Of course it’s a man. It’s always a man. Except that one time, but otherwise, it’s always a man.

So you might say that mass murder or spree killings have a sex – which is a more accurate word to describe a biological identifier. But the title of this post is that mass murder has a gender.

Gender, as opposed to sex, is a social construct. It is whatever we mean when we say masculine or feminine; it is the implied behavior when we exhort someone to “Be a man!” or “Act like a lady!”

The gender of mass murder is also a social construct. I know that there are plenty of people who will want to argue with me and say that women don’t go on spree killings because it’s not in their nature or because women are fundamentally nonviolent. This is a biological argument that I don’t buy.

Mass murder is a social construct, not a biological fact. If it were somehow in men’s essential nature to commit these crimes, we’d see uniform male participation in mass murder across cultures.

Ah, but we don’t.

Try Italy, for the sake of example. Just one mass murder that happened in 1925. But France? France has had seven incidents that would fall in this broad category. Mass murder is culturally bound.

And it’s a social construct that men do it and women don’t.

It’s time to spend less time talking about guns, which has already been overworked, and more time talking about the role of culture and gender in these events.

As a society, we should be asking ourselves what we are doing when it comes to socializing gender roles in that we socialize our men to be violent. We socialize them such that when their mental illness escalates, a spree killing is what their brains seize upon.

There are mentally ill women all over the world, who don’t turn to mass murder when their illness worsens. Or essentially sane women who are filled with hatred and bigotry, yet never devise a plan to kill as many people as they can.

Just as there are mentally ill and sane men the world over, who are just so much less likely to think of killing people than American or European men.

Let’s set the gun issue aside, and see what we can do about the social issue instead.

The answer to reducing and preventing these crimes, after all, will never come with ammunition.  Instead, the answer lies in the social construction of traditional masculinity. And what society can build, society and tear down and rebuild even better.

Related articles

• Why Men Commit Mass Murders (thedailybeast.com)
• Mass Murders, Madness, and Gun Control (psychologytoday.com)
• How the media shouldn’t cover a mass murder (newstatesman.com)
• The Overwhelming Maleness of Mass Homicide (ideas.time.com)
• In Defense of Gun Culture (crimedime.com)
• Guest Post: Consuming Machines of Death (crimedime.com)

In the midst of the ongoing Chick-fil-A mess, now seems like a good time to take a look at hate and bias crime. If you haven’t already read it, you really should start with last week’s post about Chick-fil-A. It deals with some of the free speech issues.

To reiterate: hate speech is generally, but not always, protected by first amendment rights.

Hate crimes, however, are a different story. A hate crime is one in which the offense is motivated by hatred of a group of people. Hate crimes are tricky in that they criminalize thinking – not all by itself – but in conjunction with a criminal act against certain groups of people.

Do we really want to criminalize thinking? Is it okay to say that someone deserves an extra penalty because of what they were thinking when they committed a crime?  Or their motive?  That aspect of hate crimes always gives me the heebie jeebies, in a Big Brother kind of way.

On the other hand, how can we, as a society, fail to take action when some of our members are targeted just because of who they are? Did we learn anything from the Holocaust? When we allow hate crimes, we contribute to oppression – so isn’t criminalizing hate crime obvious?

We can’t resolve those issues in a single blog post. Instead, presented for further contemplation, I give you some data on hate crimes. These are the most recent numbers available from the FBI’s UCR hate crime data.

By far, Blacks are the largest category of victims of hate and bias crimes. Sexual orientation, however, is similar in size to religion. Which brings us right back to Chick-fil-A. Must every path end at a fast food chain?

I anticipated that vandalism would constitute a sizeable chunk of the offense type pie, but I was a little surprised that it was the largest portion. Included in the “other” category are six homicides and four sexual assaults. While the numbers of such crimes are small, the impact on the relevant communities is huge.

Did anything surprise you in the data?

Related articles

• Free Speech, Hate Speech, Chick-fil-A Speech
• Shooting at Wis. Sikh Temple Called “Hate Crime” (investmentwatchblog.com)
• Plano PD: Wanted Suspects Committed Anti-Gay Hate Crime (dfw.cbslocal.com)
• Police in hate crime warning (scotsman.com)
• Temple shooting dredges up memories of long history of bias crimes against Sikhs (cnn.com)
• How Do We Justify Protecting Free Speech? (crimedime.com)

The fight since then is about two things: gay rights and free speech.

