Medieval Oxford Was Dangerous

Steven Pinker is generally correct that society has grown progressively less violent over time.

The research suggests that Oxford’s student population was by far the most lethally violent social or professional group in any of the three cities.

The team behind the Medieval Murder Maps – a digital resource that plots crime scenes based on translated investigations from 700-year-old coroners’ inquests – estimate the per capita homicide rate in Oxford to have been 4-5 times higher than late medieval London or York.

Among Oxford perpetrators with a known background, 75% were identified by the coroner as “clericus”, as were 72% of all Oxford’s homicide victims. During this period, clericus is most likely to refer to a student or member of the early university.

“A medieval university city such as Oxford had a deadly mix of conditions,” said Prof Manuel Eisner, murder map investigator and Director of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“Oxford students were all male and typically aged between fourteen and twenty-one, the peak for violence and risk-taking. These were young men freed from tight controls of family, parish or guild, and thrust into an environment full of weapons, with ample access to alehouses and sex workers.

Consider the source as this is from the University of Cambridge.

It also, in my mind, supports the case for removing the secrecy from the juvenile justice system. By all means, we should not give legal effect to stale criminal convictions or juvenile offenses, but we should also be informed by them, especially when it comes to estimating recidivism risk. Age eighteen is right in the middle of the peak age range for criminal conduct. Young men do "age out" of criminal activity, but this happens in their 30s or early 40s. The most powerful predictor of repeat criminality is how early, how often, and how intensely offenders committed crimes as juveniles. Further, secrecy encourages institutional rot because its flaws are not exposed to public inspection.

Crime Reduction Research

An interesting analysis takes on the question of how to reduce crime.

It starts by establishing that crime is bad, not just due to direct harm, but due to indirect harms like changing how people behave to avoid it. I won't belabor that point.

It then lays out some key facts:

The distribution of criminal behaviour is highly skewed, with a very small proportion of the population accounting for a significant share of total crime. Incapacitation of this group through imprisonment results in a significant reduction in societal exposure to criminal activity.

(i) A study of the Swedish population born between 1958 and 1980 found that 3.9% of the cohort was convicted of a violent crime. A group of persistent offenders accounting for 1% of the total population accounted for 63.2% of all convictions. These offenders were relatively likely to commit offences early, use drugs, and display personality disorders.

(ii) A paper comparing convictions from a UK longitudinal study and a US dataset of self-reported delinquency found that in both cases, criminal behaviour was well described by a power law.

(iii) Some 70% of custodial sentences in England and Wales are handed out to offenders with at least seven previous convictions or cautions; 50% to those with at least 15.

(iv) Roughly 73% of 2016 US federal offenders had previous convictions. Among this group, the average number of convictions was ~6. Around 39.5% of these offenders had prior violent offences.

Offenders often possess characteristics which require greater support both in prison and in general society, and which may make standard models of rational choice a poor fit for their decision-making processes.

[Multiple studies show that people convicted of crimes have "high discount rates" which is to say that they disproportionately care about the short term and short change the long consequences.] . . . .

(iv) Some 53,109 adults in British prisons were being treated for alcohol or drug abuse issues in 2017-18, out of a total prison population of around 82,000.

(vi) The National Institute on Drug Abuse states that ”85% of the [US] prison population has an active substance use disorder or were incarcerated for a crime involving drugs or drug use”

(vi) The UK does not have up-to-date figures on mental health in prisons, but the Institute of Psychiatry estimated over half of prisoners have common mental disorders - PTSD, anxiety, or depression - while another 15% have specialist mental health needs, and 2% acute and serious problems.

(vii) The APA estimates that “at least half of prisoners have some mental health concerns”, and 10-25% of US prisoners serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.

The deterrence effect of jail time appears to be relatively weak, in part due to these commonalities. . . . 

(ii) . . .  the majority of any deterrent effect results from the initial period of punishment.

(iii) . . . when . . . the economic return to non-criminal activity . . . is low value the return to crime may be disproportionately high.

(iv) . . . it is not clear whether classical rational behaviour is a good approximation to the behaviour of individuals suffering from mental illness or substance abuse issues.

(v) These suspicions are born out by David Roodman’s excellent analysis of deterrence, which notes that punishments designed under the presumption that increases in the certainty of punishment better dissuades criminal behaviour than the threat of greater sanction did not produce the desired effects.

(vi) Roodman also notes that US studies on increased severity have shown little in the way of strong deterrence effects.

(vii) The existence of significant procedural delays in trials and sentencing may exacerbate this, pushing the eventual punishment further into the discounting window.

Conversely, the deterrence effect of visible policing is relatively high

(i) A study using variation caused by the terror alert level set by the Department of Homeland Security found that crime levels decrease significantly when police presence is increased.

(ii) An Argentine study using variation in policing following terror attacks found a strong deterrent effect of observable police in the immediate vicinity.

(iii) Evidence from the United Kingdom shows that victim-reported crime drops with higher numbers of police, while police recorded crime may increase - indicating a deterrent effect alongside improved reporting.

(iv) Variation in police spending in sync with electoral cycles shows that increases in police force numbers have a strong effect on violent crime.

(v) A review of the literature on hotspot policing found that focusing police attention on high crime areas caused an appreciable decrease in crime, with some evidence that high visibility patrols were more effective than normal patterns of behaviour.

Local interventions can also reduce crime by altering the physical environment

. . .  

(ii) An analysis of the impact of street lighting on crime in the UK found that targeted interventions tended to reduce crime, and also made residents less fearful, potentially reducing costly behavioural alteration. . . . A broader review backs this conclusion, finding that street lighting significantly reduces crime.

(iv) A 2009 review of the literature on the installation of CCTV cameras found that it resulted in a small but significant decrease in criminal activity, particularly in car parks. . . . A similar review conducted in 2019 replicated these findings, with the additional note that active monitoring resulted in a larger reduction than passive systems. . . . One study suggests that the bulk of the benefit is deterrence of automobile theft.

The incapacitation effect of imprisonment is relatively strong

(i) Almost by definition, an individual in prison is highly unlikely to commit a crime against a member of the general public.

(ii) Set against this, they are also more likely to commit crimes within prison. Greater monitoring of behaviour must be set against the lack of possibility for effective further punishment (longer sentences may not act as sufficient deterrent), and an environment which is likely to be criminogenic (see below).

