Alternatives to Prison (Part 1 of 3)

Introduction:  For almost 200 years, the treatment and punishment of convicted criminals was defined by blending the Pennsylvania System and the New York System.  And, of course, it did nothing to remediate either the offender or the harms.  People came out of prison worse than when then went in.  They re-offended.  And their victims often were the same people they hurt before.  It is a cliché in corrections that prisoners are returned to within 100 yards of where they were arrested.  However, we have made progress.  Community corrections, moral reconation therapy, and reintegrative shaming are among the new modes that provide successful outcomes.

Failure Modes

Historically, transgressors were exiled.  The modern prison solves that problem with topology: we lock them in, not out.  However, the modern prison system does not have deep roots in history.  Until America in the 18^th century, prisons were only for holding people until they were brought forward for punishment.  Some people might never leave prison, but incarceration was not the intended punishment for the crime. 

The modern prison began in 1788 with the Penitentiary House of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia.  The purpose was specifically to reform the penitent.  The intention to remake and rehabilitate the offender led to the construction of the Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829.  Separating convicts into solitary cells was a radical idea, consistent with the social theories of the Enlightenment.  Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments (Dei delitti e delle pene, 1764) launched the modern study of penology within criminology.  Beccaria argued against capital punishment and torture. His ideas were incidentally consistent with Quaker theory on salvation.  For them, solitary confinement was supposed to allow the penitent to come to terms with God.

However, an alternate model also informed penology:  convicted offenders should live and work communally under close supervision coupled with physical punishment for non-compliance.  That was the Auburn System created in New York following the appointment of Elam Lynds as warden of the prison in 1821. When flogging finally was prohibited in 1847, different punishments were invented. The striped uniform was another innovation in the Auburn System.

From chain gangs and work farms to separate facilities for low, medium, and high-risk offenders, prisons in America achieved little except to keep some people out of the sight of others.  Generally, prisoners themselves controlled their daily routines, usually with the most violent preying on anyone less aggressive.  Illegal drugs passed into prisons through corrupt guards.

Radicals and Reformers

Following the intellectual ferment of the 1960s, new methods for remediating harms slowly advanced within criminology; and they have found some success.  The basic assumptions of their sociology often are informed by some school of socialism, whether Marxist, neo-Marxist, or postmodern.  For them, crime is a response to oppression. For the classic Marxist, economic exploitation reduces the proletariat to criminal activity.  In point of fact, we have found that when the economy improves, crime goes up.  The current long recession (from 2001 to the present) has seen crime go down. 

However, their point is well-made because the outcomes of criminal action are different for different classes. And class correlates with race, though correlation is not cause.  See Our Kind of People: Inside America's Black Upper Class by Lawrence O. Graham (HarperCollins, 1999).  When suburban kids are caught shoplifting, or shooting out streetlights with a pellet gun, or using drugs, their outcomes are different from that of their inner city cohorts. Suburban offenders receive many of the treatments and remediations outlined here.  The poor get prison. 

Moreover, we all offend.  Newt Gingrich once said that for most Americans, the posted speed limit is a benchmark of opportunity.  The only relevant questions are: Whom did you hurt? And what are you going to do about it?

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Firefighters

All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights

Eyewitness Testimony: Popper, Wittgenstein, and the Innocence Project

Wolf DeVoon

Alternatives to Prison (Part 2 of 3)

Reintegrative Shaming was developed by John Braithwaite based on his experience as an administrative regulator of pharmaceutical firms in Australia.  It was quite simple.  If you go in with a warrant, you only meet the lawyers.  If you sit down for tea with the plant manager, you gain voluntary compliance.  “Sitting down for tea” meant getting the manager to acknowledge out loud that he knew about the violation, and knew that it was wrong. Then, he would promise to fix it, and usually did. 

Braithwaite followed those encounters with research into the anthropology of offense.  He found many examples from history and modern first peoples where the offender was brought back into the community after admitting the transgression and apologizing to the victim, making restoration where possible. 

Sometimes, it is not possible.  An Eskimo man killed his wife; and when her brother complained about that, he killed her brother.  So, his friends invited him to go hunting.  Four went out; three came back.  (Hoebel, E. Adamson. 1967. The Law of Primitive Man: A Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.).  Usually, the outcomes are better for everyone because most harms are smaller than murder. 

