Mad Kings

According to tradition, the Roman Republic was preceded by the Kingdom of Rome from 753 BCE to 509 BCE (244 years spanned by just seven kings).

The Roman Republic had lasted for about 482 years after it began with the establishment of the Roman consulate in 509 BCE. 

The first Roman emperor, Augustus, took office in 27 BCE. Tiberius, the second Roman emperor, who took office in 17 CE was reputedly mentally ill, although less flamboyantly that two of his three successors. Caligula, the third Roman emperor, took office in 37 CE. Nero, the fifth Roman emperor, took office in 54 CE.  Two later emperors before the split and then fall of the Roman empire were also considered mentally ill: Commodus who took office in 177 CE and Elagabalus who took office in 218 CE.

The Roman Empire split between the Western and Eastern (Byzantine) empires in 364 CE (391 years after the Roman Empire was established), and the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 CE (112 years after the split).

According to Google AI (I'm feeling lazy today):

The most notable and documented "mad kings" include:

• King Charles VI of France (1368–1422): Often called Charles le Fou (Charles the Mad), he suffered from manic episodes and the infamous "glass delusion," where he believed he was made of brittle glass and wore iron rods in his clothing to prevent himself from shattering. [1, 2]
• King George III of Great Britain (1738–1820): Known as the monarch who "lost America," George III suffered from prolonged bouts of mental instability—long thought to be porphyria—which caused him to experience severe logorrhea and depression, eventually necessitating a regency. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–1886): Famously dubbed "Mad King Ludwig," he was deeply eccentric, neglecting state affairs to focus entirely on building extravagantly expensive, fairytale-style palaces (such as Neuschwanstein Castle) before being declared insane. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• King Christian VII of Denmark (1749–1808): Suffering from severe mental illness and paranoia, his inability to govern left his kingdom in the hands of various regents and his royal physician. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• Tsar Ivan IV of Russia (1530–1584): Better known as Ivan the Terrible, his early, capable rule slowly devolved into legendary paranoia and violent, sadistic outbursts later in his life, particularly following the death of his first wife. [1, 2, 3]
• King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon (634–562 BC): Often considered the original "mad king," the granddaddy of Babylonian rulers was struck down by a seven-year descent into animal-like insanity as recounted in the Book of Daniel.

In addition to some other European and Middle Eastern mad kings, there are at least two notable ones from Japan (a list that surely omits notable mad Chinese emperors):

• Emperor Yōzei (陽成天皇, Yōzei-tennō, 869–949, ruled 876–884) was described by the 14th-century historian Kitabatake Chikafusa as affected by madness, killing people and animals without reason. His unstable and violent behavior prompted his advisors to force his abdication in 884.^[29]
• Emperor Taishō (大正天皇, Taishō-tennō, 1879–1926, ruled 1912–1926) of Japan, had a variety of neurological disorders, which though at least partially physical in origin incorporated psychological elements as well. Discussion or criticism of an emperor, including that of health issues, remains a controversial subject in Japan for cultural, political, and religious reasons and is referred to as the Chrysanthemum taboo.^[30][31][32]

The United States of America will have persisted for 250 years from its self-declared birthday of July 4, 1776, in a few weeks. Mad kings were a problem that the Founders were familiar with at the time that they drafted the current U.S. Constitution (which took effect in 1789 and added the Bill of Rights in 1791). Indeed, this clear and present danger is the source of some of the emphatic anti-monarchy provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

Probably the most similar historical figures to Trump 2.0 are Nero and Caligula, although there are other somewhat similar examples from European and Asian monarchies.

There is great fear that President Trump signals the end of democracy in America, if not actually on his watch, but showing the way to, and heralding, its end. Then again, while some mad kings were followed by more sane monarchs, others were followed in fairly short order by the demise of the monarchy's power, or its abolition entirely.

Our Dismal Moment

The left is fighting for all it is worth to keep democracy alive in America, to create a world where justice prevails, where villains aren't rewarded, where decency and empathy guide policy, where science and reason are heard, and where people doing good are empowered through cooperative effort.

The right has less noble goal and tries to achieve them with lies, cheating, and violence. There was a time when there were intellectually defensible conservative policy arguments that the right tried to advance. But that has died with MAGA. Trump is a post-policy politician who is doing is best to run the federal government, and the United States of America into the ground without regard to any legitimate arguments for doing so.

Why the political right in the United States, which is suffering and will suffer further from Trump's agenda, doesn't wake up and turn on Trump is hard to understand.

Trump, a life long con man, rapist, and pedophile, and more recently, a felon, an insurrectionist and hard core fascist (like his father), is unraveling further into his most basic psychopathic tendencies as, at age 79, his dementia, probably the same Lewy body dementia that afflicted his father Fred in his 70s, gets steadily worse. The average 79 year old man in the U.S. has a life expectancy of 9-10 years and Trump is in below average health. The average person with Lewy body dementia dies 7-8 years after symptoms start, and they started a while ago in Trump. He may or may not manage to stay alive for the next three and a half years. He is the most unpopular President in U.S. history (rivaled only by himself in his previous term).

He's already done irreparable harm. A defeat in the 2026 midterm elections could mitigate the amount of further harm he can do, and would make it harder for him to carry out a coup ending democracy for good.

Once in place, dictatorial regimes can persist for generations. Look at North Korea.

Democrats really, really want to resolve the crisis facing the United States while coloring within the lines, rather than slicing the Gordian knot. MAGA has no such scruples.

Today, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will be having a summit meeting in Alaska, mostly about ongoing Ukraine War. In a better world, treachery would leave both men, each one of the greatest forces for evil in the entire world in their generation, dead. This is highly unlikely to happen, however. We'll see what does.