Let’s get the first one out of the way. Gay rights? Yep, I support them. Wholeheartedly. As someone who believes that we all have a duty to respect and care for our fellow human beings, regardless of sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, sex, political views, or dog vs. cat pet ownership status.

Now, free speech.

Yeesh. The public discourse on the issue has done a fabulous job of highlighting just how uneducated we are when it comes to free speech issues. So let’s set the record straight (oh, pardon the pun, dear reader!) on what’s going on with Chick-fil-A and speech.

First, the text of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It’s helpful to think about the term, freedom of speech, and ask yourself, “freedom from what?” The answer is Congress. Or, more broadly, the government as the Supreme Court has made it clear that first amendment protections extend not just to federal actions (Congress), but to the states as well.

Free speech is about being able to speak freely without government interference. Those protesters who are boycotting Chick-fil-A because of Cathy and Chick-fil-A’s corporate stance on religion, family, and sexuality are NOT infringing upon Cathy’s free speech rights. By definition, the only body that can do that is the government.

Protesters are merely that – protesters. Both they and Cathy are merely participating in the marketplace of ideas.

Now, the mayor of Boston is another story.

Mayor Thomas Menino sent a letter to Chick-fil-A telling Cathy that the business wasn’t welcome in Boston.

Oh, snap, now we got a problem.

While I love, love, love the fact that Menino is publicly supporting gay rights and calling out Chick-fil-A for their hatefulness, if Menino goes further than “not welcome” and actually takes steps to prevent Chick-fil-A’s business enterprise on the basis of Cathy’s speech and beliefs, well that, my friends, is a free speech violation.

Menino is government. Your freedom of speech is freedom from government interference.

It makes me want to vomit, but the various mayors who have said they’ll try to block the fast food chain’s presence are wrong.  Mayors can participate in the marketplace of ideas, but they can’t use the power of the state to silence or impede others solely on the basis of speech and beliefs. Thus, the KKK gets to clean up the highway if they want to. Again, makes me want to vomit, but that’s what speech is all about.

Allowing ugliness keeps us free from governmental and political oppression. Just ask Abbie Hoffman about his shirt sometime… he was busted for wearing a shirt designed to resemble an American flag. Or, you know, ask the Founding Fathers about how important free speech was to organizing the revolution.

But there are limits. Free speech is not Totally Unlimited, Unchecked, Anyone Can Say Anything Speech.

You can’t call fire in a crowded theater.

You can’t incite a riot.

You can’t use fighting words.

In the example of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, we understand that the government has the power and duty to regulate speech that would reasonably hurt other human beings.

But what about hate speech? Where do we draw the line between a legitimate state interest to prevent violence and protecting someone’s right to voice their opinion?

Hate speech is murky territory. It is the ill-defined space between public safety and unpopular or ugly beliefs. The zone in which legitimate state interests intertwine with individual civil liberties. It is the part of the map in which no one can definitively say how far is too far.

Hate speech is generally protected as a first amendment activity, but not always. Take, for example, Title VII and Title IX. If employers allow hate speech and it creates a hostile environment in the workplace, employers can be sued. But an employee can say those same hateful things outside of work without censure.

So it’s tricky.

But I would argue that Chick-fil-A is engaging in hate speech. And that it creates a hostile environment for its employees by doing so. Unfortunately, the federal government does not recognized the LGBTQ community as protected by civil rights provisions.

There are a number of local jurisdictions who do, and I think the only legitimate way that government can deal with Chick-fil-A’s homophobia is through employment law and hostile environment provisions.

But bottom line: all those protesters? You keep at it. As long as you are a private citizen, Cathy’s first amendment rights won’t be violated in the slightest.

Related articles

• Q & A with a College Perspective on Chick-fil-a (uloop.com)
• When in the Course of Human Events Criminals Become Heroes  (crimedime.com)
• How Do We Justify Protecting Free Speech? (crimedime.com)
• Do You Have to Tell Police Your Name?  (crimedime.com)
• Pat Robertson and Bong Hits 4 Jesus  (crimedime.com)

Chief Justice Roberts issued an opinion on Monday that effectively allows Maryland to go back to collecting DNA from suspects arrested for violent crimes or burglaries.

As TwoBits reported back in May, the Maryland Court of Appeals overturned a rape conviction. Alonzo Jay King, Jr. was arrested for first and second-degree assault in 2009. The Maryland statute in place at the time allowed for the collection of his DNA. The DNA, in turn, matched a 2003 sexual assault, and King was subsequently convicted of the sexual assault.

