Misplaced Priorities

A federal judge ruled that six Somali pirates can't be charged with piracy under U.S. law. The six are accused of attacking a U.S. Navy ship off the Somali coast.

While it may seem like a bizarre ruling, the judge appears to have made the correct legal ruling. The controlling case is a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 1820 that defined piracy as "robbery at sea". Prosecutors tried to expand this definition of piracy to includes any violent acts at sea, since the pirates were thwarted in completing their attack so no robbery occurred.

But the judge didn't bend to political expediency or use today's norms to decide the case: his decision rests on the law as it stands.

The pirates do face other charges with lesser penalties, but what this case illustrates is the need for a new, revised law to govern piracy in the U.S.

So while the Obama administration has been in extremely active in promoting legislation to reorder our economy, they have dropped the ball on promoting new laws to protect us from modern threats.

Crime and No Punishment

The New York Sun comments on the state of New York passing a new law to prevent the New York Police Department from using its database of information gathered from its stop and frisk efforts. The database has been used to produce the past 18 months over 170 arrests, including 17 murders, 7 rapes, 11 shootings, and 36 robberies.

I'm not surprised that the leftists in New York have, given the outrage vented over the Arizona immigration law which is less troublesome than New York City's stop and frisk policy, have put these restrictions in place.

When the left had its way with New York City's mayoral and police administration, crime rates soared, culminating in 1990 with over 2,200 murders. In 2009, fewer than 500 murders occurred. Not only did this save great suffering upon the part of the people not killed and their families, but it has led to a remarkable renaissance in New York as many people no longer fear living, working, or visiting the city.

Many factors no doubt contributed to this decline in crime, including stopping people who the police under a "reasonable suspicion" standard and frisk them. Not only are some arrested from these stop and frisk encounters, but the policy's biggest impact is probably as a deterrent to people carrying weapons - if you know the police may stop you, you are less likely to carry a weapon that can get you arrested. Moreover, the data derived from these encounters has gone into a database to investigate future crimes.

Retreating from the policies that save lives and make New York safer may make leftists feel better. Unfortunately, it makes all of us less safe.

Arizona Revisited

The initial media coverage of the controversial Arizona immigration law does not state a critical component of the law, which is that it only allows people to be questioned about immigration status if another crime is involved.

As example, here is the initial New York Times article dated April 23 on the law, and no where is this critical fact mentioned. The Wall Street Journal on April 24 is similarly guilty of missing this important part of the story. But in this July 6 story, the New York Times clearly that:

"The law, signed by Gov. Jan Brewer on April 23, makes it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in the state and requires the officers to determine the immigration status of people they stop for another offense based on a 'reasonable suspicion' that they might be illegal immigrants."

This is a profound difference, since illegal activity other than violating immigration law is a predicate to being questioned about immigration status. People are asked for identification all the time in this country, such as going through an airport or being stopped for a traffic violation. The notion, as popularized in the initial commentary on the Arizona law, of Nazi-like police officers demanding to see anyone's "papers" simply isn't relevant: only those people stopped for a crime and who the police reasonably suspect of being here illegally can be questioned about their immigration status.

Compare this to New York City's "stop and frisk" policy, where over 570,000 times in 2009, the NYPD stopped people under a "reasonable suspicion" standard. About 6% of the people stopped are arrested, so only a small percentage of people detained under "stop and frisk" are arrested.

It is clear that Arizona's law requires holds the police to a higher standard to question someone's immigration status than New York City's law does to allow the police to stop and frisk someone.

So where are the boycott calls of New York City? Should the NFL rescind granting the city the 2014 Super Bowl? Should New York's baseball stadiums be unable to host future all-star games until the stop and frisk policy is rescinded? Given the reaction to Arizona's law, these would seem reasonable steps to take against New York too for its even more egregious law enforcement policies.

But we don't hear boycott calls against New York, just like we didn't get accurate reporting on the Arizona law when it was first reported, when first impressions are made in the public's mind. The Obama administration decided to use the Arizona law to rally Hispanic voters to the side of Democrats, and their friends in the media didn't report on key aspects of the law to make it appear more egregious than it is.

Moreover, the Obama administration's lawsuit against the Arizona law has nothing to do with alleged civil rights violations. Instead, the lawsuit claims enforcing immigration laws is a federal, not state, government responsibility. That is an important issue, as all constitutional issues are, but not a civil rights crisis.

Moreover, the Obama administration has not sued other states or cities that actively oppose federal immigration law - highlighting the political gamesmanship Barack Obama is playing with this issue.