The night is pretty dark, although there is plenty of room for it to get darker. I'd like to think that hope can survive it, but I'm not sure.

DNA Evidence Probably Identifies Jack The Ripper

More than a dozen suspects who could have been Jack the Ripper, one of the earliest well known serial killers, have been seriously considered. 

A police investigation into a series of eleven brutal murders committed in Whitechapel and Spitalfields between 1888 and 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888. Five victims—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—are known as the "canonical five" and their murders between 31 August and 9 November 1888 are often considered the most likely to be linked. The murders were never solved.

Several other murders, less definitively connected to this spree than the "canonical five" also occurred in the vicinity before the man who is now clearly the prime suspect was committed to an insane asylum.

But, DNA evidence has tipped the balance and arguably cracked this cold case case and linked the killings to one of the top suspects.

A Polish barber by the name of Aaron Kosminski was a suspect at the time of the five murders in Whitechapel, east London, in 1888. . . . A bloodstained shawl said to have been found on the body of one of the victims – which was purchased at auction in 2007 by author and Ripper researcher Russell Edwards – was recently found to have the DNA of both the victim and Kosminski. In October, the Daily Mail revealed that Mr Edwards had uncovered new evidence of Kosminski’s links to the highly secretive Freemasons which may have motivated his sadistic killings and shielded him from law enforcement, ensuring he was locked away in an asylum, where he eventually died. . . . Aaron Kosminski was a Polish immigrant who worked as a barber upon moving to London. He was only a young man when he embarked on his killing spree – 23 years old to be exact. To uncover the killer’s identity, Kosminski’s oldest brother’s great-great-granddaughter actually helped Edwards. She provided a DNA sample that was able to be matched with that of the shawl. . . . When the original inquest was held on October 4, 1888, a verdict of ‘wilful murder’ was returned. But police were still hunting for the serial killer at the time.

From here.

While the DNA match isn't ironclad, it apparently relied on mtDNA which isn't as useful at definitively fingering a suspect as autosomal DNA, it also corroborates other evidence against him which was stronger than the evidence against of any of the other leading suspects, even without DNA evidence. He was formally diagnosed at the asylum with paranoid schizophrenia. 

On 12 July 1890, Kosminski was placed in Mile End Old Town workhouse due to his worsening mental illness, with his brother Woolf certifying the entry, and was released three days later. On 4 February 1891, he was returned to the workhouse, possibly by the police, and on 7 February, he was transferred to Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum. A witness to the certification of his entry, recorded as Jacob Cohen, gave some basic background information and stated that Kosminski had threatened his sister with a knife. It is unclear whether this meant Kosminski's sister or Cohen's. Kosminski remained at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum for the next three years until he was admitted on 19 April 1894 to Leavesden Asylum. Case notes indicate that Kosminski had been ill since at least 1885. His insanity took the form of auditory hallucinations, a paranoid fear of being fed by other people that drove him to pick up and eat food dropped as litter, and a refusal to wash or bathe. 

The cause of his insanity was recorded as "self-abuse", which is thought to be a euphemism for masturbation. His poor diet seems to have kept him in an emaciated state for years; his low weight was recorded in the asylum case notes. By February 1919, he weighed just 96 pounds (44 kg). He died the following month, aged 53.

While the evidence that Kosminski was Jack the Ripper might not meet modern standards of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, in a case that is 130 years old occurring at the dawn of modern policing, there is enough evidence that is is very likely that he was the Ripper, and he is far more likely to have been the killer than any of the other leading suspects.

The Shooting In Washington Park

The Shooting

The description of the events in this section is compiled mostly from multiple news reports at the Denver Post (including this one), the Denver Gazette, and three TV news channel websites (7 News including this one, 9 News, and Fox 31 News).

My previous post on middle class crime, was motivated by, and a prelude to, this post about the February 2, 2025 shooting in Washington Park, in Denver, Colorado, about three blocks from my home, that took place around 2:30-2:40 p.m. on a sunny warm day in broad daylight, just minutes after my wife decided to take another route home from the Washington Park Recreation Center than she had been planning to take. 

The shooting took place roughly Downing and Kentucky streets near a major west entrance to the park (it may have taken place a block further south at Downing and Tennessee, there are conflicting reports and there is a park bench there that could have been the one central to this story).

Twenty-eight year old Ryan Martin Egelston is suspected of having gotten into an argument with another man over a park bench at this location. 

As a Denver Post story explains:

Egelston got into a fight with another man in the park around 2 p.m. Sunday after the man asked if he could share a park bench with Egelston, according to an arrest affidavit released by the Denver Police Department.

Witnesses told investigators that Egelston spat on the man, pushed him in the chest and punched him in the lower back, according to the affidavit.

The man was walking away with his bike when Egelston allegedly pulled out a gun and shot at him. Egelston didn’t hit the man, but police said the bullet punctured one of the bike’s tires.

About 90 seconds later, Egelston shot at a second, unrelated victim from behind, striking him near the jaw, according to the affidavit. Witnesses told the Denver Post on Sunday that the bullet entered the man’s neck and went out his face.

“At no point did the second victim and (Egelston) appear to have any sort of disagreement or altercation prior to the shooting,” Denver police officials said in the arrest affidavit.

Chaos erupted in the crowed park in response. A medical doctor who was in the park nearby provided first aid to the man who was shot until an ambulance arrived and took him to a hospital. The man who was shot is expected to survive despite these serious injuries.