Even though less than homicide, assault is a violent crime.  Victims suffer multiple traumas, deeper than the physical wounds and scars.  Howard Zehr is a photographer.  He created Transcending: Reflections of Crime Victims (Good Books, 2001).   Zehr presented the portraits and the stories of 39 courageous victims of violent crime.  Not all of the encounters brought closure.  In two, the attackers continued to mock their victims.  In one, the subject was a man whose son was killed in prison.  For three dozen other cases, both the victim and the offender found that they could overcome their suffering.

Community Corrections

The Midtown Manhattan Community Court opened in 1993. The Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn opened in the summer of 1998.  Red Hook’s success has served as a model for many other efforts.  Greg Berman invested two years of daily work, laying the social foundation for the center before it opened.  He met with groups.  He met with individuals. His salary came from a grant by the New York City Housing Authority to the Center for Court Innovation and the King County District Attorney’s Office.

The Red Hook court brings offenders and victims together.  The usual harms are domestic violence and shoplifting.  They also get public indecency cases when men are caught urinating in an alleyway.  Their theory on that is that there is no such thing as a victimless crime.   Every transgression harms the community.

In cases of personal crime, perpetrators confront their victims, apologize, and make whatever restitution is possible.  For offenses against the public order, the guilty apologize to an appropriate authority, acknowledge the harm they caused, and perform community service work. 

In many community corrections programs house arrest with electronic tethering is a common judicial sentence, especially for otherwise non-violent offenders such as the habitual drunk driver.  Community programs find work for them.  Their whereabouts are monitored.  It costs less for us, and keeps them integrated to the community.

Self-Awareness

That assailants are also victims is a fact of crime.  In the first place, a police investigation often reveals that the victim was only the last person to get hurt the most.  Whether a fight in a bar or a feud between neighbors, they had a personal interaction that played out over time.  Either one could have withdrawn completely, but neither did. 

Domestic assault is different than that.  There, a lifelong violent offender finds a lifelong victim of violence.  Typically, both grew up in abusive homes, as did their parents.  That is how they learned their roles.  To them, it seems perfectly normal. 

Moral Reconation Therapy is one of the most successful treatment programs for domestic and drug abuse cases.  Not surprisingly, they go together, especially with the drug of choice is alcohol; and MRT is also employed for treating drunk drivers.  MRT is the work of Gregory L. Little and Kenneth D. Robinson.  Launched in 1988, it was based on five years of research in the Tennessee prison system.  Research continues across problem areas and the many multi-year follow-up studies on recidivism place it high on the list of evidence-based therapies. 

The process is simple.  Following a tested and proven workbook, counselors direct clients in small groups to explore their own attitudes, beliefs, and emotions.  For them self-awareness is a new experience.  Ayn Rand most cogently pointed out that the root of all evil is the failure to choose to think.  Thinking is not automatic.  It is volitional.  People blank-out, evade, and repress unpleasant thoughts, especially about themselves.  For a child, it does not take many years for them to become fogged into a reactive life of the immediate present.  Non-violent people become dysfunctional neurotics.  The violent ones become aggressive criminals.  Self-awareness cures that in about half the cases.

For over thirty years, MRT and other evidence-based practices typically have had success rates in the mid-fifties percent.  The National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (http://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov) is part of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (http://www.samhsa.gov).

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Employee Theft

Minimizing the Likelihood of Bad Cops

The Fallibility of Fingerprinting

20% of Scientists are Crooks

Alternatives to Prison (Part 3 of 3)

Laissez-faire Criminology is my assertion (on this blog) that you do not need to react to every wrong or harm, either against yourself or someone else.  Defining “human” as “rational animal” and given that violent offenders lack self-awareness, they cannot be considered human.  Self-righteous punishment of a criminal is no more meaningful than scolding a coyote or attempting to corral a tornado.  (Indeed, prisons are nothing if not corrals full of tornados.)  Sometimes the best thing you can do is to cut your losses and mind your own business.

Private treaties are one way that corporations deal with white collar crime.  Of all the harms that individuals visit on each other, white collar crime perfectly matches the theory of the rational actor.  White collar criminals are planfully competent.  They are privileged, educated, economically comfortable.  Therefore, the remediations are individualized and based on profit.

