Category: crime and punishment

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crime and punishment

Justice & Consequences

Washington DC, crime, law, police

Crime has gotten so bad in our nation’s capital that it’s even becoming too dangerous for the criminals.

“An off-​duty federal security officer on his way into work Saturday night,” reports The Washington Post, “fatally shot a 13-​year-​old boy who the officer said was one of two youths who tried to carjack him in the District’s Penn Quarter neighborhood, near public safety buildings and an entertainment complex, according to D.C. police.”

My heart goes out to this man who was forced to defend himself. But also to this foolish 13-​year-​old boy, who is gone. 

Carjackings in the city have more than doubled this year over last, 821 and counting. According to the newspaper, those “involving juveniles are also up this year.”

The death of this perpetrator follows a recent incident in which “a 16-​year-​old girl driving a carjacked vehicle crashed into a utility pole in Northeast Washington and was killed.” The deceased girl’s 15-​year-​old partner in crime, now in police custody, had been released from “the city’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services” after “robbery and theft charges” only “because the agency had no available housing for her.”

“Violent crime in D.C. is up 41 percent this year,” The Post adds, pointing out that this recent shooting was just “several blocks north of where … the Washington Wizards played a home game … about three hours before.”

Good and evil have their own inertia. If crime pays, we will see more of it. And in more places. And if such acts are perceived to be easy to get away with … 

The consequences of no consequences are proving all too consequential.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people

Why Criminals Commit Crimes

criminal mind, crime, incentives

Is it a mystery?

“I really think if we can identify the ‘why,’ especially amongst the juveniles, we might be able to change our approach on how to slow this down,” says Carlos Heraud, an assistant chief at the DC police department.

Along with other crime in Washington. D.C., carjackings are up. Why?

Some people choose to be criminals. And some policymakers choose to aid and abet them.

It’s a matter of incentives and disincentives, but also choices and character. 

Since different people react differently to being born into poverty — or being disrespected, being peer-​pressured, being bored, being fired — we cannot simply say that criminals are created by difficult circumstances.

Most do not become thugs and hoodlums.

Some who make criminal choices pull back and determine to do better. Others commit offenses forever. Chief Heraud and D.C. mayors and lawmakers should heed the insights of Stanton Samenow’s Inside the Criminal Mind. Although criminals make excuses for themselves and latch onto the excuses made for them by others, they know they’re responsible for their actions.

But while circumstances don’t create the criminal mind, circumstances can abet crime. For example, if you make it easier for criminals to get away with assault and theft, they’ll likely commit more assaults and thefts.

The government of our imperial capital makes it hard for potential victims to arm themselves, easy for criminals who are “caught” to walk away. If you’re a criminal operating in a town like that, it’d have to be encouraging to receive by this kind of encouragement?

After all, it’s not a question of bad incentives incentivizing all to be wicked. The effects can be seen on the margin, among those most likely to be induced by corrupt incentives, or to not be dissuaded from criminal action by reduced disincentives.

No great mystery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly national politics & policies

Don’t Fence Me In?

Joe Biden, border wall, immigration, NIMBY

“The Biden administration on Thursday said it would expand former President Donald Trump’s wall,” informs The Gray Lady, with a stiff upper lip. 

And do it lickety-​split: “Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction,” the UK Guardian headlines its report. 

In fiscal 2023, government data shows 245,000 people entered the United States from this Rio Grande Valley sector.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated in the federal registry.

“Well, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall,” quipped the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller, “Biden did.”

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the president had promised to the contrary during the 2020 campaign. Now Sleepy Joe’s administration has so awakened to the need for action on immigration that it argues for fencing off the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act from getting in the way … 

… of building that wall. 

Fast!

The New York Times notes “intensifying” complaints coming from “Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and elsewhere who say the influx is overwhelming their ability to house and feed the migrants.” 

Want a nimble response to the border crisis? 

Instead, we see a NIMBY response — from big-​city politicians, as the buses arrive from down south.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture insider corruption

Traditional Terrorism

Jamaal Bowman, Congress, antifa, false alarm, protest, insurrection,

It’s a mild form of terrorism … perpetrated by a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jamaal Bowman (D‑NY) pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol, apparently to postpone a vote on a measure that would have kept the federal government operational, as it lurches into another of its periodic debt ceiling crises.

