Zero Tolerance Comes To Italy

There has been much talk in Italy on the necessity of adopting a "Zero Tolerance" policy toward crime and illegal immigration, talk fueled by the results of general elections on April 13-14, and by a number of violent crimes, particularly against women.

It is striking to note that this fashion of politicians willing to show they are "tough" on crime arrives in Italy at the very moment when in the US many start to challenge the "broken-windows" theory of crime, which is the basis of the so-called Zero Tolerance criminal policy.

It is enough to go to a mainstream media website to find fresh news like this: "Innocent man free after 26 years in prison." And, of course, there are literally hundreds of cases of innocent people executed, or still in the Death Row.

But facts are never enough to have a theory abandoned, and so it is important to show that the theory that has revolutionized policing in the United States and abroad, with its emphasis on policies that crack down on disorderly conduct and aggressively enforce misdemeanor laws is baseless. Although the broken-windows theory has been around for nearly thirty years (it started in Newark, New Jersey, in the 1970s) it has never been empirically verified. Indeed, existing data suggest that it is false. Conceptually, it rests on unexamined categories of "law abiders" and "disorderly people" and of "order" and "disorder," which have no intrinsic reality, independent of the techniques of punishment that a particular society adopts.

How did the new order-maintenance approach to criminal justice--a theory without solid empirical support, a theory that is conceptually flawed and results in aggressive detentions of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens--come to be one of the leading criminal justice theories embraced by progressive reformers, policymakers, and academics throughout the world? The problem is that it appears plausible, it offers "something" to show to citizens, and is highly symbolic: politicians can use it to build a "macho image" and this usually is good in competitive elections. Absent a more complex thinking, and serious research, the media and lobbies interested in a repressive policy easily prevail in pushing opportunistic politicians in this direction. The fact that it is a costly and ineffective policy is never seriously debated.

Maybe Wright is Right

Washington DC - In his speech at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia, Democratic candidate Barack Obama addressed openly the issue of race for the first time since the beginning of the campaign. The speech came in response to increasing criticisms of Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., a pastor of Trinity, the parish of the United Church of Christ that Obama attends in Chicago.

Reverend Wright is famous for his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric about race relations in the United States and the discrimination of the African-American minority. Last Tuesday, Senator Obama chose to acknowledge this country's history of segregation and how such past still affects American society today. He explicitely highlighted the need to remember the history of injustice and never to lose sight of the mistakes that have been made. He also encouraged the people of the United States to move beyond ethnic divisions and to start working together for a better, and more just, country.

The Wall Street Journal today publishes a little-noticed, yet stunning, statistics that might confirm the fact that the US is still a divided and segregated country.

In the last few years there has been a notable upswing in the murder rate of African-Americans, while the same figure for overall murders has declined steadily, or remained stable at worst. As a result, the number of black victims of murder exceeds today that of the white poplation, despite the fact that Afican-Americans only comprise 13% of all Americans.

According to the most recent statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the number of whites murdered declined from 7,005 in 2004 to 6,956 in 2006. At the same time, 7,421 black citizens were killed in 2006, an 11% increase from the 6,680 who died in 2004.

The only positive note is that this growing figure is still lower than it was in the early 1990s, when killings of African-Americans spiked due to a wave of drug-related crime.

Arthur Miller, Where Are You When We Need You?

Many scholars of American political campaigns remember how the mainstream press savaged Al Gore in his debates of October 2000 with George W. Bush, because of his "pedantic" attitude. Pundits took issue with his puzzled and exasperated look listening to the nonsense mumbled by his opponent: "Lack of respect," "pretentiousness," "arrogance" were the judgments of his critics. No columnist seemed interested in evaluating Bush's arguments, and in in saying whether Gore's detailed observations were correct or not. The late Arthur Miller, in his excellent I presidenti americani e l'arte di recitare (1) remarked that newspapermen became movie critics: they were interested only in the performance of the two "actors" on stage, and perfectly indifferent to the issues discussed. Who was more briliant? Who did find the best one-liner? That one was the "winner," and therefore should become President of the United States.
Apparently, not much has changed since 2000: last Tuesday there was a tense debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the last one before March 4th critical primaries in Texas and in Ohio. What was the focus of New York Times's ADAM NAGOURNEY in his piece? Writing about Hillary Clinton, he observed: "in contrast to other debates where she mixed a warm smile with a sharp attack — she was stern and tense through most of the evening, speaking in an almost fatigued monotone as she recounted her criticisms of Mr. Obama, some of them new but many of them familiar. She often sat staring unsmiling at Mr. Obama and at Tim Russert of NBC News."
Too bad, "she was stern and tense through most of the evening" and therefore is not qualified to be President of the USA. She was "speaking in an almost fatigued monotone" and this is not acceptable. She "sat staring unsmiling" and therefore her political proposals about health care, taxes or foreign policy passed away. Well, if this is the tone and substance of the campaign, as seen by the New York Times, there isn't much hope for American democracy in 2008.

(1)We couldn't find an English edition for this text, and we'll be grateful to the reader who will point out to one.

This campaign is for the Democrats to lose

Only ONE state has switched sides in this map drawn according to the 2004 results: Ohio. That would be enough to give Democrats a majority.

