autism
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FW: causes of autism Pepinsky, Harold E.
You forwarded this message on 1/28/2012 11:01 PM.
Sent: Saturday, January 28, 2012 10:59 PM To:
Pepinsky,...
38 minutes ago
Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Saturday, 25 December 2010
Friday, 24 December 2010
Santa brings me an anti drug pencil
I should really be a good parent and give it to my kids but I need to use it this evening so will sharpen it up again and give it to them in the morning
Tuesday, 21 December 2010
Alternatives to the punitive
I used to regularly contribute to the Guardian's Comment is Free and did so again this week in a thread entitled: At least Bob Ainsworth dares to speak about drugs
Whilst on the site I started rereading my previous contributions and thought I would share this one from January 2008
Whilst on the site I started rereading my previous contributions and thought I would share this one from January 2008
@ BigFaceDog
"What do these young people have to guide them in life? What have faux liberals such as John Moore put in place of what he and his fellow travellers have destroyed? Perhaps one of you can answer that simple question?"
Two responses
I regret I have destroyed very little. We retain a punitive criminal justice system that fails to address the crimes of the powerful (which cause the greatest harms) and focus instead on the powerless and most vulnerable in our society. Criminal justice interventions create more crime than they solve. Politicians follow policies they know will increase the number of victims and then (often successfully) seduce those very victims with tough words and promises of more of the same.
On a personal level what have I tried to create as alternatives?
Well I spent 20 years working directly with men and women leaving prison and forensic mental health services, managing and developing services that enabled them to escape the destructive grip of the penal syste. Services that treated them with respect, helped them access community resources, find housing, get jobs, sort out their money, become integrated into our communities and live ok lives.
I know that there are a couple of hundred women and men living ordinary lives away from prison and contact with the police as a result of that work. They benefited from our efforts to create opportunities for them to become socially included AND as a direct result there are at a guess many thousands of other members of our community who as a result were never victimised.
Its easy to condemn, demand more violence and more pain, but if you want to make things better you have to admit that what works to stop the anti social behaviour of the vast majority of people in our criminal justice system is community based services that facilitate intergration, inclusion and which respects them as fellow members of our society.
Monday, 20 December 2010
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Appeal re missing MPS Taser
Spotted this press release from the Met
Appeal re missing MPS Taser
Police are appealing for the assistance of the public in finding a Taser which has fallen from a police vehicle in Lambeth.
An officer from the MPS CO19 Firearms Unit had attended a briefing at a firearms base in Norfolk Row, Lambeth on Tuesday, 7 December, between 0700hrs and 0830hrs.
During the course of preparing the vehicle for operation after the briefing, the officer placed a Taser on the roof of a marked police vehicle. He then drove away from the base with the Taser still on the roof.
At around 1000hrs it was noticed that the Taser was missing. Despite extensive searches, we have been unable to recover the Taser and four cartridges which were with it.
Officers believe the Taser would have fallen from the vehicle in the Norfolk Row area of Lambeth, and almost certainly before reaching Vauxhall Cross where the vehicle stopped for fuel.
We are appealing for anyone with information as to the Taser's whereabouts to call the Metropolitan Police on 0300 123 1212.
The Taser broadly resembles a handgun in shape, but is constructed of bright yellow plastic.
We would ask anyone in possession of the Taser not to handle it, but to call police immediately.
An internal investigation is underway. The Directorate of Professional Standards has been informed. The officer has been removed from operational firearms duty.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
No image available overnight.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
Sunday, 5 December 2010
Lies, Damned Lies and Charles Murray’s arithmetic
In 1997 the Sunday Times published an influential series of articles by Charles Murray’s entitled ‘Prison Works’. Murray claimed an aversion to prison and its under-use was responsible for a dramatic increase of crime during the second half of the twentieth century. The policy implication was simple. Any Government wanting to significantly reduce crime must build many more prisons. To do any less was to fail to protect the public. Murray claimed his arguments in favour of mass incarceration were “a matter of arithmetic, not ideology.” To prove this he cited selected crime and prison population statistics from the United States and England and Wales. To investigate his claims I looked at the statistics for England and Wales in the early twentieth century, four European countries statistics for the period 1990 to 2000 and United States statistics for the whole twentieth century.