Such is the thoughtful discourse Barack Obama has brought to American politics.

The Persecution of Goldman Sachs

If a person wants to buy a home, should he not do so because of the very fact that the seller wants to sell and therefore most "know something" to make it a bad purchase?

If someone wants to make an investment, such as in stocks, bonds, or a certificate of deposit, should she not do so because the seller wants to sell and therefore buying the investment is too risky?

If you think these are ludicrous perspectives on commonplace transactions, you are right.

But fundamentally, that is the essence of the SEC's allegations against Goldman Sachs it in the Abacus transaction involving subprime mortgages.

The Abacus deal required some parties to be "long" the deal (meaning they think the investment will increase in value) and others to be "short" the deal (meaning they think the investment will decrease in value). The SEC alleges that Goldman Sachs didn't disclose material information by not disclosing the name of the investor who was "short" the deal.

The "long" investors specialized in mortgage investments, managing billions of dollars, and as Warren Buffet said about the incident, knowing who the "short" is in the deal is irrelevant to making a proper investment decision.

Putting it another way, if you buy (taking the "long" position) a stock through your broker, you never know who the seller (analogous to taking the "short" position) is. Does that mean you shouldn't buy the stock until you know the name of the seller? Why would that matter? Clearly, the SEC doesn't think that is important since billions of shares a day are traded in the United States without the buyer knowing the identity of the seller.

This reflects a fundamental fact about economic transactions: the buyer and seller have different views on the items being bought/sold, and transact with one another to allow each to have their own view realized. Differences of opinions are fundamental to many economic transactions, particularly financial ones.

Even Bill Clinton concluded that Goldman Sachs broke no laws in the Abacus deal.

Moreover, it is worth noting how unusual the SEC's process was in deciding to bring the case. Goldman Sachs last spoke to the SEC in September 2009, and next heard from the SEC in April 2010 when the lawsuit was announced. Normally, the SEC notifies a party of its intent to sue them and then tries to negotiate a settlement before publicly disclosing the case.

Adding to the unusual nature of the case, the SEC's commissioner voted 3-2 to commence the lawsuit, with the three Democratic commissioners voting in favor of the suit and the two Republican commissioner opposing it. Again, such a partisan split isn't the norm for such prominent SEC suits.

If the SEC lawsuit against Goldman is so baseless, and was pursued in such an unusual manner, what might have motivated the agency to bring the case as it did?

First, one of the relatively unreported aspects of the matter - and a scandal of first order in its own right - is that on the same day the SEC announced its suit against Goldman, the SEC posted to its website, buried in a hard-to-reach link, an investigative report in its handling of the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme.

The report revealed that the SEC's investigative arm had recommended that its enforcement arm pursue Madoff for orchestrating a ponzi scheme, but the enforcement division declined to do so because it preferred easier to win cases against more prominent firms. Literally, the SEC's shocking negligence cots investors many billions of dollars in a real, unambiguous fraud.

But that story got lost due to the sensational charges against Goldman Sachs. So the case against Goldman allowed attention to be deflected from the SEC's failure.

In addition, the partisan nature of the commissioners' vote highlights that the suit against Goldman serves a useful purpose for Democrats seeking to pass their financial services regulatory bill.

The SEC's gambit worked. It hid the Madoff report and whipped up the frenzy against Wall Street to help secure Senate approval of the new regulatory bill.

Only a small thing like justice got trampled in the process.

Crime and Punishment

The New York Times notes that New York City police stopped and frisked minorities nine times more often than whites in 2009 despite having similar arrest rates after being stopped and frisked.

The article implies the police are doing something wrong by stopping minorities so often, but the opposite appears true: if their stop and frisk approach leads to similar arrest rates, then the police are able to gauge a similar degree of criminality across the population.

This also sheds some interesting information on the current controversy with Arizona's law on allowing the police to stop people to see if they are illegal immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Terry v. Ohio, allowed police to detain someone briefly under a "reasonable suspicion" standard, rather than the more stringent "probable cause" standard. New York City is currently stopping over 570,000 people per year and arresting about 6% of them.

That is a large number of people being stopped, with a fairly small percentage being arrested. If such a tactic is appropriate to deal with New York's crime problem, I wonder if the courts will overturn Arizona's attempt to deal with its illegal immigration challenge?

Who Needs Prisons Anyway?

I have written a number of columns on the effects by state governments to release prison inmates as part of efforts to save money. Unfortunately, we are now seeing the predictable results.