UPDATE: February 14, 2025:

A silver lining to the fateful day was the presence of Lakshmi Karra, Denver Health family medicine doctor, who was also at the park. She rushed to help Ben without hesitating. "I noticed that there was what looked like a gunshot wound on his neck," she said. "I took his picnic blanket out of his bag and I held pressure on his wound." Karra called 911 after which the Denver Health Paramedics rushed Ben to the hospital.

From 9 News.  

Egelston was muttering and cursing to himself and displayed his handgun to two women nearby telling them not to photograph him. He then tried to flee in his red Hyundai sedan.  

The 7 News story adds some details from the arrest affdavit and criminal case:

Moments after the second shooting, Egelston was seen walking southbound on S. Downing St. from E. Kentucky Ave. before he got inside a red Hyundai Sudan with Colorado license plate CIS-K97.

Denver Police officers who responded to the scene chased the vehicle with their sirens blaring before they rammed the car at E. Kentucky Ave. just west of S. Downing St. “due to the active threat to the public and in an attempt to limit a high-speed chase,” according to the affidavit.

At least two Denver police patrol cars surrounded the vehicle and took Engelson into custody. A black Glock handgun was then recovered from the passenger seat of the vehicle, according to investigators.

Egelston was taken to Denver Police Department headquarters where he was interviewed by police about two hours later following the shootings, though it’s not clear why Egelston got into an argument with the first victim and why he reportedly shot the two men, as the affidavit obtained by Denver7 Monday is heavily redacted.

The suspect is currently being held for investigation of attempted first-degree murder on a $1 million cash-only bond.

He was also carrying a concealed weapon in a Denver park, which is itself illegal.

UPDATE (February 10, 2024) from the Denver Post:

Ryan Martin Egelston has been charged with four counts of first-degree attempted murder, one count of assault and one count of vehicular eluding, all felonies, according to court records. He is also charged with six sentence-enhancing charges related to violent crimes and weapons.

Egelston told police he didn’t intend to shoot anyone, that he thought the two victims were involved in psyops and he was previously hospitalized for mental health concerns.

A GoFundMe has been established for the shooting victim Ben Varga, who is 23 years old, by his family. As I write this, it has raised $34,935 towards a $40,000 goal from 530 donors. Varga was taken to Denver Health, a level one trauma center. The GoFundMe page explains that:

On February 2nd, 2025, our friend, brother, and son, Ben Varga, was the victim of a shooting in Wash Park, Denver. Ben was shot from behind while waiting to meet up with friends. The bullet traveled through the back of his neck and straight through his jaw and chin. We are incredibly grateful that he survived. In what can only be described as a miracle, the bullet narrowly missed critical structures like his trachea and spine, preventing even more devastating consequences. The visible impact on his face is minimal, given that the bullet traveled in a way that left his facial structure largely intact on the surface. Since the incident, Ben has been in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) at Denver Health, undergoing multiple surgeries and receiving round-the-clock care. His recovery will be long, but we remain hopeful. . . . 

Ben, a lifelong Coloradan, has always had a deep love for his home state and the community around him. He graduated from CU Boulder's Leeds School of Business last May, is a dedicated Buffs fan, and recently moved to downtown Denver to start a new job. Ben is also a big fan of all Colorado sports, including the Broncos, Avalanche, and Nuggets. When he's not cheering for local teams, he loves skiing, playing pickleball, trying new restaurants, and traveling the world. As a triplet, he shares a special bond with his brother, sister, and family. His love extends deeply to his friends and his dogs, Tatum and Bernie.

Ben's picture appears on his "recovery" blog: 

About Shooting Suspect Ryan Egelston

The suspect in this case is not much of a fit to stereotypes about random shootings in big cities.

Egelston attended the University of Dayton, in Ohio, from 2015-2019 where he got decent enough grades, after graduating from Buffalo Grove High School in Buffalo Grove, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) on schedule, starting in August of 2011. He was born sometime in 1996. While he was in college, in the summer of 2018, he was an intern with Respire Ministries, helping to teach English to Haitian immigrants (probably the ones made famous in the 2024 Presidential race).

After he graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting and finance he became a CPA for the Big Four accounting firm of Deloitte, which he rose to the position of senior auditor over a period of two years and four months. He moved to Denver in 2021 to work as a senior associate for a financial consulting firm involving "interim financial assistance primarily to Fortune 1000 companies during critical times of need" performing accounting, auditing and compliance functions for a year until November of 2022, and was admitted as a licensed CPA in Colorado by reciprocity.

Before moving to Denver and until shortly after he moved to Denver, he was a treasurer and trustee on the board of the mother church, called "Destiny Church" and an "inherited church" called "Risen Church" and was a youth ministry leader at Destiny Church that served more than 100 members. At these meetings he "casted vision." He also worked in their addiction ministries.

Then, his ordinary and highly successful career path shifted. He took what he described as a "gap year" and "career break" for nineteen months, until May of 2024, during which he "authored over 4 unpublished books and numerous business consulting articles and thought leadership." Over the last nine months he has been working remotely providing accounting and finance consulting services for "One10" which I suspect, but don't know, is the entity in which he engaged in self-employment.

He describes himself as revivalist preacher and a Revelations 11 witness, maintained a blog until September of 2023, and made a dozen or two TikTok posts. The blog posts were pretty out there from the perspective of the uninitiated. For example, his September 25, 2023 blog post (the last one on his site) he said: 

Moore’s Law is the prophetic fulfillment of Daniel 12:4, which is prophecy on the end time’s that detail that knowledge shall increase stating, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.”

The pictures and videos on his website and TikTok posts depict a clean cut, fit, white young man, who is almost frenetic with impatient energy.

