Tag Archives: criminal

Childhood Lead Exposure Causes a Lot More Than Just a Rise in Violent Crime

by PearlXHKPliajoj Posted on August 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jessica Wolpaw Reyes has a new paper out that investigates the link between childhood lead exposure—mostly via tailpipe emissions of leaded gasoline—and violent crime. Unsurprisingly, since her previous research has shown a strong link, she finds a strong link again. But she also finds something else: a strong link between lead and teen pregnancy.

This is not a brand new finding. Rick Nevin’s very first paper about lead and crime was actually about both crime and teen pregnancy, and he found strong correlations for both at the national level. Reyes, however, goes a step further. It turns out that different states adopted unleaded gasoline at different rates, which allows Reyes to conduct a natural experiment. If lead exposure really does cause higher rates of teen pregnancy, then you’d expect states with the lowest levels of leaded gasoline to also have the lowest levels of teen pregnancy 15 years later. And guess what? They do. The chart on the right shows the correlation between gasoline lead exposure and later rates of teen pregnancy, and it’s very strong. Stronger even than the correlation with violent crime.

None of this should come as a surprise. The neurological basis for the lead-crime theory suggests that childhood lead exposure affects parts of the brain that have to do with judgment, impulse control, and executive functions. This means that lead exposure is likely to be associated not just with violent crime, but with juvenile misbehavior, drug use, teen pregnancy, and other risky behaviors. And that turns out to be the case. Reyes finds correlations with behavioral problems starting at a young age; teen pregnancy; and violent crime rates among older children.

It’s a funny thing. For years conservatives bemoaned the problem of risky and violent behavior among children and teens of the post-60s era, mostly blaming it on the breakdown of the family and a general decline in discipline. Liberals tended to take this less seriously, and in any case mostly blamed it on societal problems. In the end, though, it turned out that conservatives were right. It wasn’t just a bunch of oldsters complaining about the kids these days. Crime was up, drug use was up, and teen pregnancy was up. It was a genuine phenomenon and a genuine problem.

But liberals were right that it wasn’t related to the disintegration of the family or lower rates of churchgoing or any of that. After all, families didn’t suddenly start getting back together in the 90s and churchgoing didn’t suddenly rise. But teenage crime, drug use, and pregnancy rates all went down. And down. And down.

Most likely, there was a real problem, but it was a problem no one had a clue about. We were poisoning our children with a well-known neurotoxin, and this toxin lowered their IQs, made them into fidgety kids, wrecked their educations, and then turned them into juvenile delinquents, teen mothers, and violent criminals. When we got rid of the toxin, all of these problems magically started to decline.

This doesn’t mean that lead was 100 percent of the problem. There probably were other things going on too, and we can continue to argue about them. But the volume of the argument really ought to be lowered a lot. Maybe poverty makes a difference, maybe single parenting makes a difference, and maybe evolving societal attitudes toward child-rearing make a difference. But they probably don’t make nearly as much difference as we all thought. In the end, we’ve learned a valuable lesson: don’t poison your kids. That makes more difference than all the other stuff put together.

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Childhood Lead Exposure Causes a Lot More Than Just a Rise in Violent Crime

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Corporate polluters are almost never prosecuted for their crimes

by bmsv59yp Posted on July 15, 2014

Business as usual

Corporate polluters are almost never prosecuted for their crimes

By

Shutterstock

If you committed a crime in full view of a police officer, you could expect to be arrested — particularly if you persisted in your criminality after being told to cut it out, and if your crime were hurting the people around you.

But the same is not true for those other “people” who inhabit the U.S.: corporations. Polluting companies commit their crimes with aplomb. An investigation by the Crime Report, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice issues, has revealed the sickening levels of environmental criminality that BP, Mobil, Tyson Fresh, and other huge companies can sink to without fear of meaningful prosecution:

More than 64,000 facilities are currently listed in [EPA] databases as being in violation of federal environmental laws, but in most years, fewer than one-half of one percent of violations trigger criminal investigations, according to EPA records. …

In fiscal year 2013, the EPA’s Criminal Enforcement Division launched 297 investigations. In 2012, 320 investigations were opened; the total has steadily decreased since 2001.

In response to questions emailed to the EPA, Jennifer Colaizzi, an agency spokesperson, said the decline in cases is due to a decision to focus on “high impact cases,” as well as financial strains.

“The reality of budget cuts and staffing reductions make hard choices necessary across the board,” Colaizzi said.

With just 38 prosecutors manning the DOJ’s Environmental Crimes Section and 200 agents in the EPA’s Criminal Enforcement Division, monitoring cases across the country, the federal government has limited capacity to pursue many of America’s worst environmental offenders.

Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in Appalachia, where a seemingly endless parade of civil settlements and consent decrees has done little to abate a history of environmental malfeasance.

The group compiled a database and map that let you see what harm polluters are doing in your neighborhood, in full view of authorities. Click here to check it out.


Source
Environmental Crime: The Prosecution Gap, The Crime Report

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Did the Las Vegas Shooting Suspects Obtain Their Guns on Facebook?

by Mariett44Y Posted on June 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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A month before a married couple allegedly gunned down two police officers and a bystander in Las Vegas, suspect Jerad Miller went on Facebook looking for a gun. Any gun would do, Miller wrote, as long as it worked on the “evil tyrant bastards.”

On May 8, Miller posted the following on Facebook:

Facebook users soon chimed in to help Miller with his request. One person replied, “ak47.” A second asked, “What happened to urs?” A third offered, “What are you looking for.”

Miller replied, “Doesn’t matter, bolt action, semi, anything that can reach out and touch evil tyrant bastards. Idc I don’t care if its a hundred dollar pink 22 rifle lol.”

A fourth person chimed in that the “Gun store has plenty of rifles.” Miller replied, “We broke bro, believe me if we had the money we would be at some of the best gun stores in the country buying what we need. Idc if its a ww2 m4 lol. something for when they call us terrorists, we can defend ourselves.”

A fifth person recognized that the conversation was entering potentially illegal territory, and recommended that Miller hide his identity. “You and I both know that you shouldn’t be using Facebook for this. Get yourself a tor router and be anonymous like the constitution always intended,” the person wrote. Miller replied, “lol im just fucking around.”

But according to authorities, Miller wasn’t “just fucking around”—five people, including Miller and his wife, Amanda, are now dead. While we don’t know if the Millers were successful in obtaining any guns through Facebook, the fact that the post is still up raises questions about how well Facebook’s effort to crack down on illegal gun sales is working. In March, the social network announced that it would start deleting posts that offer to buy or sell guns without background checks. At the time, it wasn’t clear how Facebook planned to enforce the new guidelines. (As of 2012, Miller and his wife were not allowed to own guns because of his criminal record, according to Miller’s post on the conspiracy-peddling website, Infowars.)

“We are sickened to learn that the Las Vegas shooter attempted to obtain a rifle through Facebook. The post has remained live on Facebook for a month, demonstrating the inadequacy of Facebook’s gun policy,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement. “Facebook continues to make it too easy for dangerous people to find guns and should prohibit gun sales outright.”

In a statement sent to Buzzfeed, a Facebook spokesperson said: “While this online discussion is certainly disturbing in light of recent events, we have not been made aware of any connection to an actual gun transaction offline.”

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Did the Las Vegas Shooting Suspects Obtain Their Guns on Facebook?

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Here’s Mindy Kaling’s Hilarious Speech to Harvard Law: "You Will Defend BP From Birds."

by TysonGoldfarb Posted on May 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s actress/comedian Mindy Kaling speaking at this year’s Harvard Law School Class Day on Wednesday:

With this diploma in hand, most of you will go on to the noblest of pursuits, like helping a cable company acquire a telecom company. You will defend BP from birds. You will spend hours arguing that the well water was contaminated well before the fracking occurred. One of you will sort out the details of my prenup. A dozen of you will help me with my acrimonious divorce. And one of you will fall in love in the process.

Later, on a more serious note, Kaling urged graduates to “please just try to be the kind of people who give advice to celebrities, not the other way around.” She continued: “You are entering a profession where no matter how bad the crime, or the criminal, you have to defend the alleged perpetrator. That’s incredible to me.”

You can check out other highlights from her speech here, and you should watch the whole thing above.

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Here’s Mindy Kaling’s Hilarious Speech to Harvard Law: "You Will Defend BP From Birds."

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Do Background Checks Work To Keep Disturbed People From Getting Guns?

by JacquelineXrt Posted on May 22, 2014

Mother Jones


More Mother Jones reporting on guns in America.

It’s a question at the heart of the gun debate. Most Americans think the answer is yes (an overwhelming majority continues to support comprehensive background checks for gun buyers), while the National Rifle Association emphatically believes the opposite (its leadership opposes new firearm regulations of virtually any kind). Now, a new report from the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety crunches some actual data: Citing figures from the FBI, the gun-reform group reports that the number of mental health records collected from states in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (known as “NICS”) has tripled to nearly three and a half million since 2011—and that as a result, a growing number of mentally ill people have been stopped from purchasing firearms through licensed dealers.