(iii) The cost of crime within prison is likely to be lower to society than the cost of crime without; it is not committed against random members of the population, results in less defensive expenditure or avoidance behaviour, and is focused on a smaller group of individuals in an environment designed to reduce criminal activity.

(iv) Roodman’s review of incarceration notes that multiple studies find strong evidence that incapacitation works to prevent crime. This should be expected.

Certain currently common forms of sentencing are likely to increase reoffending

(i) Turning again to Roodman’s review, there is a fairly solid bed of evidence that US prisons are criminogenic. This is not sufficient to outweigh the benefits of incapacitating serious offenders, but is cause for reappraisal for marginal offenders.

(ii) Harsher prison conditions are associated with greater recidivism. This is unsurprising, as brutalising conditions are unlikely to provide effective conditions for self-improvement. . . . A study of Italian jails shows that worse prison conditions does not reduce future criminal activity, instead driving increases in future criminal behaviour. . . . A study of US jails produced a similar conclusion, with a suggestion that harsher conditions increased crime post-release. . . .

(v) A UK Ministry of Justice report concluded that short-duration sentences if anything increased reoffending relative to court orders.

(vi) Norwegian prisons consistently display low rates of recidivism, and are marked by their civilised treatment of prisoners.

The analysis has conclusions, but I'll draw them myself from this data.

1. Identify the individuals at highest risk of committing serious or repeat crimes and support them so they they don't. This is a fairly modest share of the total population: mostly males who are high school dropouts, have substance abuse problems, have criminal records or juvenile justice records, have particular mental health disorders that put them at high risk, and have with poor non-criminal economic prospects. Substance abuse is generally higher risk than mental health disorders generally (although psychopathy manifests young and is a very high risk factor). 

Gang membership, while hard to establish legally in a civil liberties respecting manner, is also an extremely high risk factor. As of 2017:

According to the DOC, there are now more than 8,000 gang-affiliated inmates and parolees in Colorado divided between at least 135 gangs. That means that roughly one out of every four people in the state prison system is labeled as being in a gang. And there are now more gang members in prison than there are total DOC employees.

Incidentally, killing or incarcerating gang kingpins is absolutely the worst thing you can do if organized crime is a serious problem. (See also here).

As I've previously noted at this blog: "Just as crime gravitates to certain neighborhoods, it also clusters in families: According to one criminologist’s analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, 5 percent of families account for more than 50 percent of all arrests."

Less than a quarter of Colorado prison inmates graduated from high school in the ordinary course (as opposed to getting a GED) (compared to about 85%+ of the general population), and just 1% have earned any college degree (compared to about 43% of the general population). Substance abuse is a problem for 79% of inmates. Just 6% of Colorado inmates both have a high school diploma (as opposed to a GED) and don't have a moderate to severe substance abuse problem, and some of the inmates in that 6% have moderate to severe mental health problems.

"As of 2010, 3 percent of the total US population and 15 percent of the African-American male population have served time in prison. People with felony convictions more broadly account for 8 percent of the overall population and 33 percent of the African-American male population." (From Science Daily. The paper is: Sarah K. S. Shannon, Christopher Uggen, Jason Schnittker, Melissa Thompson, Sara Wakefield, Michael Massoglia. "The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People With Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010." Demography (2017). DOI: 10.1007/s13524-017-0611-1).

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is extremely common in the most difficult inmates. 96% of inmates in a high risk unit of the Denver jail have a history of traumatic brain injury. By comparison, 67%-80% of all jail and prison inmates, nationally, have a history of traumatic brain injury, and 6%-8.5% of the general population has suffered from a traumatic brain injury. In the Denver high risk jail unit, 100% had a prior criminal history, more than 90% had a history of mental illness and more than 90% had a history of substance abuse. More than 77% of the inmates in the high risk unit had all four risk factors. A study reviewing TBI incidence in Australian prisons from 2006 found an 82% TBI incidence rate. Another county jail study from 2003 found an 87% lifetime incidence of TBI. A 1995 study examined the way the substance abuse can exacerbate TBI issues.

2. Incarcerate offenders with high recidivism risk until they no longer have a high recidivism risk. A small percentage of people are convicted of crimes and a small percentage of people who are convicted of crimes commit most of those crimes. Detain the worst and try to avoid criminalizing low risk offenders further with the criminalizing effects of poorly managed prisons.

3. Take the effort to make prison conditions less brutal both to reduce recidivism and to reduce crime within prisons.

4. Longer sentences don't discourage people not currently in prison from committing crimes, and even certainty in sentencing doesn't do that, because criminals don't care about the long run and aren't rational actors.

5. Visible police presence in crime hotspots can work.

6. Good street lighting reduces crime.

7. Actively monitored CCTV in parking lots reduces car theft.

The analysis fails to note, but it is nonetheless true, that strict gun control over large geographic areas is very effective at reducing homicide, suicide, and accidental deaths from firearms.

For example, “shall-issue concealed carry permitting laws were significantly associated with 6.5% higher total homicide rates, 8.6% higher firearm-related homicide rates, and 10.6% higher handgun-specific homicide rates compared with may-issue states.”

The analysis emphasizes the fact that violent crime causes more harm than non-violent crime. But, it misses some key points about prevention of crime, especially, but not only, non-violent crime:

1. Requiring a personal identification number (PIN) to use a credit card greatly reduces credit card fraud. See, e.g., this 2012 study (e.g. U.K. credit card fraud fell 63% when this was done).

2. Tracking technology is now cheap and used well, it can greatly reduce car and bicycle and laptop and phone theft, not just through deterrence and by recovering stolen items, but by catching thieves before they can reoffend.

3. Monitoring markets for stolen goods (including electronic markets) effectively is a good way to catch thieves and to make theft less cost effective.

4. Using forensic technology usually reserved for murders and serious assaults and rapes in burglary cases can greatly reduce burglaries because most burglaries are committed by repeat offenders so if you catch on burglar you prevent many offenses and recover a lot of stolen property.

5. Require small telecoms to adopt anti-spoofing calls used to make fraud calls.

6. Randomly including trackers in a modest percentage of delivered packages in problem areas, and using this information together with security camera data to catch porch pirates can reduce larceny.

