You spend all week looking forward to the game. You get up at 7.30 in the morning to watch it. You see your side go 2-0 up and start looking forward to rest of the weekend, being able to bask in the warm glow of victory.
But then you watch your team throw it all away in a tortuous second half - your team's bitterest rivals coming from behind to claim an unbelievable victory. You try to console yourself with the fact that you're not actually at the game having to witness such horror in the flesh. But its just as painful watching it on the other side of the Atlantic. And as the anger fades, the resignation sets in, that the rest of your weekend is ruined, knowing that your masochistic brain will replay the events of the match over and over, taunting you with alternative scenarios of what might have been. The cruelty of football...
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Friday, November 19, 2010
Unintended consequences
One of the great things about the HBO show The Wire is the way it depicts the unintended consequences of policing on crime. Series 4 (my personal favourite) charts the rise of an upstart drugs dealer named Marlo Stanfield, who steps in to replace the territory vacated by the collapse of the Barksdale Crew, who's leader, Avon Barksdale, had been put behind bars at the end of Series 3. To the horror of the Baltimore Police, Marlo's reign turns out to be even more violent and anarchic than his predecessor's with murders carried out for increasingly trivial reasons, rather than as a last resort.
The paradox at the heart of this tale - that 'success' in policing can sometimes end up making things worse - can be seen in evidence today.
To take just one example: US-backed victories against drug cartels in Peru and Bolivia in the late 1990s appear to have driven the narcotraficantes closer to the US border, into Mexico, which has, over the last decade became one of the world's biggest 'hubs' for organised criminality. Meanwhile, the UN's most recent World Drugs Report suggests a key reason for the dramatic increase in the Mexican homicide rate is that demand for cocaine has begun to fall in the US, meaning that the narcotraficantes have been left fighting over a shrinking market. In fact the plight of Mexico could serve as a perfect case study in the law of unintended consequences.
None of which is meant to imply that I think we should give up trying to control the illicit flows of drugs. I do not subscribe to the view that ending prohibition would necessarily reduce drug harms. For example, there is strong evidence that if currently illegal substances were made legal, their popularity would increase, which would in turn increase the levels of morbidity and mortality associated with drug-taking. And it has always struck me as odd that the issue of drug control is uniquely subject to calls that the struggle should be abandoned, when, despite equally mixed results in international interventions, no one advocates accepting poverty as inevitable, for example.
But we should acknowledge rather than ignore or deny the existence of such unintended consequences, particularly when so many lives are at stake.
The paradox at the heart of this tale - that 'success' in policing can sometimes end up making things worse - can be seen in evidence today.
To take just one example: US-backed victories against drug cartels in Peru and Bolivia in the late 1990s appear to have driven the narcotraficantes closer to the US border, into Mexico, which has, over the last decade became one of the world's biggest 'hubs' for organised criminality. Meanwhile, the UN's most recent World Drugs Report suggests a key reason for the dramatic increase in the Mexican homicide rate is that demand for cocaine has begun to fall in the US, meaning that the narcotraficantes have been left fighting over a shrinking market. In fact the plight of Mexico could serve as a perfect case study in the law of unintended consequences.
None of which is meant to imply that I think we should give up trying to control the illicit flows of drugs. I do not subscribe to the view that ending prohibition would necessarily reduce drug harms. For example, there is strong evidence that if currently illegal substances were made legal, their popularity would increase, which would in turn increase the levels of morbidity and mortality associated with drug-taking. And it has always struck me as odd that the issue of drug control is uniquely subject to calls that the struggle should be abandoned, when, despite equally mixed results in international interventions, no one advocates accepting poverty as inevitable, for example.
But we should acknowledge rather than ignore or deny the existence of such unintended consequences, particularly when so many lives are at stake.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Why don't the UK police use Compstat?
Sorry for the lack of blogging recently. A combination of in-laws and deadlines have got in the way.
During dinner with some very illustrious ex-NYPD cops the other night, one of them asked me whether police in the UK had ever experimented with using Compstat?
