Qualifiers

[BG45]

Tonry (2010) Topic: Public Criminologies

1) "We academics, however, have no special standing that entitles us to have our views given
special weight. We are as entitled as anyone else to express our views about controversial issues,
but we should do it on the basis that we favor or disapprove particular policies for empirical,
policy, normative, or ideological reasons and not on the basis that officials have misread or
disregarded the evidence or have not been guided by our wisdom."
2) There has been a long history of public criminologists, just not by that name.

[BG45]

Mears (2010) Topic: Public Criminologies
1) Need to have a balanced portfolio of research
2) We need more policy oriented research
3) We must never stop with the basic science research though, because then we just become one more interest group

[Laudate_Dominum]

Phil,

Maybe you can answer something I was wondering in a discussion on another site. Why do some states seem to have waaay more sex offenders than others?

Michigan: 4,609 sex offenders per million people; Minnesota: 48 offenders per million. Montana: 4,979 offenders per million; Oregon: 195 per million. ?? ([url="http://www.familywatchdog.us/OffenderCountByState.asp"]source[/url])

[BG45]

Braga (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime
1) Safer Cities Initiative in Los Angeles deals with the policing of disorder in Skid Row
2) Police should help the homeless connect with services such as shelters, non-profits, etc.

Personal Note for Thread: For what it's worth, this article touches on something I've heard with almost every practitioner I've talked to in the field, as well as those who later went into academia. People like to imagine the police always solving crimes and such, but the majority of time is spent dealing with paperwork and acting in a social work capacity to an extent; working with the homeless to find them shelter, drug treatment, or employment is hardly an uncommon occurrence.

[BG45]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1311199085' post='2271988']
Phil,

Maybe you can answer something I was wondering in a discussion on another site. Why do some states seem to have waaay more sex offenders than others?

Michigan: 4,609 sex offenders per million people; Minnesota: 48 offenders per million. Montana: 4,979 offenders per million; Oregon: 195 per million. ?? ([url="http://www.familywatchdog.us/OffenderCountByState.asp"]source[/url])
[/quote]

Short Answer: I honestly can't tell you.

Long Answer: If I had to take a guess, I would say that it depends on the variation of sex offender laws and how they're enforced. There is no uniform set of sex offender laws (even regarding registration) other than the Adam Walsh Act, which required people to register as a sex offender with a federal database or face federal charges. That and research shows that registries tend to be horribly out of date with as many as 1 in 10 sex offenders failing to register after they move, if they ever bothered to at all in the first place.

Mind if I post this to my FB as a question for the cohorts ahead of mine and my own to see if they can give me a good answer?

[BG45]

Berk and MacDonald (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime

1) The Safer Cities Initiative was put into place in 2005 in Los Angeles to respond to complaints about crime by and against the local homeless population (the largest in the nation).
2) SCI has managed to generate a modest reduction in nuisance street crime, violent crime, and property crime with no evidence of spatial crime displacement.
3) This is one of the few "broken windows" oriented programs that has not only managed to not displace crime spatially but also hasn't placed undue strain on police/minority relations.

[BG45]

Piquero (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime (Seriously, we should just call this "SCI and Responses")

1) SCI used 50 full time officers to police the Skid Row area
2) Officers would stay in a section of Skid Row for 7 days after stopping a crime or making an arrest to act as a "booster shot".

[BG45]

Culhane (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime

1) Notes that at the time of SCI, Los Angeles had also stepped up its homelessness prevention initiatives
2) We need to address homelessness itself, not the visible crime associated with it.

[BG45]

Eck (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime
1) Asks about the validity testing done for the SCI study
2) Policy isn't about "what works", it's about What works, when it works, and with whom it works. Something that works in Los Angeles in the short term may not in the long term, and it may not work for entirely different homeless populations in a random small town.

[BG45]

Vitale (2010) Topic: Homelessness and Crime

1) Argues SCI was not cost effective at almost 200 million dollars.
2) Argues that the design of the study was inherently flawed as the central district was the treatment zone and only 50 square blocks of that was covered by SCI

[BG45]

Rowe & O'Connell (2010) Homelessness and Crime
1) Media may have played a part in exaggerating the crime level that previously existed
2) Criticizes SCI study because it began 7 weeks prior to the formal start date of the program, had it begun with the formal start date, then their findings would be completely different because the effects observed happened in those 7 weeks.

[BG45]

Last for the night. Btw LD, thus far the consensus seems to be that it's the fact no two states actually have the same laws and definitions of what sexual offense is what.