7. More effectively blacklisting fraudsters can reduce fraud.

8. We could establish an agency that can identify patterns and networks of fraud activity in social media, and take effective action based upon it.

9. We should legalize one party consent to recording telephone communications to make it easier to catch offenders.

10. Legalizing vice (i.e. drugs, prostitution, and gambling) can greatly reduce crime by making organized crime that maintains black markets unprofitable, and by building trust between police enforcing crimes that have victims and citizens. For example, legalizing prostitution materially reduces sexual assault and drug crime rates.

Legalizing vice (e.g. federally legalizing marijuana) also reduces the amount of cash circulating which can drive robbery, burglary and theft.

11. Allowing adult entertainment businesses in a neighborhood reduces the incidence of rapes in that neighborhood.

11. After a fairly modest number of years after release from prison (about five) without committing a new offense, the risk of committing a new offense approaches barely below background levels.

12. Ignoring juvenile records deprives sentencing authorities of key information because the earlier and more severe your juvenile offenses are, the most likely you are to commit serious future offenses. Juvenile delinquency records are a major risk factor for adult crime. The notion that young offenses are most prone to rehabilitation is mostly false. People do age out of being high crime risks, but only in middle age.

13. The risk of substance abuse, and of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders, is highly hereditary.

14. The risk of poor academic performance leading to behavioral problems in school are highly predictable from early childhood, as is a capacity to defer gratification which is a major risk factor for crime.

15. A large share of crimes are economically motivated, or are violent crimes that are incident to economically motivated crimes. Even quite modest non-criminal economic opportunities for people with criminal records and people at high risk for committing crimes can significantly disfavor crime.

16. Abating lead pollution prevented a lot of crime and should continue. More generally, a 2017 California study of the link between air pollution exposure and delinquency shows a statistically significant link between pollution exposure and delinquency. A related study shows the impacts on air pollution exposure on cognitive development.

Finally, a footnote on race, public safety, and crime:

rates of homicides, gun killings and illicit-drug fatalities [ed. combined] are highest in counties where nine in 10 residents are white and where President Trump won in the 2016 election.

Such counties are not limited to one geographical region. They include Boone County, W.V.; Washington County, Utah; Baxter County, Ark.; and Brown County, Ohio.

Correspondingly, the white Americans who are safest from such deaths are those who live in racially diverse areas such as Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, where two-thirds of residents are nonwhite, where millions of immigrants live, and where voters favored Hillary Clinton in 2016. Nonwhites also are safer in these areas overall, though rates vary by location.  

White Americans are nearly eight times more likely to die from illicit-drug overdoses than murder, the CDC statistics show, a proportion that undoubtedly reflects the heroin and opiate epidemic. But according to FBI data for 2015, when whites are murdered anywhere in the country, the murderer is five times more likely to be white than nonwhite. (This ratio counts only murder cases in which information about the offender is known by law enforcement.)

Overall, white Americans who live in predominantly white and Trump-voting counties are 50% more likely to die from murder, gun violence and drug overdoses [ed. combined] than whites who live in the most diverse and Democratic-voting counties. The more white and Republican a county is, the greater the risk for white Americans.

and a footnote on immigration:

immigration is consistently linked to decreases in violent (e.g., murder) and property (e.g., burglary) crime 

Robert Adelman, et al., "Urban crime rates and the changing face of immigration: Evidence across four decades" 15(1) Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice (November 21, 2016).

Deporting immigrants who are arrested for crimes, surprisingly, has no discernible impact on the crime rate.

And, a footnote on religion and homicide and suicide:

The current study assessed the relationship between national religious affiliation and lethal violence by simultaneously examining homicide and suicide rates. The information on homicide and suicide rates for 124 countries came from the World Health Organization (WHO). Regression results suggested no significant difference in lethal violence between predominantly Catholic and Protestant countries, although Islamic countries revealed significantly lower homicide, suicide, and overall lethal violence rates than non-Islamic countries. Countries with a high level of religious heterogeneity are subject to an increased suicide rate.

Don Soo Chon, "National Religious Affiliation and Integrated Model of Homicide and Suicide" (2016).

A Gun Control Deal In Congress

Sources including Politico report that 10 Republican Senators have joined Democrats to back gun control measures which would create a filibuster proof majority in support of the bill, possibly within the week.

The bipartisan framework would change the background check system to increase scrutiny of juvenile records for gun buyers under the age of 21 and closes the “boyfriend loophole” by broadening restrictions for individuals who have abused their romantic partners. In addition, it includes grants for states to implement so-called red flag laws, as well as new spending for mental health and school security.

These are incremental baby steps, but it would still enact the first new national gun control measures passed in a long time, at a time when almost all significant non-fiscal legislation has been held up by partisan gridlock made possible by the filibuster.  

Pretrial Juvenile Detention Is Common But Clearly Counterproductive

Empirical evidence shows that pre-trial juvenile detention is common and is strongly counterproductive.

Roughly one in four juveniles arrested in the U.S. spend time in a detention center prior to their court date. To study the consequences of this practice for youth, we link the universe of individual public school records in Michigan to juvenile and adult criminal justice records. Using a combination of exact matching and inverse probability weighting, we estimate that juvenile detention leads to a 31% decline in the likelihood of graduating high school and a 25% increase in the likelihood of being arrested as an adult. Falsification tests suggest the results are not driven by unobserved heterogeneity.

E. Jason Baron, Brian Jacob & Joseph P. Ryan, "Pretrial Juvenile Detention" NBER WORKING PAPER 29861 (March 2022) DOI 10.3386/w29861

Juvenile Life Without Parole

The use of life in prison without possibility of parole sentences for juvenile offenders has declined dramatically as a result of to key U.S. Supreme Court decisions and some legislative reforms that they triggered. But it also remains far more common in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world and some states are particularly at fault on this score including 210 cases in the three states singled out below.

Six years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, making Miller v. Alabama’s requirement that judges consider the mitigating attributes of youth retroactive . . .