The Maryland Court of Appeals argued that the DNA collection at the time of his arrest — for a violent crime — was a violation of King’s right to privacy under the 4th Amendment Constitutional protection against unreasonable search. They overturned King’s conviction for the sexual assault.

Dude, no.

Fingerprints (which contain touch DNA, I might add) are collected. Photographs, which reveal or suggest all kinds of personal information like age, race, sex, hair color, or illness, are collected.  Notes are taken regarding tattoos, scars, and identifying characteristics. The ONLY personal information revealed by the CODIS DNA system is sex.  The rest of the gene pairs stored (there are only 12 others) do not reveal any information about an individual.

Furthermore, we’re talking about collecting this extremely limited DNA from individuals who have been arrested. Arrest requires probable cause. Police have to be able to articulate good reasons for that arrest. So it’s not just, hey, yo, we think this guy did it. It’s something more, and the rest of the information taken, recorded, and entered into a national database (NCIC) reveals far more than the DNA test.

So, thank you, Chief Justice Roberts.

No, the ruling has not yet been addressed by the Supreme Court. That will take time. But Roberts’ opinion basically said that there’s a reasonable chance that the Supreme Court will overturn the Appeals Court ruling, and Maryland can go back to collecting DNA from offenders arrested for violent crimes and burglaries.

Awesomesauce.

Related articles

• Supreme Court stays Maryland injunction on state DNA collection law (jurist.org)
• Maryland’s Court of Appeals DNA Collection Ruling = [Face-palm] (crimedime.com)
• DNA Collection is a Feminist Issue (bigthink.com)
• I Have a (Woman) I’m Very Protective Of: What Can Men do to Stop Rape? (crimedime.com)
• 4 Reasons the Supreme Court’s Decision to Allow Suspicionless Strip Searches is Stupid (crimedime.com)
• Reducing Human Error in Fingerprint Analysis (crimedime.com)
• 4 Reasons A Lot of Forensic Science is Total Crap (crimedime.com)

I didn’t read carefully – it was just a passing skim on my smartphone – and not everything that shows up in the google news reader actually comes from a real news source. Nevertheless, I got all worked up and started writing a CrimeDime post in my head.

It had a bulleted list of reasons that racial quotas on discipline were a bad idea, including that we must respond to each incident based on what happened, not who was involved, that it would be unfair to victims, that data transparency might actually encourage some kids to behave worse if they knew their quota had been met… There were going to be diagrams and everything.

I was going to have a section on how school-discipline numbers get to be so disproportionate in the first place, including the fact that the behavior of minorities is already socially defined as more deviant, racial threat theory, victim reporting, harsh attitudes, and cultural differences between teachers and students.

Yeah, I don’t need any of that because when I read the coverage on the Washington Post, it turns out they aren’t doing quotas. They just want to reduce the disparities, hopefully to the point that there are no longer any disparities by race. Um, that’s exactly what they should be doing, y’all.

For our majority children, those who conform to social norms associated with power and privilege including skin color, language, accent, socioeconomic status, religion, ability, sexual orientation, etc., school discipline isn’t a big deal.

For middle and upper class white kids, routine school discipline is survivable and serious discipline is fightable. “I’ll get you fired and sue you,” says the entitled child of an attorney to a teacher… and the teacher knows it’s a possibility and backs off.

For minority children, school discipline can quickly become disastrous.

It leads to educational disengagement and lower performance. Here’s a thought: why don’t we take the kids who are having problems and actually take them out of school without providing any support instruction so that when they come back to school they’ll have even more trouble?

That’s exactly what an out of school suspension does. In school suspension with instruction costs money, and the kids who get suspended are generally not valued enough to spend those dollars.

While those kids are out on suspension, they are unsupervised because their parents aren’t wealthy enough to be stay-at-home parents or to even take the time off of work. Which gives opportunities to engage in even more serious crime, leading to opportunities to get in trouble with the criminal justice system, which further takes them out of school. That, in turn, leads to lower overall educational attainment, and the criminal record prohibits economic success in the legitimate economy and getting a job, which leads to greater participation in even more crime…

School becomes a path to incarceration. School house to jail house is a serious problem, and it’s a problem that white kids get to largely ignore, even those who are not quite middle class status.

Quotas, of course, are a stupid idea. Fortunately, no one wants a quota. They just want to eliminate the disproportionate impact of school discipline on minority status children.

That’s something we should all support wholeheartedly.