For those not versed in the vagaries of police performance management, Compstat (which stands for computer comparative statistics) refers to a management tool pioneered by the NYPD under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Commissioner Bill Bratton during the 1990s. The system is very simple: ‘crime maps’ are used to track when, where and what types of crimes are occurring within a small geographical area. In weekly meetings, those maps are then used by senior NYPD personnel to hold local precinct commanders to account for crimes in their borough and to plan officer deployment accordingly.
The system has long been credited with being a major contributor to the dramatic fall in crime in NYC from the mid 1990s onwards (crime fell by over 50% in four years, almost twice the speed of the national average) and has even been dramatised by the popular HBO series, The Wire.
Although most UK police forces are now beginning to use crime mapping technology, it is mainly being done for the public’s benefit (so they can see what crimes are happening in their local area and raise the issue with their neighbourhood police team). As far as I’m aware, no police forces yet use this information as an accountability or resource deployment tool.
And as I had to admit to my colleague over dinner, I don’t know why that is, given the success it has had in the US.
Any ideas?
During dinner with some very illustrious ex-NYPD cops the other night, one of them asked me whether police in the UK had ever experimented with using Compstat?
For those not versed in the vagaries of police performance management, Compstat (which stands for computer comparative statistics) refers to a management tool pioneered by the NYPD under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Commissioner Bill Bratton during the 1990s. The system is very simple: ‘crime maps’ are used to track when, where and what types of crimes are occurring within a small geographical area. In weekly meetings, those maps are then used by senior NYPD personnel to hold local precinct commanders to account for crimes in their borough and to plan officer deployment accordingly.
The system has long been credited with being a major contributor to the dramatic fall in crime in NYC from the mid 1990s onwards (crime fell by over 50% in four years, almost twice the speed of the national average) and has even been dramatised by the popular HBO series, The Wire.
Although most UK police forces are now beginning to use crime mapping technology, it is mainly being done for the public’s benefit (so they can see what crimes are happening in their local area and raise the issue with their neighbourhood police team). As far as I’m aware, no police forces yet use this information as an accountability or resource deployment tool.
And as I had to admit to my colleague over dinner, I don’t know why that is, given the success it has had in the US.
Any ideas?
Friday, October 8, 2010
Putting police reform into perspective
 |
| Police protesting over pay in 2008 |
As a primary source of the state's monopoly of the use of force the police hold a uniquely powerful position in the relationship between state and citizen. That is why organised police protests tend to have a more symbolic and emotive impact than most other industrial disputes. It also explains why the structure and shape of the police workforce - and its various anomalies (for example, tenure-based, rather than performance-based pay) - have remained largely intact over the last fifty years: even the most reforming and combative Home Secretaries have tended to quail at the sight (or threat) of the police marching against them.
No doubt Teresa May and her team in the Home Office will be busy working out how best to mitigate the risk that her Police Pay Review will provoke similarly damaging protests. However, their response is likely to be tepid in comparison to the actions of the Ecuadorian police in response to President Rafael Correa's proposals to reform police pay.
Ecuadorian prosecutors have announced that a total of 57 officers are now in custody following a 'spontaneous revolt' by rebellious police who roughed up and tear gassed the president. Apparently the revolt only ended when army commandos rescued Correa in a hail of gunfire and concussion grenades at a hospital where he had been surrounded by insurrectionists...
No matter how bad things get for Teresa May and David Cameron, surely they won't get as bad as that?
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
The Social Network
I enjoyed David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network, on Saturday evening. This being the opening night and being Harvard, the cinema was packed to the rafters, mainly with excited students hoping to catch a glimpse of a street/ lecture theatre/ bar they knew or had been to. So it was a fun atmosphere.
For those unfamiliar with the story, the film is based on the real life events surrounding the founding of Facebook in 2003 and its creator, Mark Zuckerburg - now the world’s youngest billionaire. It also attempts to unravel the claims and counter-claims made during several costly litigation battles that followed, with Zuckerburg accused of stealing the idea behind Facebook from other students and cutting his best friend (and former business partner) out of the company.
The film avoids the usual clichés by managing to paint a more subtle picture of Zuckerburg’s character than I would have expected. Played by the brilliant Jesse Eisenberg, Zuckerburg appears contradictory: simultaneously confident and insecure, a creative genius but socially inept. Partly because of this subtlety, American audiences appear divided on how to interpret him.