At the time Miller and Montgomery were decided, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Louisiana each had more children sentenced to life without parole than any other state in the country

While 76% of the pre-Miller JLWOP population in Louisiana was Black, Black children received 93% of JLWOP sentences since 2012. Today, the sentence is reserved almost exclusively for Black boys. . . . Despite six years passing since the Supreme Court ordered resentencings in Montgomery, almost 100 people still serving unconstitutional JLWOP sentences in Michigan have not yet had their day in court. This is especially concerning in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which tragically claimed the life of William Garrison a few months shy of freedom.. . . . JLWOP population at time of Miller: 297 Completed resentencings: 251 Currently Serving JLWOP: 63 Released: 99

Once second to Pennsylvania in JLWOP cases, Michigan now has the most children serving life without parole in the country. Racial disparities for this population in Michigan are starker than they are nationally—71% of those eligible for resentencing in Michigan after Miller were Black (compared to 61% nationally), and 74% of those still awaiting resentencing are Black. . . . JLWOP population at time of Miller: 356 Completed resentencings: 273 Currently Serving JLWOP: 97 Released: 154

At the time Miller was decided, Pennsylvania mandated JLWOP for first and second degree murder and had the highest number of children sentenced to life without parole in the country. Subsequent reforms have abolished JLWOP for second degree murder, a significant step forward. Since Montgomery, approximately 90% of these cases have been resentenced with only 1% resentenced to JLWOP. This progress was bolstered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which acted to ensure resentencing hearings had constitutionally sufficient procedure. The Pennsylvania Parole Board has also recognized the importance of meaningful consideration of these cases, granting parole in approximately 70% of the former JLWOP cases. . . . JLWOP population at time of Miller: 526 Completed resentencings: 463 Currently Serving JLWOP: 50 Released: 268

At the time of the decision, 2,800 individuals in the U.S. were serving life without parole for crimes committed as children. In the six years since, 835 individuals formerly serving this sentence have been released from prison. 

Today, 25 states and the District of Columbia ban life-without-parole sentences for children, and in six additional states, no one is serving life without parole for a crime committed as a child. . . . 

The uneven implementation of Miller disproportionately impacts Black individuals, who represent 61% of the total JLWOP population.... 

Within that population [serving JLWOP when Montgomery was decided], 29% have been released, over 50% have had their sentences reduced from JLWOP, about 17% have not yet been afforded relief, and approximately 3% have been resentenced to JLWOP.

From this report. 

Notable Opening Day Bills In The Colorado General Assembly In The 2022 Session

Here are summaries of six notable bills from the eighty-five bills introduced on "opening day" of the 2022 legislative session of the Colorado General Assembly, that have a meaningful chance of enactment because they are not partisan bills with solely Republican sponsors.

* HB22-1038 "Right To Counsel For Youth: Concerning client-directed legal representation for youth in court proceedings for youth."

Current law requires the appointment of a guardian ad litem for children or youth in dependency and neglect cases. The bill requires that client-directed counsel for youth be appointed for children or youth 12 years of age or older to provide specialized client-directed legal representation.

The bill prohibits the waiver of a child's or youth's right to counsel in dependency and neglect proceedings. The bill also allows a child or youth to be a party in a dependency and neglect proceeding. For a child or youth 12 years of age or older with diminished capacity, a guardian ad litem shall remain in the role and separate counsel for the child or youth must be appointed.

SB22-023 "Deceptive Tactics Juvenile Custodian Interrogation: Concerning prohibiting deceptive tactics during interrogation of a juvenile."

The bill prohibits a law enforcement officer or an agent who assists, cooperates with, or otherwise facilitates a custodial interrogation with a juvenile (law enforcement official) from using deception and false facts or beliefs (deception) to obtain a statement or admission from the juvenile. Any statement or admission obtained during the course of a juvenile custodial interrogation in which a law enforcement official knowingly uses deception is presumptively inadmissible against the juvenile in an evidentiary hearing unless the prosecution proves by clear and convincing evidence that the statement or admission was made voluntarily.

The bill requires law enforcement officials to electronically record all juvenile custodial interrogations.

SB22-008 "Higher Education Support For Foster Youth: Concerning postsecondary education support for certain students who have been in out-of-home placement."

Colorado Youth Advisory Council Review Committee. The bill requires all public higher education institutions (institutions) in Colorado to waive undergraduate tuition and fees for Colorado resident students who have been in foster care or, following an adjudication as neglected or dependent, in noncertified kinship care in Colorado at any time on or after reaching the age of 13 (qualifying students). The institutions are required to designate an employee to serve as a liaison to qualifying or prospective qualifying students.

Under existing law, school districts and the state charter school institute must designate an employee to act as the child welfare education liaison. The bill requires child welfare education liaisons to provide students in out-of-home placement with information and assistance regarding the tuition waiver for qualifying students.

SB22-019 "Access To Suppressed Court Eviction Records: Concerning access to automatically suppressed court records of eviction proceedings."

Under existing law, a court record in an eviction proceeding is automatically suppressed and only available to judges; court staff; a party to the case and, if represented, the party's attorneys; authorized judicial department staff; and a person with a valid court order authorizing access to the court record. The bill permits an attorney, with permission of a party included in a suppressed court record, to access the record for the purpose of providing legal advice to, or evaluating whether to enter an appearance on behalf of, the party included in the record.

SB22-034 "Business Filing Address And Name Fraud: Concerning measures to counteract the filing of fraudulent business documents with the secretary of state."

Under current law, a business entity submits to the secretary of state for online filing documents that concern the creation, organization, and operations of the entity. By submitting a document, an individual affirms under penalty of perjury that the individual is authorized to file the document, the facts in the document are true, and the document otherwise complies with the secretary of state's filing requirements. The secretary of state files the document in an online database as a ministerial act and does not independently verify whether the document is accurate.

The bill creates a complaint process for a person whose business identity or personal identifying information has been used in the filing of these documents with the secretary of state without authority or for fraudulent activity. If a complaint is submitted with the secretary of state, the secretary may forward the complaint to the attorney general for further investigation. The attorney general may investigate the complaint and refer the complaint to an administrative law judge.

If an administrative law judge determines that an entity has been created fraudulently or without authorization, the secretary of state will:

* Mark the business record with a notice that the entity is fraudulent or unauthorized;

* Redact each address that was used without authorization from the entity's filing and from any other relevant filings; and

* Disable additional filing functionality on the entity's records. 