The change owes to increased federal funding for the system and a wave of more stringent state laws put in place. As we documented at the one-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre, 2013 saw a barrage of new state laws from coast to coast, both easing and tightening gun restrictions. Among them were laws in 15 states intended to keep firearms away from the seriously mentally ill.

After a ghastly run of mass shootings from Tucson to Aurora to Newtown to Fort Hood (again), this particular issue no longer seems such a partisan one. The states passing bills in 2013 included gun-rights strongholds such as Texas and Florida, and this spring Republican-led Arizona and Oklahoma joined the list. At least 18 states have moved on this issue since late 2011, according to Everytown.

The result? In 2013 nearly 3,000 people were blocked from purchasing guns because of NICS—more than 600 more than in 2012, continuing an upward trend that goes back to 2009.

Granted, that’s but a tiny fraction of the 300 million guns in circulation nationwide. And it remains remarkably easy for people to get firearms from somewhere other than a federally licensed dealer. But it only takes one gun in the wrong hands to wreak havoc. As our in-depth investigation showed, a majority of mass shootings are carried out by people with serious mental health problems, using weapons they obtained legally.

Also notable in Everytown’s report are the states still failing on the mental health front with respect to firearms. This interactive map shows them, including a couple that may seem surprising—liberal Massachusetts?—and others that have fresh reason to consider the issue, such as Georgia. It was less than a month ago that a young man went on a rampage at a FedEx facility in suburban Atlanta, wounding six people before killing himself. Police investigators declined to say where he bought the gun he used, but his state of mind was clear enough: He described his “mental instability” in a suicide note that he left behind. “I am a sociopath,” he wrote. “I want to hurt people.”

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Do Background Checks Work To Keep Disturbed People From Getting Guns?

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How to Use Public-Private Partnerships to Screw the Poor

by Cosetta Shallenberger Posted on January 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is now behind an Iron Curtain-like paywall, which is too bad since apparently they ran a great story yesterday about Georgia’s practice of using private companies to collect fines and fees in the criminal justice system. I’ll farm out the job of summarizing the story to the Economist’s Jon Fasman:

It works like this: say you get a $200 speeding ticket, and you don’t have the money to pay it. You are placed on probation, and for a monthly supervisory fee you can pay the fine off in instalments over the course of your probation term. The devil, as ever, is in the details….Those supervisory fees vary markedly: in Cobb County, for instance, just north of Atlanta, the government charges a $22 monthly fee. Private companies charge $39, and often add extra costs on top of that to cover drug testing, electronic monitoring and even classes they decide offenders need.

….Even worse, people who fail to pay the fines imposed by these private companies can find warrants for their arrests sworn out and the period of their probation extended. I spoke with an attorney for a couple in Alabama who say they were threatened with Tasers and the removal of their children if they did not pay the company what they owed. In 2012 a court found that the fees levied by private-probation companies in Harpersville, Alabama, could turn a $200 fine and a year’s probation into $2,100 in fees and fines stretched over 41 months.

Isn’t that great? It’s the free market at work, all right. It reminds me of last year’s piece in the Washington Post about the privatization of the debt collection in Washington DC:

For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid.

But under the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay, a Washington Post investigation found.

As the housing market soared, the investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.

You may remember this as the story of the 76-year-old man struggling with dementia who was thrown out on the street and had his house seized because of a mix-up over a $134 property tax bill. That in turn might remind you of all the stories you’ve heard about civil asset forfeiture, where local police agencies groundlessly extort property from people convicted of no crimes, and then use the money “for purchasing equipment and getting things you normally wouldn’t be able to get to fight crime.”

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?

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How to Use Public-Private Partnerships to Screw the Poor

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Crime Scene: In Rhino Horn Case, Judge Sees a Criminal Instead of a ‘Naïve Kid’

by Myrna Posted on January 10, 2014

Michael Slattery Jr., who pleaded guilty last year to trafficking in the horns of an endangered species of rhinoceros, was sentenced to 14 months in prison. View the original here –  Crime Scene: In Rhino Horn Case, Judge Sees a Criminal Instead of a ‘Naïve Kid’ ; ;Related ArticlesNational Briefing | New England: Maine: Man Pleads Guilty in Tusk Smuggling CaseChemical Spill Fouls Water in West VirginiaCelebrating Deep Freeze, Insect Experts See a Chance to Kill Off Invasive Species ;

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Crime Scene: In Rhino Horn Case, Judge Sees a Criminal Instead of a ‘Naïve Kid’

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The Outrage Continues: An Alabama Man Who Raped a Teenager Still Won’t Do Prison Time Under His New Sentence

by dfonis5 Posted on December 27, 2013

Mother Jones

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The Alabama man who was allowed to walk free after being convicted of rape has had his probation extended by two years, but he still won’t have to serve prison time under a new, supposedly stiffer sentence handed down this week.

