Tag Archives: crime

Criminal Justice by the Numbers: The Moneyball Approach

“The approach is simple. First, government needs to figure out what works. Second, government should fund what works. Then, it should stop funding what doesn’t work.”

That, in a nutshell, is Peter Orszag’s summary of a recent, detailed set of recommendations  issued by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU’s law school. He calls it “the Moneyball approach”–going by statistical evidence rather than gut impressions.

The Brennan Center’s proposal, Reforming Funding to Reduce Mass Incarceration, is a plan to link federal grant money to modern criminal justice goals – to use that grant money more strategically– to promote innovative crime-reduction policies nationwide and to reduce crime, incarceration and the costs of both.

The proposal, titled “Success-Oriented Funding,” would change the federal government’s $352 million Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program, by focusing on the government’s current criteria for determining whether a grant has been successful.  (Fortunately, given the gridlock in Congress, It could be implemented by the DOJ– it wouldn’t require legislation.)

The fundamental premise of the program is that “what gets measured gets done.” If you are measuring the number of arrests, you’ll increase arrests. If you are measuring reductions in crime or recidivism, you’ll get reductions in crime and recidivism.

A blue-ribbon panel including prosecutors and defense lawyers, Republicans and Democrats, academics and officeholders has signed on to the proposal. As Orszag noted in the Forward:

Based on rough calculations, less than $1 out of every $100 of government spending is backed by even the most basic evidence that the money is being spent wisely. With so little performance data, it is impossible to say how many of the programs are effective. The consequences of failing to measure the impact of so many of our government programs — and of sometimes ignoring the data even when we do measure them — go well beyond wasting scarce tax dollars. Every time a young person participates in a program that doesn’t work but could have participated in one that does, that represents a human cost. And failing to do any good is by no means the worst sin possible: Some state and federal dollars flow to programs that actually harm the people who participate in them.

Figuring out what we taxpayers are paying for, and whether what we are paying for works.

Evidence. What a novel idea!

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Random Thoughts Post-Boston

Random observations, in no particular order…

Anyone can buy a pressure cooker, but the Boston bombers also killed with guns. Wonder where they got them? Internet? Gun show? As a friend of mine has noted, we demand background checks to buy Sudafed, but not guns.

The right to vote is at least as important as the right to own a firearm, but the same people who are so protective of the Constitution and the  2d Amendment seem to have no problem requiring documentation in order to vote. Yet in-person vote fraud is virtually non-existent, while gun violence perpetrated by felons and paranoids is epidemic.

Speaking of self-appointed guardians of (selective) constitutional rights, it hasn’t taken long for many of them (yes, Lindsey Graham, I’m looking at YOU) to advocate immediate retribution against the Boston bombers in defiance of both the Constitution and the rule of law. Amazing how quickly the same people who indignantly wrap themselves in the Constitution when they perceive a threat to their rights are willing to resort to mob rule when someone else’s rights are at issue.

Finally, for all you War on Terror types: the horrific attack at the Boston Marathon was treated as a crime, and the perpetrators were promptly apprehended. Random acts of carnage, whatever the motives of those responsible, are criminal acts. The perpetrators are criminals, not “warriors.”

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Random Thoughts on a Frosty Morning….

Back in Indiana, on a morning that lets us all know fall is here…

Some ruminations.

Random thought #1. I talked to folks in Cleveland about what happened to the “Flats,” an old warehouse area that had been revitalized with restaurants and entertainment venues a couple of decades ago. The area is now pretty desolate; their explanation was that crime had increased–folks were mugged and beaten–and people had stopped patronizing those establishments. That made me think about the current problems in Indianapolis, where police presence has dropped significantly and the city has allowed important amenities like the canal to deteriorate. If we don’t want to emulate Cleveland–and we don’t–we need to send a message to City Hall.