The New York Times reports on the backlash that is growing from these efforts. In Illinois, of the 1,700 inmates who were released early, 50 had committed new crimes within the first three months (no doubt this understates the number due to undetected criminal activity).

As government has moved away from securing our rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and to instead providing welfare benefits, the costs of the welfare state use tax dollars that would otherwise be available for criminal justice. As a result, states are defaulting on their primary responsibility to protect citizens from crime through these inmate-release programs.

Chalk up robbery, rape, and murder as another cost of the welfare state.

Crime and Economy II

It is nice to see Heather Mac Donald writing in the Wall Street Journal on the decline in crime during this recession as a contradiction of the left's belief that crime is a function of economic difficulties. This is the topic I wrote about in a recent column (here), and she provides additional information on the history and implications of this terrible idea.

Crime and the Economy

In an email from the New York Times with today's headlines, the Times said:

"Despite the bad economy, [New York City] is on track to have the fewest homicides in a 12-month period since 1962."

That comment is based on the left's belief that economic conditions are the key determinant of criminal activity. Crime rates rose during the economic boom of the 1920's and fell during the Great Depression of the 1930's. The fact that this pattern was influenced by criminal activity associated with Prohibition during the 1920's and its repeal in 1933 suggests that crime is due to many factors and is not well correlated to economic conditions.

The drop in the number of murders in New York in 2009 during a recession further explodes this myth.

The article discusses the continued decline in murder that New York has enjoyed. From a peak of 2,245 murders in 1990, the number of murders this year as of December 27 was 461 - a staggering decline of almost 80%.

One of the tactics the New York City police employ is to question and frisk some people on the streets - which resulted this year in 7,000 weapons being seized, including 800 guns. Speaking of this tactic, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says, "We believe young people who may have a gun think twice before they take it out on the street."

This is a profoundly important policy. The NYPD is raising the cost to would-be thugs from bringing weapons on to the streets by confiscating them, and as with most things in life, if the "cost" of something is raised, people will engage in less of that activity.

Interestingly, this tactic is likely to be "politically incorrect", since its implementation is probably based on common-sense profiling (does he look like a gang member?). Perhaps city residents are enjoying the 80% drop in murders too much to protest.

Crime and the Economy

One of the left's shibboleths is that poverty and difficult economic times are a root cause of crime.

But facts are a difficult thing, and the facts tell a different story.

During the economic boom of the 1920's, crime increased significantly, while crime decreased in the 1930's during the Great Depression. The imposition of Prohibition in the 1920's, and its repeal in the 1930's, no doubt had an important role. But it illustrates that crime is not just about poverty and hard times.

And now we turn to today. The FBI recently announced that crime dropped in 2008, despite the difficult economic environment.

Don't expect the left, so disconnected from reality, to change its tune.

Justice, European-Style

Scotland released the Libyan agent who was convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people.

The agent, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi, is terminally ill so his release is for "humane" reasons.

Aside from the obscenity of releasing a mass murder, this serves as a great example of what criminal justice really means in Europe.

It is a relevant consideration for Americans, since opponents of the death penalty often use Europe's ban on the death penalty as a reason we should ban it.

The release of al-Megrahi illustrates the problem with the philosophy underlying the left's view of criminal justice: it is a soft-on-crime approach, with shorter sentences (he was only sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison for his conviction in the killing of 270 people) and more lenient view on releasing prisoners.

Abandoning the death penalty is likely to be the first step in weakening criminal penalties across a range of crimes, that life without parole as the substitute for the death penalty will also come under assault, and all "lesser" crimes will eventually have weakened criminal penalties.

One of the most effective ways to reduce crime is to keep criminals behind bars. And the death penalty for the most heinous of crimes can help raise the penalties for all other crimes, which helps keep violent criminals behind bars and off the streets.

So the next time someone uses Europe as an example for abandoning the death penalty, remember the Lockerbie case.

Prison Insanity

The New York Times reports that states are considering closing prisons to cut spending amid budget deficits.

This illustrates perfectly one of the profound problems with the welfare state: not only does the government focus its money and energies on improper activities such as wealth redistribution, but it defaults on its responsibilities to protect us from criminals.

The effort to cut spending by closing prisons and reducing the number of criminals behind bars means more people will be murdered, raped, and assaulted.

Where is the outrage over that certain outcome? Where are the protesters picketing in front of lawmakers' homes demanding that prisons be kept open?