The "about me" section on his webpage says (fancy formatting in the original not fully preserved):

Passionate About Revival, Writing Books, Teaching the Word of God,

Empowerment, Leadership Development,

Business Development/Consulting Services, and Public Speaking

I am a small business owner who is 'sold out' with a deep passion to preach and teach the Word of God with all my chips on the table, and I offer speaking arrangements where I hope to be the spiritual thermostat for you, your business, or your church! When not speaking or writing books, I love to consult with companies and would love the opportunity to help take your business to the next level and be a sounding board of wisdom in your room, a voice of reason, a voice that you can trust that will come in looking out for your best intentions with the utmost excellence. Business is my passion, people are my concentration, and the Word of God is what I belt out and yearn to live out with the very actions of my life. I choose to live 'under the Word,' apply it in every area of my life, and yearn to see an on-fire and burning church ready with oil for the return of Christ.

Currently, I am writing books believing God to impact thousands of people in whatever manner possible and dream of speaking all around the world. I am deeply passionate about client service and love adding value in the consulting sphere solving complex problems and being the sounding board for decision makers like you! Moreover, I'd love to come speak at your church or organization and inspire and build up one anothers' faith, usher in a spirit of revival, and preach LIGHTS out. If you think I'd be a great fit to speak, please do not hesitate to reach out!

A Reddit thread provides some more insights about him. One comment states:

Went to college with this guy. He became super religious after moving to Colorado and started going a little nutty. We always knew he was a little off, this is taking it to the next level.

Another comment in the thread states:

I'm almost certain I saw this dude tweaking around 1st and Emerson like two weeks ago. Same red hyundai parked in the alley, same build/look. He was trying to get into the abandoned homes on that block. I remember it now because the dude looked really wound up and had something he kept pocketing/holding. i got the fuck away ASAP. It confirms my initial suspicions that it was a gun. freaky shit.

A third comment in the thread states: 

OMG this dude came through the gas station one night and was having some kind of schizophrenic episode. He did the gesture of a rifle in his arms and I asked him if he was doing alright. He like snapped out of it said he’s going great and then went back to his episode.

Analysis

Looking at all of the facts and circumstances, including his own statement to police, I have to concur with the final Reddit comment quoted above that this shooting is probably a result of Ryan Egelston developing schizophrenia symptoms (or if not that, some other form of psychosis).

His life apparently started to go off track sometime between late 2021 when he left his job at Deloitte and November of 2022 when he left the position that he took in Denver after only a year to take a "gap year." He would have been 25-26 years old at the time, which is a very typical time for men with schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis (whose brains develop at a somewhat later age than women) to have their symptoms reach a point where they become unmanageable. These symptoms probably presented themselves at a more manageable level, perhaps even at such a slight level that one could doubt that they were real, several years earlier.

Inability to function in a highly structured conventional business setting like an accounting firm, paranoia and overreaction to unaggressive conduct from others, claims to see "visions", and making seemingly bizarre connections between ideas that other would see as unrelated, are all classic symptoms of schizophrenia.

He probably didn't self-diagnose his situation as a mental health issue (although his claim that he was previously hospitalized suggests otherwise), and his religious peers probably didn't either, as it seemed to be consistent with his self-image as a religious prophet or witness. 

His behavior as reported at Reddit and his lack of work history according to LinkedIn, also suggests that he may have been nearing the end of his rope financially, after being on the top of the world financially briefly after college as an accountant at a big national accounting firm, and then apparently exhausting his savings. This may have further fueled his paranoia and desperation.

From the perspective of criminal law, his behavior seems to belie the state of mind (typically associated with severe schizophrenia) that is necessary for him to present an insanity defense to his charges, although his lawyers, once hired or appointed, will probably have no choice but to present this defense in the criminal prosecution arising from this incident. The statement he made to police after the shooting might support this defense.

If he is not found to be incompetent and involuntarily committed as a threat to himself and others, he will probably plea bargain down from attempted murder to aggregated assault and received a fairly lengthy prison sentence in connection with that charge.

As a result of the quick response of the police to the incident, the numerous witnesses, and the ample physical evidence, a defense strategy claiming that he wasn't the shooter, or that he had a legal justification for the shooting, such as self-defense, would almost surely be futile. 

It is also plausible that an investigation will link him to other crimes for which he may face additional charges for which an insanity defense is not available (such as burglary, or carrying a concealed weapon in a Denver city park).

Middle Class Crime

Middle Class Prison Inmates Are Rare

There is a lot of data on the characteristics of offenders and nature of the offenses committed overall, and there is significant data on sentencing for felonies (sentencing data for misdemeanors and ordinance violations is much harder to come by).

One of the things that we know from that data is that having any college education, even attending a single semester at community college and then dropping out, profoundly reduces you odds of being a prison inmate relative to have no college education at all. Your odds of being a prison inmate are 40-fold or more lower.

Clearly, this is mostly a sorting effect. 

Your likelihood of being a prison inmate is highest if you don't graduate from high school and also don't earn a GED. 

The next highest likelihood of being a prison inmate is earning a GED (even though it takes a higher IQ to do so than it does to graduate from high school in the ordinary course), rather than graduating from high school and then not receiving any further higher education. This reflects the fact that people, especially men, drop out of high school not just because they are low in IQ and not succeeding in school for that reason. They also drop out because they have trouble behaving appropriately in a high school setting, which is highly connected to their likelihood of committing crimes and going to prison.

Graduating from high school in the ordinary course rather than earning a GED, and then not receiving any further higher education is the next highest likelihood of being a prison inmate, and is still quite high.

But, some college or more dramatically reduces your likelihood of being a prison inmate, and the number of prison inmates who are in that category is so small that the statistics often aren't broken down further into people who have only some college, people who have associate's degrees, people who have four year degrees, and people who have graduate or professional degrees beyond a four year undergraduate degree.

