 John Maher of Delancey Street: A guide to peaceful revolution in America; By Grover Sales [*Amazon*] “Delancey Street is an incredible mixture of pure idealism and hard practicality. It is the best and the most successful [criminal rehabilitation] organization I have studied in the world” — Dr. Karl Menninger |
It simply amazes me how so many criminology academics, with strong opinions about the root causes for criminality; don't bother to conduct brutally honest conversations with brutally honest former criminals themselves, to find out exactly what it is that motivated their criminality.
John Maher’s criminal career started at age 14 in New York City, as a pickpocket, then thief, then armed robber, and drug addict, etc. With the help of Chuck Dedericks from Synanon, Maher then rehabilitated himself, and started the most successful rehabilitation program in the world: Delancey Street Foundation. Thirty plus years after Delancey Street was started by Maher with $100 loan from a loanshark, it has successfully rehabilitated over 14,000 former drug addicts, violent gang criminals, and delinquents; which has cost US Taxpayers exactly ZERO; because Delancey Street refuses goverment funding.
A few excerpts, from John Maher of Delancey Street: A Guide for Peaceful Revolution in America, by Grover Sales:“In retrospect, I think most of my antisocial behaviour was due to the fact that I wanted to get laid. In slums, the romantic and heroic figures are those who can beat the system. Soon as a guy legitimately makes money, he moves out of the slums. No movie stars or social leaders there, so the guys that could make it with broads were the ones who had cash and some heroic non drudge role – the hoodlums. So why dig ditches that don’t get you the girls, the attention, or the cash to pay off the cops?About Rykers Island Prison:“Jails like rain to a farmer – just make sure you don’t get too much of it. Jail was a chance, with a little risk, to impress gangsters from the Neighbourhood; there were men in all the New York jails who knew my father and my grandfather. On the street, I had to work for a rep, but in jail I could build it easily, pick up the law from older Neighbourhood fellas, names I could use to drop on the outside, like “You was with Yago,” or “You was with Irving the Banker.”
About Prison Rehabilitation from Criminology Ph.D. experts:“One day this brand new Ph.D comes around looking for a quorum for his group therapy sessions, so I tell him. “You get us some good coffee and keep my boys out of the hole and we’ll go to therapy.” I line up this motley crew to sit around in a room with this dopey doctor asks some guy from East Harlem, for Chrissake, how he feels about his mother!. … So you lead the sucker along: “Gee, Doc, I get these terrible feelings of insecurity when I go look for a job.” What job? When we get out, we don’t go for no job – we go out and get a fix. I’ve been group therapized thousands of times – its about as good as exorcism.”About Prison Officials:“The only ones who did some good were your basic correctional officers who had the job because they had kids to feed, did not take themselves too seriously, and had been through the mill. I never met any city appointee in the prison administration worth half a fuck….. The administration at all times encourages racism, even to the point of pitting white guards against black guards….. But of course in those days I was too crazy to perceive such things. I was too busy wanting to grow up to be a big-time gangster.”
So, Maher became a criminal, because his belief system informed him that being a gangster was a noble means of employment! It was a conscious career choice to become a noble exciting big-time gangster; instead of an average boring hardworking taxpaying law abiding citizen. Is it possible, then that a criminals belief system, is the foundation wherefrom s/he chooses and justifies their life-of-crime criminality?
About Chuck Dedericks, a former heroin addict, who had rehabilitated himself, and created “a revolutionary method for freeing the addictive personality – the discovery that ex-patients make the best doctors,” after a chance reading of Emersons essay “Self Reliance”:“Dederich treated emotional addicts like small children until he was satisfied they could think and function like reasoning adults. A man who threatened violence would have his head shaved and wear a sign, “I’m a little boy – please laugh at my idiotic attempts to act tough.””How Dederich changed Maher’s Beliefs about the alleged nobility of Criminality:“Dederich impressed me because he took no money. I had never met anyone before who would help you for no money or salary. It reeked out of the man that he didn’t have a racket, he was basically honest and had some interesting concepts. And I knew my life was not producing the quality that it should. Dederich put the responsibility on me. The responsibility to kick my own habit. Not, “We’re going to help you, Junior,” but “Why don’t you help yourself? Here’s the tools!” Prior to this, either the right-wing nuts clobber your head, or the left-wing nuts kiss your ass, until you’re bananas. In hospitals little old Red Cross ladies cried a lot and told me what a hard life I had, or in jail, guards would beat me up and scream what a dirty sonofoabitch I was. So Dederich made sense and became a father figure to me.
