Pacific Crime Blog

Criminology and Animals

There are varied areas of criminology and criminal justice that overlap with the study of nonhuman animals. Interest in domestic violence involving animals, animal cruelty, the role of dogs in prison therapy or animal assisted therapy generally, the use of service dogs in social control, such as K-9 units, and the like, are commonly discussed in the field.

Beyond the field of criminology, it is important to recognize how extensively Americans are involved with their nonhuman pets. Well over half of all U.S. households have a pet, and although there are actually more pet cats, more households have a dog than any other nonhuman animal. Surveys indicate that people interact with their pets, give them human names, buy them gifts, etc.

This makes the satirical Crate-Gate an especially interesting phenomenon for criminologists to watch. If you've never heard of Crate-Gate, try the above link. As any student of human and non-human interaction will attest, people speak through their nonhuman animals, in this case, dogs. In today's world of a presidential race in progress, we have an opportunity to see the varied voices and scenes that humans use to tell their dogs' stories. Can or should a presidential candidate be judged on how he treats his own family pet? Would knowledge about how a presidential candidate treats his own family pet inform citizens' understanding of his moral character?

The treatment of peaceful Occupy protesters at U C Davis has become widely known thanks to video recordings that have gone viral. This letter by a U C Davis Professor, "Militarization Of Campus Police," provides a compelling interpretation of the official response to protest. Pepper spray in the faces of peaceful protesters? Think again and again. What is the crime and who is/are the criminals? U C D Law Professors also join in the discussion.

The long awaited realignment in California has begun. The state of California now transfers responsibility for specific categories of less serious criminal offenders to county jurisdictions rather than state prison. Let us hope that it goes smoothly. Perhaps other jurisdictions could then see a viable way to reduce overused prisons and return offenders to local jurisdictions where they may have a greater chance of successful reentry. It is clear that many other states have serious crowding and other problems, but it appears that California leads the pack in the size, extent and severity of the problems. If we have learned anything in California, it is that history can repeat itself: using prisons as we have to solve the problems of crime is an extraordinarily costly use of scarce public money that is highly likely to fail.

The colossal California prison failure has taken a narrowly defined federal court order (one that had to go to the U.S. Supreme Court) to change, which coincides with a financially broke state that has no money for teachers, roads, health care, and the like. So it's about time. Some of the nearly ten billion dollars that goes to the state's prisons--over eleven percent of the state's budget--should be reduced by $1.5 billion.

Observers estimate that almost twenty-six thousand would-be prison inmates will do time in local jails now instead of prison, which one would expect would be closer to home, job, family and perhaps even rehabilitation or job training programs. There won't be the rapid and wasteful "churning" of parolees.

There is a lot of speculation about the effects of the realignment on local jail capacity, crime levels, and the like. An editorial by our local paper says that it is an "experiment" and a "gamble." Much of the discussion statewide mirrors that that surrounded of the probation subsidy program of decades past: "Will the money for all of these inmates materialize?" (When and exactly how much are reasonable questions); "Will crime levels increase?" (Hard to imagine they could ever be as high as the recidivism levels of released prisoners in California); Can we develop effective local programs to manage our own criminal offenders? (What a refreshing question. Local experience in Napa County suggests that local programs can provide beneficial employment training, drug testing and yet have substantially reduced recidivism levels.)

Let us hope that the experience with realignment will be carefully studied by researchers. We need ways of rationally assessing the consequences of our policy choices rather than allowing such things as politicians with simplistic crime control agendas, pundits, and high profile cases to guide policy decisions. The last thing we need is the hyperbolic thinking that got us into this enormous problem to begin with, like that supplied our own Republican State Senator (Runner) commenting on realignment:

"Now is the time for Californians to get a dog, buy a gun and install an alarm system. The state of California is no longer going to protect you."

Recently updated. Originally posted in April 2010.

