Woman Robs Bank With a Jar of Spaghetti Sauce

Technology is Making Society More Dangerous

I just wrapped up teaching a course called Technology in Criminal Justice, and it was a real eye-opener for both me and my students. One theme that became absolutely clear was that technology cannot replace human intervention, no matter how much we’d like that to be the case. At least not yet, it can’t. It also can’t save us from our inherent human fallibility.

Everywhere we look, though, we see governments and vendors touting technologies as a primary way to thwart crime. The downsides of any of these technologies are rarely discussed, except when something goes wrong. For example, ARS Technica recently reported on thousands of paroled sex offenders easily disabling the GPS tracking devices they were ordered to wear. Ugh.

But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Debacles such as the Department of Homeland Security’s failed multi-million dollar program to use technology to secure the US-Mexican border highlight the sometimes overwhelming management challenges of developing such complex technologies.

Smaller failures, such as have occurred with  facial recognition technology, emergency dispatch systems, tasers, drones – even police radio systems – highlight the many ways that an over-reliance on technology can cause as many problems as it solves.

In fact, the false sense of security these technologies engender is making society less safe, not more.

We trust that any technology the criminal justice system employs is not only going to work, it’s going to be an improvement over what came before. In other words, more technology equals more safety in many people’s minds. The fact that technology is so fallible and can fail at the worst possible time puts us at increased risk.

I’m no Luddite, but I am a proponent of thoughtful and careful implementation of new technologies. I’m also a staunch proponent of accounting for the human component of any new endeavor, be it a technology or any other innovation.

So, what are your thoughts on technology in criminal justice: boon or boondoggle?

Friday Crime Vids – Help Police Solve These Crimes

This week’s crime videos focus on helping investigators around the country identify suspects in several different types of offenses, including a store robbery in Louisiana, an armed robbery in Washington state, and a shooting in Pennsylvania.

If you have any information, please contact your local police or the numbers listed for the specific video.

Have a safe weekend!

Compliance with Authority and The Strip Search Prank Call Scam

Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment demonstrated the power of authority to compel individuals to engage in negative, and even harmful behaviors against others. In Milgram’s experiment, subjects complied with instructions from experimenters wearing white lab coats to administer what they thought were painful electric shocks to people hidden in another room nearby.

The subjects could hear the individuals (who were actually the experimenter’s confederates) crying out in pain and begging for the shocks to stop. But, that didn’t stop the subjects in many cases from administering additional shocks at the instruction of the experimenter.

Milgram conducted his experiments in the 1960s, and there have been not only replications of his experiments in the years since, but also actual criminal behavior grounded in compliance with authority. The 2012 movie, Compliance, dramatizes true events in which an individual called a fast food restaurant claiming to be a police officer and convinced a manager to strip search an employee, who was also then subjected to sexual abuse and humiliation.

The movie is painful to watch in spots, as you might imagine, but it is also a fascinating look inside the psychology of compliance and just how powerfully some individuals react to authority figures. The movie’s controversial content sparked some debate when it was released, including claims that the movie was exploitative and unrealistic.

The below news story regarding this case, which includes actual footage taken from a surveillance camera of the incident, would suggest, however, that the movie attempted to faithfully recreate the horrible circumstances of the offense.

Of his experiments, Milgram wrote:

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

It seems this conclusion, in terms of the above case at least, has been borne out beyond the confines of the laboratory.

Friday Crime Vids – The UCF Crime Scene

If you haven’t seen it yet, the below video footage of officers responding to a man-with-a-gun call at a University of Central Florida dormitory was released this week.  It shows officers quickly and carefully responding to the call and searching for the reported gunman, who turned out to have committed suicide in his dorm room prior to officers arriving.

In addition to the firearms seen in the video, police later recovered explosive materials in bags near the man’s body. Thankfully, those didn’t detonate, and the alleged gunman wasn’t able to carry out his reported plan to corral and kill a number of people on the campus by pulling the fire alarm.

This incident was another reminder, though, of the unpredictability of human behavior, especially when it comes to violence.

Have a safe weekend!

This day in crime history: March 19, 1943

Nobody Move!