By comparison, in the general population:

In 2022, the highest level of education of the population age 25 and older in the United States ranged from less than high school to advanced degrees beyond a bachelor’s degree.

9% had less than a high school diploma or equivalent.

28% had high school as their highest level of school completed.

15% had completed some college but not a degree.

10% had an associate degree as their highest level of school completed.

23% had a bachelor’s degree as their highest degree.

14% had completed advanced education such as a master’s degree, professional degree or doctorate. . . . 

In 2022, 30.1% of men age 25 and older had completed a high school diploma or GED as their highest level of educational attainment, compared with 27.0% of women age 25 and older.

In 2022, 39.0% of women age 25 and older, and 36.2% of men in the same age range, had completed a bachelor’s degree or more as their highest level of educational attainment. 

About 16% of adults have passed a GED exam. About half of people who pass the GED exam go on to have at least some college. So, about 8% of adults have a GED as their highest educational credential (roughly the same as the percentage of high school dropouts who haven't passed a GED exam). 

Both high school dropouts and people who have a GED exam as their highest educational credential are disproportionately men. In the case of the GED, this is, in part, because a large share of GED exams are taken high school dropouts who are in prison, and prison inmates are disproportionately men.

So, about 36% of men have at least a four year degree, 24% of men have some college but no degree or an associate's degree, about 20% of men graduated from high school in the ordinary course, 10% have a GED rather than a high school diploma and no college, and about 10% of men are high school dropouts who have not earned a GED.

The roughly 60% of men with at least some college have a dramatically reduced likelihood of going to prison. The 20% of men who are high school dropouts or only have a GED have a highly elevated likelihood of going to prison, and the 20% of men who graduate from high school but have no further high education have an intermediate likelihood of going to prison. On average, these men are in the bottom quarter of high school graduates academically (although a variety of other factors influence a decision not to pursue any higher education after graduating from high school).

One expects that among the 20% of men who graduate from high school but have no further education, men who are at the top of that group academically and behaviorally but didn't go to college because they had decent job prospects or went into the military or couldn't afford to go to college, probably have a likelihood of going to prison similar to that of people who drop out of college soon after starting college. But men who are the the bottom of that group academically and behaviorally probably have a likelihood of going to prison similar to but somewhat lower men who drop out of high school and then earn a GED but don't pursue further education. They are able to behave marginally well enough to meet the minimum requirements to graduate, and are not totally stupid.

So, the likelihood of going to prison is probably most elevated among men in the bottom 30% to 1/3rd of success in the formal education system, and are profoundly reduced among men who are more successful in the formal education system.

Operationally, however, since there is almost no data sorting high achieving and well-behaved high school graduates with no college, from low achieving and poorly behaved high school graduates with no college, we can define "middle class" inmates as inmates who have some college or more.

Questions That Are Hard To Answer

1. Some of the reason that middle class inmates are so rare is that middle class criminal defendants tend to have only minimal prior criminal records and are seen as having good prospects of rehabilitation. They also tend to have been legal representation in the court system, make good choices about when to accept plea bargains, take actions that judges view as mitigating circumstances, and behave in the way that sentencing judges want them to in the court process, relative to non-middle class criminal defendants. 

So, a middle class criminal defendant who commits the same crime as a non-middle class criminal defendant is more likely to receive probation, a fine, community service, time in a half-way house, or a jail sentence, than an ordinary prison sentence, especially for less severe crimes. Likewise, even if they receive a prison sentence, it is likely to be shorter than the sentence that a typical non-middle class criminal defendant would receive for the same crime.

2. Middle class criminal defendants probably tend to commit less serious crimes, when they are convicted of crimes. They tend not to commit "blue collar" property crimes that can send you to prison like car theft, burglary, or grand larceny of tangible personal property (as opposed to fraud or theft of intangible assets). They also probably tend to commit the same sorts of crimes that are disproportionately committed by women.

3. I suspect that middle class criminal defendant who actually go to prison have mostly either committed high dollar/drug volume non-violent crimes like fraud or drug dealing, or have committed serious violent crimes for which a prison sentence is really the only plausible sentence. But, I don't know that for a fact and I haven't seen good data on that point.

4. I don't know and would be interested to know how educational attainment beyond high school influences one's likelihood of being a prison inmate. I would suspect that the risk is reduced with greater educational attainment, but the data isn't there to show how significantly protective education beyond "some college" is in terms of likelihood of being a prison inmate.

4. The trio of serious substance abuse issues, serious mental health issues, and traumatic brain injury are pervasive in a huge share of all prison inmates. Middle class prison inmates are probably no exception. Indeed, these issues probably make up a bigger share of middle class prison inmates, since economic pressures on these inmates are usually more mild.

But notably, the protective effect of even some college is huge, despite the fact that the rates of serious substance abuse and serious mental health problems is very significant even among college educated people. Most likely, people with at least some college (overall, not just prison inmates) both have mental health and substance abuse problems that are sufficiently moderate that they can function well enough to finish high school and spend some time in college, and they are better at coming up with mental health treatment, substance abuse rehabilitation, and self-help programs to manage to live an at least moderately normal life despite these challenges, while the most severely impaired people have behavioral problems early enough that they can't finish high school and some college, and/or they can't figure out a self-help regime or access the mental health care system resources that they need.

Also, some mental health and substance abuse problems have a relatively late onset. 

Susceptibility to substance abuse has a very strong genetic component. But people who grew up in strict families, or avoided substances after seeing how it affected other family members, may not have had access to substances that they can abuse, or strictly avoided substances that they can abuse, until they are in or have graduated from college.

