Prison Nation - New York Times

Prison Nation - New York TimesMarch 10, 2008

Editorial

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.

50% of people on Earth are now connected via mobile

From Treo Today:

What’s the difference between yesterday and today? Nothing much, if you consider it on a day by day basis. Just 26 years after the first cellular (mobile) network was launched, we have reached 3.3 billion mobile subscriptions. That’s half the population of the world, many of whom never had any form of telecommunications just ten years ago. Today there are mobile networks in 224 countries.

The first mobile network was launched way back in August 1981 in Sweden and Norway. The network was based on the NMT-450 (Nordic Mobile Telephony) standard, and the first mobile phone was the Mobira Senator 450 by Nokia. The Mobira Senator 450 weighed 10 kilos! Think about that the next time you say a Nokia phone is “heavy”.

We’re not gonna take it anymore!

Source one (PDF link); Source two

Address by Mayor Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson

October 27, 2007

City & County Building

Salt Lake City, Utah

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”

“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”

“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”

“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”

“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”

“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.

It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?

John Buckman (BookMooch founder) joins EFF Board of Directors

[This was announced in the EFF newsletter back in September.]

Source: http://www.eff.org/press/releases/2007/09#005443

* Two Leading Technologists Join EFF Board of Directors

Free Culture Leader John Buckman and Privacy and Security Expert Lorrie Faith Cranor Sign on to Distinguished Team

San Francisco - The Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has elected two leading technologists to join its executive board: free culture leader John Buckman and privacy and security expert Lorrie Faith Cranor.

John Buckman is a programmer, an entrepreneur, and the founder of Magnatune.com — an online record label that strives to be fair to both recording artists and consumers alike. The Magnatune site provides web-based distribution to over 250 recording artists and features an innovative tool for online music licensing for film, television, and new media. This Creative Commons-backed business model has helped establish Buckman as a leader in the free culture movement. Buckman is also the founder Bookmooch.com, an online community for the exchanging of used books. His past accomplishments include having founded email software company Lyris in 1994, which he sold to JL Halsey in 2005. He also created Tile.net, an early web site directory that was purchased by Internet.com in 2001.

“EFF fights to protect the rights of artists and fans who use technology to make and enjoy creative works,” said Buckman. “I’m happy to join them in taking on these cutting-edge issues.”

Lorrie Faith Cranor is an Associate Research Professor in the School of Computer Science and the department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She has played a key role in building the usable privacy and security research community, having co-edited the seminal book “Security and Usability” and founded the Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). Cranor has authored over 80 research papers on online privacy, phishing and semantic attacks, spam, electronic voting, anonymous publishing, usable access control, and other topics. She has also testified as an expert in lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Internet “harmful to minors” laws. In 2003, Cranor was named one of the top 100 innovators 35 or younger by Technology Review magazine. She was previously a researcher at AT&T Labs Research and taught in the Stern School of Business at New York University.

“The privacy and security policy decisions made now will have far-reaching implications in the years to come,” said Cranor. “I’m pleased to work with EFF as they champion the public interest in these important debates.”

Other members of EFF’s executive board include John Perry Barlow, David Farber, Edward W. Felten, John Gilmore, Brewster Kahle, Joe Kraus, Lawrence Lessig, Pamela Samuelson, Shari Steele, and Brad Templeton.

“EFF is so fortunate to have such a distinguished Board of Directors, comprised of leaders in technology, policy, and law,” said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. “John and Lorrie bring a wonderful wealth of experience to EFF and will help us continue to think about our role in relation to emerging technologies.”