Governor Bill Richardson’s (D-NM) December 7 Georgetown address came amidst heightened speculation that he will pursue a run for the presidency.  His address, however, focused on the immigration debate.  As a border state governor, and a Hispanic American, Gov. Richardson brings credibility and authority to the immigration debate.  The governor called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform and denounced the recent House bill focusing on building fences as playing on our fears.  Recalling President Reagan’s famous speech “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” he pointed out the shortsightedness of the House bill.  Overall, the governor’s discussion was well balanced; mixing passionate rhetorical arguments with a sufficient amount of detailed policy recommendations I don’t normally see in the mainstream media.

 Immigration issues have proven fertile ground for the party competition on political language.  At times, the governor would describe immigrants as “illegal” and then switch to “undocumented workers.”  Both of these descriptions are used frequently in the national political discourse.  However, the governor did inject a term just recently gaining mainstream acceptance and that is “economic refugees.”  Economic refugees, a term coined by the Rockridge Institute, encourages a fresh perspective on the immigration debate.  Emphasizing critical economic insecurities that force migrants out of their homeland, policymakers hope to spur a more compassionate immigration policy response.  The governor then went on to describe some of these push factors: lack of jobs in Mexico, high poverty rates, and low wages. 

The governor also discussed measures undertaken in New Mexico to address immigration issues.  Agencies granted drivers licenses to migrants without regard to residency.  The benefits were two-fold: increased car insurance and an ability to track undocumented workers. 

The conversation concluded with the governor detailing his policy recommendations for Congress namely, border security, worksite enforcement, and paths to citizenship.  He favors border patrol personnel to monitor the border, increased technology, and working closely with Mexico.  His rationale for a path to citizenship was well thought-out.  What do we do with the 11 million undocumented workers now?  He made the analogy to the Japanese-American roundups of 1942 arguing against any deportation measures.  He also pointed out that our economy could not handle sudden massive labor shortages.  His solution was a legal path to citizenship, which in turn will bring all parties into the system and obviously increase government coffers.  Future legalization measures would be considered in light of national and regional economic needs.
   
A lively Q&A followed and when asked whether he will run for President...

...he will let everyone know in January.

Damian Kudelka is a staff writer for The  Review and a guest blogger. 

The recent shootings in New York City in which five officers fired 50 shots and killed an unarmed groom in Queens highlights what can be an often contentious relationship between police and the communities they patrol. While the Queens case will bring politicians and pundits out of the woodwork to decry the injustice of the system, it remains to be seen whether this is an isolated incident or a systemic problem. Jesse Jackson talked about the incident in terms of a "criminal justice system that has broken down..... for young black males".

Though there is certainly evidence that young black males have seen the highest impact of large increases in incarceration rates over the last 15 years, it's hard to imagine that the shootings in Queens are a result of that. The Bureau of Justice statistics released a report finding that in 2002, large agencies had fewer than 1 officer out of 100 responding to calls in which a legitimate claim of excessive force was found. Although there were a greater number of complaints, most were exonerated or not sustained. I leave it to the reader to make a judgment call, but 1 bad seed (or just bad decision) out of 100 doesn't seem too bad considering what police officers deal with on a daily basis.

I'm admittedly a little biased given that my brother just graduated from the Houston Police Academy on Tuesday, but I've listened to stories of what police officers respond to and it's easy to understand why policing is consistently ranked one of the worst jobs. The investigation into the incident in Queens will almost certainly certainly come to the conclusion of excessive force, but I would hope that opportunists don't use the incident for political gain at the expense of the long term good of the men and women who keep our streets safe.

With less than a week until the mid-term elections I'd like to add one or two more entries on issues around the election before moving into purely policy issues. Were I a political consultant for the democrats, I would make one suggestion that would be a surefire way to pick up a million or more votes nationwide in the next Presidential election (It's too late to get them in the current one). I would put a campaign out to the states to repeal disfranchisement laws for felons as well as for prisoners, probationers, and parolees. Would this be popular or easy? Heck no! These are prisoners, felons and they must be punished, right? I'll get into the "fairness" around the issue later, but first I direct you here to research by a George Mason professor on how many people were ineligible to vote due to criminal behavior in the US as a whole in 2004. So, lets do some crude, back of the envelope calculations and see how "bad guy" disfranchisement laws hurt the democrats.