Most mental health conditions are genetic or congenital. And, most of them, like ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, psychopathy, anxiety disorders, and OCD typically manifest before you finish high school, so people with particularly severe cases of these conditions that aren't treated adequately either don't graduate from high school for behavioral reasons or just barely scrape by at that time. Most of them, except clinical levels of autism spectrum disorder and psychopathy are quite common. Substance abuse, ADHD (as a result of high levels of impulsivity and impairments to working and being a student at regular jobs), and psychopathy seem to have the strongest association with criminal conduct that can send you to prison. Other mental health conditions, while also common, seem much less likely to be associated with criminal activity.

But psychosis (i.e. manic-depression and schizophrenia) tends to manifest in late adolescence or in one's 20s as your neural connections thin out in the brain transition from childhood to adulthood. It tends to emerge a little later in men than in women because their brains mature a little bit later than women. Psychosis is rare but devastating in its effect on your ability to function. Psychoses are also among the most heavily genetic mental health conditions.  Even if early mild symptoms of psychosis manifest in late high school or college, these way be manageable until a few years later. (As an aside, one thing that is almost a litmus test for schizophrenia is heavy nicotine use, which despite its other harmful health effects, provides some limited relief from schizophrenia symptoms. A very large percentage of schizophrenics who have access to nicotine, legally or illicitly, use it.) 

M.S. typically manifests at ages similar to psychosis but has a viral cause, and its neurodegenerative symptoms can mirror major mental health issues and gets worse over time since it is degenerative. Further, traumatic brain injury, major depression (apart from manic depression) and PTSD are predominantly not genetic or congenital and can manifest at any age. Finally, some forms of dementia, whose symptoms are often only unmistakable in late life, and stokes (including TIAs) can also give rise to symptoms similar to major mental health issues.

These mental and cognitive health conditions that manifest after one typically starts college probably disproportionately impact middle class inmates, since these impairments do not interfere with behavior until these key educational landmarks are reached. 

Autism and ADHD Incidence

About 1 in 25 American boys ages 5 to 17 have a diagnosis of autism. Boys are four times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with the condition. Diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: 14.5 percent of American boys, 8 percent of girls. The likelihood of an ADHD diagnosis decreases as family income increases.

From the Washington Post. 

Why Are Buses And Intracity Rail In The U.S. So Crime Ridden?

The biggest reason for low bus and intracity rail usage in the United States by international standards is that crime in and around transit is high and these means of transportation don't feel safe. It is a long standing issue, and it isn't nearly such a serious problem in countries all of the world. 

Israelis, for example, packed buses in the course of living their every day lives, even when suicide bombers were terrorizing those buses.

A recent Denver Post story quantifies and characterizes the problem in Denver's transit system.

When Denver resident Jana Angelo rides the Regional Transportation District’s buses and trains, she feels trapped and says she sometimes hugs herself for fortitude.

She’s smelled fumes from passengers smoking fentanyl. She’s heard unhinged riders’ rants. Two “really high” men once fought right in front of her, said Angelo, 29.

“I was like, ‘Stop the bus!’ ” she said. “But the driver did not.”

Angelo packs a knife just in case, she said, and wears headphones, avoiding conversation. . . .

Passengers on RTD’s buses and trains were assaulted or threatened at the rate of one per day over the last three years, according to agency records obtained by The Denver Post. RTD drivers also are assaulted regularly — more than 100 times a year on average since 2019, records show — as they work amid crime and antisocial behavior, including riders using illegal drugs and unhoused people who sleep in station elevators and on climate-controlled buses and trains. 

. . .

The agency’s general manager, Debra Johnson, acknowledged the problems and said ensuring safety is critical. She’s discussed rising violence and crime in public transit with her counterparts in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

“We’re all adversely impacted by the same elements of society,” Johnson said in an interview, referring to mental health problems, substance use and homelessness. “These are societal issues. Whatever’s happening in a municipality is going to spill over into the transit system. What are we collectively doing to help minimize and mitigate these societal issues?” 

. . .

RTD bus driver Dan Day, 43, recalled how, on a cold day in 2020 during his first year on the job, he saw a man down, bleeding from his head, while another man kicked him at the Decatur Station along Federal Boulevard.

Day took the bleeding man onto the bus and handed him paper towels. As he steered the bus around the station, the attacker approached it, pointing a gun. He climbed on, aiming the barrel at the bleeding man. Day was caught between them, learned it was a dispute about a sister, and brokered a truce.

“I had a sense he wouldn’t shoot,” Day said. “…I was just trying to follow procedure, to call dispatch, let them know what happened.”

RTD supervisors offered him therapeutic counseling. He declined, turning instead to classic stoic philosophers: “My own tools to just cope with scary and difficult situations,” Day said. “Keep yourself in the moment. This is just a moment in time. It is going to pass.” 

. . .

RTD bus drivers and train operators were physically assaulted 463 times between January 2019 and April 2024 — a rate of roughly seven assaults per month, according to the records obtained by The Post through a Colorado Open Records Act request.

In addition, drivers have reported 501 verbal assaults and threats of violence since 2021 — a dozen per month on average, the records show.

Assaults and threats targeting RTD passengers happen more often, according to the records. Since January 2021, 1,375 passengers have experienced physical assaults and verbal threats along bus and rail routes, records show. That’s an average of 34 a month over the past three years.

The troubles appear concentrated along busy streets including Colfax Avenue, Broadway and Federal Boulevard.

RTD’s transit police have been busy. The agency’s tallies show that, during the first half of 2023, transit officers made a monthly average of 36 arrests. They responded to a monthly average of 60 assaults, 486 disturbances, 1,206 drug-related incidents, 389 trespasses and 58 instances of vandalism, according to an agency document.

