Category Archives: Human Rights

Pew Report: 1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars in 2008

A Pew report found that 1 in every 100 U.S. adults is now behind bars. The breakdown along racial and ethnic lines is even more disturbing. In the 18 and over age demographic for males, Pew found that 1 in 106 white males are behind bars compared to 1 in 36 for Hispanic males, and 1 in 15 for black males. The most incarcerated group of all is black males from the ages of 20 to 34 with 1 in 9 in this group behind bars.

Pew also found a large gender gap in incarcerations; 1 in 54 all males (18 and over) are behind bars compared to 1 in 265 of all women ages 35 to 69 (“all women 18 and over” must have been too small of a group to measure). The least incarcerated group of all is white women ages 35 to 39 with only 1 in 355.

One would think that based on an adult population of 230 million that with 1 in 100 in jail or prison that our country must be full of murderers, rapists, and thieves. How do we manage to leave our homes without being raped, robbed, or murdered?

Maybe the reason we have so many Americans behind bars has to do with something else: too many “crimes” which do not violate the rights of a non-consenting other. Maybe it is our laws that are the problem.

Gene Healy of the Cato Institute made the following observation in an article he wrote in 2005 called “Criminalization out of Control.”

Because Congress criminalizes unreflectively, the federal criminal code has become vast and incomprehensible. A research team led by professor John Baker of Louisiana State Law School recently estimated that there are more than 4,000 separate federal criminal offenses. That number, inexact as it is, vastly understates the breadth of the criminal law, because the federal criminal code, in turn, incorporates by reference tens of thousands of regulatory violations never voted on by Congress. [Emphasis mine]

And this burgeoning culture of criminalization reverberates down the law enforcement ladder as local police increasingly use handcuffs and jail to deal with situations that clearly don’t warrant it. In September, at a Washington, D.C., bus stop, a Metro transit officer forced a pregnant woman to the ground and handcuffed her for talking too loudly on her cell phone. In April, in St. Petersburg, Fla., police were called into an elementary school to handcuff an unruly 5-year-old girl.

One of our most destructive overcriminalization binges occurred during the “Just Say No” era, when Congress embraced mandatory minimum sentencing as a way to deal with the use of illicit drugs. Making prison the solution to drug abuse has had staggering social costs.

This Pew study bears this out as the study states:

In short, experts say, expanding prisons will accomplish less and cost more than it has in the past.

[…]

[W]ith one in 100 adults looking out at this country from behind an expensive wall of bars, the potential of new approaches cannot be ignored.

There is, however, some good news that perhaps some of these new approaches are not being ignored. The report also found that states are learning that incarceration is not always the best answer. Some states are taking another look at their mandatory minimum sentencing statutes and have begun to prioritize the limited space based on violent offenses vs. nonviolent offenses. More states are also giving “drug courts” and treatment programs for nonviolent drug offenders another look as an alternative to incarceration. This could be a big step in the right direction given that drug offenses account for 53.5% of the national prison population.

Still, there is much work to be done in reforming our broken criminal justice system due in large part to the war on (some) drugs and mandatory minimum sentencing.

Hat Tip: Cato Daily Dispatch for February 29, 2008

Judge Andrew Napolitano Discusses the History of Civil Liberty Violations in America

Judge Andrew Napolitano gave a speech for Reason Magazine in Washington D.C. in October of last year on the history of Constitutional infidelity. Virtually every president from George Washington to George W. Bush has broken his oath of office to defend the Constitution. President John Adams, the nation’s second president, was the first president who tried (and succeeded for a time) in curtailing free speech rights with the Alien and Sedition Acts. These blatantly unconstitutional laws made it a crime for anyone to publicly criticize members of congress, the president, or his cabinet. Interestingly, there was no prohibition for criticizing the vice president, who happened to be Adams’ political rival – Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was adamantly opposed to the acts and allowed them to expire whenever he became president.

Since John Adams, there have been many, many other Constitutional violations from all three branches of government which continue to this day. Much has been said in recent years about how President George W. Bush has trampled on the Constitution by passing such laws as the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act. Of the 43 presidents of the U.S., where does George W. Bush rank when it comes to violating the Constitution?

Napolitano answers:

George W. Bush has shown less fidelity to the Constitution than any president since Abraham Lincoln.

Worse than Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, or Richard Nixon? Now that’s a bold statement! Whether it’s Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, or Mike Huckabee as our next president, one thing seems to be certain: our civil liberties protected by our constitution will be further compromised. It’s really only a question of to what degree they will be compromised.

Free Market Organs

Last week, Doug linked a post about British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s support for a policy that would allow hospitals to harvest organs without prior consent of the decedent or his/ her family. In essence, the organs of all deceased British citizens would belong to the government’s healthcare system except for those individuals who “opted out” prior to death.

The policy in the U.S. is an “opt in” approach rather than “opt out.” Why is this distinction important? Answer: the presumption of ownership. If citizens have an option of opting in, this shows that individuals own their bodies; to suggest that an individual has to opt out shows that citizens’ bodies are property of the government (unless s/he makes an affirmative claim on his/her body).
The reason for Brown’s support for this policy is quite obvious: like just about everywhere else in the world, Britain is having an organ shortage.

