Quotulatiousness

July 29, 2020

Some fascinating and disturbing information on the Nova Scotia murders

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Once again, the Halifax Examiner provides information on the mass murder case in Nova Scotia that seems to be mystifyingly of little to no interest to the mainstream media outlets:

An annotated RCMP map shows the killer’s route from 123 Ventura Drive in Debert to 2328 Hunter Road in Wentworth. Insets of still images taken from different videos show the killer’s replica police car at 5:43am in Debert and passing a driveway on Hunter Road in Wentworth at 6:29am.

The most stunning revelation comes from one person who spoke with Halifax police. That person told police that the murderer, who the Examiner refers to as GW, “builds fires and burns bodies, is a sexual predator, and supplies drugs in Portapique and Economy, Nova Scotia.”

Moreover, the person said that GW “had smuggled guns and drugs from Maine for years and had a stockpile of guns” and GW “had a bag of 10,000 oxy-contin and 15,000 dilaudid from a reservation in New Brunswick.”

Another person who spoke with the RCMP gave information about GW’s properties, relating that it was known that there were secret hiding places at the properties. The person said GW had shown another person (whose name remains redacted) a “hidden compartment in the garage” [presumably in Portapique], which was under a workbench, and GW kept a “high powered rifle” in the space.

The person who spoke with the RCMP said that there was a “false wall” at GW’s Dartmouth residence. That information was echoed by another person who spoke with Halifax police on April 19, who said that “there is a secret room in the clinic in Dartmouth.”

Other information that is newly un-redacted confirms information that was widely known before.

July 20, 2020

The “epic failure” of the RCMP during the Nova Scotia killing spree

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the Halifax Examiner, Paul Palango reconstructs the (known) series of events during the April pursuit of the killer at large in Nova Scotia:

The RCMP has claimed it did its best in trying to deal with the Nova Scotia mass killer on the weekend of April 18 and 19, but a reconstruction of events by the Halifax Examiner strongly suggests that the police force made no attempt to save lives by confronting the gunman or stopping his spree at any point.

“Public safety and preservation of life are the primary duties of any peace officer,” said a former high ranking RCMP executive officer who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation by current and former law enforcement officials who are vigilant about any criticism of policing by those in the field. “As far as I can tell, the RCMP did nothing in Nova Scotia to save a life. They weren’t ready. It is embarrassing to me. The entire thing was an epic failure.”

Based upon interviews with other current and former police officers, witnesses, and law enforcement, and on emergency services transcripts, it seems clear that there was a collapse of the policing function on that weekend.

At no point in the two-day rampage did the RCMP get in front of the killer, who the Examiner identifies as GW. It also seems apparent that some Mounties, many of whom were called in from distant locales, were stunningly unaware of the geography and landmarks in the general area as the RCMP tried to keep up with GW.

Sources within the RCMP say a major problem was that communications between various RCMP units was never co-ordinated. “Everyone was on their own channels,” the source said. “Nothing was synchronized. They could have gone to a single channel and brought in the municipal cops as well, but for some reason they didn’t. It was like no one was in charge.”

This incident is revealing:

Several RCMP and law enforcement sources say that a corporal from a nearby detachment who was the initial supervisor on the scene froze in place to the distress of other Mounties. The corporal later ran into nearby woods and turned off their flashlight and hid. That officer continues to be off work on stress leave.

Some veteran Mounties say that there were likely a number of factors which caused the first Mounties on the scene to hesitate.

“It could have been inexperience. Maybe there was no backup. And then there’s always that Canada Labour Code thing,” said one long time Mountie.

The “Canada Labour Code thing” is an interesting insight, although it doesn’t excuse the RCMP’s disorganization and lack of effective leadership over the two days.

An annotated RCMP map shows the killer’s route from 123 Ventura Drive in Debert to 2328 Hunter Road in Wentworth. Insets of still images taken from different videos show the killer’s replica police car at 5:43am in Debert and passing a driveway on Hunter Road in Wentworth at 6:29am.