Random thought #2. I see where Governor Daniels had a pretty bad weekend. Somehow, he’s blown through all that money he got from selling off–er, leasing–the Toll Road. So the portion of I69 between Bloomington and Indy evidently won’t get built, at least not without a lot of extra tax dollars. (That’s the problem with funding government by selling off state assets–when the money’s gone, so’s the ability of the asset to generate added income.) While the national unemployment rate dropped below 8%, Indiana’s rate increased to 8.3%. And legislators are beginning a real push-back on Daniels’ love affair with coal gasification and his plan to dump lots of state money into a coal gasification plant in southern Indiana, raising questions that should have been asked before this. But better late than never. But never fear–the Governor isn’t going to let these pesky problems distract him from important duties like shilling for the online “education” provided through WGU. (How’s that Purdue presidency coming along, Mitch?)

Random thought #3. Over the weekend, the Star somehow managed to avoid setting off the irony meter, in an editorial decrying the performance of Indiana’s public schools. The editorial writer wondered why a state that has managed its fiscal affairs so well (i.e., we have a surplus) hasn’t been able to improve education. Um…guys? Where do you think that money came from? Think that might have something to do with the problem?

Happy Indiana Autumn …

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Crime and Promises

When Greg Ballard ran for mayor, we were treated to a lot of rhetoric about crime. Public Safety was going to be “job one” in a Ballard administration. Well, if crime has been job one, I shudder to think of how we are doing with jobs two through ten.

The media have reported on our distressing rates of violent crime; it seems as if there’s a murder every day or so. But there are fewer reports of the so-called nonviolent and “petty” crimes: thefts from cars parked on city streets, burglaries and house break-ins, etc. And those have grown alarmingly.

I live in the Old Northside now, but my husband and I have lived in downtown neighborhoods for 30 years. We were part of the Hudnut Administration that jump-started the renaissance of the city’s core. In that thirty-year period, I have never seen the rate of what police call “household invasions” anywhere near this high. Just in the past month, I’ve had three neighbors I know personally burgled, and the neighborhood listserv has circulated reports of several others. One friend was in his house, in bed with his wife, when intruders broke in and took computers and other electronics. (Talk about shaking your sense of security!)

My friends in IMPD report significant issues of morale and management in the department. Whether those issues affect the crime rate, I don’t know. What I DO know is that crime is increasingly a topic of concern among my friends and neighbors, and that there is a perception of a significant increase in criminal activity. That’s troubling enough, but what is even more troubling is that the Mayor does not seem to recognize either the problem or the challenge that the growing concern about crime poses to other important city goals.

Promises, promises………

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Facts, Law and Mike Delph

A friend who uses Twitter sent me a series of Tweets from Mike Delph today. Most railed against “activist” judges (beginning with Chief Justice Marshall’s decision in Marbury v. Madison) and the “elites that control them.” Others were–frankly–incomprehensible, not to mention ungrammatical. The one sentiment that came through loud and clear is that Delph is highly pissed off that the courts would dare strike down provisions of his pet legislation. (Putting this as politely as possible, if he has even a rudimentary grasp of the constitutional architecture, that grasp was not on display in these tweets.)

I thought about Delph’s war on immigrants when I read a recent article from the Atlantic.

The article was titled “Safety in Diversity: Why Crime is Down in America’s Cities.” A couple of relevant paragraphs will give its basic thrust, but the entire article is worth reading.

In the popular imagination, crime is frequently associated with big, densely populated cities. Here again, we can separate fact from myth.  Primary cities and older high-density suburbs exhibited the largest decreases in crime between 1990 and 2008, according to the Brookings study. And the gap between city and suburban violent crime narrowed in two-thirds of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. Our own analysis turns up no association whatsoever between metro size or metro density and the overall level of crime, though we do find a modest correlation (.25) between density and violent crime.

……

It might be hard to wrap your mind around this–especially with all the demagoguery about immigration. But the numbers tell a different story than our alarmist pundits and politicians do. “Since 1990, all types of communities within the country’s largest metro areas have become more diverse,” Elizabeth Kneebone, one of the authors of the Brookings report, wrote in The New Republic. “Crime fell fastest in big cities and high-density suburbs that were poorer, more minority, and had higher crime rates to begin with. At the same time, all kinds of suburbs saw their share of poor, minority, and foreign-born residents increase. As suburbia diversified, crime rates fell.” Along with their entrepreneurial energy and their zeal to succeed, immigrants are good neighbors–cultural and economic factors that militate against criminal behavior, and not just in their own enclaves but in surrounding communities as well.

Don’t you just hate it when the facts smack you down?