On the one hand, are those that see the film as a classic tale of individual ambition and drive – celebrating the cornerstones of American capitalism. To them Zuckerburg is a visionary who saw the potential power of the internet to transform social interaction and then seized the opportunity to exploit it before anyone else.
On the other, are those who see Zuckerburg, not as a hero, but as a hubristic and flawed individual who betrays his friends in order to achieve wealth and stardom. To this audience, the central irony of the film lies in the fact that the man who has transformed the experience of social communication for millions is singly incapable of forming the most basic bonds of friendship. As David Carr comments in the New York Times, “the movie could well serve as a referendum on business aggression and ambition that breaks along generational lines”.
Aside from the question of what the film says about American capitalism, it has also made me think about the extent to which Facebook has transformed our experience of social interaction. To its cheerleaders, Facebook represents the front line in a movement to democratise social interaction by strengthening networks of peers at the expense of the old established social order, which left information in the hands of elites and meant social organisation was confined to hierarchies. However, as Malcolm Gladwell has convincingly argued in this month’s New Yorker, online social networking does not and will never replace the kinds of deep interaction, commitment and yes hierarchies that were necessary to achieve change in, say, the American civil rights movement in the 1960s.
As you can see I’m no Barry Norman but I hope this will convince you to at least watch the film on DVD – I think you’ll enjoy it.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Is politics cyclical?
I attended a fascinating class at the Kennedy School yesterday delivered by David Gergen, who talked about the cyclical nature of American politics. Essentially the argument goes something like this:
Although both Democrats and Republicans have occupied the White House over the last couple of hundred years, the political centre of gravity has never strayed too far from the centre. This is because each presidency has been constrained by a prevailing set of ideas and norms, concerning the role and size of the state.
Every once in a while, a rupture occurs to the established order, where the prevailing ideas and norms are challenged. Examples include the radical expansion of the state under FDR in the 1940s (which ended with the 'New Deal') and the "Reagan Revolution" during the 1980s, which sought to radically repeal the power of the state.
Most presidencies though tend to fall within these broad cyclical shifts and therefore either confirm or consolidate prevailing ideas and norms, rather than challenging them. So despite winning power for the Republicans in 1953 President Eisenhower did not fundamentally challenge the prevailing view of the state's role established a decade earlier under FDR. Similarly Bill Clinton, who's presidency interrupted twenty years of steady Republican rule, did not seek to challenge the established conservative consensus established under Reagan. Indeed Clinton is famous for stating "the era of big government is over".
The question now is whether the election of Obama in 2008 represented a break from the established order or whether in fact it was merely a temporary blip in an otherwise conservative-dominated cycle. It is probably too early to say but it is worth nothing the following: although most of the US media have for months dismissed the Tea Party as an extremist fringe of Republican thinking the election of several Tea Party-backed candidates over more established Republican figures and the expected outcome of the mid-terms suggests they are not as far from the political mainstream as has been assumed.
It would be interesting to compare this account with an analysis of recent British political history. Are we still living in an essentially Thatcherite cycle or does the existing coalition government represent a break from the established order? Discuss!
Although both Democrats and Republicans have occupied the White House over the last couple of hundred years, the political centre of gravity has never strayed too far from the centre. This is because each presidency has been constrained by a prevailing set of ideas and norms, concerning the role and size of the state.
Every once in a while, a rupture occurs to the established order, where the prevailing ideas and norms are challenged. Examples include the radical expansion of the state under FDR in the 1940s (which ended with the 'New Deal') and the "Reagan Revolution" during the 1980s, which sought to radically repeal the power of the state.
Most presidencies though tend to fall within these broad cyclical shifts and therefore either confirm or consolidate prevailing ideas and norms, rather than challenging them. So despite winning power for the Republicans in 1953 President Eisenhower did not fundamentally challenge the prevailing view of the state's role established a decade earlier under FDR. Similarly Bill Clinton, who's presidency interrupted twenty years of steady Republican rule, did not seek to challenge the established conservative consensus established under Reagan. Indeed Clinton is famous for stating "the era of big government is over".