As they say, “read the whole thing“, as the events unfold with what seems like an endless series of missed opportunities on the part of the RCMP to stop the killings.

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

July 12, 2020

QotD: “Getting tough on crime”

Filed under: Law, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Whenever some crime becomes prominent in the public eye, some politician inevitably promises to fix it by getting really tough on criminals. No more of this namby-pamby mollycoddling! This time, we’re going to make it so miserable to be a criminal that no one will dare.

It is a bipartisan habit; progressives may talk enthusiastically about ending mass incarceration, but switch the topic to male sex offenders (or, say, 2008 bankers) and what you’ll hear often sounds like a recap from some Republican law-and-order conference, circa 1984. The belief that crime is a soluble problem if we’re willing to be mean enough is apparently nestled deep in the human psyche.

Megan McArdle, “Killing drug dealers won’t stop the opioid epidemic”, Washington Post, 2018-03-20.

July 11, 2020

Truncating the state of Oklahoma

Filed under: Government, History, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Colby Cosh on what might turn out to be the most important US Supreme Court decision in recent history:

A map of Oklahoma from the mid-1880s showing county boundaries and the tribal areas of Indian Territory.
Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th edition, 1888 via Wikimedia Commons.

On Thursday the court published its judgment in the case of McGirt v. Oklahoma [PDF]. McGirt is Jimcy McGirt, a man convicted in state court in 1997 of heinous sex crimes against a four year old. A creative public defender had tried to argue for years in lower courts that, as McGirt was a member of the Seminole Nation and his crimes had occurred on territory set aside in the 19th century for Creek Indians, he was never subject to state prosecution.

He should have been tried, the argument ran, under the federal Major Crimes Act of 1885, which specifies that accusations of serious felonies against Indians in “Indian country” go immediately to federal court. Under an 1856 treaty between the U.S. and the Creeks, the Creek lands were to be a “permanent home” for the displaced nation for as long as it existed (at a time when Aboriginal-Americans were still widely expected to diminish and disappear as a race).

The formalized concept of an Indian reservation did not yet exist, but the theory, then and now, is that some Aboriginal nations have direct relationships, albeit ones of “dependence,” with the federal government. Sometimes it is said that the U.S. is the “suzerain,” the overlord, of otherwise sovereign Indian nations. The Creeks, and the other four “Civilized Tribes” who had been forced into the “Indian Territory” that once covered the eastern part of future Oklahoma, were given strong written promises that they would be held apart from the U.S. states proper and would have jurisdiction over crimes and civil matters on their lands. Only the United States Congress, as a power contracting with sovereign nations, could act to encroach upon this jurisdiction.

In a fashion familiar to anyone who has read even a shred of the history of the American Indian, these promises just kind of got … misplaced. In the early 20th century the Oklahoma tribes were encouraged by Congress to abandon communal property holding and take up individual “allotments” of Indian-held land. This ought not to have changed the underlying nation-to-nation relationship, any more than assigning homesteading parcels to settlers busted up or negated the ultimate sovereignty of the U.S. elsewhere in the American West. But that constitutional framework was more easily ignored once a contiguous bundle of territory began to be bought and sold. (Some of it became part of the city of Tulsa.) This history has helped to make similar allotment action in Canada impossible, whatever advantages it might have.

June 21, 2020

Paul Wells – “Everyone agrees!” [on the need to fully investigate the Nova Scotia massacre] … “But so far there is no inquiry”

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Paul Wells in Maclean’s:

We are faced, perhaps only temporarily, with a familiar Canadian paradox: everyone says they want something to happen, but it isn’t happening.

The “something” is a rigorous public inquiry into a horrible shooting spree that spanned two days and killed 22 people in Nova Scotia in mid-April. It was the worst mass murder in Canadian history. It was lurid in its weirdness. The gunman, Gabriel Wortman, spent two days driving around in a convincing replica RCMP vehicle, shooting at whim, while the force he was imitating and dodging failed to send out a more comprehensive emergency alert than their Twitter warnings, one that might have saved more lives. In the midst of the carnage, two actual RCMP officers apparently fired their weapons into the walls of a firehall in Onslow for reasons that remain unknown.