As you may recall, a few days ago Marco Polo made a few calculations about the Electoral College (the machinery that assigned the Presidency FOUR TIMES to the losers since 1824). We predicted an easy majority of 273 votes for the Democratic candidate -whoever he or she is- and a possible majority of 298 Electoral Votes, throwing in two winnable swing states such as Nevada and Ohio.
Today, the much-respected Rasmussen Reports offered its evaluation: "If the Presidential election were held today, the Democratic candidate would be poised to win 284 Electoral Votes. That’s 14 more than the minimum needed to capture the White House. The Republican candidate could expect to win 216 Electoral Votes while 38 more would be in the Toss-up category." It appears that 284 is very close to the midpoint between our two forecasts, the low one of 273 and the high one of 298 Electoral Votes. Rasmussen gives as "winnable" by the Democrats even states like Virginia, where they won for the last time in 1964.
As everybody knows, the magic number to enter the White House is 270 (What will happen if each candidate gets 269 votes? Be the first to send the right answer and win our prize). A simple truth: in 2008, the campaign is for the Democrats to lose.

Castro resigns: Will the American Obsession with Him Fade?

It was 3AM in the US, last night, when Reuter broke the news that Fidel Castro has resigned, citing this letter to Granma website: "A mis entrañables compatriotas, que me hicieron el inmenso honor de elegirme en días recientes como miembro del Parlamento, en cuyo seno se deben adoptar acuerdos importantes para el destino de nuestra Revolución, les comunico que no aspiraré ni aceptaré- repito- no aspiraré ni aceptaré, el cargo de Presidente del Consejo de Estado y Comandante en Jefe."
It will be interesting to see, now, if the irrational obsession with him felt by all American Presidents from John Kennedy through George W. Bush will decline. Among international relations scholars, there is a consensus that the ailing Cuban regime has been kept alive by the US embargo, a powerful stabilyzing factor in the island. Unfortunately, American politicians have been kept hostage of the powerful Cuban community in Florida, the State that gave Bush the 25 votes in the Electoral College need to become President in 2000.
There are literally hundreds of book dealing with the CIA and Cuba, most of them of modest interest. One that had new material when published in 1994 was David Corn's Blond Ghost, while a more recent one is Dan Bohning's The Castro's Obsession. Corn write the first biography of Ted Shackley, who ran from Miami the inter-agency program to overthrow Castro in the early Sixties.
A more scholarly approach, focusing on the larger picture of the different path chosen by Canada, Mexico, and Spain toward Cuba (constructive engagement) is found in the book by Michele Zebich-Knos and Heather Nicol Foreign Policy Toward Cuba: isolation or engagement? The authors have assembled a group of scholars to describe the domestic causes and evaluate the international effects of these different approaches.

Election rigging in Harlem?

Has the "example" of successful election rigging in Florida in November 2000 spread INSIDE the two parties? According to the New York Times in some precincts of Harlem not a single vote was cast for Barack Obama. That seems, well, difficult.
The investigation is under way, but the larger topic of the integrity of the elections in a federal system is not in the news. This is truly surprising, given the amount of literature created not only by the stolen election of 2000, but also by the strong suspicions cast over the critical results of Ohio in 2004, suspicions that are still alive today (see this). You can also find an analysis of various issues of 2004 presidential elections (in Italian) here.
Among the analysis of the Florida case, we recommend Jeffrey Tobin's Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election and Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America: How the Supreme Court Undermined the Constitution and Chose Our President Of course, those books were hardly alone: in a more scholarly fashion, the issue was tackled by Robert Watson (Counting Votes), Mark Whitman (Florida 2000: A Sourcebook on the Contested Presidential Election), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Electing the President, 2000), Cass Sunstein and Richard Epstein (The Vote: Bush, Gore, and the Supreme Court), Jarvis's Bush v. Gore: The Fight for Florida's Vote, and, more important, Roy Saltman: The History and Politics of Voting Technology: In Quest of Integrity and Public Confidence. Saltman traces the evolution of voting technology, highlighting how the antiquated systems in use today are a legacy of the 1950s. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to disentangle the responsibilities of federal, state, and local authorities in monitoring and counting the votes. It would be even worse if the various factions inside the parties took advantage of these obsolete and undemocratic procedures to rig the primaries, too.

This week, you may want to read...

While political autobiographies usually are among the most despicable literary genres, as a service to our readers we shall point to three books "written" by the three main candidates to the nomination: Living History by Hillary Clinton, Dreams of My Father, by Barack Obama (I sogni di mio padre in Italian) and Worth The Fighting For by John McCain.
As for Hillary Clinton, a much better work is the in-depth biography by Carl Bernstein, the stubborn muckraker of Watergate fame, who left the "Washington Post" several years ago and has produced a nuanced portrait of the former First Lady: "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," now in paperback.
Of course, the phenomenon of the last two weeks has been senator Barack Obama, of whom you should read "Dreams of My Father," even if the book is much less charismatic than the author on stage.

McCain's book is interesting because it includes a chapter where he details how Karl Rove's dirty-tricks machine derailed his candidature in South Carolina eigth years ago. "Bush's brain" spread the slander that McCain had fathered an illegittimate child with a black prostitute, and that was enough for Republican voters to switch to Dubya in 2000. This year, trying to court the hardcore Republican base, McCain stated that he has only admiration for "Rove's political mind." Is this the truly independent candidate, the "maverick" of the Republican party?