The question now is whether the election of Obama in 2008 represented a break from the established order or whether in fact it was merely a temporary blip in an otherwise conservative-dominated cycle. It is probably too early to say but it is worth nothing the following: although most of the US media have for months dismissed the Tea Party as an extremist fringe of Republican thinking the election of several Tea Party-backed candidates over more established Republican figures and the expected outcome of the mid-terms suggests they are not as far from the political mainstream as has been assumed.
It would be interesting to compare this account with an analysis of recent British political history. Are we still living in an essentially Thatcherite cycle or does the existing coalition government represent a break from the established order? Discuss!
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Calculating the cost of punishment
Judges in St Louis are to be given new information when sentencing convicted criminals: how much a given punishment will cost the state. So for a convicted thief, a judge will now learn how much imprisoning that thief would cost, compared to the cost of punishing them in the community.
Pressure on criminal justice budgets has fuelled an explosion of innovative penal reforms across the US, from New York's experiments with drug courts to Michigan's decision to actually close down prisons. However, Missouri is the first state to systematically provide information about the costs of punishment to judges.
Its a bold move. Many would argue that justice should remain independent of cost considerations and that a criminal's fate should not be determined by a bureaucrat's interpretation of what is 'affordable'. A more nuanced concern might also be over the methodology used to calculate such costs. There is lots of data telling us what the average cost of imprisonment is but this tends to be pretty generic and smoothes over some important variables. For example, the cost of punishing an offender depends, not just on the cost of administering a particular punishment, but on that offender's likelihood of re-offending and therefore of being re-convicted. If the offender breaches a community sentence and is re-sentenced to prison, the state has paid twice over. Perhaps you could get around this by also publishing the likely re-offending rate of a particular offender, but this would open up a whole other range of methodological uncertainties.
On the other hand, supporters of such a move would argue, as they have in Missouri, that nobody is forcing the judge to do anything he or she doesn't want to: this is just more information being made available to them when making their decision. Economic considerations play roles in all sorts of important public policy decisions, so why not sentencing? Justice has a price, just like anything else.
These debates are obviously live within the UK right now, with the forthcoming spending review around the corner and the justice department being one of the unprotected departments. Ultimately though, this is unlikely to be a panacea to the problem of prison over-crowding, at least in the UK. That's because, contrary to widespread perception, the huge rise in the prison population has not been caused by an over-incarceration of non-violent offenders, such as shop-lifters for whom prison might not be the obvious answer, but by a general harshening of sentencing practice for more serious crimes, such as sexual offences and violence against the person. And even in Missouri, they do not envisage the cost of punishment being a consideration in the most violent cases.
Pressure on criminal justice budgets has fuelled an explosion of innovative penal reforms across the US, from New York's experiments with drug courts to Michigan's decision to actually close down prisons. However, Missouri is the first state to systematically provide information about the costs of punishment to judges.
Its a bold move. Many would argue that justice should remain independent of cost considerations and that a criminal's fate should not be determined by a bureaucrat's interpretation of what is 'affordable'. A more nuanced concern might also be over the methodology used to calculate such costs. There is lots of data telling us what the average cost of imprisonment is but this tends to be pretty generic and smoothes over some important variables. For example, the cost of punishing an offender depends, not just on the cost of administering a particular punishment, but on that offender's likelihood of re-offending and therefore of being re-convicted. If the offender breaches a community sentence and is re-sentenced to prison, the state has paid twice over. Perhaps you could get around this by also publishing the likely re-offending rate of a particular offender, but this would open up a whole other range of methodological uncertainties.
On the other hand, supporters of such a move would argue, as they have in Missouri, that nobody is forcing the judge to do anything he or she doesn't want to: this is just more information being made available to them when making their decision. Economic considerations play roles in all sorts of important public policy decisions, so why not sentencing? Justice has a price, just like anything else.
These debates are obviously live within the UK right now, with the forthcoming spending review around the corner and the justice department being one of the unprotected departments. Ultimately though, this is unlikely to be a panacea to the problem of prison over-crowding, at least in the UK. That's because, contrary to widespread perception, the huge rise in the prison population has not been caused by an over-incarceration of non-violent offenders, such as shop-lifters for whom prison might not be the obvious answer, but by a general harshening of sentencing practice for more serious crimes, such as sexual offences and violence against the person. And even in Missouri, they do not envisage the cost of punishment being a consideration in the most violent cases.
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