If an administrative law judge determines that an unauthorized filing was made for a legitimate entity, the secretary of state will:

* Mark each unauthorized filing for the entity to notify the public that the filing is unauthorized;

* Redact from the entity's filing and from the relevant filings each address and name that was used without authorization; and

* Mark the business record on the entity's filing to notify the public that the entity has been the victim of fraudulent or unauthorized acts.

If a person alleged to have committed fraud or unauthorized acts fails to respond to the complaint, the allegations are deemed conceded, and the secretary of state will take the appropriate steps listed above in the same manner as if the finding had been made by an administrative law judge.

Additionally, the bill states that fraudulent filings are unfair or deceptive trade practices under the "Colorado Consumer Protection Act" and as such are subject to enforcement by the attorney general's office.

SB22-013 "Boards And Commissions: Concerning requirements for boards and commissions."

The bill makes changes related to the requirements for various boards and commissions (boards).

Section 1 of the bill includes standard provisions that generally apply to boards for which membership is based in full or in part on representation from the congressional districts of the state. Specifically, unless a statute or constitutional provision creating a board provides otherwise:

* If a member appointed to represent a district no longer resides in the district due solely to a change in the district's boundaries following redistricting, the member may serve the remainder of their term notwithstanding the nonresidency;

* If a board increases in size due to the addition of a new congressional district in the state, the appointing authority shall appoint a new member to represent the new district as soon as practicable; and

* If a board decreases in size due to the loss of a congressional district in the state, the appointing authority shall determine which current member's term should be terminated, or, if the member will be replaced by an at-large or other member, which member should be replaced at the expiration of the member's term. The appointing authority must attempt to ensure that the remaining membership adequately represents the remaining congressional districts.

Section 2 establishes standard provisions that apply to all boards unless the statute or constitutional provision creating a board provides differently. The standard provisions include: requiring an appointing authority to fill a vacancy for the remainder of the unexpired term, allowing the designee of a state official to fulfill the official's duties on the board, defining the term "minimum majority" to mean the lowest number of members that is more than half, allowing members to participate in meetings of the board remotely, and clarifying how partial terms count towards any applicable term limit. 

Sections 33 and 40 update the statutes that establish the membership of the state board of education and the board of regents of the university of Colorado, respectively, both of which are elected boards created in the state constitution. 

For the state board of education, section 33 provides for the election of one new member to represent the eighth congressional district and one new member from the state at large at the 2022 general election. 

For the board of regents, section 40 requires the election of a member to represent the eighth congressional district in place of the election of a member representing the state at large at the 2022 general election. 

Sections 37, 42, 52, 60, 73, 85, 86, 90, 101, and 107 amend statutes governing boards for which membership is based on the number of congressional districts in the state. For each board, the total number of members is no longer specified. Instead, each statute provides for the appointment of members from each congressional district in the state plus, as applicable, additional members as is currently provided for each board. Provisions requiring staggering of terms and limits on the number of board members who may be affiliated with a single political party are amended to refer to a "minimum majority" of the board to accommodate any future changes in board membership resulting from changes in the number of Colorado congressional districts. 

Section 133 repeals a statute that addressed the impact of redistricting on boards following the 2000 federal decennial census, and a statute that adjusted the lengths of terms of members of certain boards in 1987.

The remaining sections of the bill make changes to statutory provisions governing various boards with appointed members, including:

* Repealing deadlines for events or actions that have already occurred;

* Repealing language setting specific expiration dates or requirements for board members' terms in order to create staggering of the board members' terms, and replacing it with a general requirement that the terms of office are staggered;

* Repealing requirements for notice and hearing before a board member can be removed for cause by an appointing authority;

* Repealing, for certain boards, the requirement that a board member serve until the board member's successor is confirmed by the senate;

* Updating archaic language to conform to current drafting standards;

* Reorganizing sections to clarify requirements related to appointments, qualifications for appointees, and terms of office;

* Clarifying requirements related to the number of board members that may be affiliated with one political party; and

* Making conforming amendments.

Demons, Angels And Nephilim - Reflections On Tracking

One day, sketching out some ideas for a possible fictional story that never panned out, I came up with fanciful names for different tracks that kids could be put into in a school system.

The top 5% or so of the most promising students in terms of academics and character, on track to go to selective colleges and to graduate schools and other elite professions after that, were called the "angels" (e.g., future physicians).

The middle 90% were broken into three tracks of roughly equal size. The "preppies" who were academically strong enough and conformist enough to graduate from college (e.g., future pharmacists and registered nurses and physicians assistants). The "techies" who were bright enough and had the right inclination to joint the skilled trades or earn associate's degrees or occupational certificates (e.g., future licensed practical nurses). The "proles" were good kids who were capable of being self-supporting, but just weren't going to do well in any kind of further education or highly skilled trade.

At the bottom 5% were the students who were already on track for violent crime, academic failure, and turbulent personal lives, broken up into two groups. Most were "demons". A minority of them (perhaps 0.5% of the total) were "nephilim" who were smart and/or display inspired moments of good character, but were also disruptive and had turbulent lives that got them into trouble.

The names are fanciful, and the tracking system sketched out was more rigid than what exists in reality, but the proportions are roughly what the status quo produces.

Our society, in the United States, does a reasonably tolerable job of preparing angels and preppies through public K-12 schools, public colleges and universities, and private colleges and universities supported by financial aid systems, although family affluence plays too great a part in the kind of education that equally academically capable students receive. There is a good argument that there is degree inflation in many fields, but we do prepare youths on these tracks adequately.

The same is not true for the other two-thirds of young people.

Kids who would probably thrive on a techie track in both school and subsequent careers in the U.S., instead are typically put in dumbed down versions of curricula designed to prepare them for four year liberal arts college degrees which don't interest them at all because they have no use to them, and are then urged to enroll in college programs that they will most likely drop out of without completing.

Kids who would be put on a prole track in the status quo in the U.S. leave high school without functional literacy, without any marketable skills or job experience, and without any guidance in how to navigate adult life. They work at unskilled jobs, often in retail or food service, designed with the assumption that they are only a passing step on the path to something better, and they don't have options for housing, transportation, health care, or anything else that can allow them to live decent lives in the long run without much job advancement with what they earn.

