Keepin' 'Em Locked Up

We like to lock people up. Can't get around it. America likes to send people to prison, and if we can make the prisons absolutely miserable, well, more power to us. Dissent Magazine gives us an informed essay on the price we all pay for our criminal warehouses.

Since the 1970s, the U.S. prisoner population has increased by more than fivefold. Today, the United States is the world’s warden, incarcerating a higher proportion of its people than any other country—or about one out of every hundred adults. A staggering seven million people—or one in every thirty-two adults—are either incarcerated, on parole or probation, or under some other form of state supervision.

These figures understate the enormous and disproportionate impact that this unprecedented social experiment has had on certain groups in U.S. society. If current trends continue, one in three black men and one in six Hispanic men will spend some time in jail or prison during their lives.

So what, you might say. If they did the crime, they can do the time. OK, but what about the ripple effects that each convict's absence causes? The communities which suffer the most from imprisonment are already high-crime areas. Does it make any sense to remove healthy males from communities that already can't support themselves? And what do we do with these people we imprison? Do we educate them, get them off drugs, or, at least, keep them safe from disease and violence? No. We dump them back in the very same high crime communities, where they can import the 'tough love' we showed them to their new surroundings.

Imprisonment costs an awful lot as well. In this current economic crisis, does it make sense to feed and tend to adults who contribute nothing to society, except the occasional license plate or end table? The educational and rehabilitative services which have been cut from state prison budgets nationwide are much more effective at controlling crime than the building of more prisons. There is no reason offenders cannot return to society with marketable skills.

Finally, our nation's prisons are the last great civil rights issue. We in America just elected a black president, and we are justifiably proud of this. But we still imprison an extraordinarily high amount of black men. We need to stop looking at crime as the cause of problems, but as the effect of years of governmental ignorance. Give poor communities jobs. Give inner-city schools appropriate funding. Give increased student aid to underprivileged youth who want to go to college. Yes, this will cost an awful lot of money, but it is an investment in their future and our safety. Because what kind of investment is a prison?

This is a personal issue for us at Shambollocks. We have both been the victims and the loved ones of crime. So has most of America. It's time to make a more compassionate decision.

Craigslist Crook Caught

Sad news, today. It appears that Monroe, WA police have arrested the ingenious man who robbed a Bank of America via a Craigslist stunt and inner-tube getaway.

About three weeks before the robbery, a Monroe city employee was contacted by a homeless man who had found a pile of items behind a trash bin near the Bank of America.

The items included a black two-way radio, a yellow reflective safety vest, a black wig with a short ponytail, dark sunglasses, a large can of mace and a baseball cap, police said.

The homeless man watched as a man drove up to the trash bin in a silver car, gathered the items and left. He wrote down the license-plate number.

Willis said police believe the homeless man may have witnessed a failed attempt at a robbery or a practice run.

She said Monroe police tracked the license-plate number to Curcio and the FBI placed him under surveillance.

His DNA was collected without his knowledge when the FBI retrieved a container he'd been using as a chewing-tobacco spittoon. DNA from the container was matched by the State Patrol crime lab to that collected from the robber's discarded particle mask, police said.

Busted by a vigilant bum? What are the odds? Craigslist Crook, we will still hold you in high esteem at Shambollocks.

Robber Posts On Craigslist, Takes Off On Inner Tube

In Monroe, Washington, Wednesday, a robber utilized a Craigslist ad to recruit accomplices, robbed an armed guard with pepper spray, and got away on an inner tube according to the Seattle Times. Fantastic!

Mike, who wanted to be identified only by his first name, told KING-5 that he saw a Craigslist ad last week seeking workers for a road-maintenance project. He inquired and was e-mailed instructions to meet near the bank at 11 a.m. Tuesday and to wear specific clothing.

"Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask ... and, if possible, a blue shirt," Mike told KING-5.

No contractor met Mike and about a dozen other similarly dressed men who showed up at the bank, and they thought they had been stood up. Then, KING-5 reported, a man told them about the bank robbery.

" 'Yeah, guys, we just got scammed,' " Mike said the man told him. "Bank robbery just happened to be right across the street, in the same attire in all the e-mails that everyone got."

Awesome! I hope the dude gets away it. Sure, banks don't need anymore bad news this week, but what a plan! Kudos, dude in dust mask. Kudos.

Why Crime Is High

A particular focus of the Chicago media over the last few weeks has been the spike in violence. The story is usually swept under the rug, but earlier this month there were shootings at the Taste of Chicago which could not be ignored. Mayor Daley is betting a large part of his legacy on bringing the Olympics to Chicago in 2016, and gun violence at the premier annual public event is sure to set off alarms.

Last weekend, I attended a Chicago cop wedding. The talk at the event centered on how unsafe Chicago was. A good friend of mine had given up working the special forces-style TACT unit because he felt isolated by the politicians and media. In the last year or so, there have been heavily covered stories of police misconduct. These stories led to the hiring of a new Police Commissioner, Jody Weis. Weis now finds himself on the hot seat, charged with the unenviable task of answering to politicians who won't hire more police and improving morale with an increasingly disaffected officer corps.

But the question no one is asking is why? The reason no one is asking this is because in the current economic crisis, no one wants to hear the answer: More police. And more jobs for the poor.

In the current issue of The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin gives us some insight into why the small cities of America (Memphis, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc.) are suffering through crime waves. The answer stems from the missing skyline of poverty that used to border the eastern edge of the Dan Ryan. The ghetto has been demolished, but the misery has been exported to other areas of Chicago, the suburbs, and to neighboring states. Areas which had never seen gang violence now suffer from the urban plague.

Neek’s middle-class habits have made him, unwittingly, a perfect target
for homegrown gangs. Gang leaders, cut loose from the housing projects,
have adapted their recruiting efforts and operations to their new
setting. Lately, they’ve been going after “smart, intelligent,
go-to-college-looking kid[s], without gold teeth and medallions,” said
Sergeant Lambert Ross, an investigator with the Memphis Police.
Clean-cut kids serve the same function as American recruits for
al-Qaeda: they become the respectable front men. If a gang member gets
pulled over with guns or drugs, he can hand them to the college boy,
who has no prior record. The college boy, raised outside the projects,
might be dreaming of being the next 50 Cent, or might be too
intimidated not to join. Ross told me that his latest batch of arrests
involved several kids from two-car-garage families.

Neither candidate has made crime an issue, but it is only a matter of time before a crime so heinous is perpetrated that the focus will return to the recurring ills of inner-city poverty. Will either stand up and demand that government place economic development for the impoverished as a priority? Or will they demonize these communities? In today's political climate, I'm not too optimistic for increased government aid.