After repeated efforts to inform Dept. of Corrections of Delancey Street rehabilitation principles and doctrines that 'work'; repeatedly ignored and vilified by such officials; I informed the ANC Goverment of this reality, in 11 June 2004: An Essay on Proudly South African Parasite Hypocrisy: Fraudulent 'Rehabilitation' Boomerang: Correctional Services Prison Policies As A Major Intentional Source of New South Africa's 'Kaffirs' AKA 'Criminals', delivered via Judge JJ Fagan, Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons. The only response I got was from DA MP James Selfe.
The Essay on Proudly SA Hypocrisy provided the Dept. of Corrections and ANC SA Goverment with insight into some of the following issues:
- Are Violent Criminals in South Africa proud or ashamed of their violence?
- Does the black and coloured community admire violent criminals?
- Do these violent predators experience orgiastic pleasure from their violence?
A Crime Theory Demolished
If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased?
Heather MacDonald | Wall Street Journal |
January 4, 2010, 9:52 P.M. ET
The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice.
As the economy started shedding jobs in 2008, criminologists and pundits predicted that crime would shoot up, since poverty, as the "root causes" theory holds, begets criminals. Instead, the opposite happened. Over seven million lost jobs later, crime has plummeted to its lowest level since the early 1960s. The consequences of this drop for how we think about social order are significant.
The notion that crime is an understandable reaction to poverty and racism took hold in the early 1960s. Sociologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin argued that juvenile delinquency was essentially a form of social criticism. Poor minority youth come to understand that the American promise of upward mobility is a sham, after a bigoted society denies them the opportunity to advance. These disillusioned teens then turn to crime out of thwarted expectations.
The theories put forward by Cloward, who spent his career at Columbia University, and Ohlin, who served presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Carter, provided an intellectual foundation for many Great Society-era programs. From the Mobilization for Youth on Manhattan's Lower East Side in 1963 through the federal Office of Economic Opportunity and a host of welfare, counseling and job initiatives, their ideas were turned into policy.
If crime was a rational response to income inequality, the thinking went, government can best fight it through social services and wealth redistribution, not through arrests and incarceration. Even law enforcement officials came to embrace the root causes theory, which let them off the hook for rising lawlessness.
 The Compstat Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business and the Public Sector; By Vincent E. Henry [*Amazon*] |
Through the late 1980s, the FBI's annual national crime report included the disclaimer that "criminal homicide is largely a societal problem which is beyond the control of the police." Policing, it was understood, can only respond to crime after the fact; preventing it is the domain of government welfare programs.
The 1960s themselves offered a challenge to the poverty-causes-crime thesis. Homicides rose 43%, despite an expanding economy and a surge in government jobs for inner-city residents.
The Great Depression also contradicted the idea that need breeds predation, since crime rates dropped during that prolonged crisis. The academy's commitment to root causes apologetics nevertheless persisted. Andrew Karmen of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice echoed Cloward and Ohlin in 2000 in his book "New York Murder Mystery." Crime, he wrote, is "a distorted form of social protest."
And as the current recession deepened, liberal media outlets called for more government social programs to fight the coming crime wave. In late 2008, the New York Times urged President Barack Obama to crank up federal spending on after-school programs, social workers, and summer jobs. "The economic crisis," the paper's editorialists wrote, "has clearly created the conditions for more crime and more gangs—among hopeless, jobless young men in the inner cities."
Even then crime patterns were defying expectations. And by the end of 2009, the purported association between economic hardship and crime was in shambles.
According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, homicide dropped 10% nationwide in the first six months of 2009; violent crime dropped 4.4% and property crime dropped 6.1%. Car thefts are down nearly 19%. The crime plunge is sharpest in many areas that have been hit the hardest by the housing collapse. Unemployment in California is 12.3%, but homicides in Los Angeles County, the Los Angeles Times reported recently, dropped 25% over the course of 2009. Car thefts there are down nearly 20%.
The recession crime free fall continues a trend of declining national crime rates that began in the 1990s, during a very different economy. The causes of that long-term drop are hotly disputed, but an increase in the number of people incarcerated had a large effect on crime in the last decade and continues to affect crime rates today, however much anti-incarceration activists deny it. The number of state and federal prisoners grew fivefold between 1977 and 2008, from 300,000 to 1.6 million.
 Leading Beyond Tradition: A Breakthrough Strategy for Law Enforcement; By William E. Cooper [*Amazon*] |
***
The spread of data-driven policing has also contributed to the 2000s' crime drop.
At the start of the recession, the two police chiefs who confidently announced that their cities' crime rates would remain recession-proof were Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
As New York Police Commissioner in the mid-1990s, Mr. Bratton pioneered the intensive use of crime data to determine policing strategies and to hold precinct commanders accountable—a process known as Compstat. Commissioner Kelly has continued Mr. Bratton's revolutionary policies, leading to New York's stunning 16-year 77% crime drop.