Have you filled out the 2010 Census form yet? What does this have to do with crime and corrections? Quite a bit once you think about it.
"Fixing prison-based gerrymandering after the 2010 Census: A 50 state guide" is a very important look at where prisoners are counted as living for the purpose of the U.S. Census. Since residence defines where representation and resources are supposed to be apportioned, and with two million people locked up and prisoners counted as residents of the institutions (cities/states) where they are housed, it can give an unfair representative advantage to jurisdictions with prisons. As researchers note, "communities that bear the most direct costs of crime are also the communities that are the biggest victims of prison-based gerrymandering."

As these researchers and advocates for change note, states can change the way the Census counts are used for the allocation of representation and resources society.

More recently, the state of New York has changed its laws dealing with this issue. See the editorial in the New York Times.

Now Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation (AB 420) mandating that prisoners in California will be counted based on their residence at commitment, not in the prison that they happen to be housed in, beginning in 2020. California is the fourth state to do this.

(Updated) Using criminal laws to manage a narrowly defined immigration "problem" is currently a hot topic. SSU faculty member Francisco Vasquez discusses the issue of the legal vs. ethical issues surrounding immigration in light of Arizona's new laws. He writes, for example, that "Politically, the issue of Mexican illegal immigration is the most exploited, useful and, historically, the principal political weapon for U.S. politicians every time there is an economic crisis." He raises a number of good points that can inform debate about immigration today.

Find Francisco's "GUEST OPINION: Standing up against an unethical Arizona law" at the local newspaper.

It is also worth noting that President Obama is frequently criticized for failing to enforce federal immigration laws. However, as more recently noted by TRAC,

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) show that during the first nine months of FY 2010, more non-US citizens were removed from the country than during any similar period in the Bush Administration....the first nine months of FY 2010...resulted in the removal of 279,035 individuals compared to 254,763 in the same nine month period during the final year of the Bush administration."

Should America unleash the private sector to solve our immigration problems? Even ardent private sector believers can't help but see the humor and truth in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon about capitalism in America. Project Censored looks at the role of private sector corrections in responding to the issues facing immigrants and the U.S. problems with immigration. Their observation differs from but seems to complement Francisco's. They note at this link that two private sector leaders in the privatization of prisons,

"CCA based in Nashville, Tennessee, and Geo Group, a global corporation based in Boca Raton, Florida, are the principal moving forces in the behind-the-scenes organization of the current wave of anti-immigrant legislative efforts."

For the latest data on federal law enforcement in the area of immigration take this link. The table below is taken from 2010 TRAC report. It shows how Arizona compares to the rest of the U.S.

Here is a web site on issues of immigration that looks at its human side. Enjoy!

This ebook, Justice (pdf), was made possible by the Rockefeller Foundation, Columbia University, and Penland School of Crafts.

Justice

Justice Kennedy was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan in upholding the previously ordered release of California inmates from CDCR. California's prisons, designed to hold 80,000 inmates, have been holding more than double that for decades. In response to a long period of attempted federal intervention and a prior three judge federal court finding (subsequently appealed) that mental and medical care needs of inmates could not be met unless population size is reduced, the high court's 5-4 decision finally concludes the case.

This is big news. Supposedly population will be reduced to about 137 percent of capacity. Exactly how and when this will be accomplished has yet to be seen but supposedly it will happen within two years. Inmates will hopefully receive better care rather than cruel and unusual punishment.

And now California can re-embark on a new era of community based corrections rather than having such an extraordinarily heavy reliance on the extremely expensive system of incarceration. I say re-embark because we have successfully gone down this path before--in the 60's and early 70's through probation subsidy and in the 80's through the Blue Ribbon Commission's community supervision act proposal. There have been more recent proposals as well.

Hopefully, decreased commitments and shorter terms will also lead to reduced reliance on parole supervision as well. California has been criticized heavily for paroling everyone even though not everyone "needs" it. Some have argued that the system of supervision itself should be done away with, but a significant response has been that even if that's true, there has to be a release valve from prison. Perhaps for the moment there is a greater need for flexibility to get or keep people out of prison.

The high court's finding could also not have come at a better time--over the past 30 years California's prison budget has more than tripled to over 9 billion dollars while the state's services have been severely crippled. The horrific budget deficit that threatens massive layoffs at local levels, closure of public parks, retraction of higher education and huge increases in tuition/fees, might be mitigated by the proper reduction of money to the prison system. Whether that can happen has yet to be seen.