According to Murray increases in crime in England since 1955 are explained by a change “in the elite wisdom about how to deal with crime” that concluded, “prison was retrogressive”. In fact in the mid 1950’s these ideas were increasingly being rejected in favour of a more hard-line approach. The 1958 White Paper “Penal Practice in a Changing Society” and Home Secretary, R. A. Butler’s speeches demonstrate both an increasingly punitive approach and a rejection of the reformative ideas that had dominated the first half of the twentieth century. The elite wisdom Murray claims developed in the mid 1950’s had in fact first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. It was put into practice early in the twentieth century with the development of Probation, reformative Borstals and the requirement of magistrates to give offenders time to pay fines. All these policies were intended to reduce imprisonment and they did dramatically. English and Welsh prison receptions declined from over 200,000 in 1908 to less than 28,000 by 1918 and were maintained at this level until the 1940s. Reported crime remained relatively stable in this period. The dramatic reduction in the use of imprisonment had no statistically significant impact on crime.
In Europe I looked at Denmark, France, Greece and the Netherlands using reported crime and prison statistics for the years 1990 and 2000. Two of the countries significantly increased their prison populations, Greece by 57% and the Netherlands by a whopping 101%. Demark and France had stable prison populations with increases of 1% and 3% respectively. If Charles Murray’s claims were correct Greece and the Netherlands would have experience a decrease in crime. However both countries recorded 12% increases. In Demark however crime fell by 4% and in France it increased by 8%.
Murray also looks at the relationship between crime rates and imprisonment in America and concludes that the apparent stabilisation in the crime rate in the 1990’s was a direct result of increased imprisonment since 1980. Reviewing the statistics for twentieth century America it was clear that two government policies could explain variations in crime and imprisonment rates far more effective than Murray. The first was Prohibition. In 1907 when Georgia and Oklahoma became the first states to prohibit alcohol the American murder rate was 1 person per 100,000 and it imprisoned 69 persons per 100,000 population. By 1933 when the error of prohibition was conceded and the 18th Amendment repealed the murder rate had increased by over 1000% and America’s prison population had doubled. By 1943, ten years after the end of prohibition the murder rate had halved and America’s prison population had reduced by a third.
The war on drugs had a similar impact. By 1970 homicide had doubled and was again at 1933 levels. The impact on imprisonment was far more dramatic and sustained. By 1980 it had risen to 138 per 100,000 and by 1990 it was 297 per 100,000. This rise has continued to date with the USA now locking up over 2 million people, a rate of over 700 per 100,000. As the end of prohibition showed ending the war on drugs would be the most effective crime reduction strategy. Combined with a general amnesty on incarcerated drug offenders the USA (and indeed Britain and the rest of the world) could benefit simultaneously from reductions in crime and people incarcerated.
A quick glance at Murray’s other writings including “The Emerging British Underclass” (1990) and “The Bell Curve” (1994) shows his preoccupation with the poor and powerless and the threat they pose. In 2002 the Social Exclusion Unit reviewed the characteristics of the prison population. They found that prisoners are 14 times more likely to have been in care as a child, 20 times more likely to have attended a special school, 13 times more likely to be unemployed, 50 times more likely to be suffering from three or more mental disorders, 12 times more likely to have a personality disorder, and 4,700 times more likely to be sleeping rough. Politicians may claim, as former Home Secretary David Blunkett did, that their agenda is about “tougher sentences for violent, dangerous sex crimes” but the reality during his period in office was imprisonment targeted at the weak, vulnerable and powerless. Murray’s mathematical fallacy, followed by Governments on both sides of the Atlantic, has had a dramatic impact. In both the UK and US the homeless, women, children, black people and the mentally ill are all being disproportionately sucked into the ever-expanding penal estate.
Whilst we would all like simple and easy solutions to crime we need to realise that crime covers a multitude of unrelated phenomenon. Imprisoning people has high social costs and is as likely to increase crime, as it is to decrease it. The lessons from crime and prison statistics are clear and the exact opposite of Murray’s claim. The powerful moral and political arguments for prisons abolition are backed up by historical and statistical evidence that strongly suggests closing our prisons will at worse have no impact on crime and could potentially significantly reduce it.
JM Moore
According to Murray increases in crime in England since 1955 are explained by a change “in the elite wisdom about how to deal with crime” that concluded, “prison was retrogressive”. In fact in the mid 1950’s these ideas were increasingly being rejected in favour of a more hard-line approach. The 1958 White Paper “Penal Practice in a Changing Society” and Home Secretary, R. A. Butler’s speeches demonstrate both an increasingly punitive approach and a rejection of the reformative ideas that had dominated the first half of the twentieth century. The elite wisdom Murray claims developed in the mid 1950’s had in fact first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. It was put into practice early in the twentieth century with the development of Probation, reformative Borstals and the requirement of magistrates to give offenders time to pay fines. All these policies were intended to reduce imprisonment and they did dramatically. English and Welsh prison receptions declined from over 200,000 in 1908 to less than 28,000 by 1918 and were maintained at this level until the 1940s. Reported crime remained relatively stable in this period. The dramatic reduction in the use of imprisonment had no statistically significant impact on crime.
