When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants (21 page)

The evening ended with a series of additional wagers: Tony-T accepted challenges to his claim that Bunk dies by the end of the season; Shine proposed that Marlo would kill Prop Joe; the youngest attendee, the twenty-nine-year-old Flavor, placed $2,500 on Clay Davis escaping indictment and revealing his close ties with Marlo.

I felt obliged to chime in: I wagered five dollars that the circulation of
The Baltimore Sun
would double, attracting a takeover by Warren Buffett by Episode 4. No one was interested enough to take my bet.

Venkatesh went on to write nine columns about watching
The Wire
with his criminally inclined friends. They can all be found at
Freakonomics.com
.

New York’s state senate recently passed a bill making it illegal to recruit someone into a street gang.

In the never-ending fight by city officials and legislators to combat gangs, this is one of the latest efforts to outmaneuver them. Other initiatives have included: city ordinances that limit two or more gang members from hanging out in
public space; school codes that ban the use of hats, clothing, and colors that signify gang membership; and public housing authorities that evict leaseholders who allow gang members (or any other “criminal”) to live inside the housing unit.

These laws rarely lead to reductions in gang membership, gang violence, or gang crime. In fact, police officers I know find these ordinances and statutes a waste of time. Cops would much rather “control and contain” gang activity. Most officers who work in inner cities understand that you cannot eliminate gang activity entirely—arrest two gang members and you will find a dozen others waiting in line to take their places. Police know that gang members have great knowledge about local crimes, so they rely on a trade-off: keep gangs isolated to particular areas, don’t let their criminal activities spill over into other spaces, and use high-ranking gang members for information.

This strategy actually prevents membership from expanding, at least in big cities where gangs are economically oriented. Beat cops who run the streets make sure that gang leaders don’t prey upon too many kids for recruiting purposes. In effect, this kind of policing limits the reach of gangs. It may not be socially desirable policing, but it works if you measure effectiveness by reductions in gang membership.

I called a few gang leaders in Chicago and asked them about the greatest obstacles to recruiting and retaining members. Here are a few answers:

Michael (thirty years old, African American) was insistent that today’s gangs are mostly “drug crews,” i.e., businesses:

We always lose people to jobs. If a n----r in my crew gets a good job, he’s gone. So, as long as there ain’t no work for a brother, then we have no problem. Most of us have families, we’re not in school beating each other up, acting stupid. We’re out here on the streets trying to make our money. You got all these people telling us to get an education—I’m making thousands of dollars each month. Why do I need to go to school?

Darnell (thirty-two years old, African American) said police should be more creative.

Let’s say you catch one of us—I’d make the boy wear a dress and makeup. Maybe for two weeks. Let the boy go to school looking like a girl. Let him walk the streets looking like he’s gay. I guarantee you, we’d have a hard time holding on to n----rs if you do shit like that!

Jo-Jo (forty-nine years old, half Puerto Rican, half black) said the cops should do . . .

. . . what they did when I was younger. Drop a Disciple off in Vicelords territory late at night. Let him get his ass kicked. And keep doing it! I remember growing up and all these cats used to get beat up. You know
what? This would actually help me because it would get rid of a lot of these folks who do nothing for us except cause trouble. In fact, I’d be willing to work with the cops if they want to call me. Maybe we could help each other out?

My good friend Dorothy never ran a gang, but as an outreach worker who helps young people in the ghetto turn their lives around, she has pretty good insight. She recalled some of her own gang-intervention efforts in the 1990s and came up with the following suggestion:

Tax the n-----s! That’s what I would do if I was the mayor. Don’t put them in jail, but take fifty percent of their money. You know what I mean? Find them on the streets if they’re misbehaving, grab half of their cash, and put it into a community fund. Let the block clubs have it, let the churches have the money. I guarantee you that a lot of brothers will think twice if you get to their pocketbooks.

Interesting thought. I wonder whether market forces might exert the kind of discipline required to limit the involvement of young people in gang-controlled drug economies. If, as Treasury Secretary Paulson reminds us, “market discipline” is sufficient to regulate the financial markets, perhaps it could be effective in the underground.

Oh, yes, I forgot about Bear Stearns. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

In a
sample of thirteen African countries
between 1999 and 2004, 52 percent of women surveyed say they think that wife-beating is justified if she neglects the children; around 45 percent think it’s justified if she goes out without telling the husband or argues with him; 36 percent if she refuses sex, and 30 percent if she burns the food.

And this is what the women think.

We live in a strange world.

In order to become a U.S. citizen, one has to complete the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s
Form N-400
.

How long do you think it has been since someone answered yes to question 12(c) in part 10(b):

Between March 23, 1933, and May 8, 1945, did you work for or associate in any way (either directly or indirectly) with any German, Nazi, or SS military unit, paramilitary unit, self-defense unit, vigilante unit, citizen unit, police unit, government agency or office, extermination camp, concentration camp, prisoner of war camp, prison, labor camp, or transit camp?

I also wonder what kind of person answers yes to this question:

Have you ever been a member of or in any way associated (either directly or indirectly) with a terrorist organization?

I’m surprised we still bother to ask this question:

Have you ever been a member of or in any way associated (either directly or indirectly) with the Communist Party?

There are some trickier questions, though, like this one:

Have you ever committed a crime or offense for which you were not arrested?

Not many people can truthfully answer no to that last question, but I presume everyone does anyway.

Is there any point to asking questions when you know that people will never give a yes answer?

It turns out that there actually is a point to such questions: U.S. law enforcement can use demonstrably false answers against individuals to prosecute or deport them. Indeed, some officers I was speaking with the other day said they wished there were more questions on terrorist activities on the N-400.