Relief ordered, at last! Download the opinion at this link.

On Dec. 6 the New York Times published an opinion piece worthy of note. In response to the California prison conditions case now before the U.S. Supreme Court, Schwarzenegger v. Plata. Federal oversight of California's broken system determined that population must be reduced by forty thousand inmates to provide adequate, but minimal, health care to inmates, who die routinely as a direct result of the the poor quality of care and a failure of the prison to respond to court orders issues to prevent these problems over the past couple of decades.

The editorial concludes: "America's prison system is now studied largely because of its failure -- the result of an expensive approach to criminal justice shaped by fear-driven ideology. California's prisons embody this overwhelming failure."

In these times of potential social change it is useful for students and teachers to read the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union in light of their criminal justice systems. This provides a useful example for comparison to the U.S.

PEW's just released study, National Research of Public Attitudes on Crime and Punishment, is must reading for people concerned with correctional reform in the U.S.

The study shows that voters want citizens and communities safe and want offenders to be accountable. In addition: "Voters believe a strong public safety system is possible while reducing the size and cost of the prison system."

The findings detail how much people are willing to release offenders from prison, the high priority they place on funding education over prisons, and how important people view preparing people who are released from prison (since 95% are) to become productive members of society.

Do the PEW findings apply to California? Some data suggests that the answer is yes. For example, the table below is derived from a random sample of Californians as of January, 2010 collected by the PPIC. It shows support for cutting various state agencies in California to reduce the deficit. The data show that nearly 70% of the California public supports cutting prison budgets to reduce the deficit. The public is, however, strongly opposed to cutting budgets in education and health and human services to reduce the deficit.

People want to know how much crime there is. The data below have been taken from publicly accessible data sources identified in the tables below or in the text.

Police Data. Here are some police data generated from the Uniform Crime Reports, 2009.

Part I or Index Personal/Violent Offenses, 1990-2009:
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Part I or Index Property Offenses, 1990-2009:
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UCR reported offenses cleared by arrest or exceptional means, 2009:
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UCR Arrests, 2009, all offenses and jurisdictions (% of total computed):
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Justifiable homicides by police over time, by time of weapon:
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Justifiable homicides by citizens over time, by type of weapon:
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Victim Data. Latest data (see year on table). Here are some data from National Crime Victim Survey: Americans reporting on how frequently and what kind of victimization they have experienced, as well as whether or not they have reported it to the police. One recent report is Criminal Victimization 2008

Proportion of victims who do/do not report victimization, by offense:
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Why victims report victimization to police:
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Why victims do not report victimization to police:
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Dramatic declines in victimization, 1998-2008 (from Criminal Victimization above):
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Violent personal victimization by gender, race, ethnicity and age:
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Violent personal victimization by race, controlling for gender:
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Victim-offender relationship in violent victimization, by type of crime and gender of victim:
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Self-protective measures taken by victims of violent personal crime, by gender and race
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Property victimization by annual household income:
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Self report data. The third method of measuring crime is by asking those who break the rules. For reasons that are not entirely clear, these kinds of questions are often only asked of juveniles. Today one of the best known self-report program is called Monitoring the Future, which has been collecting data for thirty-six years. At present self report data are collected annually from 8th, 10th and 12th graders. Here's a small sample from the latest survey. A report overview (pdf) is available.

View table

Some data are available for juveniles and adults on illicit drug use. For example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse conducted a national survey in 2008 available at this link. The latest data are available in this report. The table below displays marijuana use level by age for the U.S. as a whole:

View table

Updated and reposted:
Everyone interested in crime and punishment may be interested in the 2005 report on California's Three Strikes Law, entitled A Primer: Three Strikes: The Impact After More Than a Decade, authored by Brian Brown and Greg Jolivette of the Legislative Analyst's Office of the State of California.* This study is elegant in its simplicity and its quantity and quality of information. There are important findings.