In Europe I looked at Denmark, France, Greece and the Netherlands using reported crime and prison statistics for the years 1990 and 2000. Two of the countries significantly increased their prison populations, Greece by 57% and the Netherlands by a whopping 101%. Demark and France had stable prison populations with increases of 1% and 3% respectively. If Charles Murray’s claims were correct Greece and the Netherlands would have experience a decrease in crime. However both countries recorded 12% increases. In Demark however crime fell by 4% and in France it increased by 8%.
Murray also looks at the relationship between crime rates and imprisonment in America and concludes that the apparent stabilisation in the crime rate in the 1990’s was a direct result of increased imprisonment since 1980. Reviewing the statistics for twentieth century America it was clear that two government policies could explain variations in crime and imprisonment rates far more effective than Murray. The first was Prohibition. In 1907 when Georgia and Oklahoma became the first states to prohibit alcohol the American murder rate was 1 person per 100,000 and it imprisoned 69 persons per 100,000 population. By 1933 when the error of prohibition was conceded and the 18th Amendment repealed the murder rate had increased by over 1000% and America’s prison population had doubled. By 1943, ten years after the end of prohibition the murder rate had halved and America’s prison population had reduced by a third.
The war on drugs had a similar impact. By 1970 homicide had doubled and was again at 1933 levels. The impact on imprisonment was far more dramatic and sustained. By 1980 it had risen to 138 per 100,000 and by 1990 it was 297 per 100,000. This rise has continued to date with the USA now locking up over 2 million people, a rate of over 700 per 100,000. As the end of prohibition showed ending the war on drugs would be the most effective crime reduction strategy. Combined with a general amnesty on incarcerated drug offenders the USA (and indeed Britain and the rest of the world) could benefit simultaneously from reductions in crime and people incarcerated.
A quick glance at Murray’s other writings including “The Emerging British Underclass” (1990) and “The Bell Curve” (1994) shows his preoccupation with the poor and powerless and the threat they pose. In 2002 the Social Exclusion Unit reviewed the characteristics of the prison population. They found that prisoners are 14 times more likely to have been in care as a child, 20 times more likely to have attended a special school, 13 times more likely to be unemployed, 50 times more likely to be suffering from three or more mental disorders, 12 times more likely to have a personality disorder, and 4,700 times more likely to be sleeping rough. Politicians may claim, as former Home Secretary David Blunkett did, that their agenda is about “tougher sentences for violent, dangerous sex crimes” but the reality during his period in office was imprisonment targeted at the weak, vulnerable and powerless. Murray’s mathematical fallacy, followed by Governments on both sides of the Atlantic, has had a dramatic impact. In both the UK and US the homeless, women, children, black people and the mentally ill are all being disproportionately sucked into the ever-expanding penal estate.
Whilst we would all like simple and easy solutions to crime we need to realise that crime covers a multitude of unrelated phenomenon. Imprisoning people has high social costs and is as likely to increase crime, as it is to decrease it. The lessons from crime and prison statistics are clear and the exact opposite of Murray’s claim. The powerful moral and political arguments for prisons abolition are backed up by historical and statistical evidence that strongly suggests closing our prisons will at worse have no impact on crime and could potentially significantly reduce it.
JM Moore
Wednesday, 1 December 2010
Student Protests -v- McDonald's Prospects
I was reading up on yesterday's student protests when I noticed the advert the Guardian was running on that page.
UPDATED 2 December
From today's Guardian
Leo Tolstoy
Last month saw the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Novelist Leo Tolstoy. To celebrate a couple of quotes from his last novel Redemption
And he ran over in his mind the people he knew who were suffering from the activity of the various institutions for the re-establishment of justice, the support of religion and the education of the masses … and he saw with remarkable clarity that all these people had been arrested, locked up or exiled, not in the least because they had transgressed against justice or committed lawless acts but merely because they were an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the wealth they were busy amassing from the people.’ (pp 386-387)
‘there was no man living who was guiltless and therefore able to punish or reform.’ (p. 565)
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