Now this is a bit disturbing

[Mythsaje]

QUESTIONING US ARREST STATISTICS
by Scott Christianson, (Source:Christian Science Monitor)
18 Jan 2006


SAND LAKE, N.Y. -- Policing in the United States has changed a lot during
the past 50 years. Higher education and training requirements have led to
greater police professionalism, and most departments' ranks have benefited
from huge increases of personnel, stunning technological advancements,
forensics breakthroughs, and affirmative action policies that presumably
have led to a more representative workforce sensitive to civil rights.
Policing's academic side has also prospered from decades of ample government
research grants.

-snip-

But discussions of police performance often fail to note another important
but overlooked trend, apparently unrelated to the falling crime rate:
Federal statistics reveal that the nation's "clearance rate" - the
percentage of cases for which police arrest or identify a suspect - has
fallen dramatically. And this shift is fraught with implications.
The arrest clearance rate for reported homicides recently dropped to about
60 percent compared with about 90 percent 50 years ago. This means that a
murderer today has about a 40 percent chance of avoiding arrest compared
with less than 10 percent in 1950. The record for other FBI Index Crimes is
even more dismal: The clearance rates have sunk to 42 percent for forcible
rape, 26 percent for robbery, and 13 percent for burglary and motor vehicle
theft, all way down from earlier eras.

Judging a police department or the criminal justice system as a whole based
simply on arrest statistics wouldn't be wise, for the police can and do
fulfill many crucial functions in our society, such as maintaining public
order and helping to protect citizens from terrorist attack. But ignoring
measures of how the police deal with reported serious crime isn't smart
either.

http://search.csmonitor.com/search_content/0118/p09s01-coop.html

[havocmom]

1. To busy keeping protesters in Free Speech gulags and chasing leads

involving calls to restraints owned by people of Middle Eastern heritage to solve real crimes?

Do you feel safer, America? The rapists are still on the loose, but brown people and liberals are all under surveillance!

[acmejack]

2. I think both reasons are valid.

I admit the latter was what I thought of, but the the initial premise about drug enforcement, especially marijuana, was spot on.

[Mythsaje]

3. Absolutely

The drug war has set some dangerous precedents in this country, if not around the world, and this report suggests something I've been saying for years...that important crimes are being ignored to pursue it. Bad juju.

[TahitiNut]

4. Alberto Gonzales is on top of it. He's going after the PORNOGRAPHY!

Boy, he sure has his finger on the problem, doesn't he? :eyes: :eyes:

14 million arrests in 2004 alone. 14 million. As we've become an outlaw nation in the world, we've become a nation of outlaws. When the pResident arrogantly proclaims his power to ignore the law and 220 years of Constitutional precedent, is it any wonder?

[Mythsaje]

5. But Ted Bundy

was addicted to porn!

Ignoring, of course, the millions of people all over the world who do NOT become serial killers after viewing porn.

Just like the millions of pot smokers who do not go on to become addicted to hard drugs.

Or the millions of peaceful protestors who do not go on to become terrorists.

It's scary ironic that in these days of sophisticated crime-solving techniques, the human resources aren't there to solve the real crimes in this country.

[TahitiNut]

7. When we criminalize behaviors that "lead to" other criminal acts ...

... we might as well make it a crime to be born. There is nothing quite as ethically bankrupt in the legal system as the fallacy of criminalizing 'gateway' behavior, unless it's the criminaliztion of victimless behavior per se. Unless and until another person is demonstrably and provably harmed, no behavior should be criminalized. Period.

How can any sane nation criminalize the act of smoking pot, which harms not one other person, and not criminalize the massive frauds and manipulations of a consortium of energy companies that harmed the citizens of California to the tune of 30 billion dollars? The criminal sociopaths of Enron, Duke, Reliant, et. al. have gotten off with absolutely no penalty for that monstrous fraud.

[Mythsaje]

10. Yep...

Especially since they're incapable of finding any causal link between things...and the media, and the stupids who follow the media, don't seem to understand that there's a big difference between whether something is related because it's caused by a thing, or whether it's related because of other factors. People who smoke pot going on to harder drugs is at least as much caused by the black market environment and the fact that dealers make more money by pushing harder and more addictive substances. It's not the drug that's the "gateway" factor, it's the market forces.

[aikoaiko]

6. Not neccesarily a bad thing...

If police are not railroadind individuals or wrongly arresting without malice, then a drop in clearance might be a good thing.

Just my 2 cents.

[ComerPerro]

8. A conservative would read this and then say

that people are getting away with crimes now not because of a failure on the PD's part, but because of the meddling ACLU and the hippie Democrat liberal communists who are soft on crime and make it so police can't do their job without being though politically incorrect.

Any conservative will tell you this right away. They have been conditioned to think this way for several years now.

And the more people there are who think in such a manner, the easier it will be for the administration to force their unconstitutional power grabs on us.

[Mythsaje]

9. The counter being...

This reflects the number of arrests and/or charges brought...NOT how many convictions they get.

[ComerPerro]

11. "But we can't even arrest people because of fear of profiling

and the desire to be politically correct." ...

[Mythsaje]

12. Non-starter...

The price of doing business, of doing your job, is to take that risk in order to protect the public. Do your job and let the chips fall where they may. If you follow procedure, work to protect the rights of the accused, and show a clear chain of evidence, your job is done.

Everything else is an excuse, and not even a particularly good one.