First, the three strikes law has had a major impact on California prisons: individuals sentenced under the law now comprise 26 percent of the state's prison population. Since the law was passed about 87,500 people have been sentenced to prison under its provisions. Unlike some other states, who use tough-sounding habitual offender laws more as symbolic legislation, California has made big-time use of this law. At $35,000 per inmate per year this means Californians are paying big money for this.

Second, fully 56% of "strikers" (inmates sentenced under the law) are in prison for nonserious or nonviolent offenses: this includes 59% of second strikers and 46 percent of third strikers. Sentence lengths of all inmates increased by 19 percent since the law was passed; "Second strikers released to parole in 2004 served 43 months on average. The additional time in prison for second strikers costs the state approximately $60,000 per striker" (p. 20). None of the 7,575 third strikers have yet been released and none will be until 2019.

Third, the fiscal impact is unclear, but the report estimates that the law costs about a half a billion dollars a year and that this cost will increase significantly. There will be long term costs as aging prisoners' health care costs are added to the base cost of incarcerating inmates. There will be additional parole and parole decision-making costs, and there has been a 10% increase in trials that can probably be attributed to the law; calculation of these and other costs are not included in the half billion figure. Parole officials are beefing up supervision of striker releasees, thereby increasing the cost of supervision.

The very big promise of this law is that it will reduce crime. Has it? First, it is important to recognize that the law was passed when crime was declining to begin with, both in California and the U.S. as a whole. Second, there is wide variation in use of the law by the counties, e.g., "Kern County with 1,518 strikers per 100,000 adult felony arrests is over 13 times more likely to send an arrestee to state prison with a strike enhancement than San Francisco County (113 strikers per 100,000 adult felony arrests)" (p. 25). Third, there is no correspondance between county usage of the law and subsequent changes in county crime rates. Citing a report by Jim Austin, they note: " If Three Strikes works as intended, one would expect that those counties that used the law more often would experience significantly greater reductions in crime than those that did not use it as often. However, the county comparison study did not find significantly different outcomes across different counties, suggesting that the Three Strikes law was not the primary cause of the significant drop in crime after 1994" (p. 31).

As it concerns violent crime rates in particular, the report goes on to compare the declines in violent crime across counties that used the striker enhancements a great deal compared to those that did not use it as much. They find no differences in benefits across counties: "The violent crime rate in those counties least likely to send strikers to prison declined by an average of 45 percent, while the violent crime rate in the counties most likely to send strikers to prison declined by an average of 44 percent."

In short, the decline in crime in California (and elsewhere) can not be linked to the three strikes law.

The report does not say this but it obviously needs to be: the law has been an enormously costly and ineffectual response to crime. It is grounded in unfounded and simplistic assumptions about how to control crime. Despite the hard-line rhetoric it very likely has had no effect on public safety.

As we continue to dump massive amounts of public money to fund the incarceration of offenders convicted of nonserious strikes, we miss the opportunity to support other pressing needs--ones that might well have demonstrable positive effects in dealing with crime and its antecedents.

California's Proposition 66 of the 2004 election, which would have scaled down Three Strikes to only include offenders whose second and third strikes were violent or serious felonies, was narrowly defeated at the polls because of a last minute campaign headed by the Governor, a very wealth friend of his, and other vested interests--the most powerful lobbying group in California (the California Correctional and Peace Officer's Association), and the District Attorney's Association. The television ads against the law were filled with gross inaccuracies and distortions (see them for yourself at http://www.keep3strikes.org/video2.asp).
Prior to this extremely well-funded media blitz there was strong public support for changing the three strikes law. Pollsters were surprised by the dramatic switch in public opinion.

We, the public and taxpayers, are left with paying the enormous price tag for no crime reduction benefit and lost opportunities to spend money on alternative pressing needs that can do much more to prevent crime.

SuperCell thrives on California's three strikes law. SuperCell relishes people who don't want to be bothered with ineffective crime control policies. SuperCell admires politicians who ignore information on ineffective crime control policy.

For a study of the disproportionate impact of three strikes on minorities see "Racial Divide: An Examination of the Impact of California's Three Strikes Law on African-Americans and Latinos."

