Drawing lines

I had planned earlier today to write a post on this week’s death-penalty decision, expanding on my post from yesterday, and focusing on the logical fallacy at the heart of the argument that some crimes are so heinous as to deserve death. I got sidetracked, however, and then I read a post from Matthew Yglesias that included this line:

efforts to draw distinctions — to tinker with the machinery of death — are fundamentally misguided.

That’s my opinion exactly. Consider the case at hand. There is no doubt that child rape is as venal and disgusting a crime as can be imagined; to many — probably most — people, sending the perpetrator to death would be warranted.

The question, however, is why draw the line there? Why not apply it to all rape? And why stop there?

I am being facetious, of course, but my point is that our efforts to draw lines only create new questions and difficulties, new inconsistencies and new hypocrisies. And while we have no choice but to draw some lines, lives are not at stake.

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Xenophobia in Bound Brook

Bound Brook Councilman Jim Lefkowitz wants the Somerset County borough to target undocumented residents, blaming them for an increased need for rental housing and the potential for an increase in crime.

The councilman also said it is well-documented that an increase in illegal aliens correlates to an increase in the crime rate.

“Studies show that illegal immigrants cost taxpayers much more in public services than they pay into the system via taxes,” Lefkowitz states in the summary of his resolution.

The councilman — a Republican councilman up for re-election — wants the borough to require local landlords to “obtain proof their tenants are legal residents,” and require “police to determine the legal status of any person arrested and to make sure that if any illegal alien is taken into custody, that person is turned over to federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officials.” He also wants “the borough to deny any contracts to a firm that hires illegal aliens.”

I’m getting tired of this kind of story, not the least because it just allows this elected xenophobe to recycle the kind of bogus mythology that demonizes Latinos. Consider this, from a 2001 study on immigration and crime:

In the 1980s and 1990s researchers have concluded, or at least have lent support to the conclusion, that immigrants commit proportionately no more than and possibly even fewer crimes than native-born citizens. The General Accounting Office, analyzing FBI records, found that foreign-born individuals accounted for about 19 percent of the total arrests in 1985 in six selected major cities.8 The foreign-born represented 19.6 percent of the aggregate population. While “foreign-born” can mean refer to citizens as well as aliens,9 the study makes an implicit case that immigrant crime is in line with the rest of the country.

In 2007, The Arizona Daily Star reported on another study:

WASHINGTON — Immigrants — both legal and illegal — do not raise the rate of crime in the United States, according to a study released Monday.

In every ethnic group, incarceration rates among young men are lowest for immigrants, even those who are less educated, said the study by the Immigration Policy Center, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington. This holds especially true for Mexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans, who make up the bulk of the illegal population.

The authors of the study say it dispels the common notion — which they say is propagated by excessive media coverage of crimes and gang activity — that immigrants commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.

“The misperception that immigrants, especially illegal immigrants, are responsible for higher crime rates is deeply rooted in American public opinion and is sustained by media anecdotes and popular myth,” said Ruben G. Rumbaut, a sociology professor at the University of California-Irvine. “This perception is not supported empirically. In fact, it is refuted by the preponderance of scientific evidence.”

The incarceration rate of U.S.- born men 18 to 39 years old in 2000 was 3.5 percent — five times higher than the incarceration rate of their immigrant counterparts, the study found.

The report — which analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau, police records and other sources — also shows that a large increase in illegal immigrants has not resulted in a rise in crime. Since 1994, violent crime in the United States has declined 34 percent, and property crime has fallen 26 percent. At the same time, the illegal immigrant population has doubled to around 12 million.

This, of course, raises the question as to what studies our Bound Brook councilman is referencing.

Not that it matters. Mr. Lefkowitz appears to be of the same ilk as Tom Tancredo, the famously anti-immigrant Congressman who barely registered on the radar screen during the Republican presidential primaries, politicians who view undocumented workers as unworthy of being here, as people (or something a bit less) who contribute nothing. I admit that I am stereotyping, but I’m getting tired of hearing this kind of nonsensical drivel from the xenophobic right.

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Runner’s diary, Thursday

Today was an indoor day. With the skies being overcast and rain in the forecast, I opted to hit the treadmill. And because of the sore calf, I followed yesterday’s regimen — a five-minute warm-up and stretching before the run. Today, I added some upper body work — chest and back — to the mix before doing five miles in 43 minutes. I’m going to have to force myself to bring the pace down outside — right now there is a 40-to-50-second differential between my treadmill runs and my outdoor runs.

By the way, my friend Bill passed along this interesting feature from today’s New York Times. It is a running map of Central Park that makes me want to take a road trip (pun intended).

Music: Steve Earle, Washington Square Serenade and selections from The Revolution Starts Now and Jerusalem.

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Reigning in capital punishment, again

The U.S. Supreme Court, by the customarily narrow margin of 5-4, drew a line in the sand on the death penalty, rejecting laws that allow judges to sentence child rapists to death.

The issue at hand was a case in Louisiana in which Patrick Kennedy appealed the death sentence handed down after he was convicted in the rape of his 8-year-old stepdaughter.

The court ruled that the sentence was excessive and violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,” such as treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said there was “a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and non-homicide crimes against individual persons,” even such “devastating” crimes as the rape of a child, on
the other.

I am a death-penalty opponent, as readers of my blog and columns know, and I would have prefered that the court finally toss out capital punishment completely. But I’ll have to settle for this.

As for how the decision will affect my presidential vote (ha ha) or the vote of the nation, consider these disturbing and disappointing responses from the two men who are vying to take over the nation’s highest office:

Both presidential candidates criticized the death penalty decision. Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, said: “That there is a judge anywhere in America who does not believe that the rape of a child represents the most heinous of crimes, which is deserving of the most serious of punishments, is profoundly disturbing” He called the decision “an assault on law enforcement’s efforts to punish these heinous felons for the most despicable crime.”

Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, said, “I think that the rape of a small child, 6 or 8 years old, is a heinous crime, and if a state makes a decision under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances, that the death penalty is at least potentially applicable, that does not violate our Constitution.” He added that the Supreme Court should have set conditions for imposing the death penalty for the crime, “but it basically had a blanket prohibition, and I disagree with the decision.”

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