Criminality

The map feature in the Toronto Star, "Criminal Charges in Toronto," showing each patrol district in the city and providing the ability to click on a tab for the geographical distribution of crimes according to the type of offense reminds me that I've been meaning to write about "crime," specifically about using data and also GIS to shed more light on what the nature of crime in the city really is.

A few weeks ago the Baltimore City Paper did a nice feature, "Rising Tide," on murders in that city (which was criticized in at least one follow up letter to the editor), providing a breakdown of the data on the type of murder, by race; age; location (police district); and method (gun, stabbing, blunt force trauma/beating. asphyixiation, and other).

Maybe we use data to be able to differentiate ourselves from other people, so that we can worry less. I prefer to think of data-based approaches to problems and social change as a method to better understand problems and work to craft approaches that will truly work rather than fail.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times Sunday Magazine had an excellent feature, "Prisoners of Parole," on a variety of advanced methods for dealing with criminals and sanctions. From the article:

IN 2004, STEVEN ALM, a state trial judge in Hawaii, was frustrated with the cases on his docket. Nearly half of the people appearing before him were convicted offenders with drug problems who had been sentenced to probation rather than prison and then repeatedly violated the terms of that probation by missing appointments or testing positive for drugs. Whether out of neglect or leniency, probation officers would tend to overlook a probationer’s first 5 or 10 violations, giving the offender the impression that he could ignore the rules. But eventually, the officers would get fed up and recommend that Alm revoke probation and send the offender to jail to serve out his sentence. That struck Alm as too harsh, but the alternative — winking at probation violations — struck him as too soft. “I thought, This is crazy, this is a crazy way to change people’s behavior,” he told me recently.

So Alm decided to try something different. He reasoned that if the offenders knew that a probation violation would lead immediately to some certain punishment, they might shape up. “I thought, What did I do when my son was young?” he recalled. “If he misbehaved, I talked to him and warned him, and if he disregarded the warning, I gave him some kind of consequence right away.” Working with U.S. marshals and local police, Alm arranged for a new procedure: if offenders tested positive for drugs or missed an appointment, they would be arrested within hours and most would have a hearing within 72 hours. Those who were found to have violated probation would be quickly sentenced to a short jail term proportionate to the severity of the violation — typically a few days. ...

Alm had stumbled onto an effective strategy for keeping people out of prison, one that puts a fresh twist on some venerable ideas about deterrence. Classical deterrence theory has long held that the threat of a mild punishment imposed reliably and immediately has a much greater deterrent effect than the threat of a severe punishment that is delayed and uncertain. ...

Judge Alm’s story is an example of a new approach to keeping people out of prison that is being championed by some of the most innovative scholars studying deterrence today. At its core, the approach focuses on establishing the legitimacy of the criminal-justice system in the eyes of those who have run afoul of it or are likely to. Promising less crime and less punishment, this approach includes elements that should appeal to liberals (it doesn’t rely on draconian prison sentences) and to conservatives (it stresses individual choice and moral accountability).

We know that the present system isn't working. It's time to figure out why and address the problems systematically, rather than grandstand and continue to run in place. The article discusses other crime reduction programs across the county based on similar foundations.