White (2010) Homelessness and crime
1) Zero tolerance against the homeless is a shift away from professional policing
2) Alternatives to arrest are preferable as arrest makes any potential employment and staying in some shelters impossible

[Luigi]

If you pass the qualifiers, and we've read all your post-it-notes, can we get into grad school, too?

[BG45]

Don't say "if". And maybe for this field? I still maintain I'm in the easy one compared to some folks on this board; I know at least one person here has a PhD already in a "hard science" and another is working on one in a hard science...

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='BG45' timestamp='1311200584' post='2272007']
Short Answer: I honestly can't tell you.

Long Answer: If I had to take a guess, I would say that it depends on the variation of sex offender laws and how they're enforced. There is no uniform set of sex offender laws (even regarding registration) other than the Adam Walsh Act, which required people to register as a sex offender with a federal database or face federal charges. That and research shows that registries tend to be horribly out of date with as many as 1 in 10 sex offenders failing to register after they move, if they ever bothered to at all in the first place.

Mind if I post this to my FB as a question for the cohorts ahead of mine and my own to see if they can give me a good answer?
[/quote]
Please do! The disparities seem pretty dramatic so I imagine there must be a dramatic answer. haha.

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='BG45' timestamp='1311205856' post='2272120']
Last for the night. Btw LD, thus far the consensus seems to be that it's the fact no two states actually have the same laws and definitions of what sexual offense is what.

White (2010) Homelessness and crime
1) Zero tolerance against the homeless is a shift away from professional policing
2) Alternatives to arrest are preferable as arrest makes any potential employment and staying in some shelters impossible
[/quote]
Wow. If one state can have 5,000 per million and another can have 50 per million I suspect a serious need for reform on some level. Also (and if I'm distracting you from your duties please ignore me), after clicking around that site and checking towns that I'm familiar with I can't help but suspect a major correlation between economic status and sex offenders. What do you think? I mean, my mom's swanky town barely has any whereas a dumpy town not far from here had twelve pedophiles and three rapists within a one mile radius (and near an elementary school!).

edit: added parentheticals.

Edited July 21, 2011 by Laudate_Dominum

[BG45]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1311227938' post='2272432']
Wow. If one state can have 5,000 per million and another can have 50 per million I suspect a serious need for reform on some level. Also (and if I'm distracting you from your duties please ignore me), after clicking around that site and checking towns that I'm familiar with I can't help but suspect a major correlation between economic status and sex offenders. What do you think? I mean, my mom's swanky town barely has any whereas a dumpy town not far from here had twelve pedophiles and three rapists within a one mile radius (and near an elementary school!).

edit: added parentheticals.
[/quote]

You aren't distracting LD, it's a possible question on Policy...anything Policy related is. It's a crapshoot. And I'd not be too surprised if economic status had something to do with it as well, the rich do usually manage to find a way to get sentences lessened and such, it's a sad thing in our system, even if we don't teach it that way. The overall consensus has become that it's mainly the difference in definitions and how a sex offense is defined since there is no unifying state level set of definitions. I was talking to a friend who grew up in Montana who said their laws are very lax to begin with and not very well enforced. My home state of West Virginia for example doesn't recognize the crime of "rape", we define it as a "sexual assault".

Then at the federal level, the Adam Walsh Act, in my humble opinion, is a total joke. But most laws named after kids tend to be, overreactionary stuff that isn't very well thought through before implementation (see all the "Caylee's law" things popping up at super speed). Every sex offender has to register with the federal registry under it, but if you plea yourself down you can go from the Tier 3 offender which is high risk down to the Tier 1 low risk! Difference between "X raped and killed that person" and "X engaged in unwanted sexual contact which resulted in involuntary manslaughter of Y".

[Chrysophylax]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' timestamp='1311199085' post='2271988']
Phil,

Maybe you can answer something I was wondering in a discussion on another site. Why do some states seem to have waaay more sex offenders than others?

Michigan: 4,609 sex offenders per million people; Minnesota: 48 offenders per million. Montana: 4,979 offenders per million; Oregon: 195 per million. ?? ([url="http://www.familywatchdog.us/OffenderCountByState.asp"]source[/url])
[/quote]

Minnesota is so low because MN is the best state ever.

[BG45]

LOL. All Minnesotans say that about their state!

Also, taking a break for rest of the day. I have one more journal of policy to do, then I can post all my pre-done cards. But my wind just got taken out of my sails with a Facebook message from a member of my cohort. He's so scared of the Methods section (that I'm in pantaloons pooing terror of) that he's not going to join us for classes next semester. Instead he's going to take the Policy and Theory, but then wait until January to sit for the first time for Methods.

[Laudate_Dominum]

You're the man Phil.