Related articles

• Do ‘Zero Tolerance’ School Discipline Policies Go Too Far? (time.com)
• Why Everyone is Reading The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander (crimedime.com)
• You: Police up to 28 times more likely to stop and search black people – study (guardian.co.uk)
• The Imaginary War Against White People (washingtonmonthly.com)
• Darnell Hawkins’ and a Research Agenda for Ethnicity Studies and Crime (crimedime.com)
• Geraldo, Trayvon’s Hoodie, and the Rape of Mr. Smith (crimedime.com)
• How to Go to Prison for Stealing Something That’s Free (crimedime.com)
• The Implications of a Racist Joke Emailed From the Bench (crimedime.com)
• Guest Post: “Colorblindness” is Denial (crimedime.com)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold dripping sweat, vacation zen, and glacially chilled iced tea.

It’s when we ponder the legality of lemonade stands, and wonder if we can send the cops after those kids whose grimy hands may have given us dysentery.

It’s also when we fire up the barbecue, and discuss, patriotically, the nature of rebellion, treason, and crime as they relate to our national history. And while no one with any social skills will bring muffins to a 4th of July picnic (APPLE PIE, folks!), there was still plenty to say about the sad story of muffingate and how it is still harming your community. Oh, and God. And the child abuse in the name of God thing.

We got all ponderous and academic-y about crime and media literacy, as well as media effects and meanings. The nerds down at the CrimeDime compound thought they had won the world elections when The New Jim Crow made the Times’ bestseller list, but in reality, there was no world election. (Don’t tell them that. It would be like stealing a binky from a baby. Crying might be involved.)

July was also a big home improvement month around here, though we didn’t go to Home Depot to get our posts on prison reform, improving the police, or what works for juvenile offenders. We were also delighted with advances in research on the nature of violence against the elderly, and fresh data on sexual assault in correctional facilities.

No, sirree, Home Depot still remains the place where you can go to contemplate the nature of light bulbs, cabinet handles, and paint mixing.

Though, if a fight breaks out in aisle five (nails, people, nails), maybe some violence interrupters can help. But if someone is picking walking around texting, don’t call the police. Call in private security instead? But only if you see Robert Agnew. He might have been experiencing a little strain.

I have just the cure for that, right here in my big picture of iced tea (dysentery not included). And if you don’t go for that, how about lemonade? No, I won’t make you an Arnold Palmer. That’s just gross. But we can certainly negotiate for a special kind of iced tea, the particular mix that hails from Long Island…

Related articles

• CrimeDime June 2012 Roundup
• CrimeDime May 2012 Roundup
• CrimeDime April 2012 Roundup
• CrimeDime March 2012 Roundup

Totally annoying.

And common. When I stepped outside to take a photo for this post, I located a distracted pedestrian within ten seconds. Because they are everywhere. It’s not just that their halfalogues annoy the snot out of us, it’s that they are a hazard to others. And themselves.

So why not issue these distracted pedestrians tickets in the same way that we do distracted drivers?

Distracted walking ordinances have popped up in a handful of jurisdictions, but have largely failed.

Utah, however, succeeded. Now one municipality boasts an ordinance that allows police to ticket you for distracted walking, but only around railways. As the Salt Lake Tribune reports:

“The fact we have an ordinance on the books gives our transit police an opportunity to go up and educate [people],” Carpenter said. “It creates an environment where we can have a little more serious conversation than we could without having the ordinance on the books.”

Um, back up the train there, sport. See, here’s the thing. Your police can already go up to people and educate them. You can already have a serious conversation. Adding the ability to cite them for “distracted walking” amps up that police encounter, and gives police officers yet another tool to exert social control over citizens for activities that are so vague and ill-defined that nearly anything might qualify.

How about walking while eating an ice cream cone? Talking to a friend? Disciplining a screaming toddler? Walking an unruly dog? And how does one demonstrate the opposite of distracted walking, anyway?

This is not like distracted driving, no matter how tempting the comparison might be.

Driving is a privilege, not a right. Walking is a right, not a privilege.

Driving involves operating a motor vehicle, which requires a license and holds age requirements. Vehicles are large, powerful machines capable of great speed and have tremendous lethality potential.

The state can, and should, be heavily involved in how citizens drive cars.

The state should stay the hell out of how people walk.

What do you think?