Kids who would be put on a demon track get suspended or expelled or otherwise disciplined in school until they drop out, have contact with the juvenile justice system as adolescents, may join gangs, and eventually drift into the adult criminal justice system, vagrancy, or life at the margins of society.

There is almost no recognition at all in our society that there might be any kids who are nephilim, who get into a lot trouble but could also be very promising if given a chance to be nurtured, even though there are cases such as people who earn college degrees in prison and end up their only due to happenstance to some extent, who fit that description.

I believe that techies would be better served by being formally tracked into quality vocational education in high school and apprenticeships and community college programs afterwards than they are by the status quo.

I believe that proles would be better served by being formally tracks into programs giving them job experience in fairly unskilled jobs, teaching them life skills and "adulting", and having some formal support systems in place into their early twenties to provide them with structure and guidance similar to the residential side of being in college, than they are by the status quo.

Some techies and proles might be well served by a chance to experience military service or serve in a parallel civilian public service corps.

I believe that demons and nephilim are people who are reasonably easy to identify with fairly modest effort, who should really be targeted for intense and sustained intervention and support before they go too far off the rails, because they and society suffer in the relatively laissez faire approach taken to them until they are arrested for serious crimes in the status quo.

Educators and parents are often uncomfortable with formal tracking because they are terrified to an unreasonable degree about limiting people's possibilities, but in the process, provide inferior means to develop the potential that roughly two-thirds of students do have by trying to force feed them into a watered down preppie track to which they do not belong and in which they will never thrive.

It is all good and well to have outs by which someone who starts on one path can end up on another one.

For example, in the military, while most officers start the careers as active duty soldiers and sailors by attending a military academy or a reserve officer training program in college or through direct commissioning of clergy, lawyers and doctors, soldiers and sailors who start out at the bottom as enlisted soldiers and sailors who show promise in performing their duties can be picked to attend officer candidate school and earn a commission as a military officer. About one in five officers secured their commissions through this path, although there is considerable variation by service with almost two-thirds of Marine Officers following this course, while only about one in nine Army officers does.

Similarly, in civilian life, while most people who earn four year college degrees do so by entering a four year degree program directly, a minority transfer from a community college program where they may or may not have earned an associate's degree. About 20% of bachelor's degrees are earned by people who previously earned a two year degree, and some community college students transfer into four year programs without earning a two year degree.

But, while ways to jump to another path are desirable, it is equally or more important that people be well prepared for the career and life path that they are most likely to end up on in the best possible way, rather than letting the tail wag the dog.

Child Sexual Abuse Became More Rare Just As Porn Became More Available

Child Sexual Abuse Has Fallen Greatly Since The Early 1990s

As of 2016, the rate of substantiated child maltreatment has shown little change over the past several years. It is, however, considerably lower than in 1990, having fallen from 13 incidents per 1,000 children to 9 per 1,000. Rates of physical, sexual, and psychological or emotional abuse have declined the most since 2000, while rates of neglect have declined the least.

From 1990 to 1994, the number of cases of child abuse or neglect that were either substantiated or indicated rose from 861,000 to 1,032,000, reaching a rate of 15 incidents per 1,000 children under age 18 in 1994. From 1994 to 1999, the trend reversed, with the number of cases dropping to 829,000, a rate of 12 per 1,000, in 1999. . . . In 2016, there were approximately 672,000 maltreated children in the United States, a rate of 9.1 per 1,000. . . .

Reported rates of neglect are higher than those for other types of child maltreatment. In 2016, 7 children per 1,000 were reported victims of neglect, compared with 1.7 for physical abuse, 0.8 for sexual abuse, and 0.5 for psychological or emotional abuse (Appendix 2). 

Among all maltreated children, the proportion with reported neglect increased from 49 percent in 1990 to 75 percent in 2016; those with reported sexual abuse declined from 17 to 9 percent, and those with reported physical abuse declined from 27 to 18 percent. Less frequent types of maltreatment, including those classed as “unknown,” accounted for the balance (Appendix 1). 

Rates of physical and sexual abuse have declined over the past two decades, while rates of neglect have fluctuated. From 1990 to 2016, rates of substantiated physical abuse declined by 40 percent and sexual abuse rates declined by 62 percent; in contrast, rates of substantiated neglect fell by just 8 percent over this period.2

From here.

Other surveys show that the median age of first sexual intercourse is rising for both men and women, and that high school and younger students are having sex less often that they did in the previous few decades. Some trends from 1954 to 2003 are reported in this report. A nice chart illustrating the long term trend can be found here.

According to this source, as of 2017: Teen birth rates, and overall abortion rates, were at record lows as of 2017. "Adolescent pregnancies are also decreasing precipitously, down 55 percent between 1990 and 2011. Early data suggest those numbers will continue to fall: Birthrates for women between the ages of 15 and 19 declined an additional 35 percent between 2011 and 2016, hitting the lowest levels since CDC began collecting data."

Based upon sources cited in a 2016 post at this blog: "There were about 1,030 children born to mothers aged 15 to 17 in New Jersey in 2014 (a rate of 5.8 per 1,000 girls aged 15-17 . . . down 78% from a peak in 1991), and about 37 children born to mothers under age 15 in New Jersey in 2014." If 2014 was equal to the average number of marriages by minor girls from 1995 to 2012 in New Jersey, 193 girls under age 18 in New Jersey were married in that year, including 9 girls between the ages of 13 and 15. Marriages in New Jersey for 16 and 17 year olds can be authorized with parental consent and 91% of them are of girls under eighteen to men over the age of eighteen. Roughly 19% of teen mothers in New Jersey marry before turning age 18. This is almost certainly a number that has declined over time, so it probably overstates the marriage rate for girls under age 18 in New Jersey.

According to this 2012 report: "In 2012, adolescents aged <15 and 15–19 years accounted for 0.4% and 12.2% of all abortions, respectively, and had abortion rates of 0.8 and 9.2 abortions per 1,000 adolescents aged <15 and 15–19 years, respectively. From 2003 to 2012, the percentage of abortions accounted for by adolescents aged 15–19 years decreased 27% and their abortion rate decreased 40%. These decreases were greater than the decreases for women in any older age group." Note that abortions performed for girls under the age of 15 are so rare that statistical significant becomes an issue in trend measurements except for very large sample sizes, since only one abortion in 250 involves a girl under the age of 15.