This year, a homicide on an RTD bus in west Denver heightened concerns. A 13-year-old boy has been charged with murder in the fatal shooting on Jan. 27 of a 60-year-old grandfather whose leg was blocking an RTD bus aisle.

Illegal drug use happens almost daily, drivers and train operators say. 

. . .

Light rail operator Roy Martinez, who previously worked as a bus driver and endured assaults, said he regularly smells illegal drugs on light-rail trains such as the E Line that connects downtown Denver with the south suburbs.

Typically, a rider places a fentanyl pill on a piece of foil and crushes it. Then the rider lights the powder and, hunkering under a hood or blanket, inhales the fumes.

Those fumes rise and spread through the train’s air system, Martinez said, noting he detects odors inside the locked front cabin where he runs the train. There’s no option but to push through to the next stop. “Then you stop the train, open the doors, air it out,” he said.

From the Denver Post.

The story presents a mix of questions and answers, some tucked away behind the scenes.

One obvious issue is that the U.S. has a weak social safety net, and the highest percentage of people who drive their own cars, if their licenses aren't revoked, and don't use transit. Transit is disproportionately left with people who are too disabled to drive, people whose licenses have been revoked, and people who are very poor. Even people without licenses who have money often ride share instead.

So, transit is heavily weighted with very poor people and is not well counter-balanced, most of the time, with middle class and more affluent people. It is also heavily weighted with people who have lost driver's licenses due to illegal conduct and substance abuse.

Big cities in the U.S. with transit systems also tend to have riders who lack social cohesion that can impose order through nearly universally held social norms, in lieu of formal law enforcement.

But another issue is that policy makers and people who talk about policy and involved in politics, like me, struggle to understand why people who act in anti-social ways in and around transit are acting the way that they do.

I can completely understand why someone might become addicted to smoking fentanyl. But I can't fathom at all why someone would feel like this is an activity that makes sense to engage in while riding a bus or a light rail train.

I'm comfortable trusting that Debra Johnson, the general manager of Denver's Regional Transportation District has a better handle on what's going on that I do. She blames mental illness, substance abuse and homelessness.

In other words, mentally ill and homeless drug users tend to use drugs on buses and train cars because that's more comfortable than doing it on the streets, under a bridge, or in an alley.

Public libraries, which are one of the few places you can just hang out without paying money, in a place shielded from the weather, face similar problems, although seemingly, fewer violent assaults.

Anecdotally, at least, the assaults seem to be driven by poor people with a lack of an ability to control anger and impulse, and a lack of access in terms of both personal social skills and formal access to other recourse to resolve situations where they feel aggrieved. 

It isn't that working class and middle class people don't often do some of the same things. But they don't do that at bus stops, on buses, and on light rail trains. Driving a car reduces the amount of potentially triggering interactions you have with other people, although even that doesn't stop road rage incidents.

These situations on transit and in urban neighborhoods are something that urban people can't ignore, which is one of the reasons that urban people tend to be more liberal.

The whole situation is also an apt example of what makes illegal drugs a problem that we have invoked the criminal justice system to address, even if it has done a very poor job of it. Most vices, including illegal drug use, are primarily a problem because they are instrumental in creating a "bad neighborhood." 

If drug users were out of sight in an opium den somewhere, and didn't bother everyone else, we'd care less. And, modern opium dens might even be equipped to deal with overdoses and other forms of drug induced anti-social behavior.

Big, Low Profile Issues

Today, some big, lurking low profile issues that deserve more attention:

* The public school system does a poor job of serving those who are not in the top quarter or so academically. Far too many students have a curriculum oriented towards preparing them for four years of a selective liberal arts college education that they will not pursue, which will not benefit them, and in which the routinely fail and struggle. Too many students are pushed into enrolling in AP classes which they aren't ready for and perform poorly in. Too many students are pushed into enrolling in college programs for which they are inadequately prepared and fail in at high rates. Regional vocational schools and good community college programs are among the most important exceptions to that rule but are under-enrolled.

* We have far too many people, especially men, without college educations who have skills and work habits that would have been valuable in the 1950s and 1960s, but are no longer needed in the quantities that are present in the work force. Our entrepreneurs have failed to find worthwhile ways to utilize what they have to offer. Public policy history is also filled with dozens of case studies of job training programs designed to address this problem that have failed. Our society needs a vision of a workable decent American dream for them, for people with minor criminal records, for people who had children at the wrong time, and so on.

* Our court system does a poor job handling medium sized civil lawsuits, those larger than small claims and small collection and residential eviction cases, but less than say, $100,000 in controversy. We need a better system for mid-sized litigation. There have been efforts to do this, but Colorado's simplified civil litigation rules under Colorado Rule of Civil Procedure 16.1 does a poor job of it.  It also needs to be a system that people without legal training and with poor bureaucracy navigating and writing and research skills can navigate without catastrophic results.

* We also need more affordable legal professionals to provide affordable representation in litigation where there isn't an ability to pay a lot, which a system that requires seven years of education plus a bar exam and some on the job training to be competent in doesn't provide. Specialist, independent licensed legal professionals in practice areas including child custody and child support, immigration law, criminal defense, consumer bankruptcy, and landlord-tenant law could fill this gap with mid-skill professionals.  These licensed legal professionals would have training levels similar to tax preparers, bookkeepers, police officers, real estate agents, customer service desk workers, title company closing officers, consumer loan bank officers, mortgage underwriters, and insurance adjusters.

* We need an eviction process that is connected to a homelessness mitigation response, because that is how a lot of homelessness starts, and an eviction process that does not result in undue collateral harm to the possessions of people who are evicted.