 “In responding to and resolving the criminal behavior of employees, organizations routinely choose options other than criminal prosecution, for example, suspension without pay, transfer, job reassignment, job redesign (eliminating some job duties), civil restitution, and dismissal...
“While on the surface, it appears that organizations opt for less severe sanctions than would be imposed by the criminal justice system, in reality, the organizational sanctions may have greater impact...  In addition, the private systems of criminal justice are not always subject to principles of exclusionary evidence, fairness, and defendant rights which characterize the public criminal justice systems. The level of position, the amount of power, and socio-economic standing of the employee in the company may greatly influence the formality and type of company sanctions.  In general, private justice systems are characterized by informal negotiations and outcomes, and nonuniform standards and procedures among organizations and crime types.”
(Hallcrest Report cited in Introduction to Private Security, Hess and Wrobleski, West Publishing, St.Paul, 1982, 1988. The Hallcrest Report I and II, by William C. Cunningham and Todd H. Taylor, et al., Butterworth-Heinemann, Boston, 1985 and 1990.)
 

When Nothing Works

Robert Martinson is famous for “What works? Questions and answers about prison reform” (The Public Interest 35.2; 1974: 22-54).  His research was immediately recast as “nothing works.”  Martinson found that every attempt at rehabilitation in prison had failures, often in greater proportion to their successes.  Successful treatments tended to work only for various minorities, often poorly identified or defined. 

Eventually, the claim that “nothing works” generated another response.  Among very many articles, consider:

·       “Beyond ‘What Works?’ A 25-year Jubilee Retrospective of Robert Martinsons Famous Article,” by Rick Sarre, in Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology 34: 38-46.

·       “Does Correctional Treatment Work? A Clinically Relevant and Psychologically Informed Meta-Analysis” by D.A. Andrews, Ivan Zinger, et al., Criminology, Volume 28, Issue 3, Pages 369–404, August 1990. 

Reduce your problem population as much as you want, eventually you will find individuals for whom nothing we know of will solve their problems.  What do you do with the unregenerate?

Perhaps we should just kill them.  We would save ourselves the trouble and expense.  Consider that we know that a child who is cruel to animals grows up to be a violent offender.  Would it be right to kill a child for abusing a family pet?  Ideally, the offender would be remediated and re-integrated with one of the other responses.

The therapies and remedies discussed above may not work in all cases.  Ultimately, we are left with an intractable problem. We build very many small spaces for internal exile.  In Russia, they have all of Siberia for internal exile.  That may remain the best solution for the worst cases.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Active Defense and Passive Aggression, Part I

Active Defense and Passive Aggression, Part II

A Forensics Bibliography

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science

Brian Krebs’ Spam Nation

Computer security journalist Brian Krebs ("Krebs on Security" here) signed books at Barnes & Noble in Austin on November 24.  Spam Nation is really about two nations: Russia and the United States.  Two criminal organizations dedicated to online spam and botnets, perhaps the largest in the world, work(ed) from Russia, targeting Americans. 

Brian Krebs started his presentation by acknowledging the four years he spent on the project.  He then thanked his publisher, editor, and associated researchers, and the cyber-crooks.  Both of them denied that they were engaged in criminal activity; and both have threatened to sue. 

It starts with spam, offers for Viagra, Gucci, and other big name products, especially pharmaceuticals and designer fashions.  The offers themselves are real enough, in that, apparently, millions of people are taking fake drugs and carrying fake handbags. 

About fifty security professionals attended.

However, attached to the offer is malicious software that takes control of your computer. Your computer becomes a zombie following their orders to infect more computers.  These networks of robots (“botnets”) flood the Internet with new viruses.  According to Krebs, the typical life cycle is 12 to 24 hours. As new creations, the programs successfully challenge anti-virus software such as Kaspersky and McAfee.

Eventually, the two criminals turned on each other.  They provided Russian law enforcement (and Krebs) with millions of stolen records.  One of them, Pavel Vreblevsky even got himself appointed to a commission to investigate computer crime.  (I note that in that, he was like William Chaloner and John J. Ford, who also played both sides of the game.)

When asked about security tools, Krebs replied that good procedures are the best protection.  Rather than trying to keep people out of your network, you need to focus on finding them once they get in.  Rather than spending money, sometimes millions of dollars, on tools that no one actually uses, it is better to hire good people to really use the tools your company now has. 

Krebs said to keep your personal and professional lives separate.  He recommended partitioning your operations with different computers on different services for different tasks. Have different VPNs (virtual private networks). Use layers of security.

Asked about the threat of a catastrophic attack on our information infrastructure, Krebs said that it is not in the interests of these criminals to harm our economy.  They want us to buy from them.  Disrupting commerce is unproductive.  Krebs suggested that a catastrophic event will come from a Wargames scenario where “some kid in his mom’s basement who will see a big red button and has no social understanding.”