So if presumed consent is not the answer to solving the organ shortage, what is? Randolph Beard, John D. Jackson, and David L. Kaserman of Auburn University published a study in the Winter 2008 issue of Cato’s Regulation Magazine. The team studied the effectiveness of current policies aimed at maximizing donor participation and organ matching. Among the policies they analyzed were: increased government funding for organ donor education, organ donor cards (such as having the words “organ donor” on driver’s licenses), required request, kidney exchange programs, and donor reimbursement. None of the policies have come close to solving the shortage. The researchers estimate that roughly half of the potentially viable cadaver organs are ever harvested. With the exception of the inefficient kidney exchange program, one feature that all of these programs have in common is that they each rely on altruism on the part of individuals to donate organs without any sort of compensation.

The one solution which the researchers believe would be effective, monetary compensation to organ donors or their families, is illegal almost everywhere. In 1984, the National Organ Transplant Act was passed making it a crime in the U.S. for a surviving family to receive payment for their loved one’s organs. The law was passed mostly on ethical grounds without any consideration for what would happen to the supply of available organs. The researchers estimate that some 80,000 lives from 1984 to present have been lost because of the bill’s passage and other subsequent policies in the current “altruistic” system. The researchers further project that another 196,310 lives will be lost between 2005- 2015 (and this is what they consider a “conservative” estimate!).

As controversial as compensating families organs of deceased family members is, the thought of an individual driving to a hospital, removing an organ (such as a kidney), and selling that organ to someone in need of the organ for a profit is a complete non-starter. This shouldn’t come as a shock given that in today’s lexicon; the word “profit” is a dirty word. The people who scream bloody murder whenever people decide to “scalp” tickets to sporting events or tickets for Hanna Montana concerts (what’s the big deal with Hanna Montana anyway?) will not likely be in favor of selling vital organs. Anti-capitalist objections aside, free market buying and selling of organs appears to be the most practical solution.

Cato Institute’s Director of Bioethics Studies Sigrid Fry-Revere found that Iran is the only country that does not have an organ shortage and has not had a shortage in ten years. Why? Because Iran (of all places!) is one of the only countries where it is legal for individuals to buy and sell organs from live, voluntary, donations. Revere’s findings also revealed that even if all the viable organs were taken by force by the government from cadavers, there would still not be enough organs to provide an organ to everyone who needs one (Cato Daily Podcast dated January 15, 2008). Maybe the Iranians are on to something here?

David Holcberg, writing for Capitalism Magazine agrees arguing in favor of a free market system for organs on both practical and moral grounds:

If you were sick and needed a kidney transplant, you would soon find out that there is a waiting line–and that there are 70,000 people ahead of you, 4,000 of whom will die within a year. If you couldn’t find a willing and compatible donor among your friends and family, you could try to find a stranger willing to give you his kidney–but you would not be allowed to pay him. In fact, the law would not permit you to give him any value in exchange for his kidney. As far as the law is concerned, no one can profit from donating an organ–even if that policy costs you your life.

Patients’ attempt to circumvent this deplorable state of affairs has led to the emergence of “paired” kidney donations, an arrangement whereby two individuals–who can’t donate their organs to their loves ones because of medical incompatibility–agree that each will donate a kidney to a friend or family member of the other. But this exchange of value for value is precisely what today’s law forbids. Thus, under pressure to allow this type of exchange, in December the U.S. House and Senate passed The Living Kidney Organ Donation Clarification Act, which amends the National Organ Transplant Act to exempt “paired” donations of kidneys from prosecution.

The congress says that kidneys can be exchanged without sending anyone to jail; how thoughtful. While this is an encouraging step in the right direction, why won’t our elected officials go the rest of the way? Is it the potential risks for the donors? Holcberg points out that the risk for a healthy person dying from donating a kidney is about .03% and usually live normal lives without reducing his or her life expectancy.

No, I suspect the objection to selling organs is more rooted in the overall distain far too many people have towards capitalism. It’s simply unethical to make a profit off of something that someone else “needs” whether its gasoline, Hanna Montana tickets, or a kidney. Only the “privileged” will be able to buy organs if such a system were adopted, they would argue.

Even if this were true, denying a person the right to purchase an organ to save his or her own life should not be subject to a vote or someone else’s ethical hang-ups. If I want to remove a kidney and sell it to a willing buyer for $30,000 (or whatever the going market rate is) I ought to have that right. Why must we assume the government has the right to tell us what we can do with our bodies whether it’s selling our organs by our own choices or government taking them from us after we die without prior consent? Our individual rights of life, liberty, and property demand that we have the ability to make these choices for ourselves.

Double-Speak Definition Of The Day

Today’s double-speak is: “Al-Qaeda’s Number 3 Man”

A hierarchical description applied to a member of an organization that has no clearly defined hierarchy beyond the top two members.  This term is popular with the current administration whenever they kill a probable terrorist whose body the military was able to identify in a timely fashion and who had enough of a profile with the media so that his death was notable (i.e. “The death of (insert deceased’s name) represents a turning point in our efforts here in (insert country name) because he was al-Qaeda’s number 3 man.”) despite the tendency of said individual’s death to have little to no meaningful impact on our efforts in the Global War On Terror.  Also used to diffuse criticism of human rights violations committed by the U.S. government against detainees by attaching a superficial sense of importance or urgency to the information said interrogation suspect possesses (e.g. Sheikh Khalid Mohammad), despite a continuing inability of the government to demonstrate that said human rights abuses provided any tangible benefits in regards to the Global War on Terror beyond getting people off the President’s back.

I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a financial company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3” (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

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