* We need to support foster children well after they turn age eighteen, until they can reach stable self-sufficiency, and need to improve the quality of life for them in the foster care system.

* Vast numbers of homeowners live in homes in that are in dysfunctional homeowner's associations. The way the needs that these HOAs serve are met must be reformed, because volunteer elected officers of small HOAs aren't competent to run them and democratic self-governance is not an ideal model for meeting most of these needs.

* We need our public systems for taxes, for welfare benefits, for health care, for routinely consumer legal problems, for business and labor regulation, for home ownership, and so on, to be less complex so that academically average and below average people can navigate them.

* We have a large unmet need for inpatient mental health and substance abuse care. The deinstitutionalization movement made some good points, but went too far and still hasn't recovered.

* There is not enough medical education capacity. We could be training twice as many doctors each year and still have extremely well qualified graduates.

* We need better models for how to handle the inevitable decline in population and tax bases of cities and towns in the Rust Belt and in rural America.

* Every place in American should have clean running water and functional sewage systems.

* Our jails and prisons are dangerous, do almost nothing to reform inmates in most cases, and are a major factor in the formation and strengthening of criminal gangs. They need to be run much differently.

Beyond The Adversarial Models For Mental Health And Incapacity

I'm litigating an adult guardianship case. It isn't the first time I've done one. As a general rule, there is, at least, a lawyer for the person asking for a guardianship, a court appointed visitor (social work who sees what's going on), a court appointed lawyer for the person upon whom a guardian is to be imposed, and a court appointed guardian ad litem for the person to have a guardian impose, in addition to a judge and a judge's division clerk involved. A physician's letter from none of those people is preferred. There is an emergency guardianship option, but the usual process takes about two months. Sometimes more lawyers are involved if there are disputes over who should be appointed. Sometimes, adult protective services is involved.

On one hand, the concern that the process not put an adult in a subordinated position with reduced autonomy rights without adequate due process is legitimate. On the other hand, the process puts a lot of barriers in the way of getting help and intervention to people who, by definition, aren't able to reasonably manage their own affairs and are highly vulnerable to manipulation in any formal process. We put a lot of highly paid professionals in place to check and balance each other, instead of placing greater trust into fewer people at a lower cost. I have to think that this isn't the optimal system. We should have a system that is more pro-active and doesn't pose quite such high barriers to intervention, perhaps with more pro-active follow up and supervision of fiduciaries that extends beyond a paper record.

The thing is that, whether or not they get it, lots of people, maybe half or more, are going to spend some time in their lives when they need, or would benefit from, transitioning to having someone who can make decisions for them. An adversarial model for securing this situation, and a placing a premium on autonomy, which makes sense for most of one's adult life, even in times of physical illness, isn't optimal for lots of people at the end of their lives.

Mental health care, likewise, really ought to be more pro-active. And, the assumptions of the physical health care system, which is oriented towards a "cure" of temporary illnesses and injuries, really isn't appropriate for a large share of mental health care conditions which are congenital or at least permanent. Symptom management is the concern, not a "cure". The push for mental and physical health care parity may have been a good transitional way to leverage more insurance coverage and access to mental health care, but the truth is that they are fairly disjoint and efficiently providing each involves different professionals. The privacy concerns are different. The kind of treatment setting that is needed is different. We should have systems in place to pro-actively intervene in the face of predictable crisis situations. 

Language Can Frame Attitudes

There are lots of "reframing the dialog" memes out there. I particularly like this one as a way to develop a more constructive and empathetic worldview and a less toxic society.

How Helpful Is Psychotherapy?

The empirical evidence for the benefits of psychotherapy is very mixed, with the studies showing the greatest benefits from this mental health treatment plagued by small sample sizes and poor study designs.

An effect size of zero in the chart above implies no benefit, a negative effect is harmful, and a positive effect improves mental health outcomes. Standard error which has zero at the top rather than the bottom in the chart, is largely a function of sample size.

The data tends to show that psychotherapy usually, although not always, provides some benefit, but that the benefit shown in large, accurate studies is quite small, and that studies showing large benefits are basically flukes.

The data aren't high enough in quality to distinguish different approaches to psychotherapy from each other.

The Impact Of Legalizing Marijuana

Colorado received a particularly large economic boost because it was an early adopter of recreational marijuana legalization. 

One important social benefit that isn't quantified is the social benefit arising from people not being incarcerated for and receiving criminal records for marijuana violations. 

Another factor not considered is the social benefit arising from people who use marijuana without having substance abuse difficulties (and sometimes with medical benefits). Likewise, beneficial substitution of marijuana for alcohol is not analyzed.

There are lots of other methodological issues, and while a 35% increase in chronic homelessness seems high and could have confounding factors, the paper says that it is "just outside of statistical significance."

We analyze the effects of legalizing recreational marijuana on state economic and social outcomes (2000–20) using difference-in-differences estimation robust to staggered timing and heterogeneity of treatment. 

We find moderate economic gains and accompanied by some social costs. Post-legalization, average state income grew by 3 percent, house prices by 6 percent, and population by 2 percent. However, substance use disorders, chronic homelessness, and arrests increased by 17, 35, and 13 percent, respectively. 

Although some of our estimates are noisy, our findings suggest that the economic benefits of legalization are broadly distributed, while the social costs may be more concentrated among individuals who use marijuana heavily. States that legalized early experienced similar social costs but larger economic gains, implying a potential first-mover advantage.

Jason Brown, Elior Cohen, and R. Alison Felix, "Economic benefits and social costs legalizing recreational marijuana" Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Working Paper 23-10 (September 28, 2023).