In September, a jury in Limestone County, Alabama found 25-year-old Austin Smith Clem guilty of raping his teenager neighbor, Courtney Andrews, three times—twice when she was 14, and once when was she was 18. County Judge James Woodroof theoretically sentenced Clem to 40 years in prison. But Woodroof structured the sentence so that Clem would only serve three years probation, plus two years in the Limestone County corrections program for nonviolent criminals, which would allow Clem to work and live in the community. Only if Clem violated his probation would he be required to serve the prison time.

Clem’s lenient sentence touched off a national outcry, and Andrews eventually appeared on Melissa Harris-Perry’s MSNBC show to call for tougher punishment. In early December, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals found that the sentence was illegal and ordered Woodroof to mete out a stiffer penalty. But Clem’s new sentence, which Woodroof handed down Monday, only extends Clem’s probation from three to five years. And if Clem violates the terms of his probation, he will only have to serve 35 years in prison—less than he would have under his initial sentence.

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The Outrage Continues: An Alabama Man Who Raped a Teenager Still Won’t Do Prison Time Under His New Sentence

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BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

by AdelaidaH Posted on December 19, 2013

BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

By

NOAA

In May 2010, as BP prepared to try to staunch the flow of oil from beneath the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig by dumping mud over the blowout, some of the company’s engineers knew the effort was bound to fail. But the mud-dumping plan, codenamed Top Kill, moved forward anyway as the world’s media watched on. Sure enough, Top Kill failed to staunch the leak.

One of the engineers who knew the effort would fail, Kurt Mix, later tried to keep that a secret from investigators. When Mix found out that his iPhone was about to be seized, he deleted more than 100 text messages — messages such as “Too much flowrate – over 15,000.” In that message, Mix was warning a colleague that 15,000 barrels of oil was leaking every day, which was too much oil for the operation to handle, and three times the flow rate that BP had stated publicly.

The presumably panicked decision to delete the texts on Wednesday led to the 52-year-old Texan being found guilty by a jury of one charge of obstruction of justice — a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. He avoided conviction on a second, similar charge. His attorneys vowed to appeal. From the AP:

Mix, who was arrested in April 2012, was the first of four current or former BP employees charged with spill-related crimes and the first of them to be tried.

BP took corporate responsibility for its role in the catastrophe earlier this year, pleading guilty in January to manslaughter charges for the workers’ deaths and agreeing to pay a record $4 billion in penalties. But none of the top executives at the London-based oil giant have been charged with crimes.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, said Mix was a “sympathetic defendant” because his conduct seemed relatively minor in the context of a disaster that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Uhlmann, however, said the Justice Department appropriately has a “zero-tolerance policy” for those who destroy evidence in a criminal investigation.

“The Gulf oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages from his iPhone,” he said. “The government was justified in seeking charges, but there’s a proportionality problem here.”

Props to the feds for going after BP wrongdoers. But it would sure be nice to see some senior execs held accountable for the 2010 disaster, which is still affecting the Gulf of Mexico and its fishermen and shoreline communities.


Source
Ex-BP engineer convicted on 1 obstruction charge, Associated Press
Former BP Engineer Arrested for Obstruction of Justice in Connection with the Deepwater Horizon Criminal Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

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Read the Connecticut State’s Attorney’s Crime Report on the Sandy Hook Massacre

by al36olu Posted on November 25, 2013

Mother Jones

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See our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Today Connecticut State’s Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III released a report on the criminal investigation of the December 14, 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead. The long-awaited document is only a summary of the yet-to-be released final crime report, which is estimated to run thousands of pages, according to the Hartford Courant.

The summary report includes a timeline of the police response to Sandy Hook, starting with the first 911 call. It also offers some insight into the family history, interests, and mental health of shooter Adam Lanza. Included is an inventory of violent video games he owned, along with a record of some of the evidence recovered from Lanza’s hard drive, such as images of him brandishing weapons, movies depicting mass shootings, and videos of people committing suicide by gunshot.

Sedensky has been criticized for delaying the publication of the report and withholding 911 recordings, which are routinely released to the public. He is currently appealing a ruling by the state’s Freedom of Information Commission stating he must release the emergency calls. A judge is expected to listen to the tapes and make a ruling in the near future. With today’s release of the crime report, the investigation into the massacre is officially closed.

We’ll be combing through the report and highlighting important revelations here. Check back for updates.

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Click here to download the report.

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Read the Connecticut State’s Attorney’s Crime Report on the Sandy Hook Massacre

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