June 2013
17 posts
The United States still puts more children and teenagers in juvenile detention than any other developed nations in the world - as it turns out, this is very likely a bad idea.
(The Washington Post) - A new paper by economists Anna Aizer and Joseph J. Doyle, Jr. offers strong evidence that juvenile detention is a really counterproductive strategy for many youths under the age of 19. Not only does throwing a kid in detention often reduce the chance that he or she will graduate high school, but it also raises the chance that the youth will commit more crimes later on in life.
This seems intuitive enough, but the problem is actually measuring the effect. After all, the youths who commit crimes and get tossed in detention in the first place are presumably different from kids who never get detained. So of course they’d have different outcomes. What we’d really want to know is whether detention itself is actually making things worse.
So, to figure this out, Aizer and Doyle took a look at the juvenile court system in Chicago, Illinois. The researchers found that certain judges in the system were more likely to recommend detention than others — even for similar crimes. That is, it’s possible to identify stricter and more lenient judges. And, since youths were assigned to judges at random, this created a randomized trial of sorts.
What the researchers found was striking. The kids who ended up incarcerated were 13 percentage points less likely to graduate high school and 22 percentage points more likely to end up back in prison as adults than the kids who went to court but were placed under, say, home monitoring instead. (This was after controlling for family background and so forth.) Juvenile detention appeared to be creating criminals, not stopping them.
Today in things that everyone already knew, but are now scientifically proven.
“Allowing the United States government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
—Admitted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden • In an interview with The Washington Post, the other publication he worked with when leaking information. (He previously spoke to The Guardian.) Snowden says he has no plans to hide from the federal government, and will remain in Hong Kong for the time being. He suggests that, by arresting him, the federal government will only prove his point on the leaks issue. “I’m not going to hide,” he told the newspaper. (via shortformblog)
“Prison is a recruitment center for the army of crime. That is what it achieves. For 200 years everybody has been saying, “Prisons are failing; all they do is produce new criminals.” I would say on the other hand, “They are a success, since that is what has been asked of them.”
—Michel Foucault (via obamacarekush)
“Hey, check this out: There’s good phone sex or there’s some pillow talk, pull up this call, it’s really funny, go check it out.”
—NSA staffer on what he and his colleagues would say to each other as they secretly tapped into calls overseas to soldiers, journalists, and aid workers in Iraq. (via bostonreview)
More than half of student loan debt is held by families with a net worth less than $8,500. More charts on America’s nearly $1 trillion student loan debt crisis.
“The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23. Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur.”
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Senator Saxby Chambliss on what’s behind the military’s sexual assault crisis: hormones.
(h/t Mediaite)
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The food stamp program — which these days actually uses debit cards, and is officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — tries to provide modest but crucial aid to families in need. And the evidence is crystal clear both that the overwhelming majority of food stamp recipients really need the help, and that the program is highly successful…
Indeed, estimates from the consulting firm Moody’s Analytics suggest that each dollar spent on food stamps in a depressed economy raises G.D.P. by about $1.70 — which means, by the way, that much of the money laid out to help families in need actually comes right back to the government in the form of higher revenue.
Wait, we’re not done yet. Food stamps greatly reduce food insecurity among low-income children, which, in turn, greatly enhances their chances of doing well in school and growing up to be successful, productive adults. So food stamps are in a very real sense an investment in the nation’s future — an investment that in the long run almost surely reduces the budget deficit, because tomorrow’s adults will also be tomorrow’s taxpayers.
So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it.
” —From the Mouths of Babes (via smdxn)
“I decided to break the law to provide a necessary medical service because women were dying at the hands of butchers and incompetent quacks, and there was no one there to help them. The law was barbarous, cruel and unjust. I had been in a concentration camp, and I knew what suffering was. If I can ease suffering, I feel perfectly justified in doing so.”
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Dr. Henry Morgentaler, a Canadian doctor who was arrested four times for performing abortions, but whose arrests eventually led to the 1988 Canadian Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the country. He died this week at the age of 90. Good obit in the NY Times.
(via ilyagerner)
May 2013
22 posts
“President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have used the Espionage Act six times to prosecute whistle-blowers—more than all previous presidents combined. Obama’s assault on journalism and his relentless war on whistle-blowers are serious threats to fundamental democratic principles on which this nation was founded.”
—Amy Goodman (via azspot)
“Who but a black teenager has the ability to dehumanize a police officer with a stare? Who but a(n unarmed) black teenager can make (armed) police feel threatened by clenching his fists? Who but a black teenager can simultaneously clench his fists and feed a puppy? Who but a black teenager isn’t afforded the opportunity to comply with a request before it’s determined that they’re not complying? Who but a black teenager is choked to the point they urinate themselves while being handcuffed? When does any of this happen to people aren’t black teenagers?”
—Mychal Denzel Smith, To Be Young and Black in America: Always Considered a Threat (via thenationmagazine)
“But think about the [Great] Depression. That was before there was any welfare state at all. How many people starved? No one.”
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Fox’s Jon Stossel advocating cuts to social welfare programs because “no one starved” during the Great Depression. To this, Steve Doocy responds, “right, good point.”
The number of cases of starvation in New York City alone increased from 20 in 1931 to 110 in 1934.
(via reallyfoxnews)
Oh my God I can’t even…
(via cognitivedissonance)