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

LASCON 2014

Securing Your Viper Against Cylons

Hacking Computer Security: BSides Austin 2013

Claude M. Watson

Newton versus the Counterfeiter

Intended for a general readership, this book rests on an extraordinary foundation of careful scholarship.  Newton and the Counterfeiter: The Unknown Detective Career of the World’s Greatest Scientist by Thomas Levenson (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009).

Thomas Levenson teaches science journalism at MIT. He has been granted special recognition for his Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentaries. Among those is a Westinghouse award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which he shared with co-producer Paula Apsell, for the 1992 PBS “Nova” presentation, Eclipse of the Century. In 2005, the National Academies honored Levenson with a Communications Award for his PBS mini-series production, “Origins: Back to the Beginning,” about evidence for the ontology of life. He knows science; and he knows how to present its difficult facts and complex theories.

            This lively historical narrative of criminology and jurisprudence animates Sir Isaac Newton’s career as a detective and prosecutor. Levenson delivers to print the videographer’s impact of sight and sound. Levenson introduces us to Newton in a series of establishing shots, pan-and-zoom vignettes that sketch and detail the events spotlighting the intellectual and emotional development of the man easily nominated as the greatest scientist. You walk down the alleys and into the pubs where Sir Isaac Newton investigated crimes against the British Royal Mint which he served as warden and master.

            Levenson opens the book by outlining Newton’s intellectual and emotional development. Complementing his work in mathematics, astronomy and optics, Newton also experimented with alchemy, performing purifications and alloys of metals. Emotionally, Newton’s isolation was rooted in self-abnegation. The hint of a homosexual dalliance comes as an instantaneous action, the lifelong reaction to which only distanced his social relations to ethereal planes. You could get no closer to Newton the man than you could to the Man in the Moon. Thus, this combination of unflinching pursuit of difficult theoretical and empirical truths, bulwarked by a stellar disregard for other people’s feelings made Newton the perfect prosecutor.

Newton portrait
by Enoch Seemar 1726

            The counterfeiter, William Chaloner, was Newton’s opposite. A runaway apprentice whose first lawful skill was making nails, Chaloner found London to be a probabilistic cloud of moral relativity whose potentials suited his self-indulgence. For William Chaloner, counterfeiting coins was only one craft in a wider enterprise. In the language of the day, Chaloner called his swindles “funning”. He funned the Mint with counterfeit coins, and the Bank of England with fake paper, both bank notes and drafts. When his counterfeit notes were discovered, he turned informant, not only avoiding prosecution and prison, but being granted £200 in reward. Accused by informants of counterfeiting, Chaloner won the first courtroom skirmish, humiliating Newton. Consequently, Chaloner erroneously considered himself Newton’s equal; and his complex, long-range plans were but moves in a game designed to give him access to the Mint in order to coin for his own profit.

            Before Newton, the posts of warden and master were only sinecures for the favored who then further stocked their own larders at public expense. They were not exceptions. Married to sisters, the master smelter and the assay master were brothers-in-law, living beyond the limits of their official salaries, inferentially guilty of conspiring to pass debased silver into the official coining operation. The vector that impelled Newton’s trajectory was the sale of dies from the Mint to counterfeiters on the outside.

            Whether Newton’s career as a detective and prosecutor is “unknown” is putative. While most readers here probably know of his Three Laws of Motion, his work at the British Royal Mint is less often taught. Biographer David Berlinksi (Newton’s Gift: How Sir Isaac Newton Unlocked the System of the World, New York: The Free Press, 2000) called Newton’s tenure at the mint uninteresting. Numismatists, who study the forms and uses of money, feel differently. 

Levenson acknowledges the works of Sir John Craig. Craig’s book, Newton at the Mint (Cambridge, 1946) is catalogued by the libraries of both the American Numismatic Society and the American Numismatic Association. Levenson also cites two other Craig monographs, "Isaac Newton—Crime Investigator", Nature 182, 149-52; and Isaac Newton and the Counterfeiters, 18 Notes and Records of the Royal Society 2, 136-45 (1963). When I proposed a review of the Levenson book to the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, editor Wayne Homren shot back: “How does it compare to Craig?” Levenson draws on the same sources as Craig: Newton’s papers, the mint archives, court records, a biography of Chaloner, Chaloner’s own petitions and letters. Where numismatist John Craig presented the facts, videographer Thomas Levenson brings them to life.

Merchant Token 1791 Middlesex
1penny; size larger than
US quarter dollar.