Related articles

• In 3 months, UTA cites 1 for distracted walking (mysanantonio.com)
• Number of pedestrian accidents due to distraction rising (wjla.com)
• Behind The Wheel With Police: Catching Distracted Drivers (minnesota.cbslocal.com)
• Distracted Driving: Texting Isn’t the Only Cause (themarlincompany.com)
• Do You Have to Tell Police Your Name? (crimedime.com)
• Don’t Talk to Police – The Coolest Explanation You Will Ever Get (crimedime.com)
• Dancing Cops, Community Policing, and the Public Trust (crimedime.com)

Image: Amazon

“Words can get you killed,” explains Ameena. She is one of the violence interrupters who walk through Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. She and the other interrupters walk through a world that is as foreign to middle class America as any passport destination. They cool down arguments, insert themselves into brewing storms.

Billed as a documentary about violence prevention, The Interrupters is about grief, concentrated disadvantage, poverty, education, and, finally, a modern take on the medicalization of crime. The idea that crime is a disease is not new – in the early 1900s enthusiasm for the 20th Century Rehabilitative Ideal quickly reached a fever pitch, if you’ll forgive the pun.

The analogy is compelling. If crime is a disease, then, like a disease, we can search for a cure. We can identify symptoms, treatments, prognoses, preventative treatments.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way. Crime is a complex phenomenon that requires very broad perspectives ranging from sociology to biology to sociology to political science to economics to…  you name it. Fitting the medical model to crime is something we do to make ourselves feel better, not to actually deal with the problem.

But that doesn’t mean The Interrupters is a total waste.  Just ignore the medical model stuff, and the rest is fantastic.

Related articles

• Inequality and the Angry Society (inequalitiesblog.wordpress.com)
• Deaf In Prison: Being Deaf In A Society of Captives (crimedime.com)
• Crossover Youth: When Child Victims Enter the Juvenile Justice System (crimedime.com)
• What Do We Know About Gangs? (crimedime.com)

In my last post, I focused on the interconnections between crime coverage in news media and the media literacy skills that audience members should possess. I did so by interrogating some of the findings presented in an infographic compiled by Infobia, which were made available on this blog by CrimeDime. In that post, I focused my attention on the top two sections of the graphic that detailed the study’s findings. In this post, I will turn my attention to the final section of that graphic that highlights the theoretical foundation for the research that was undertaken.

The final section of the graphic carries a banner reading “Mean World Syndrome.” The mean world syndrom is a phrase popularized by media scholar George Gerbner. Gerbner’s work spanned several decades in the latter half of the 20th century, but he was most associated with cultivation theory.

Cultivation theory is one of a number of theories that are grouped together under the broad heading of media effects theories. These theories focus on what media do to audiences, but these theories often underestimate the power and intelligence of the audience. On the other side of this equation you will find theoretical approaches that are rooted in historical, literary, and cultural traditions. Some scholars refer to this theoretical body as cultural studies. In contrast to effects theories, cultural studies are more likely to focus on what media do with audiences. If you want to learn more about this distinction then I recommend Henry Jenkins’ essay “The War Between Effects and Meanings,” which can be found in his book Fans, Bloggers & Gamers.

In this essay, Jenkins endeavors to clearly articulate the distinctions between the two approaches. Understanding these distinctions is one way to recognize the importance of developing media literacy skills. To summarize Jenkins’ position I will briefly outline the characteristics of effects and meanings below:

• Characteristics of Effects
  • Passive (effects happen to us)
  • Largely subconscious (we don’t know effects are happening)
  • Inaccessible to self-evaluation and critical examination
  • Do not build on prior knowledge
  • More uniform and individual (acultural)
  • Cannot be taught
  • What media do to audiences
  • Social Scientific Tradition (Scientific—Stimulus/Response)

• Characteristics of Meanings
  • Active (meanings happen with us)
  • Conscious (we work to create meanings and know we are doing so)
  • Accessible to self-evaluation and critical examination
  • Build on prior knowledge
  • More varied and socially-influenced (culturally-rooted)
  • Can be taught
  • What media do with audiences
  • Literary or Historical Traditions (Humanist—Reflection-based)

Jenkins’ work also attempts to highlight some of the weaknesses associated with effects research. Cultivation theory, and by extension the mean world syndrome, suffer from some of these weaknesses. As mentioned above, effects theories may simply underestimate the role audience members play in creating their own understandings of the world. This theory is often tested through the use of a methodology called content analysis.

Content analysis, at its most basic level, is a process of counting (see the top half of the infographic). In order to count something, one must also define that thing. In this case, what must be defined is violence. While the infographic in question here is fairly straightforward–since it uses true crime stories in newspapers–not all studies using this theory are quite as clear-cut. Violence, as it turns out, is a difficult concept to define. For example, the Three Stooges and Tom & Jerry are both quite violent but most reasonable people would not confuse this type of violence for what is seen in a Quentin Tarantino film or what we read about in a news story involving murder.