He denies the accusation … even as Breitbart News reports that he “ripped down two signs warning a second floor door in the Cannon House Office Building was for emergency use only before pulling the fire alarm and running out through a different door on a different floor.” It’s all “on tape,” requiring no advanced dialectic to determine the truth. 

I hazard that no one believes Bowman’s denial, not even his many defenders — for no one is really that stupid, not even in the Imperial City.

The go-​to interpretive of the non-​left commentariat is to compare it to the January 6 protests and riots. 

When those 2020 entrants into the Capitol disrupted the Senate’s ratification of the Electoral College results, they were accused of affronts to democracy, the peaceful handoff of power, and of obstructing the normal operations of government. Rep. Bowman, by misusing a fire alarm, was doing pretty much the same thing. But he is on the side of Big Government and the Democratic insider elite, so he’s probably not in as much jeopardy as those “losers” who found themselves stuck in prison.

But I notice another parallel: the juvenile stunt of pulling the fire alarm is a classic tactic of leftist protesters. Leftwing saboteurs of free speech have pulled many a similar alarm, if usually only to scuttle campus speaking events by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Cathy Young, et al. The saboteurs almost always get away with it. 

Bowman probably thought he would, too.

It’s tradition!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment Second Amendment rights social media

A Gun with His Name On It

Trump, Glock, self defense, 2nd Amendment

An “X” post by a Trump spokesperson implicated the former president in a crime.

What followed implicates the U.S. Government in something far worse.

But first, to clarify:

  1. By “X” I mean “Twitter.” Remember, Elon Musk changed the name of his social media company.
  2. By “Trump” I mean, of course, Donald John Trump, former president of the United States running the same office, a man surrounded by armed guards at all times.
  3. By “crime” I mean an infraction of federal law, not a willful abuse of someone’s rights at common law. 
  4. The crime in question is the act of receiving “any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce” by a person “under indictment … a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” Trump’s been indicted quite a number of times, recently, and therefore isn’t legally allowed to buy a gun.

The initial tweet said Trump admired a Glock that had his name stamped on it. It was the “Donald Trump edition,” gold-​colored, retailing for under a thousand bucks. Trump’s on video saying he wants one of these handguns.

When X went all a‑twitter with the implications, spokesman Steven Cheung took down his post and the campaign issued a corrective: “President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.” 

This is all explained by Jacob Sullum at Reason, who goes on to indicate that the law makes no real sense. The obvious absurdity of not allowing a well-​guarded presidential candidate to guard himself with gun of any kind, that’s one thing. Flouting the Second Amendment by prohibiting the innocent, i.e. not yet proven guilty, from bearing arms, looks far worse — a policy of rights suppression.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Corrigendum notice: a correction was made late on the date of publication [Trump is not a “Jr.,” as originally stated].

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crime and punishment folly too much government

The California Experiment

safety first, California, socialism, globalism, global warming, climate change, control

California is determined to give us the full bleak picture of totalitarianism, American-style.

Anticipating proposed SEC regulations, Newsom’s California is set to impose nonsensical mandates for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and “climate-​related financial risk” that target companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more (according to the terms of SB253) and $500 million or more (SB261).

Billion-​dollar businesses will have to report all direct and indirect emissions, including emissions produced throughout a business’s supply chain. Business travel. Employee commutes. Penalties for failure to report could be as high as $500,000.

The cost is in time, money, privacy, freedom, with no benefits except to bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy bossing us around and destroying our ability to function.

These requirements are tyrannical in the same way they’d be tyrannical if required of you and me as individuals. 

Do you know all about the emissions produced in delivering the water, electricity, electronics, gas, paper you use each month? 

Care to drop everything you’re doing to find out? 

And submit the data in a bureaucrat-​satisfying format?

We already know what the results of California’s experiment will be. We already know that crushing freedom and giving unfettered power to slave-​masters is not the road to wealth and happiness.

What we don’t know is exactly how far the Tarnished State’s aspiring totalitarians will go. But whatever the consequences, they’ll blame others … or just mutter “Good riddance, we didn’t want that prosperity and those evil businesses anyway.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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