On this date in 1943, Chicago mob boss Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti committed suicide. Nitti, who rose to prominence as Al Capone’s right hand man, was facing a prison sentence for shaking down several Hollywood movie studios. Severe claustrophobia, which had surfaced during a previous eighteen month stint in prison, made the mobster terrified at the thought of being locked up again. On the morning of March 19th, after his wife left for church, Nitti began drinking heavily. Once he had enough liquid courage, Nitti got his gun and went for a walk. He wound up at a rail yard several blocks from his house. He sat down on the ground, put the gun to his head, and pulled the trigger.

Further reading:

My Al Capone Museum – Frank Nitti

Find A Grave – Frank “The Enforcer” Nitti

Wikipedia – Frank Nitti

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Crime, Violence, and Facebook

Facebook proclaims that it “helps you connect and share with the people in your life,” which, as it turns out, may not always be such a good thing. Illegal activity, ranging from child pornography, stalking and harassment, and violation of restraining orders also occurs in the virtual world of social media. Even more concerning, however, are violent offenses, such as  sexual assault and homicide, that have been either facilitated or directly precipitated by use of such sites.

As it turns out, though, this might just be a double edged sword. Social media can facilitate crime, but it can also help solve offenses, too.

For example, a teenager was recently found guilty of a 2011 Facebook-related murder in which the site was used to lure the victim to a location where he was then shot to death. Fortunately, detectives were able to seize the teen’s computer and verify that he was indeed the person responsible for the crime.

Below is an excellent infographic created by criminaljusticedgreesguide.com that describes twenty other offenses solved using Facebook. The range and scope of these crimes is pretty staggering, as is the apparent ignorance of some of the perpetrators who treated a social media site as if it were their private haven. As you’ll see, that didn’t work out too well for them.

Can Zoning Reduce Crime?

Jane Jacobs popularized the relationship between architecture and crime in her 1961 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and some research has continued since then into the connection between these two apparently disparate fields. Unfortunately, urban planing, zoning, and related areas of the law get very little attention as crime control strategies in the mainstream press. The focus instead is often on topics that seem more directly relevant, such as criminal law, policing strategies, sentencing structures, and efforts to rehabilitate individuals.

So, what can zoning law offer in the way of crime reduction?

Last month, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review published an article about the impact of zoning law changes on crime rates in high-crime areas of Los Angeles. The study’s authors examined 205 blocks in eight sections of the city and found significant crime reduction in many areas where residential zones had been added during the four-year period considered in the study (2006-2010). In fact, areas exclusively zoned as residential had the lowest crime rates, as compared with exclusively commercial or industrial zones. Mixed-use zones fell somewhere in between the two.

This partially supports Jane Jacobs’ assertions about the effects of mixed-use development on crime, although in the opposite direction than she had hypothesized. Instead of commercial zones having a protective effect on residential areas, the reverse was found to be true in the above study.  Nevertheless, Jacobs’ intuition that organic surveillance reduced crime has found some support in the Los Angeles study.

All of this raises the larger question of how to integrate zoning into an overall crime reduction strategy. Zoning doesn’t offer the same appeal that a new policing strategy or a community engagement project might, and it certainly doesn’t have the same sound-bite quality as does announcing the hiring of additional officers to provide targeted patrols.  It’s a slow strategy that will take considerable time to evolve in a given area.

Are you aware of any specific efforts to implement this type of crime reduction strategy in the U.S. or elsewhere?

Why do Non-violent Felons Lose the Right to Bear Arms?

Gun control, and topics surrounding it, have been much discussed in the wake of recent high-profile cases of gun violence in the U.S. One question that arises in this context is the restrictions placed on gun ownership based on criminal conviction status. Are these restrictions appropriate and will they prevent the types of violence we’ve seen in recent months?

The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 is the legislation that made it illegal for convicted felons (among other groups of excluded persons) to purchase or own a firearm. This was in reaction to high-profile gun violence, including the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy early in the 1960s. This law was later modified in 1986 by passage of the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which gave certain powers over gun ownership back to the states.

Currently, all individuals convicted of a felony lose their right to firearm ownership, as do some individuals convicted of misdemeanor offenses. For example, someone convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence is banned under federal law from owning or possessing a firearm, as are respondents to a restraining orders. Some state laws are even more strict in this regard.