However, depending on the way that the term (violence) is defined these representations could be counted together, and when this happens we must realize that the counting strips the context from the specific representation. Context matters because audiences recognize context and that context helps the audience form their interpretations of the event. Everything we read, hear, or see is interpreted in some way and oftentimes different people interpret the same message differently. Ultimately, any study employing content analysis as a methodology must also make some interpretive leaps in order to explain what was counted. It is here where the “scientific” methodology becomes a bit less-than scientific.

While it may be true that heavy consumption of crime media may have some impact on the ways that people view the world, the theory falls short of establishing that media are the primary cause of this belief or that this belief is uniformly held. It could be just as likely that people who believe the world is a dangerous place are prone to select stories involving crime thereby confirming their beliefs. Or as Daniel Chandler writes, “More recent theories stressing the active viewer downplay the power of television to influence viewers which is assumed by cultivation theory. Cultivation theory focuses on the amount of television viewing or ‘exposure’, and does not allow for differences in the ways in which viewers interpret television realities.” Put differently, the correlation that is often revealed when applying this theory does not necessarily indicate causation.

More importantly, a theory like this one lends itself to promoting a belief that audience members are powerless and the media are all powerful. Note the ways that Jenkins describes the assumptions of effects theories. Audiences are assumed to be passive receptacles incapable of realizing what is happening to them and unable to learn from their experiences. In contrast, a more media literate audience takes on an active role. A media literate audience realizes that the senders of the messages have certain wants and desires, and they are able to learn from past experiences–many of us realize that violent crime stories sell newspapers. More importantly, the development of media literacy skills and the corresponding ability to learn from prior experiences may help to insulate audiences from the potential of harmful effects. Put simply, media education may be the answer to some of the potential problems often associated with media consumption.

There is no doubt that certain types of crimes are more widely covered than other types of crimes. Or, that violent crimes receive a disproportionate amount of media and audience attention. What is in doubt is whether this imbalance really matters much. One thing that I know for certain is that if the audience is savvy and literate, then the imbalance matters less.

Related articles

• Fighting Effects of Media Violence with Education and Media Literacy (smamdouh.wordpress.com)
• Two Articles on Media Literacy (msvucriticalmedialiteracy.wordpress.com)
• Dissecting Dexter’s Discourses: Exploring TV Crime as Artform and Argument (crimedime.com)
• Kids and Social Messages About Crime (crimedime.com)

Why is it so popular?

Because it tells the story of race, ethnicity, criminal justice, and social control in a compelling, accessible way. Where academic criminologists conduct studies on concepts like “perceived racial threat” and “racial normalization of crime,” Alexander makes it pretty simple.

Racism, no longer socially acceptable in its overt forms, has become socially acceptable in a new format: the criminal justice system.

This isn’t really news to criminologists. We even have acronyms for it: DMC refers to disproportionate minority confinement, or DMP which means disproportionate minority presence.

People of color show up all over crime data, in numbers that do not match their presence in the population. So what’s going on here? Are minorities committing more crime? Yes, without a doubt. But to leave the issue right there would be a terrible injustice to understanding the intersection of race and crime.

Because minorities are more likely to be reported for crime. More likely to be arrested. More likely to be charged, convicted, sentenced. And more likely to be sentenced to a harsher punishment.

The favorite textbook example of harsher sentencing is always powder versus crack cocaine. How do you explain the fact that penalties for crack cocaine have been as much as 50 times higher than for powder cocaine? Well, consider who uses the two different forms of the drug, and you’ve got your answer.

Each of these slight differences add up to a whole that is nothing less than institutionalized and socially accepted racism. Mass incarceration targets and harms blacks in a way that is parallel to the old Jim Crow laws against a backdrop of self-righteous punitive criminal justice attitudes that pretend to be color-blind.

That’s what Michelle Alexander is trying to say, and she says it well.

Related articles:

• Michelle Alexander: More Black Men Are In Prison Today Than Were Enslaved In 1850 (innerstandingisness.wordpress.com)
• Cut Black Men Some Slack, Jack: Michelle Alexander’s New Jim Crow May Give New Hope (clutchmagonline.com)
• Darnell Hawkins’ and a Research Agenda for Ethnicity Studies and Crime (crimedime.com)
• Guest Post: “Colorblindness” is Denial (crimedime.com)
• Geraldo, Trayvon’s Hoodie, and the Rape of Mr. Smith (crimedime.com)