meta-roj

ok, i have to put this together in my head somehow….

on the 29th, we learned that selling sex toys was illegal in alabama

today, the associated press carries this…. dateline decatur, alabama….

Sex Shop Claims Job Applicant Stole Toy [ap, via abc, august 4, 2004]

A sex shop planned to file an arrest warrant for a woman who allegedly left the store without paying for a toy but who left a good lead on how to find her: She had just filled out a job application.

please tell me this isn’t some sort of botched sting operation….

obviously, the alleged shoplifter was just trying to comply with the “no sales” rule in alabama. obviously.

Woman Who Stole Fuel Ordered to Wear Sign [ap via abc, july 30, 2004]

A woman who stole $4.52 worth of fuel was ordered to stand outside the gas station Friday wearing a sandwich board sign that declared: “I was caught stealing gas.”

this means that there’s no mandatory sentence for stealing less than $5 of fuel, giving the judge in the case some room for… judgement.

at least she wasn’t put in prison.

i imagine the sandwich board cost more than the gas, tho…

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.

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.

it seems that a federal court understands that you can’t just slap the term “terrorist” on anyone that does bad things….

Conviction nixed after ‘terrorist’ remark [ap via seattle post intelligencer]

A federal appeals court ordered a new trial Wednesday for a man accused of arson and weapons charges, ruling that prosecutors improperly inflamed a jury by calling him a terrorist a day before the first anniversary of the 2001 attacks.

perhaps there’s hope in this united states of america. perhaps.

reaching? opportunistic?

Md. Firm Files to Limit Google Trademark [washington post, july 8, 2004, registration]

“We want them staying out of the children’s space,” [Steven] Esrig [head of Stelor Productions Inc.] said. “Anything that could potentially be a children’s item as far as I’m concerned is legally ours.”

that’s staking out some pretty big turf for a little company with seven full-time employees, but i’m all about thinking big, so you go, guys.

Md. Firm Files to Limit Google Trademark [washington post, july 8, 2004, registration]

Esrig said he wants to coexist with Google and has suggested that Googles.com become the children’s arm of the search engine company. “The ‘s’ could be for ‘safety,’ ” he said.

that’s an interesting poposition…

it’ll be interesting to see how the soon-to-ipo, don’t-be-evil google responds. so far, they haven’t.

because i just did a rant on too many laws and creative prosecution, i thought it was worth noting that the delaware legislature has decided that tongue-splitting should be illegal in delaware (except when done by a doctor or dentist)…

Del. Lawmakers Limit Tongue Splitting [ap via abc news]

While the practice is rare, if not nonexistent, in Delaware, lawmakers decided it would be wise to nip it in the bud.

“I had never heard of tongue splitting until I saw this bill,” said Senate sponsor James Vaughn, D-Clayton.

apparently, it’s already illegal in texas and illinois, and legislation has been proposed in tennessee, west virginia, new york, indiana and kentucky.

i guess it’s a good thing our legislators are spending their time on these important issues of our times

[this is a follow-up to check your art supplies and, to a lesser degree, art attack]

the news today is that the grand jury did, indeed, hand down indictments against steven kurtz and an associate, robert ferrel. that means it’s time for me to go on a little rant.

first, the report….

Art professor indicted over biological materials [ap, via usa today]

An unconventional artist who became the target of a federal terrorism investigation — and a cause celebre in the world art community — was indicted Tuesday on charges he illegally obtained biological materials.

now, i do mean to get off on a rant here, and that basically has to do with the myraid laws we have in this society now. once you’ve attracted the interest of a prosecutor, i’m willing to bet that we can find some law you’ve broken and get at least as far as an indictment.

so, it looks to me like this is simply a case where the local police panicked a little (how ironic that i should put that up just as the news was breaking on the wires…) and called in the bioterror team. i’m not going to find fault in that at all. funky test tubes, odd things growing in laboratory glassware… sure. call in the professionals.

then the trouble starts – now we’ve gotten everyone’s attention. we’ve had the house taped off and guys in biohazard suits running around the neighborhood for a while, so something must be wrong here, and someone has to be held to account.

and then the backlash – the art community, people that know this kurtz guy pretty well, start doing what they do best – social commentary. they effectively take the patriot act provisions and terrorism laws out-of-play. it would look really bad to call this guy a terrorist with all this attention focused on him, but it would look even worse to just admit that it was a false alarm – worse for someone’s career. so we need to nail him for something. surely, there’s something we can get this guy on….

and the answer is, apparently, is that “he illegally obtained potentially harmful biological materials.” (he’s probably also jaywalked and exceeded the speed limit, but that’s not part of this investigation yet…)

harmful biological materials

i needed to emphasize that for a moment, because the ap story has some information on what these harmful biological materials are…

Art professor indicted over biological materials [ap, via usa today]

The organisms sent to Ferrell for Kurtz, the indictment said, were serratia marcescens, which can sicken some people under some circumstances, and bacillus atrophaeus, also known as bacillus globigii.

so, let’s do some homework…

serratia marcescens [state university of new york]

Habitat: Occurs naturally in soil and water as well as the intestines.

Pathogenicity: Important as a nocosomial infection; associated with urinary and respiratory tract infections, endocarditis, osteomyelitis, septicemia, wound infections, eye infections, meningitis.

Transmission: direct contact, droplets; has been found growing on catheters, in saline irrigation solutions, and in other supposedly sterile solutions.

Treatment: Includes cephalosporins, gentamicin, amikacin, but most strains are resistant to several antibiotics because of the presence or R-factors on plasmids.

We used to think that this bacteria was non-pathogenic, and because of the pigment it produces, it was used widely to trace bacterial transmission. In 1951 and 1952 the US Army conducted a study called “Operation Sea-Spray” to study wind currents that might carry biological weapons. They filled balloons with S. marcescens and burst them over San Francisco. Shortly thereafter, doctors noted a drastic increase in pneumonia and urinary tract infections.

Definition of Bacillus globigii [webster’s dictionary]

a species of Bacillus found in soil and decomposing organic matter; some strains produce antibiotics

yeah. technically, i guess these could be harmful biological materials, but then again, check your medicine cabinet for this stuff… Antibacterial Household Products: Cause for Concern

having failed at the grand jury stage, now i guess we have to rely on the wisdom of a jury, and steven kurtz has to waste a decent chunk of his life for his art. oh, and the lawyers get paid, of course.

for more on this story before the indictment, there’s Genetic art crosses line, says FBI from the boston globe. i suspect this is going to get plenty of attention once people in america wake up…

other important links: Email from artist suspected by FBI of bioterrorism, cae defense fund

The Obsessively Annotated Introduction to the INDUCE Act

The cognitive dissonance of this speech is giving me a headache.

following on the news from idaho, i stumbled into this from wired a few days ago:

Cities Say No to the Patriot Act

In the past two years, more than 300 cities and four states have passed resolutions calling on Congress to repeal or change parts of the USA Patriot Act that, activists say, violate constitutional rights such as free speech and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

Barring that, the resolutions declare that their communities will uphold the constitutional rights of their residents should federal law enforcement agents come knocking on the door of local authorities for assistance in tracking residents. This means local authorities will insist on complying with federal orders only in ways that do not violate constitutional rights. The resolutions are not binding, however, and do not affect the federal government’s actions.

for more, visit the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.