First, out of the 3,158,443 ineligible felons in 2004, the breakdown is approximately 45% black, and just over 55% for non-blacks according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The number of people in prison is lower (about 2 million) than the number above, but the number above takes into account parolees and probationers that can't vote as well. Making a few assumptions, lets say that of those ineligible voters, we would expect 90% of blacks to vote democrat, with a turnout in the lowest income group (people in prison, on average, would be in this group) of a very conservative 45%. Of the remaining 55% non-black inmates, lets say that they vote democrat a conservative 60% of the time, using the low income/education bracket and party affiliation (I use the National Annenberg Election Survey from 2000). Crunching all those numbers, I get just over a million Democratic votes to about 375,000 Republican votes for a net of about 668,000 Democratic votes nationwide.

I promised you a million votes for the dems, though, and the rest would come from the convicted felons that live in one of 14 states that prohibit felons from voting (which are not included in the numbers above). In 2002 there were over a million felony convictions in state courts, which was up 20% from 1994 and therefore similar conviction numbers exist each year. And with Texas and Florida being two of the states with disfranchisement laws, you can easily extrapolate the 335,000 additional votes denied to Democrats due to felony convictions. About a million felony convictions a year excludes a LOT of people from voting.

To be clear, this is just an exercise in demonstrating how non-voting among inmates, probationers, parolees, and felons hurts the democrats. As to my opinion, I can certainly understand why people in prison are not allowed to vote given the planning and coordination of allowing them to, and because the fact they are in prison prevents them from doing a great deal of things in society.

But convicted felons who are no longer in prison? I just don't get it. I seriously doubt there is any crime deterrent effect in preventing them from voting. When a sex offender is released, they have to register in their community. Felons are restricted in (legal) gun purchases. These are post-prison conditions of their conviction that make sense because they protect the public, but does a similar public safety argument exist for not allowing someone to vote? Additionally, this is no small population and given close races of the day, ex-felons can certainly have an impact on elections. But maybe that's the reason that their vote is taken away in some jurisdictions. There have been claims of racism in the laws (given 45% of those disenfranchised are black, far greater than their proportion in the population), and I can't comment on that. But there is almost certainly some hypocrisy in expecting offenders to become productive members of society, but taking away their rights in a way that does not seem to make the public any safer. Possessing 5 grams of crack is a felony, and if you're struggling with a crack addiction it seems to add insult to injury to say that you can no longer vote. I welcome your thoughts on this issue, though.

The age old story continues to be told about inner city schools and there lack of resources, which in turn, serves to force our students further and further into academic inadequacy.  However, little is often done to rectify this matter.  As a New York City school teacher, I serve as a witness to the daily negligence and inefficiency of our school leaders.  Legally, for instance New York City mandates that a teacher may not have more than thirty four students in a class.  However, school systems do not begin the process of equalizing classrooms until the second or third month of school.  It is impossible to inspire, command, and orchestrate students in a classroom that maxes out at forty five students for the first three months of the school year.  Aside from the fact that there is a shortage of desks to meet the needs of this many students, (and the reality that this many students in a classroom does not make for a comfortable learning environment) the truth of the matter is that no high school teacher can efficiently teach a class of this size.  During the months it takes to equalize our classes, students are at a severe disadvantage. 

Eventually classes are equalized; however, the numbers of students we are expected to teach in a classroom legally is still preposterous.  Educational policy makers fail to recognize why it is that our students are falling further and further through the cracks.  Even the most dedicated and meticulous teachers cannot adequately nurture the needs of a class this size in a forty minute period.  These students are coming into high school with severe learning disabilities, poor writing skills, and minimal reading capabilities. In addition, these students often lack familial support.  Yet the teacher is constantly expected to work miracles.

We need smaller class sizes.  Any teacher will tell you this.  Yet policy makers and school administrators continue to ignore this reality due to supposed budget restraints.  But as a teacher, I am constantly aware of how poorly our school leaders allocate federal funding.  We need reading specialists for the students who are illiterate. We need desks for every student. We need newer versions of older textbooks. We need smaller classes not larger baseball fields. We need more teachers to a department and fewer students to a class.       

The antidote for the pestilences that plague public schools is not sophistry.  When will policy makers and school officials acknowledge this reality?    

Steve Remieka is a high school English teacher in Queens, NY.  He received a master's degree in education from Columbia University. 

I’m loathe to admit it, but I love the song SexyBack by Justin Timberlake. It drives straight into your brain and won't let go no matter what else you listen to. For those who have never heard the song, in the lyrics JT suggests that "sexy" has been lacking for too long and he's bring us back to the good old days when, I presume, sexy was everywhere. There are other themes in the song, but this being a family blog, I won't delve into those. On the sexy issue, though, you can't help but to agree with JT. You find yourself thinking "Where has sexy been? Who let the lack of sexy go this far? And thank goodness JT is bringing it back". The power of musical persuasion.