"The Legislative Analyst's Office (LAO) is a nonpartisan office which provides fiscal and policy information and advice to the California Legislature. To request publications call (916) 445-4656. This report and others, as well as an E-mail subscription service, are available on the LAO's Internet site at www.lao.ca.gov."

The economy is ripe for (mostly) downscale arson. Some news articles suggest the structural reasons for this, e.g., 

Economy blamed for jump in arson cases | MLive.com

The conviction of a peace officer for the killing of Oscar Grant raises the question of how frequently police are charged with crimes against citizens and what the outcomes of accusations are. The table on p. 5 of Crime in California, the California Attorney General's advance report on crime in California, shows how many times police in California were charged with crimes against citizens over the past six years. In 2009, 600 felony and 833 misdemeanor charges were leveled against officers by citizens. Fifty-one (8.5%) of the 600 felonies were "sustained," as were 101 (12.1%) of the misdemeanors. Click the table to enlarge it. An important question--not addressed in the report--is the meaning of "sustained" and the consequences of this for officers, departments and citizens.

Accusations against prison guards by inmates at this time appear to be far more hidden than accusations against police by free citizens. One would think that the California prison system would be far more open and transparent in its dealings with inmates given the sustained criticism of the operation of prisons but for varied reasons it is not. A recent Sacramento Bee investigative story discusses what happens to complaints filed by inmates in California prisons against correctional officers. Will this instigate more inquiry?

"Daniel Johnson, a recently retired state prison research analyst, was assigned in 2008 and 2009 to record information into a database from about 10,000 employee-misconduct appeals filed by prisoners over more than five years. He told The [Sacramento] Bee that virtually every complaint filed against a correctional officer was rejected by officials, including hundreds of appeals alleging physical abuse 'even when medical records supported the complaint.'"

Source: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/01/2928417/rights-of-prisoners-under-siege.html#ixzz0vOZjOuMp

In an update of an earlier report at the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, The California Miracle: Drastically Reduced Youth Incarceration, Drastically Reduced Youth Crime, authors Mike Males and Daniel Macallair examine whether adult and juvenile crime rates have changed in California as the incarceration of juveniles has dramatically declined. For the record, in the past thirty years the rate of incarceration for juveniles has declined by eighty percent. The answer (relax conservatives, don't sweat it politicians, take heart progressives): decarcerating juveniles has been a very good thing. As incarceration has decreased, crime among juveniles has decreased. For example, from 1980 to 2009, the felony crime rate among juveniles dropped sixty percent.

The study also compares the juvenile and adult experiences and looks at particular counties that have widely varying rates of incarceration.

This is an important reading in a state with staggering budget deficits and an over reliance on incarceration as a solution to crime problems. Criminologists will appreciate how the study directly addresses the meaning and implications of the results for incapacitation theory. These kind of results do not bolster SuperCell's reputation.

Today the House passed legislation that will greatly decrease the wide disparities in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine sentences. It will also repeal the five year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack cocaine. This comes on the heels of the Senate vote. The legislation now goes to the President. The issue of whether the changes will be applied retroactively is unknown.

This was bipartisan legislation, although one has to wonder whether it could ever have happened had Democrats not had the upper hand. It's the first repeal of a mandatory minimum drug sentence since the days of the Nixon administration. Various groups, including the Sentencing Project and FAMM have argued strenuously for reform of the laws.

During the early 1970's in California Ronald Reagan decided to deinstitutionalize persons with mental illnesses. With legislative support that's what happened, and it was supposed to be somehow replaced with some kind of community care system and psychotropic drugs that somehow never fully materialized. Over the years many commentators and researchers have noticed the increased presence of persons with varied mental illnesses or dual diagnoses in prisons and jails.

The Treatment Advocacy Center's latest nationwide study on the mentally ill in confinement notes:

"In historical perspective, we have returned to the early nineteenth century, when mentally ill persons filled our jails and prisons. At that time, a reform movement, sparked by Dorothea Dix, led to a more humane treatment of mentally ill persons. For over a hundred years, mentally ill individuals were treated in hospitals. We have now returned to the conditions of the 1840s by putting large numbers of mentally ill persons back into jails and prisons" (emphasis in original).