            Nonetheless, graphical animation can be dangerous. Of Newton’s meeting in a pub with an informant, Levenson says, “The detective swallowed his irritation.” (P. x.) Did he?  Was that recorded?  “For Newton’s part, this first encounter with Chaloner did not register very deeply.” (P. 157.) The storyteller’s power depends on many such inferences and inventions. The salient question is: Does the poetic license that is extended to creative non-fiction jeopardize the truth? 

            Of course, we have the compiled confessions of the accused and the accusations of informers whom Newton interrogated. Yet, those folios are decidedly incomplete. We know that many were burned. To explain why official records were destroyed, Levenson leaves the main narrative to establish a historical context for the use of torture in interrogation, a subject of some immediacy to us. Newton could not resort to extreme methods, but the actual tactics are lost because the documents were burned according to the reports of Sir Isaac Newton’s secretary.

            Whether William Chaloner was factually guilty may never be known. It is accepted that William Chaloner did not get a fair trial. “Chaloner was sentenced to death, very fairly on his record, unjudicially on the evidence …” (Craig, 1963; P. 143.) Levenson concurs. William Chaloner was accused of crimes committed in London. “And yet Chaloner faced charges brought by a Middlesex grand jury, being heard by a Middlesex trial jury. How could such a court, Chaloner asked, address crimes committed outside its jurisdiction?.” (P. 231.)

            Our modern experience with wrongful convictions throws a harsh light on the testimonies of jailhouse snitches, casting shadows of doubt. Yet, those informants were the only source of Newton’s evidence against Chaloner. Prima facie evidence is easy to accept. Chaloner probably was guilty, but certainly did not get a fair trial by modern standards. Moreover, our sociological context also condemns much else of that time and place. We do not horribly execute counterfeiters. Chaloner was drawn and quartered.

            As a casual read, the book can be enjoyed in a couple of hours. No reference numbers or inline citations encumber the text. The Notes are all in the back with concordance by page number and key words. Some readers will find profitable cause to linger there and reflect.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics

Merry Newtonmas (2013)

Harriman's Logical Leap Almost Makes It

Junk Criminology as Pseudo-Science

Stand Up and Be Counted

Electronic voting makes election fraud even easier. Here in Travis County, no audit trail exists. The process of voting leaves no physical traces.  Moreover, no "red team" or "capture the flag" tests have been conducted. Instead, county clerk Dana DeBeauvoir repeatedly insists that adhering to good specifications removes the need for security tests. This is a logical outcome of the secret ballot. The secret ballot is called the "Australian ballot" because Australia was settled by criminals who did not trust each other.  That can be a bedrock foundation for social structures of laissez faire and laissez passer individualism. But in America, it is different. When you know that your rights will be respected by your neighbors, you can voice an unpopular opinion. 

Massachusetts still has open town meetings.  And they are serious about it.

Selected Case Law
District Attorney for the Northern District v. Wayland School Committee, 455 Mass. 561 (2009). "Prior to conducting an open meeting, the school committee commenced a private e-mail exchange in order to deliberate the superintendent's professional competence. This violated the letter and spirit of the open meeting law. Governmental bodies may not circumvent the requirements of the open meeting law by conducting deliberations via private messages, whether electronically, in person, over the telephone, or in any other form." -- http://www.lawlib.state.ma.us/subject/about/openmeeting.html

An open vote is also easier to audit because everyone present can see the tally.  Of course, that works best in a village of a few thousand where a few hundred show up and a few dozen actually lead the process.  With about 700,000 people in the average Congressional district, open voting would be held in stadiums. But that is workable, given some new social norms.  Certainly, for local matters, every community has several venues that can serve a few hundred people.

If the concept were extended to juries, they would be held liable for wrongful convictions. The history of innocent people released from prison by DNA evidence suggests that right now about 80,000 innocent people are incarcerated.  For most crimes, DNA is not an issue.  Williamson County, Texas, prosecutor Ken Anderson was given ten days in jail, fined $500, and agreed to resign from the bar, for his wrongful conviction of Michael Morton, charged with killing his wife 25 years ago. (KVUE News here.) Back then, Anderson stood before the jury, with tears running down his face in grief for the victim, though he knew that he had been withholding exculpatory evidence. Of course, the jury bought it, also, allowing themselves to be swayed despite a lack of any physical evidence or eye-witness testimony.  As the innocent man served 25 years in prison, it seems fitting that the jury should be awarded the same consequences.  We know from the basics of criminology that very few perpetrators suddenly commit a causeless heinous act. While we all make mistakes, the fact is that for about 20% of us, crime is a lifestyle.  When considering the prosecutor's actions, it makes sense to review all of his cases and investigate his lifetime career for hidden crimes.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Another Example of Unlimited Constitutional Government
The Fallibility of Fingerprinting

Eyewitness Testimony and the Innocence Project

An Objective Foundation for Government

The Roots of Poverty

In The Economy of Cities, Jane Jacobs wrote: “To seek 'causes' of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.”

