meta-roj

“they need a divided america”

the us department of justice, office of justice programs, bureau of justice statistics has released their latest data on incarceration in the united states. i’m going to talk about this a bit from a purely economic perspective, because it worries me.

Probation and Parole in the United States, 2003 [pdf]

The total Federal, State, and local adult correctional population — incarcerated or in the community — grew by 130,700 during 2003 to reach a new high of nearly 6.9 million. About 3.2% of the U.S. adult population, or 1 in every 32 adults, were incarcerated or on probation or parole at
yearend 2003.

with fresh numbers from the department of justice, it just begs for a global comparison. for this, we can turn to the international centre for prison studies.

top ten countries by total number incarcerated:

1 United States of America (2,078,570)
2 China (1,549,000)
3 Russian Federation (846,967)
4 India (313,635)
5 Brazil (308,304)
6 Thailand (213,815)
7 Ukraine (198,386)
8 South Africa (180,952)
9 Mexico (175,253)
10 Iran (163,526)

ok, you might say. not fair. it’s the incarceration rate that is the better comparison:

1 United States of America (.715%)
2 Russian Federation (.584%)
3 Belarus (.554%)
4 Bermuda (UK) (.532%)
5 Palau (.523%)
6 Virgin Islands (USA) (.522%)
7 Cayman Islands (United Kingdom) (.501%)
8 Turkmenistan (c. .489%)
9 Cuba (c. .487%)
10 Belize (.459%)

(china is #105 with .119%)

the bureau of justice statistics report says 3.2% of the adult population is in prison, on parole or on probation. the centre for prison studies cites bureau of prisons data, putting 2,078,570 persons in prison in america (plus another 100,000+ juveniles) out of a population of 290.7 million at mid-year 2003. the difference is the people on probation and parole (plus the difference between the agencies doing the counting).

so why do i bring this up? because if you’re not in the business of building or running prisons, this is “dead weight” in your personal economy. as a nation, this is dead weight on the whole economy. and, as i mentioned just a little while ago, we’re barely prosecuting the criminals we know about.

noticable is that in 1995, .6% of the population was incarcerated, and the trend is pretty steeply up. is this a problem? can america compete in a global economy with that many potentially productive citizens wasting away? does it matter?

today, we’re all criminals. it’s just a matter of how interested the prosecutors get in your case, and, apparently whether they can label you a terrorist. in fact, law enforcement is so busy in this country, we’re letting private industry organizations do a large a lot of enforement on their own – and with former atf personnel for expertise. (i could argue that the riaa got a raw deal in hiring atf people, based on their performance, but that’s another subject).

are americans just naturally more criminal? the british did ship a lot of convicts to north america a couple centuries ago. but that can’t be it. australia, built from the same criminal stock, has an incarceration rate of only .116% (less than china).

and then there’s the human question and political question and other questions that i’m completely ignoring…

update: i screwed up the math on this, converting fom “out of 100,000” to percentages. it’s all fixed now. i’m tired. sorry about that.

actor

the largest group of north koreans to make it across the border and to south korea. arrive today and tomorrow….

Plane Bringing N.Korean Refugees Arrives in South [reuters, july 26, 2004]

“We believe there are about 230 people arriving today, ” said Chun Ki-won, who heads a group of missionaries helping North Korean defectors. “We expect about the same number tomorrow.”

welcome, refugees. i hope we feed you well.

update: probably also worth noting that july 27 is the day the korean armistice was signed.

on june 28, 2001, us attorney general john ashcroft issued the following statement (quoted in part):

* A top priority of this administration and this Department of Justice is reducing gun crime by the vigorous enforcement of the nation’s gun laws. The Brady Act, enacted in 1994, requires that all federally licensed gun dealers perform a background check before selling a firearm. It helps us stop convicted felons and other dangerous people from buying guns easily. Today I am announcing a plan to improve the process of background checks on gun buyers that achieves two major objectives:

* The first is to increase prosecutions of those who attempt to purchase guns illegally.

* The second is to improve the accuracy, efficiency and reliability of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.

this month, the department of justice, office of the inspector general released report #I-2004-006 [pdf], which is a “Review of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Enforcement of Brady Act Violations Identified Through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.”

this give me an opportunity to review what happens when the attorney general declares an issue a “top priority” and directs his department to “increase prosecutions” and “improve accuracy, efficiency and reliability.”

first, let’s consider prosecutions. before we get into that, i want to point out that all of 2002 and 2003 occured at several months after the june 2001 directive from attorney general ashcroft.

report #I-2004-006 [pdf]

Our review also found that few NICS cases are prosecuted. During CYs [calendar years] 2002 and 2003, only 154 (less than 1 percent) of the 120,000 persons who were denied during the NICS [national instant criminal background check system] background check were prosecuted.

