Ian Birrell give a nice new twist to the same-old-same-old in the Guardian’s Observer Magazine: In 1998, the United Nations committed member states to achieve a “drug-free world”, pledging to eliminate or “significantly reduce” use of opium, cannabis and cocaine by 2008. Instead, global opiate use rose by more than one-third over that time, with…
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I like this model, which isn’t that rare in much of the world: “Where Prisoners Can Do Anything, Except Leave.” Why not? It’s cheaper. And more humane.
So says the Washington Times about my defense of flogging. Though I’d say overall it’s neutral (to mildly negative). The reviewer seems upset that the book is actually more about prison than flogging (but of course, that’s the point) and also that I didn’t convince her that flogging is the answer. Oh well. Here’s the…
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This must have been one of the easiest suspect-IDs in world history: Bangladeshi woman cuts off rapist’s penis and gives it to police.
An NIJ report says Tasers are fine when used on “healthy, normal, nonstressed, nonintoxicated persons.” Okaaaay… [Thanks to The Agitator] [Update: I just read the report. It is quite an unambiguous green-light for Taser use: “Law enforcement need not refrain from using CEDs to place uncooperative or combative subjects in custody.” It’s that “uncooperative” part…
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I just got this gem of a line from a police officer who just turned in his retirement papers: “This job is like cigarettes–hazardous to your health, addictive, and occasionally strangely satisfying.”
I received an email yesterday from Lorne Caplan, who gave me permission to republish it with attribution. I’ve edited it slightly: As a former investment banker and having recently been freed from prison in 2007, I have to agree with much of what you said today. Most importantly, it is the culture of eternal punishment…
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These were the two officers who stranded two 15-year-olds far from their home. They were not the first officers to do this. They may be the last. (My earlier post.) From the Sun: [Judge] Doory said the fact that Johnson was left in Howard County without shoes “stood like a monument” in the middle of…
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New York City is certainly not immune to destructive urban “progress.” Here’s a shot from Shorpy of Cortland Street from 1908. Here’s the view today: But what’s really interesting is what happens when you turn around. Back then, it would have looked much like the picture above. You were in the heart of what was…
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The other day I saw a young black man on the corner of 32nd Street and 6th Avenue with his arm up, trying to hail a cab. He wasn’t particularly well dressed, but he didn’t look like a hoodlum (the same could have been said of me). “How many empty cabs are going to pass…
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