I bring up the song and its themes to illustrate how candidates for public office are seizing on the same formula that helps make the song a hit. It's a blueprint on how to win over the public, only they'll be talking about bringing safety back, not sexy back, by ridding us of crime. Here's what the blueprint (and its SexyBack analogue) for winning an election based on the theme of crime: 

Step 1: Play on people's fears by claiming that public safety (sexy) is at peril
Step 2: Claim that tough, drastic measures (a hot new dance song) must be taken to solve the problem
Step 3: Suggest that your opponent (those other DJs) are soft on crime.
Step 4: Assure the public that you (JT) are the only candidate that can implement this anti-crime plan.

And there you have it, make a persuasive enough case and the result is certain victory or a hit song depending on your goals. Unfortunately, this flies in the face of statistical evidence suggesting crime rates are at their lowest point in the last 35 years. Additionally, the United States has been "tough on crime" for at least the last decade with much larger police forces and a continued increase in incarcerations. By most accounts we have been both tough on crime and successful at lowering rates nation wide, but leading up to Election Day we will almost certainly be bombarded by commercials suggesting the opposite. 

One example of this is in the Maryland race for governor. Bob Ehrlich (R) is the incumbent governor of Maryland and his opponent is Martin O'Malley (D), the mayor of Baltimore. Anyone watching the campaign has seen a litany of ads in which one candidate accuses the other of being weak and not trustworthy on crime with different variations on the theme. Both do their best to instill fear and promise that they hold the solution to the crime problem. So, let’s look at the crime statistics for Baltimore and Maryland as a whole. I use the Maryland example, but it's safe to say that similar situations exist in races across the country.

O’Malley was elected mayor of Baltimore in 1999 and according to the Uniform Crime Report (For all statistics I use the UCR published by the Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics unless otherwise noted. The UCR collects arrest and crime information on law enforcement offices across the US.), from 2000 to 2004 violent crime (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) rates reported by the Baltimore City Police Department dropped almost 25%. To be fair, robbery and assault cases dominate these numbers, but rape cases were down overall, and murder cases were slightly up after five years. Ehrlich became governor in 2002, and up to 2004 violent crime rates for Maryland as a whole dropped as well, due in no small part to Baltimore, which accounts for a significant fraction of crime. 

So it looks like crime rates fell at a decent pace under each candidate. There have been claims of inflated numbers, fraud, etc but I think the UCR is fairly sound. I make no judgments about whether this drop had anything to do with the policies of either man, but simply attempt to deflate the hype that both candidates use when talking about the current state of crime under their jurisdictions.

For the nation as a whole, according to the UCR, since hitting a peak in 1991, violent crime rates in the US dropped 39% by 2004 (the National Crime Victimization Survey suggested a drop of over 60%). Property crime rates in 2004 fell by 32% from their highs. These represented the lowest levels since 1974 and 1969, respectively. Wow, the nightly news doesn’t paint nearly as rosy a picture as cold, hard numbers. Chalk one up for geeky statisticians. 

The large crime decrease over the last 15 years has been accompanied by an equally substantial increase in incarceration rates and sworn in law enforcement personnel. Two distinct trends have contributed to the drop in crime. From 1992 to 2000, state and local enforcement personnel increased by over 17%, while the number of persons in State correctional facilities increased by a substantial 55% margin over the same period.

All of this serves to illustrate that countless jurisdictions have been both tough on crime and successful at lowering crime rates across the country. However, I realize that many communities are paralyzed by crime, and I, like everyone else, have an interest in seeing crime rates fall further (there was a murder 4 blocks from my home in Northwest DC a few nights ago). This analysis is not meant to encourage complacency on fighting crime, but rather to sharpen the focus on crime prevention strategies and attempt to move beyond political hyperbole. I have no doubt that, with intelligent dialogue, rates can fall further. In the coming weeks and months I hope to make a case for various successes and failures in crime reduction, and try to answer some questions about the roots of crime. Specifically, what empirical evidence exists for reasons behind criminal behavior? What is the effect of law enforcement on crime rates? What social programs have demonstrated some success on crime outcomes? Why does anyone listen to Celine Dion (to me this constitutes criminal behavior)?

I also hope to share professional and research experiences and create some dialogue on effective strategies in crime prevention as well as public management. I invite feedback and hope the discussion can lead to better policies, intelligent rhetoric, lower crimes, and a rebirth of sexy.

Joe Peters currently works for the DC Department of Corrections as a health data analyst. He previously worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Joe thinks that if you’re not watching HBO’s “The Wire” then you shouldn’t be watching TV.