A few years back, I wrote
an article for the
Times Magazine
about the NFL’s annual “rookie symposium,” a four-day gathering during which the league tries to warn incoming players about all the pitfalls they may face—personal threats, bad influences, gold-digging women, dishonest money managers, etc.

The NFL even brought in a bunch of veterans and retirees to try to teach the young guys some lessons. One was the former wide receiver Irving Fryar. As I wrote:

“We’re going to have some idiots come out of this room,” he begins. “Those of you feeling good about yourselves, stop it. You ain’t did nothing yet.” Fryar recites his career stats: 17 NFL seasons, a drug habit since he was 13, and four trips to jail. “The first time, I was stopped in New Jersey,” he says. “I was on my way to shoot somebody. Driving my BMW. I had guns in the trunk, and I got taken to jail. The second time, also guns. Third time was domestic abuse. Fourth time, it was guns again. No. Yeah, yeah, it was guns again. Things got so bad for me, I put a .44 Magnum up to my head and pulled the trigger.” Now Fryar is a minister. “When I was a rookie,” he says, “we didn’t have anything like this [symposium]. I had to learn
it the hard way. Don’t use me as an example of what you can get away with, brothers. Use me as an example of what you shouldn’t do.”

It looks like Plaxico Burress didn’t pay attention. I briefly met Burress back when he was first drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers, and have followed his career medium closely ever since. I have concluded that my first impression was pretty much accurate: he is a grade-A knucklehead. His latest misstep—shooting himself in the leg in a nightclub—is easily the most serious (he may well go to prison for criminal possession of a handgun under New York City law), but his history on and off the field reads like an idiot’s checklist.

But how anomalous is Burress? According to an ESPN report, not very. One insider estimated that 20 percent of Major League Baseball players carry concealed weapons. A former cop who has worked as a bodyguard for NBA players put the number as “close to 60 percent.” As for the NFL? Here’s what ESPN reports: “New England Patriots wide receiver Jabar Gaffney, a gun owner himself, said he thinks 90 percent of NFL players have firearms.”

Burress’s problem—aside from the fact that he shot himself—is that he didn’t have a carry permit. And while he lives in New Jersey, the shooting took place in New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg is devoutly anti-gun.

If the ESPN figures are even halfway true, the question arises: Is the risk of carrying an illegal handgun smaller
than the risk that the average NFL player faces if he goes out in public without a gun?

Burress would seem to have thought so.

Of all the stories about players who’ve gotten into trouble with guns, there’s also the case of Sean Taylor, who was shot to death in his own home even though he was armed and tried to defend himself.

His weapon? A machete.

For years, I’ve fantasized about buying a gun. The only reason I want one is that if an intruder enters my house and tries to terrorize my family, I would like to be able to defend us. The baseball bat under the bed just doesn’t seem sufficient. Never mind that I am a total coward—at least I’d be able to imagine the scenario would play out differently.

Given my own heroic fantasies, I heartily endorse a new law passed in Missouri which stipulates that you can use deadly force against someone who illegally enters your home (or even your car), even if you aren’t in obvious danger. In most places, you need to prove you were in real danger of being hurt or killed in order to justify the use of deadly force.

From a crime deterrence theoretical perspective, this
law makes sense to me. A burglar has no legitimate reason to be in your house. Burglary is a crime with high social costs (victims feel an awful sense of violation when their home is ransacked, even if the burglar doesn’t get much), but relatively low expected punishments for the criminal because arrest rates are low. Most victims never see the burglars, so they’re difficult to catch, as opposed to street robberies. I did a rough calculation many years ago, and if I remember correctly, the risk of lost years of life for burglars who were shot and killed by their victim amounted to about 15 percent of the total prison time they could expect to serve for their crimes. In other words, if you are a burglar, being killed by the resident should be a serious concern. If this law encouraged more residents to kill intruders, there would likely be fewer burglaries.

On the other hand, this law probably won’t have much real impact on crime. The kind of people that shoot burglars when they catch them in their homes are likely to shoot the burglar whether such a protective law is in place or not. (That is, more or less, my reading of the evidence on concealed-weapons laws.) I think that, in practice, they mostly let you off the hook legally if you shoot an intruder. If victim behavior doesn’t actually change, there is little reason for burglar behavior to shift. Even worse, you get a bunch of bumblers like me trying to fight burglars under the new law, and we end up getting shot.

The law does bring to mind some interesting possibilities, however. If there is someone you dislike so much that
you want him dead, all you need to do is figure out how to get him to come inside your house, and make it look plausible that he was an intruder. Maybe you could tell him that you are having a late-night poker party and to just let himself in and come upstairs to join the game. Or maybe say there’s a surprise party for a mutual acquaintance, so all the lights will be out, and to come to your bedroom at 2
A.M.

Never underestimate the creativity and deviousness of humans—or the speed with which
Law and Order
will take the first example of this and turn it into an episode.

The Supreme Court recently
struck down
the gun ban in Washington, D.C. A similar gun ban in
Chicago may be the next
to go.

The primary rationale for these gun bans is to lower crime. Do they actually work? There is remarkably little academic research that directly answers this question, but there is some indirect evidence.

Let’s start with the direct evidence. There have been a few academic papers that directly analyzed the D.C. gun ban, and the papers came to opposite conclusions.

The fundamental difficulty with this kind of research is that you have one law change. So you can compare D.C. before and after. Or you can try to find a control group and compare D.C. before and after to that control group
before and after (in what economists call a “differences-in-differences analysis”).