Photo courtesy of nesoiam

The goal of all this, many would reasonably argue, is to reduce the likelihood of gun violence by those convicted of serious crimes, as well as by those who have demonstrated a propensity for violence (thus, the domestic violence restriction). This Federal Gun Control Legislation Timeline seems to support the idea of a progression in government control of gun ownership over time as a way to legislatively address gun violence.

The problem with all this is that not all serious crimes are violent crimes, nor are they all committed by violent people. Those convicted of felony-level fraud or embezzlement lose their right to bear arms right alongside people convicted of felony assault or murder. This may seem counter-intuitive if our goal is to reduce violence, but that’s how the system has evolved.

People can and do change, which is partly why some felons can have their right to own firearm ownership restored. Laws and rules about this vary from one state to the next, so some research is required to determine how this applies in a particular jurisdiction. Some states automatically restore the right once the term of the felony conviction is over, while others require the individual to appeal for restoration.

Ultimately, there is little incentive for legislators or lobbyists to argue for less restrictive gun laws that would allow non-violent felons to retain the right of firearms ownership, especially in the current climate. To many people, a felon is a felon is a felon, and the exact circumstances of the offense don’t matter all that much. Also, some studies have shown that restricting a felon’s access to firearms reduces the likelihood of future violent crimes by 20-30%.

I suspect that as long as that’s the case, the situation will change little, if any at all. What are your thoughts on this, though? Are there any viable reasons to modify existing laws to allow non-violent offenders to retain their Second Amendment rights? If so, how might we do that effectively and what might be the possible consequences?

Why are Prison Sentences Limited to 21 Years in Norway?

In the wake of the Breivik sentencing in Norway this past summer, some have raised concerns about the statutory limitations on sentence length there, especially for such a horrific offense. Questions about this also gets at some themes I’ve discussed recently on Quora on similar topics (Prisons: Why is it a good idea to put criminals together in a prison? What are some alternatives?).

Essentially, the use of prisons emerges in part from societal consensus about the goals of sentencing, and the answer to the question about the Norwegian sentencing system likely lies somewhere in there as well.

There are essentially five goals of sentencing, retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, restoration, and rehabilitation. The last of these, rehabilitation is probably one of the most controversial. In the U.S., for example, rehabilitation is considered a secondary goal, after retribution. Americans want their prisoners punished first and rehabilitated second.

This appeals to a societal sense of justice and fair play that has considerable cultural inertia in our country. Any talk of prioritizing rehabilitation ahead of retribution very typically generates complaints about how doing so will endanger public safety, ignore the needs of crime victims, and – most damning of all – coddle criminals.

Never mind that certain forms of rehabilitation have been shown through research to reduce the risk of future offending, we want our pound of flesh first and foremost

The same is not true the world over, though. Norway, by contrast, has a very progressive approach to sentencing that prioritizes rehabilitation as a primary strategy for reducing future criminal behavior. That doesn’t mean they don’t use prisons, it just means that the conditions of confinement are geared toward reducing the risk that an offender will return to a life of crime after release.

Bastoy Prison, Norway

Unlike many U.S. jurisdictions that use determinate sentencing (the sentence stated by the court is the actual sentence that will be served), Norway uses an indeterminate system that relies on an assessment of whether or not the offender is rehabilitated as a basis for release from prison.

As you noted, the stated maximum prison sentence in Norway is 21 years, but that can also be extended in five-year increments if the prison system determines that an offender is not rehabilitated by the end of his or her initial term. They can be extended in this way, every five years, indefinitely. So, essentially, there is an ability for an individual to serve life in prison, it’s just decided on an installment basis.

The outcomes of this approach seem to be positive in terms of reducing the risk of reoffense. I couldn’t find a more authoritative source, but this Guardian article about the Norwegian prison system claims that the recidivism rate of Bastoy Prison is about 16%, the lowest in Europe, versus about 40% in the U.S. 

Sentencing practices and the conditions of confinement in Norway aren’t without controversy of their own, however. There’s been heated debate across Europe about the perceived injustice of Norwegian inmates living in relative “luxury” while the living conditions of law-abiding, but impoverished or elderly people, aren’t nearly so comfortable.

The question of whether prisoners should enjoy better living conditions than law-abiding people, even if those conditions are part of what leads to more positive rehabilitative outcomes, is a legitimate one. At this point, at least, Norway has chosen an approach that it generally believes will have the greatest positive impact on crime.

Limits to the length of prison sentences are simply one component of that approach.