Another 2012 post at this blog has similar statistics.

A 2010 post at this blog noted that:  "According to the CDC report: "The [birth] rate for the youngest teenagers, 10-14 years, fell from 0.6 to 0.5 per 1,000, the lowest level ever reported. . . . The birth rate for teenagers 15-17 years declined 7 percent to 20.1 per 1,000. This rate dropped 9 percent from 2007 (22.1) to 2009, and was 48 percent lower than the rate reported in 1991 (38.6 per 1,000)." Teen births are down 59% from their 1957 modern peak, about 33% from their most recent peak in the late 1980s (when I was 15-19 years old), and significantly below the depressed levels of World War II which rebounded from a long period of muted fertility with the baby boom. With the exception of a surge in teen birth rates in the late 1980s and some small, short term statistical blips, teen birth rates have declined steadily from the 1957 peak of the baby boom to the present."

Overall rapes declined 24% from 2001 to 2010, and declined further in both the late 1990s and the early part of the current decade.

Access To Free Pornography Online Has Increased Greatly Since The Early 1990s

Internet access was first available for people other than scientists and military users in the early 1990s. By the year 2000, about 50% of Americans had Internet access, and it rose to about 84% by 2015. The rise of free pornography available over the Internet lagged only slightly behind the rise in Internet access generally.

The line for Internet use in developed countries, globally, on the chart below from Wikipedia, closely parallels the trends in the United States:

Online Pornography Is Not Causing Increased Rates Of Child Sexual Assault

As shown above, the rise in rates of Internet access, which also brought the rise of access to free pornography videos, also coincides with large declines in the rate of sexual assaults overall, and record low teen pregnancy rates, teen birth rates, and teen abortion rates, including all time record lows for pregnancies in girls under age 15.

This data suggests that the concern that increased access to pornography over the Internet has fueled increased rates of child sexual assault, appears to be unfounded, although it is not impossible that, for example, child to child sexual assaults (which have always been, and continue to be, a minority of sexual assaults on children) have risen for this reason. 

Notably, this source, while calling the numbers alarming, does not make any statements regarding whether this is become more or less common, or what proportion of child sexual assault cases this involves. It also provides no data demonstrating what share of these cases involve pornography viewing by perpetrators.

For example, according to this 2015 source, "96% of people who sexually abuse children are male, and 76.8% of people who sexually abuse children are adults." This implies that 23.2% of perpetrators are under the age of eighteen (predominantly boys). The same source states that 91% of sexual assault victims are female. And, a minority of victims are children. The same source states that "12.3% of women were age 10 or younger at the time of their first rape/victimization, and 30% of women were between the ages of 11 and 17. 27.8% of men were age 10 or younger at the time of their first rape/victimization." Of course, one would not be at all surprised to find that the victims of child perpetrators of sexual assault are themselves young. This statistic doesn't distinguish between adolescent and pre-pubescent boys who commit sexual assaults, although I suspect that older offenders are more common than younger offenders. According to this source: "82% of all victims under 18 are female."

A different data set finds with regard to victims of child sexual abuse that:

Out of the yearly 63,000 sexual abuse cases substantiated, or found strong evidence, by Child Protective Services (CPS), the perpetrator was most often the parent: 

80% of perpetrators were a parent

6% were other relatives

5% were "other" (from siblings to strangers)

4% were unmarried partners of a parent

This would suggest that significantly less than 16% of child sexual assaults are committed by other children (presumably the relationship to the perpetrator was unknown or not available in 5% of cases in the sample), although child to child sexual assaults are probably disproportionately unlikely to be reported to Child Protective Services.

Wikipedia examines the issue of child on child sexual abuse in this entry. It notes that:

The incidence of child-on-child sexual abuse is not known with any certainty, similar to abuse by adults. It frequently goes unreported because it is not widely known of in the public, and often occurs outside of adults' direct supervision. Even if known by adults, it is sometimes dismissed as harmless by those who do not understand the implications. In particular, intersibling abuse is under-reported relative to the reporting rates for parent-child sexual abuse, and disclosure of the incest by the victim during childhood is rare. 

This implies that the long term trend in the rate at which this happens is unknown and may be heavily influenced by changes in reporting rate as opposed to changes in incidence rates.

It seems more likely that this is a case of "moral panic" at a time when the problem is actually becoming much less prevalent.

I am not claiming that greater pornography availability caused reduced rates of child sexual assault. In all likelihood, other causes were much more important.

For example, almost all other kinds of crime also became much less common in this time period.

But, I am claiming, that the claim that greater pornography availability increased rates of child sexual assault is strongly disfavored by the available data. If child sexual assault rates are down dramatically to near record lows, in a time period when pornography access has seen the biggest increase in the history of the world, it is unlikely that pornography access is causing increased rates of child sexual assaults.

Education, Substance Abuse and Prison

Executive Summary

Earning a high school diploma in the ordinary course, taking some college classes after earning a high school diploma in the ordinary course, and earning either a two year or a four year college degree after earning a high school diploma in the ordinary course, all lower the likelihood that someone will be incarcerated in prison incredibly (almost completely). If a person with those educational achievements also does not have a moderate to severe substance abuse problem, they are extremely unlikely to be incarcerated in prison.

People who end up in prison, overwhelmingly, have cognitive and behavioral health issues. Less than a quarter of Colorado prison inmates graduated from high school in the ordinary course (as opposed to getting a GED) (compared to about 85%+ of the general population), and just 1% have earned any college degree (compared to about 43% of the general population). Substance abuse is a problem for 79% of inmates. Just 6% of Colorado inmates both have a high school diploma (as opposed to a GED) and don't have a moderate to severe substance abuse problem, and some of the inmates in that 6% have moderate to severe mental health problems. The percentages in Colorado are typically nationally. (Although it is worth noting that mental health issues are much more of a risk factor for people without educational attainment and people with substance abuse problems than for people wh have educational attainment and don't have moderate to severe substance abuse problems).

While pursuing educational opportunities while in incarcerated reduces a person's risk of reoffending by about 15% (regardless of the exact nature of the educational program pursued), this is not nearly so protective as educational attainment prior to any incarceration.