Have you been to a local jail lately and checked out how many persons identified as having mental illnesses are there and how many of them are walking around with shackles? It's upsetting to behold, but when you put people in a jail and they don't behave, you do what jailers do. A sad part of this is that there are no bandaid, panacea solutions. Over 30% of women inmates, and a little over half of male inmates, have serious mental health problems, and Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca can say with authority, "I run the biggest mental hospital in the country" (cited in the above study, p. 4).

Clearly U.S. priorities and California's in particular are to criminalize problems that belong elsewhere. Criminal justice incarceration, here in the form of local jails, is one of the most inappropriate, expensive and least effective solutions around. The above study suggests that states with the greatest spending on hospitals for the mentally ill spend the least money on mentally ill inmates in prisons and jails. Moreover, mentally ill inmates cost a great deal more to manage than other inmates--and they stay longer (not surprisingly, many have trouble following institutional rules! After all, it is a place of punishment in form if not intent.).

This is one of those areas of criminal justice where it is very clear the form of our structured response to people in trouble (jail and shackles for the mentally ill) is inappropriate. Our society--through our leaders--has put all its money into a criminal justice solution to everything: we're now governing through crime, to use the title of Jonathan Simon's book, Governing Through Crime, a vital way of thinking about the mass incarceration response to crime today.

How can we get out of this mess? It seems advisable to decarcerate the mentally ill with soundly planned and executed community based alternatives designed to keep them out of jails and prisons and which do not infringe on their civil liberties. There are programs that work to do that. Mental health courts appear to have promise, as may other alternatives suggested in the report. The non-help, non-system, let them eat cake solution of Ronald Reagan doesn't work and the current policy of incarceration doesn't work. Moreover, in today's world, throwing psychiatrists at them will do little more than lead to drugs: in today's world, psychiatrists have moved away from talk therapy. (See Talk Doesn't Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy.) Instead, it's all about drugs and more drugs.

Today it appears that jails and prisons have become for the mentally ill what the juvenile court was in the early 1960's to juveniles having minor run-ins with the police: a solution of first resort. Edwin Lemert's angrily toned (and lengthy) report, Instead of Court: Diversion from Juvenile Justice, drew attention to the overreach of the juvenile justice system and suggested the importance of finding alternatives to formal processing. Since that time diversion programs, which have their own issues, have flourished and many states have decarcerated or completed closed their youth training schools (prisons for young offenders). The important lesson from research on these states' experiences is that with careful planning it is possible to decarcerate young offenders--as California has been doing--without increasing public risk and while providing people with the services and assistance to make them self-sufficient adults. Perhaps similar things can be done with mentally ill persons along lines suggested in the Treatment Advocacy Center report.

Laws relating to cell phone usage have been passed in many states or local jurisdictions (see this listing of states, local jurisdictions and their laws). This is one of those areas where systematic research has not quite caught up to the potential importance of a common practice (talking on a cell phone or even texting while driving) for traffic safety. Many such laws are targeting youth or 'novice' drivers: over 28 states target texting while driving, which is about youth mainly.

This is an area ripe for investigation by students of dynamic conflict and social change leading to legal change.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, in Graham v. Florida (08-7412.pdf), on the question of whether juveniles can be given life without parole sentences. In a case decided today the court ruled that juveniles can not be given such sentences unless convicted of homicide. The 5-4 decision is remarkable because of the minority opinion of Scalia, Thomas and Alito.

The loss of the right to vote because of a felony conviction under a de facto policy of mass incarceration in the U.S. means--translated into practice--that one-third of black men in Alabama can no longer vote. That is unbelievable. More will be added each year in that state and elsewhere as we continued to lock up massive numbers of inmates who are disproportionately represented by minorities and the poor. The NAACP has just completed a report on the general topic, "Free the Vote: Unlocking Democracy in the Cells and on the Streets." This is worth a close read and discussion. The question of whether disenfranchisement is inconsistent with the Voting Rights Act is an interesting one. See the recent opinion by Linda Greenhouse in "Voting Behind Bars."

