If we want to keep our neighbors and children safe, we are going to have to learn to have a discerning eye and forgiving heart to those who have committed sexual crimes but pose little to no future threat not only so they can get on with their lives, but so society can devote its resources to watching those who are truly dangerous. The chest-thumping over “being tough on crime” has to calm down so we can look at policies and punishments that really work rather than sound tough and produce discouraging and dangerous results.

I would love to hear your comments, and again, check out the full article.

• Every American state keeps a register of sex offenders. California has had one since 1947, but most states started theirs in the 1990s. Many people assume that anyone listed on a sex-offender registry must be a rapist or a child molester. But most states spread the net much more widely. A report by Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch, a pressure group, found that at least five states required men to register if they were caught visiting prostitutes. At least 13 required it for urinating in public (in two of which, only if a child was present). No fewer than 29 states required registration for teenagers who had consensual sex with another teenager. And 32 states registered flashers and streakers.

• America’s registers keep swelling, not least because in 17 states, registration is for life.

• The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous.

• So laws get harsher and harsher. But that does not necessarily mean they get better. If there are thousands of offenders on a registry, it is harder to keep track of the most dangerous ones.

• A study of nearly 10,000 male sex offenders in 15 American states found that 5% were rearrested for a sex crime within three years. A meta-analysis of 29,000 sex offenders in Canada, Britain and America found that 24% had reoffended after 15 years.

• A meta-analysis of 23 studies by Karl Hanson of Canada’s department of public safety found that psychological therapy was associated with a 43% drop in recidivism.

• Publicising sex offenders’ addresses makes them vulnerable to vigilantism. In April 2006, for example, a vigilante shot and killed two sex offenders in Maine after finding their addresses on the registry. One of the victims had been convicted of having consensual sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend when he was 19.

• In Washington state in 2005 a man posed as an FBI agent to enter the home of two sex offenders, warning them that they were on a “hit list” on the internet. Then he killed them.

• Jill Levenson, of Lynn University in Florida, says half of registered sex offenders have trouble finding jobs. From 20% to 40% say they have had to move house because a landlord or neighbour realised they were sex offenders.

For the month of September a donation of any amount will not only go towards their Slow Food in School Program, but also gets you member in Slow Food USA (usually $60).

Use this as an opportunity to our schools where too many students get their only real meals of the day and the only nutrition instruction of their lifetimes.

Join/Donate today!

There are heinous crimes for which I would have a hard time arguing against the death penalty (I doubt you will ever find me arguing for it in any situation). That isn’t the issue. The issue is we have a predictably flawed (all juries are imperfect) system that does not always convict the correct person of their actual crimes.

As a taxpayer, I would far rather pay for the care and appeals during the lifetime sentence of all death-row inmates than continue to be part of society that is killing innocent men and women. As quoted in the article above, former Illinois governor George Ryan stated he could no longer support a system that has “come so close to the ultimate nightmare-the state’s taking of innocent life.

This all reminds me of an amazing book I read ~2 years ago. It was one of those reads I truly could not put down, reading in during all the 5 minute breaks between periods at school, on lunch, and late into the night. It is the memoirs of Rev. Carroll Pickett, a minister who was asked to assist at his local prison when executions were resumed after the 1972 stay. He starts his journey in favor of the death penalty and over time watches as the truly guilty, but also the mentally retarded and truly innocent are put to death:

You can view the full documentary online for $3.99 at Amazon and find his book here.

About 10 percent of infants die in their first year of life in Africa — still shockingly high, but considerably lower than the European average less than 100 years ago, let alone 800 years past. And about two thirds of Africans are literate — a level achieved in Spain only in the 1920s.

This reminded me of a most hopeful and wonderful clip by Hans Rosling at TED. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Rosling’s work, watch his lectures, you’ll be simply blown away:

And if you want to consider how there needs to be a complex interaction between markets, government aide, and micro-finance (if you’re not on Kiva.org, it’s the best $25 you’ll spend) to further grow Africa, wind this clip about 60 seconds and you’ll get a great visual from Hans.

This map represents the percentage of land area needed to completely power the world using solar energy in 2030. As it notes, obviously is wouldn’t be in one large chunk as depicted but could be broken up if placed in comparable areas.