During CYs 2002 and 2003, approximately 120,000 cases were referred by the FBI to the Brady Operations Branch. Of these cases, the ATF formally referred only 230 to the USAOs [us attorney’s offices], and the USAOs accepted 185, or 80 percent for prosecution. Of these cases, 154 were prosecuted.

less than 1 percent, indeed. more like .13%. so now we’re on the record, “top priority” department of justice prosecutorial work, based on a 1994 law (plenty of time to work out the kinks, i think) results in a .13% prosecution rate for people who followed the rules and went through the background check process and federally-licensed arms merchants. i am compelled to say that this is prosecutions, not convictions. the department of justice didn’t bother to prosecute 99.87% of the gun-purchasing criminals that they identified.

i’m definitely feeling safer with this sort of “vigorous enforcement.” i didn’t dig deep enough to figure out if this .13% prosecution rate was actually an increase over previous years, but i suppose if we trust john ashcroft, we have to believe it is.

i wish i could take those odds to vegas. now onto the efficiency and accuracy part:

report #I-2004-006 [pdf]

During CYs 2002 and 2003, the FBI referred a total of 7,030 cases to the ATF in which persons that it identified as prohibited succeeded in obtaining firearms

more than 7000 people obtained firearms, illegally, through federally-licensed firearms dealers, despite a 3-day waiting period for a background check. the fbi did eventually realize that these people shouldn’t have guns, and told the atf to go get them back. and, according to the report, most of the weapons were retrieved.

with figures like those, it’s pretty easy to make a case that crime does pay.

it also kinda shoots (ahem) a few holes in the proposition that criminals only get guns illegally anyway – looks like 3500 criminals a year get guns at licensed dealers and with background checks.

since the nice votemaster at electoral-vote.com makes the data available in raw form, i thought i’d take a peek at a question i haven’t seen discussed so far.

as we are [should be!] aware, the broad vote count doesn’t really matter in the united states. what matters is the electoral college scoreboard. so i thought i’d take yesterday’s data (july 26) and compare it to the 2000 election, and see who was making progress in each state. progress, in this case, is defined as polling better as of yesterday than the actual democratic/republican split in a given state in 2000.

democrats advance in:
alaska (+5.23%)
colorado (+0.61%)
delaware (+0.02%)
district of columbia (+3.28%)
hawaii (+0.21%)
nevada (+2.77%)
new hampshire (+0.09%)
new mexico (+1.09%)
north carolina (+0.85%)
oregon (+2.94%)
south carolina (+3.1%)
tennessee (+0.71%)
vermont (+0.28%)
virginia (+0.52%)
washington (+2.84%)
wisconsin (+0.17%)

republicans advance in:
delaware (+0.08%)
florida (+1.15%)
maine (+1.03%)
mississippi (+3.38%)
new jersey (+0.71%)
north dakota (+0.34%)

i’m ignoring third parties, and of course, most of these are well within the margin of error for the poll, but i thought i’d be interesting to put the last state polls before the conventions on the record.

amazing.

that means market cap could top $35 billion, with the ipo worth $3.3 billion (more than e-billion).

johnson development corporation is bringing starbucks to compton.

‘Magic’ Johnson Opens Starbucks in Compton [ap via abc news, july 25, 2004]

Eleanor Stewart, a lifelong Compton resident, was pleased with the new addition to the neighborhood.

“I was even bragging about this to my relatives back East,” she said.

we like magic. magic does well by doing good.

because we can’t take american politics too seriously anymore… it’s time to explore the ketchup wars.

in the red corner, we have w ketchup, “you don’t support democrats, why should your ketchup,” and in the other red corner, we have bush county ketchup, “the official ketchup of right-thinking americans.”

this is, of course, because heinz ketchup is what kerry sleeps with every night, and in the hot dog-eat-dog world of presidential politics, how you wet your weiner is often the single most important issue.

but all is not happiness and light in the “republican-safe ketchup zone” – there is conflict.

First Rounds Fired in Conservative ‘Ketchup War’ [talon news, july 16, 2004]

Noting that he is “not in this for money,” [patrick] Spero [co-founder of bush country ketchup] told Talon News that he is “truly afraid that good conservatives may be taken advantage of by W Ketchup, possible liberals who are enjoying a good laugh at the expense of trusting conservatives.”

ok, ok… you didn’t hear it here first. talon news has been concentrating “on news that conservatives care about without putting a liberal spin on it” since april 1, 2003.

i will add that bush country ketchup is a product of conservative condiments, inc. of philadelphia. and we know the heinz empire is pittsburgh-based. pennsylvania, of course, is a blue state. could this mean that if bush country ketchup defeats w ketchup in the condiment primaries, that we could be looking at a pennsylvania civil war? could we end up splitting off pittsburgh and surrounding areas as “west pennsylvania”?

disclaimer: i haven’t tried either of these ketchups, but they taste like the rancid blood of a thousand plague-infested camels.

just don’t offer these guys a “condom mint”

[groans were free on this one]

6th win