In these important times of U.S. Supreme Court replacements it is helpful to have a reference point for how the process is supposed to work. Try Supreme Court Nominations

PEW Center on the States, One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections provides the latest look at the reach of corrections in the United States. It documents the unprecedented growth in and costs of the increases in community and institutional corrections and points as well to ways out of the mess that we're in.

From 1 in 31:

For some updated statistics see this study from the Correctional Research Service.

Today's New York Times' article, "California, in Financial Crisis, Opens Prison Doors," is an evenly worded statement of where the country is headed. Although no other state can match our seventy percent parole failure rate, perhaps they will want to follow California's lead and reduce inmate populations. As the Golden State hemorrhages from scarce resources, the lost opportunities due to the enormous amount of money given to its highly ineffective prisons is finally coming to the foreground. The CCPOA (guard's union) has backed off its pressure to keep the prison filled and growing and CDCR is being forced to do what it should have done decades ago: cautiously letting low risk inmates out without serious parole supervision and even trying to provide inmates the services they need to transition to society.

Governor Schwarzenegger might leave office with some dignity if he follows through with attempts to put more money into education than prisons.

Thanks to Rick L. for forwarding this op-ed link:

Prevent criminal activity, spend less on prisons

Originally published on Jan. 11, 2007. See "Afterwards" at end.

The evidence of global warming is everywhere around us, varying in forms depending upon where we live. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided the very latest evidence and scientific conclusions about global warming and what has caused it. Many are unaware of the problem due to the deliberate manipulation of information (see, e.g., Global warming facts obscured by politics).

Most of the rise in world temperature is due to the buildup of carbon dioxide caused mainly by burning fossil fuels. Only fools are still in denial. With continued global warming will come gradual or rapid but certain calamity, death, disease, crime and related problems. To learn more or to instigate thinking about this you could start by downloading a simplified version of the "Global Warming: Early Warning Signs" poster, or by getting a copy of the map itself. (fyi, we have no financial interest in the sale of this map.) You might also take a look at the Brookings document on reducing oil dependence. You could also read Stephen Hawking's thoughts on global warming.

There are plenty of weighty and compelling statements about what is happening to the earth. The Earth Institute summarizes one bit of the most visible evidence of warming:

"According to NASA, the polar ice cap is now melting at the rate of 9 percent per decade. Arctic ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s. The current pace of sea-level rise is three times the historical rate and appears to be accelerating.

The IPCC's webcast of their latest study (WG I Summary for Policymakers, Paris, France, 2 February 2007), the fourth assessment, is useful to listen to.

There are many, many other implications of global warming. Obviously the oceans will rise quite a bit, there will be dramatic weather changes, and many (more) people will die from the direct and indirect effects of all these and related factors. If you would like to read first-person accounts of the experience in areas that have been directly affected by global warming, such as the changing lives of farmers around Mt. Kilimanjaro, see the link to the "Reports from a Warming Planet" provided by American Radioworks.

It is easy to identify the the top twenty carbon dioxide emitters, the sources of our global warming problem, but far more difficult to get recognition of the problem by citizens, legislators and government, especially in the United States--one of the biggest sources of pollution leading to global warning.

One of the most challenging questions is how to get environmental pollution high on the agenda of public problems, first in the U.S. and then abroad. Perhaps we could take the bold step and define it as a crime rather than, as is presently done, burying it in administrative regulations. Unbelievable as it may sound, the Environmental Protection Agency refuses to define greenhouse gases as environmental pollution. (An analogy is the FDA's management of the cigarette/smoking issue.) California has taken the step of defining tailpipe emissions as pollution, with some strict guidelines to be implemented in 2009. It is, however, unclear whether the Bush Administration or federal law will back up California and other states that see the problems so clearly and attempt to take definite actions to try to deal with them before it is too late to do anything.

There is now a widely watched case (05-1120 Massachusetts, et al. v. EPA, et al.) sitting at the U.S. Supreme Court that begs for resolution of the meaning of the Clean Air Act, which during oral arguments led to the usual embarassment of Scalia's superficial understanding of cases before the court. At stake here, however, is whether there will or can be a speedy solution to pollution emissions in the race against global warming. If Congress has to revise the Clean Air Act it will delay, delay and delay the solutions that are needed to address the big problems we face today, now.