As a card-carrying criminologist I study the sociology of crime.  Some claim that poverty causes crime.  It may.  But, others claim, also rightfully, that crime causes poverty.  More cogently, in many instances, the criminal mind-set is the mentality of poverty: criminals are creatures of convenience and habit.  At least, some of them are.  (In a paper on criminological metatheory on my website here, I list the 30 or more theories that explain the 30 or more causes of 30 or more kinds of criminal actions.) 

Overfilled dumpster at my apartment complex.

In Goethe's Faust Part 1, Mephistopheles says: "Ich bin der Geist der verneint."  (I am the spirit that negates.)  The devil cannot create, only destroy.  Criminals are creatures of convenience and habit. Entrepreneurs seek new solutions to previously unknown problems.  They find and reduce inefficiencies.  An entrepreneur will invest all the resources available to make a dream come true.  A manager will not go over budget.  A criminal will not make the effort.  (In the Bible, this is the Parable of the Talents.) 

An empty dumpster was only 30 meters away.

I walked the short path between buildings to the next parking lot and found the dumpster there empty. Anyone who threw the next bag of garbage (or left that dead sofa) could have made the same small effort.  But it was too much work.  In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand painted Starnesville, the town abandoned by its productive citizens.  Those who remained had no time, no energy, no interest in effort. 

The distance is maybe 100 feet, 30 meters.

In fact, there were four or five available dumpters, all within a few hundred feet. 

Sociologists claim that when rich people commit crimes, it is because rich people are crooks; and when poor people commit crimes, it is because rich people are crooks.  The easy claim is that crime among the poor is a response to their oppression.  They retaliate against the ruling class by victimizing each other. At least, that is what I was taught in four years of university education in sociology, 2006-2010.  Myself, as an advocate of laissez faire capitalism, and a defender of so-called robber barons, I can see the landlord as the seamy underbelly of property.  Edison invented.  The landlord only holds.  And yet, the owners of this property invest a lot of money in maintenance.  And it is too little appreciated by the poor criminals who live here.


Maintenance worker picks up around the site.

Every day, the grounds crew picks up trash.  They reload the dumpsters, breaking down discarded furniture.  Contractors come in once a week to sweep the grounds, collecting leaves, mowing the lawn - not much of that with central Texas's drought.... but still they come...

The complex is perhaps 30 years old.  The property management firm owns a range of real estate investments in California, Texas, and other places.  The shrubs are trimmed decoratively.  When we moved in, my wife said, "We have real holly!" And, indeed, we do.  But be that as it may ....


Someone works pretty hard to do this.

No matter how much work the owner invests in the property, those who have no ownership stake take no ownership care.  Look closely under that bush in the foregound and you may notice the beer can.  They are all over the place every morning.  In a previous post, I spoke of the scavengers who come for the aluminum.  In a fascinating display of inherent respect, they do not actually walk the grounds.  I wish they would.  They only come to the dumpsters.  They do not want to intrude on the grounds.  If only all the residents here showed the same sense of propriety and respect and self-respect.



Under the round bush in the foreground,
a Modelo beer can
which someone made an effort to crush
but not to discard.

And yet, the problem is complicated and nuanced.  It has texture.  Today, a woman from an apartment along my walkway was vacuuming out her SUV.  I am fairly confident that she did not toss the beer can under the bush.  This morning, I met my neighbor below.  He has a lunch wagon, a converted pickup.  Every day, he gets up, cooks, loads his truck and goes off to construction sites.  I doubt that the beer cans are his.

BudLite can tossed on the ground, not in a dumpster.

Lacking an objective basis for morality, earlier advocates of capitalism only could say that the millionnaire has as much right to his wealth as the laborer to his hundreds. In the 20th century Ayn Rand delineated productive workers at any income from the looters and moochers.  Common laborers or uncommon inventors alike are to be contrasted against those those who look to Washington or to heaven because they cannot look within themselves to find their motivation.

Like poverty, crime has no 'cause.'  It is the ground state, the default, the lack-of-something.  In metaphysics, we say that "nothing is not a special kind of something."  So, too, in ethics, is poverty not a different kind of productivity.