This makes me think of a recent Ted talk (if you haven’t checked out Ted talks, you’re missing out big time) from Ray Kurzweil where he talks about our inability to think exponentially as humans prevents us from seeing the reasonable growth of technology, including growth in solar and other green forms of technology:

This recent NY Time article talks about falling prices of home solar panels because of: 1) the economy 2) increased production coming online around the world and 3) President Obama’s dropping of the $2,000 cap on the federal governments 30% tax rebate on solar panels purchases.

Any of you out there thinking about going solar any time soon?

If we would all work just a little bit harder (myself most of all) at moving out of our default way of being and thinking and choose to consider others we would have made a huge step towards the kind of society we are seeking.

Alex Tabarrok asks, in a recent Ted talk, “How many Ramanujan’s are there in India today, toiling in the fields, barely able to feed themselves, when they could be feeding the world?”

He goes on to explain that globalization is not something we should fear, but embrace, as one good idea will lift all of us, and lifting the world out of poverty will great millions upon millions of new college graduates, scientists, scholars, and thinkers. And that will change the world for all of us.

Enjoy this clip (starts at the pertinent point, though the whole video is highly recommended):

A recent Times article, and accompanying photo essay, tell the story of cheap 20mg zinc tablets, when combined with oral rehydration therapy, has proven very effective in lessening instances of diarrhea among children. Diarrhea claims the lives of more children than AIDS or malaria.

Save the Children has been the primary provider of zinc tablets. They are a reputable organization, with 92% of your money going to treatment.

Click here to donate $10 to Save the Children and make this $0.30, life-or-death treatment available to many children.

I remember sitting across from one girl who had scars up her all up and down the inside of arm from her cutting. My friend asked me what I would come to know as her typical introduce-the-new-person question: “Tell us some little-known fact about you.” It just so happened I had let my sister Liz paint my toesnails at her baby shower a couple weekend before and I had never gotten around to taking it off, so the girls in the class were delighted to see the formally dressed MTC teacher take off his shoes and show them his cracked toenail polish.

I fell in love with the State Hospital, I quit the MTC mid semester (let’s just say I burned a bridge at a job many clammer for) and started working as an aide in my friend’s classroom. In time I was a substitute in the younger (7-9th grade) girls’ classroom, and than was the teacher for 11 months in the 9-12th grade boys’ classroom.

I loved my time there, I love my students, and I for the most part respected the school and hospital staff I worked with. But it was impossible to ignore the fact that even with all of our good intentions and programs, these youth learned very negative behavior spending 24/7 around each other. Now, in this case they had behavior stemming from mental illness as well as, at times, “juvielle delinquent” type behavior likely unconnected to mental illness. But when one clinically depressed student arrives who has never cut before, and they are around someone who has cut or even does cut at the hospital, it not hard to imagine they at least try the behavior.

A recent Newsweek article talked about this phenomenon, s tudy that controlled for family income, single-parent homes, and early behavior problems, they found these startling facts:

*Compared with other kids with a similar history of bad behavior, those who entered the juvenile-justice system were nearly seven times more likely to be arrested for crimes as adults

*Further, those who ended up being sentenced to juvenile prison were 37 times more likely to be arrested again as adults, compared with similarly misbehaved kids who were either not caught or not put into the system.

*Kids who entered the juvenile-justice system even briefly — for example, being sentenced to community service or other penance, with limited exposure to other troubled kids — were twice as likely to be arrested as adults, compared with kids with the same behavior problems who remained outside the system.

*Being put on probation, which involves more contact with misbehaving peers, in counseling groups or even in waiting rooms at probation offices, raised teens’ odds of adult arrest by a factor of 14.

Again, in our desire to crack down out what is truly dangerous or socially unacceptable behavior in a manner than mimics the adult prison system (parole, lock down, etc.) we inadvertently fuel the fire.

What can we do? In the words of the article:

In a 1995 study conducted by Dishion involving 158 high-risk families in Oregon, researchers compared the impact on teens’ behavior of four interventions: parenting groups focused on effective discipline, social-skills-training groups for teens, both the parent- and teen-focused group interventions, or no group treatment at all. Overall, the parent-focused group was most effective, leading to reductions in teen smoking and misbehavior at school. The teen-focused group, by contrast, significantly increased participants’ rate of aggressive behavior and smoking; in the combination group, kids showed no improvement, presumably because the exposure to other teens canceled out the positive effect of the parents.