In 1988--during "Greenhouse Summer"--there was great concern expressed about the global warming phenomenon, but interest waned as obvious signs appeared to diminish (but objective indicators have continued to show definitive evidence). (See Shedon Unger, "The Rise and (Relative) Decline of Global Warming as a Social Problem," The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 33, Number 4, pages 483-501, 1992.) His work calls attention to the importance of social scares to social change and is worth reading in this context.

Locally, in Sonoma County, California, the environmental movement is alive and well and working to reduce greenhouse emissions. It really is a hands-on, grass roots example of how you can help your own local community get on this problem: make a global problem your local problem. In 2001, all nine cities, Sonoma County and the Water Agency here were the first in the United States to specify greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets for all government agencies. The Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) is the blueprint being used to coordinate public and private sector groups to make it all happen. Go to this page to see the Community Climate Action Plan Update. Other local communities can check out the Climate Protection Campaign web site.

Noticed some strange changes in the weather in your area that are, well, discomforting in some way? Is the weather too pleasant (or uncomfortable) for this time of year, or just weird? Trust your senses, start reading, educate yourself, take action. You can make a difference.

Afterwards
In July of 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center's official government report on climate change concludes:

"The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record..." See the report for more details.

See climateprogress.org/ for numerous discussions about the state of earth and how and why we are in denial about climate change.

Federal oversight of California's prison system calls for reduction of prison population in the next two years. We have the means to do it, along with the support of democratic legislators and the governor. Now the only roadblock is republicans, who are continuing to use the 'tough on crime' rhetoric to prevent California from doing what needs to happen: cutting sentences short for nonviolent offenders, reducing or eliminating parole for the low risk offenders, as other states already do, and using other reasonable means to reduce the number of prison inmates.

While the state is actively cutting programs and assistance to people with demonstrable needs--e.g., huge cuts to education, assistants for the disabled, etc.--to feed the extraordinary costly and ineffective system of corrections, republicans are truly demonstrating how much they are completely out of touch with the reality of California.

The state of California of course appealed the three judge panel's decision, which is now in the U.S. Supreme Court. We should be hearing about their decision shortly.

The Chancellor of the CSU system finally gets it. How long has this taken?

"During the budget debate, it became clear to me that something unthinkable has happened in California: Our fiscal meltdown has so distorted our legislative priorities that we are now a state that places a higher priority on prison than on higher education.

"Last week, at the same time that the California State University's Board of Trustees was approving drastic measures to manage unprecedented budget cuts, a tentative budget deal in the Legislature was unraveling because of outrage over cuts to California's prison budget. How could the message to California students have been any clearer? You can cut higher education to the bone and you won't hear a single statement of remorse from the Legislature, but start cutting into the prison budget and you'll hear howls of protest from the Capitol."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/27/ED3018UPP1.DTL#ixzz0MZssDtRf

Read Eric Williams' opinion, "To get more, they need Gitmo," in the L.A. Times. He writes:

"I have been studying the issue of prisons in rural towns across the U.S. since 2003 and have found that small towns have no problem with housing inmates, no matter how dangerous society considers the inmates to be."

For the moment, fears about the H5N1 avian flu--and related criminological issues--have receded while U.S. and other investigators look into the latest outbreak of Swine Flu. WHO and the Center for Disease Control appears to be on top of this and (as of June 11) a worldwide pandemic has been declared. The CDC is careful to say that "WHO's decision to raise the pandemic alert level to Phase 6 is a reflection of the spread of the virus, not the severity of illness caused by the virus." As of 6.25.09 there have been 127 deaths in the U.S. and its territories and a total of 265 deaths worldwide.

People are discussing primarily the flu in general and swine flu in internet forums. The figure below, created from BlogPulse, shows the trends in mention of swine flu relative to "flu" and "avian flu" on 6.29.09 for the prior six month period. It is notable that the June 11 announcement barely led to a slight blib in discussion.

Remain aware by reading regular updates from the Sonoma County Public Health Division.

The link below is one way to keep on top of official CDC information.