Ending the war on drugs seems obvious to me. But many need more proof. Now the American-led international war on drugs is approaching our borders in New Mexico and Texas. One article yields New Mexicans saying “legalize drugs.” But a fellow New Mexican (my wife) warns, “But of course those Americans saying ‘legalize drugs’ are New Mexicans, so you already…
Month: March 2008
You can’t make this up. You just can’t
Get this… this is a story about two men. So there’s this man, right? And it’s like 4am and he gets jacked in West Baltimore. A man comes up to him and pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and tries to rob him. In response, the man getting robbed pulls out hisfake handgun. Somehow, fake-handgun man takes the shotgun away from…
Against Prediction
My book review of Bernard Harcourt’s, Against Prediction,was just published in the American Journal of Sociology. You can read it here.
What’s wrong with this picture?
I heard Harvard Professor Bruce Western speak tonight at New York University. A short while back I heard him speak at John Jay College and he was nice enough to give me his powerpoint presentation. I use some of it in my class. This is one of those slides: We now lock up 730 people per 100,000. And this rate…
In the Big City
The trial of the officers involved in the Sean Bell Shooting continues with lots of interesting testimony. The justice department declares that New York City’s auxiliary police aren’t really police. At least when it comes to paying benefits to the family of two officers killed while patrolling in uniform. And Governor Paterson, who I seem to like more and more,…
33,541 Drug Overdose Deaths in 2005
The Drug War Rant and Stop the Drug War turned me on to a report by the Center for Disease Control. The just released “Deaths: Final Report for 2005” (hey, it takes a while to count all the dead folk) may not be the most uplifting title, but they do breakdown the two-and-a-half million deaths in America (bet you couldn’t…
Missing. . . . not!
New Jersey Governor Corzine signed “Patricia’s Law” mandating that police must accept—without delay—any report of a missing person. I would assert that no law named after a person has ever been good. This one sure isn’t. The Recordreports: Under Patricia’s Law, police cannot refuse to take on the case of a missing person — whether child or adult — on…
Around when you need one?
The Timesreports that the NYPD is to shrink to its smallest size in 15 years. That’s a little misleading because the department in never at its budgeted size. The “size” of the department would “drop” to 36,838. But the actual number of officers today is 35,800. So the department could still grow despite this “drop.” The horrible irony is that…
Marginal Revolution
Alex Tabarrok and Tyler Cowen, the people behind Marginal Revolution, a respected and well read blog, have been very kind to me (or at least very kind to my book). Tyler Cowen posted about my book and the Amazon pre-sales rank got a big boost (not that I check these things, of course).
Wild gun fight. Police shoot bad guy. Officers shot.
This one, if the Sunis to be believed, sounds wild. Though if the Sunis to be believed, this happened in East Baltimore (you know, where bad things happen). Best I can tell it started in the Central and ended in the Northern. Officer Anthony Jobst, 47, was in his patrol car in the first block of E. Lafayette Ave. about…