Two week wrap

A few interesting news items this past two weeks:

• Became a dad - welcome BAF!
  
• Rep. Michele Bachmann continues to lie when it suits her, discussing swine flu or the budget reconciliation process  in Congress.
• Friedman thinks it's a decent compromise to out those who tortured but not push for prosecutions, but Krugman says it's nothing short of keeping our legal and moral standards to fully prosecute.
• Opponents to climate change legislation tend to think markets are best to solve everything, except carbon emissions (too costly!).  Gotta love the smell of cognitive dissonance in the morning.
• We may have moved beyond "she asked for it" in our perceptions of rape, but the U.S. shows poor attention to justice when it leaves "rape kits" untested for years.
• A nice chart on income concentration in the U.S. shows that we're (hopefully) coming off the peak of another Gilded Age (Roaring Twenties).  Both this period and the prior one were highlighted by spectacular financial speculation and shenanigans.
  

Unleaded gasoline lowered violent crime by 56%

According to a recently released study, examining the effects of removing lead from gasoline, unleaded gas substantially reduced lead poisoning in children. Because lead poisoning is linked to more aggressive behavior is linked to violent crime, the study finds a substantial reduction in violent crime associated with the removal of lead from gasoline.

This is in addition to the substantial reduction in violent crime from the legalization of abortion.

It's crazy how things are linked together...

Florida opts to restore voting rights

One of three states that constitutionally require felons to permanently forfeit their voting rights - and requiring a lengthy process to regain them - Florida is changing its policy to allow most nonviolent offenders to automatically regain their voting rights.

The question surrounding the changed policy is this: how do voting rights relate to committing a crime? I'm curious what readers think. Should a convicted criminal forfeit their voting rights? While in prison? Forever? At all? Read up a bit more on felony voting rights at MSNBC and The Straight Dope.

The question on my mind is what purpose the former policy served. Are the loss of voting rights a deterrent to crime? (I believe this is a rhetorical questions). Is losing the right to vote while serving a sentence a significant addition to punishment? Should there be lifetime punishments for certain crimes?

Obviously, the issue of voting rights for felons taps a much deeper issue of the appropriate social response to crime. If one views the role of society to be to prevent crime, then some of the latest research suggests that punishment is a poor practice (pdf). In the United States, half of all criminals released in a 15-state study were reconvicted of a crime within three years. Is that the success of punishment?

It's the whiteys who do the crime

Articles like these should all be part of a series: Exposing Our Inner Racist. The NY Times Magazine explores how greater immigration depresses local crime rates, whereas white people feel the exact opposite. In other words, we like to think that dark-skinned people cause crime, but we're as wrong as Bush is on climate change.

Interestingly, the article notes that the law-abiding benefits of immmigrants are concentrated in the first generation. Successive generations are much more likely to be involved in crime. Probably because they get tired of being discriminated against for looking like an immigrant...