 As New York Police Commissioner in mid-1990s, Chief William Bratton pioneered the intensive use of crime data to determine policing strategies & to hold precinct commanders accountable—a process known as Compstat; which led to New York's stunning 16-year 77% crime drop. The Compstat mentality is the opposite of root causes excuse-making; it holds that policing can and must control crime for urban economic viability; to provide public safety through enforcing the rule of law. [Crime Theory Demolished: Poverty is NOT the Root Cause of Criminality!] |
The two police leaders were true to their word. In 2009, the city of L.A. saw a 17% drop in homicides, an 8% drop in property crimes, and a 10% drop in violent crimes. In New York, homicides fell 19%, to their lowest level since reliable records were first kept in 1963.
The Compstat mentality is the opposite of root causes excuse-making; it holds that policing can and must control crime for the sake of urban economic viability.
More and more police chiefs have adopted the Compstat philosophy of crime-fighting and the information-based policing techniques that it spawned. Their success in lowering crime shows that the government can control antisocial behavior and provide public safety through enforcing the rule of law. Moreover, the state has the moral right and obligation to do so, regardless of economic conditions or income inequality.
The recession could still affect crime rates if cities cut their police forces and states start releasing prisoners early. Both forms of cost-saving would be self-defeating.
Public safety is the precondition for thriving urban life.
In 1990s New York, crime did not drop because the economy improved; rather, the city's economy revived because crime was cut in half. Keeping crime rates low now is the best guarantee that cities across the country will be able to exploit the inevitable economic recovery when it comes.
Ms. Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
NYC & LA Police Chief Bill Bratton debunks the “Poverty & Racism cause crime” theory. |
» » » » [Wall Street Journal (PDF)]
The Color of Crime: Race, Crime and Justice in America
Major Findings
- Police and the justice system are not biased against minorities.
Crime Rates
- Blacks are seven times more likely than people of other races to commit murder, and eight times more likely to commit robbery.
- When blacks commit crimes of violence, they are nearly three times more likely than non-blacks to use a gun, and more than twice as likely to use a knife.
- Hispanics commit violent crimes at roughly three times the white rate, and Asians commit violent crimes at about one quarter the white rate.
- The single best indicator of violent crime levels in an area is the percentage of
the population that is black and Hispanic.
Interracial Crime
- Of the nearly 770,000 violent interracial crimes committed every year involving blacks and whites, blacks commit 85 percent and whites commit 15 percent.
- Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Fortyfive percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.
- Blacks are an estimated 39 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa, and 136 times more likely to commit robbery.
- Blacks are 2.25 times more likely to commit officially-designated hate crimes against whites than vice versa.
Gangs
- Only 10 percent of youth gang members are white.
- Hispanics are 19 times more likely than whites to be members of youth gangs. Blacks are 15 times more likely, and Asians are nine times more likely.
Incarceration
- Between 1980 and 2003 the US incarceration rate more than tripled, from 139 to 482 per 100,000, and the number of prisoners increased from 320,000 to 1.39 million.
- Blacks are seven times more likely to be in prison than whites. Hispanics are three times more likely.
» » » » [Color of Crime (PDF)]
1 comment:
The following comment, was submitted to the post of Michael Trapido: How Serious is the ANC about crime?, unfortunately Mr. Trapido, was about as serious about crime as the ANC. The comment was editted and bult thereof, including link censored. Here follows full comment:
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White Refugee on January 25th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
Mr. Walliser,
You say nobody has any idea on how to fix the crime problem in our country.
Well in fact there are people who have an idea, and in fact when their ideas have been implemented, crime dropped in one city, by 77%!!!! Yes, you read that right!
The problem, we have in South Africa, is that, implementing that plan, requires left wing liberals addicted to their ‘poverty is the root cause of criminality crackpipe’ to confront the reality that their ‘poverty is the root cause of criminality’ belief is untrue.
More here: Poverty: Not the root cause of criminality.
So, are you serious enough to shed your incorrect beliefs? Or is this just another exercise in more fake pretend outrage about crime?
Mr. Trapido;
You’d make an exceptional two-faced hypocrit peddling a fake Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in exchange for a few million; to keep your mouth shut and sell South Africans a fake Rainbow Azania…
De Kocks crimes were all politically motivated. So, if you don’t support politically motivated amnesty; fine. Charge everyone including De Klerk and Mandela, the whole lot; and throw away the key, for all.
Or you do support politcal amnesty, and you can admit when you are so filled with hate, for someone that you are unable to give his case an impartial analysis.
(Report abuse)
White Refugee on January 25th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
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