As a result, someone who has earned a GED (which often happens while incarcerated), often is at more of an elevated risk of incarceration than someone who has never graduated from high school and does not have a GED, since many people in this category are simply immigrants from places where secondary education was less universal or had difficulty obtaining a high school diploma in the United States because they were not fluent in English. But, immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than comparable native born citizens (something that illustrates the "fit immigrant" hypothesis).

In contrast, a native born American who speaks English as his or her primary language, frequently doesn't graduate from high school due to discipline problems or other behavioral issues, rather than because they aren't intelligent enough to master the academic material. So, a high school diploma is more of an indicator of socialization than it is of academic ability in the United States for native born individuals.

The extreme protective effect of educational attainment, while notable in and of itself, also illustrates a point that the practice of sealing juvenile crime records otherwise obscures. This is that the lion's share of adult felons were engaged in disruptive behavior and frequently in criminal activity, before becoming adults. The earlier someone has run ins with the juvenile justice system, the more likely it is that they will have run ins with the adult criminal justice system.

More generally, "original sin" is a more accurate metaphor for reality than "innocence at birth". Almost everyone becomes less likely to engage in disruptive anti-social behavior as they get older. Young children are more violent than older children, and children are more violent than adults, and the age of an offender when released from prison is one of the strongest predictors of recidivism, because typically offenders "age out" of blue collar criminal activity as they get older. An older child or adult may have a greater ability to successfully attempt to commit a serious crime than a younger person, however, which is why the most serious crimes aren't committed by young children.

Education is so protective because someone who is incapable of refraining from anti-social behavior is unlikely to earn high school diplomas, to have steady enough attendance to make taking college classes make sense, or to earn college degrees. If you are sufficiently well socialized to graduate from high school and college before you are first incarcerated, you are unlikely to engage in the more disruptive behavior needed to get you incarcerated for a felony as an adult after you graduate because people get tamer with age, nor more criminal.

While the primary protective effect of age before a first offense and education comes from being socialized not to commit serious crimes, a secondary part of the protective effect is that people with educational attainment don't have extreme economic need that can pressure someone to commit a felony because the vast majority of felonies for which people are convicted have some economic motive, and a tertiary part of the protective effect is that people without a prior criminal record who have some kind of educational attainment are much more likely to be treated leniently in the criminal justice system when they do commit a felony, which is also, often a less serious felony.

High school dropouts are more often unemployed than anyone else, are more often fired for conduct or poor performance, get the lowest paying and least desirable jobs when they do find work, so they are often in poverty. And, judges imposing sentences and district attorneys negotiating plea deals usual see incarceration of high school dropouts as less harmful to society than the incarceration of people who have educational attainment and have demonstrated an ability to function in society in the past.

There is more analysis below the break.

Requiring A Two Year Old To Represent Herself In Court Is A Mockery Of Justice

I have taken the liberty of republishing this piece in full because it has the character of a opinion piece that the author (Nick Martin) would like to be spread further. If I receive an objection, I will keep the link and a very short excerpt instead.

Fernanda Jacqueline Davila was taken from her grandmother when they approached the U.S. border in late July. Just two years old, Davila has spent the past two months communicating with a caseworker and translators before finally being brought before a judge.

The New York Times offered a heartbreaker this morning, publishing a profile of Davila’s journey through the makeshift judicial system that’s become the U.S. immigration courts. Davila was the 26th child Judge Randa Zagzoug ruled on that day; she was followed by four more to round out the afternoon. She was still the youngest ever to pass through the courtroom, according to the paper.

In the time between the American government entering her into its steadily growing stable of migrant children and her court date, Davila stayed at Cayuga Centers in New York City. The Times notes that “many” children were allowed to spend the night with foster families but that they had to remain in custody during the day. What this belies is the increasing number of cases in which the parents and extended family of detained children are being denied in their attempts to reconnect their families. As MSNBC reported in August, those reunification efforts are made even more difficult by the fact that, of the hundreds of undocumented children still detained after being separated from their families, most of their parents have already been deported. Take a recent report from the Associated Press, which similarly focused on the drama surrounding two-year-old Alexa. 

Her mother, Araceli Ramos Bonilla, had applied for a U.S. visa in an attempt to bring her daughter to America and escape an abusive relationship with Alexa’s father. But the visa process dragged on, leading Ramos to pack up with Alexa and travel to the Texas border in 2015, before Trump’s ghoulish policy had set in. As the AP reported, she was stopped by Border Patrol and Alexa was taken from her custody. The agents told Ramos she would never see her daughter again and deemed Alexa an “unaccompanied minor.” 

Fast forward 15 months and Ramos was deported after having her case assigned to a Louisiana immigration court that had denied 95 percent of all asylum requests (compared to a national average of 50), according to the report. Alexa was handed over to a pair of foster parents by a rural Michigan judge, who granted two American adults temporary guardianship. In total, it took 15 months, during which Ramos starting an online campaign in which she posted videos of her weeping and begging for a reunion with Alexa, before the U.S. legal system corrected its mistake. 

Ashley Tabaddor, the president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told the Times that until the last year, cases like Alexa’s and Davila’s were rare. Before the adherence to the current fear-based immigration policy of family separation, she said the courts almost never saw cases concerning children under the age of six. 

As of September, there were at least 12,800 kids in U.S. custody, roughly five times the number the were being held in the spring of 2017. They’re kids like Davila, no different from any other would-be American kid. Per the Times:

The youngest child to come before the bench in federal immigration courtroom No. 14 was so small she had to be lifted into the chair. Even the judge in her black robes breathed a soft “aww” as her latest case perched on the brown leather.  

Her feet stuck out from the seat in small gray sneakers, her legs too short to dangle. Her fists were stuffed under her knees. As soon as the caseworker who had sat her there turned to go, she let out a whimper that rose to a thin howl, her crumpled face a bursting dam. 

You shouldn’t need a reporter, or anyone, to wax poetic about two-year-olds losing months of their young lives to the shitshow that is the U.S. immigration system to understand that what’s happening to Alexa, Davila, and thousands of other kids is fucked up. Ultimately, the more distressing fact is that Davila, currently lost in the system, is not a cute, shy young girl with emotions and fears. 

There, away from her family, she is just child No. 26 in courtroom 14.

From here.