New reporting for Maclean’s by Shannon Gormley, Stephen Maher and Paul Palango raises troubling new questions about Wortman’s possible ties to organized crime and, especially, to the RCMP itself. This reporting is attracting a lot of attention and, here and there, vigorous online debate. This Twitter thread, for instance, asks hard questions about our latest story.

The questions raised by our investigative team including Paul Palango, author of three best-selling books (here, here and here) about the troubling history of the RCMP, are backed by a solid and growing network of well-informed sources. But past a certain point, even superb reporting can’t provide authoritative answers. That work is properly left to duly mandated public authorities, usually wearing judges’ robes. Some people, reading the most recent Maclean’s reporting, have said the RCMP has a lot of questions to answer. Unfortunately there is no reason to take any answer from the RCMP on faith. It’s time for a full judicial inquiry.

Everyone agrees! From Nova Scotia premier Stephen McNeil to the latest embattled RCMP commissioner to three Trudeau-appointed Nova Scotia senators to anguished families of the murdered to, I mean sort of, the Prime Minister. But so far there is no inquiry.

June 12, 2020

QotD: Homelessness in America

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Economics, Government, Health, Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

First let’s start with the fact that homelessness as it exists in America isn’t poverty. In fact part of the problem with it is that it ISN’T poverty. Look, regardless of what you’ve seen on the movies or TV, most homeless are not families fallen on hard times. Yes, there are some of those now, but most of those while technically “homeless” aren’t living in your local park. They’ve just taken over mom and dad’s basement, moved onto a friend’s living room or whatever. Terrible – I’ve been JUST short of that at least three times in my married life – and humiliating, but NOT “stand in the park and wheedle on yourself.”

90% of the homeless in America and the hard core ones are people with mental health issues, people with drug abuse issues and people who have found they can live without having to do anything for it, and can be “free” and outside society. I’ve overheard conversations in the park, and I suppose that most of the people who “dropped out” in the sixties are dead, but a lot of them are alive and going from soup kitchen to free clinic, with a bit of begging in between.

Yes, there are entire families in this system, including homeless children – but for them to stay in it, the parents need to have some sort of serious issue. Otherwise, even if they can’t find work, there is assistance available to get them at least into public housing, which, nightmarish though it is, is not living in the park.

I’m not going to pretend this doesn’t happen to normal families too – see where I came very close to that level and more than once too – but normal families usually tend to bounce back. They go through a few months of mess and horror, and then they claw back to some semblance of normalcy. (This might change as our economy dives and programs of necessity get cut. The ones for the DESERVING poor will be cut first, of course, since they rarely riot.)

The problem with this is that when people get appalled at the conditions the homeless live in and start offering “homeless services” there is an entire network, not just of homeless but of social workers who direct the homeless to the cities with better services.

I swear to you and I’m not even joking that right now there are plenty more homeless on Colorado Springs streets than in Denver, despite the Springs being much smaller.

The Springs also has its soup kitchens and other services downtown and within easy walking distance of each other.

This means downtown businesses are closing, except for bars and restaurants which can control access. And that the library is of course a place to camp in the cool/warm during the day.

It means more than that. We moved within easy driving distance of downtown, because when we lived downtown when we first came to Colorado Springs, I used to take walks every day. When we moved to our little mountain village, without these, I gained ten pounds a year. I used to love walking downtown, dropping by the deli and the three bookstores (only one left, and it’s MOSTLY a restaurant now) checking out the other little shops which ranged from yarn to weird import crafts.

Now those are gone. Worse – the last two times I walked downtown alone (i.e. without commanding the muscle, aka older son to go with me) someone FOLLOWED me and I had to employ stuff from my childhood to lose them. Once it was a large and addled looking male, and yes, he was following me. And once it was TWO large and addled looking males. For the icing on the cake – not related to this, but from a blog entry – I clicked on the sex offenders registry. Yes, I know, a lot of people there are there because someone accused them and was never proven. Our local one at least has notes on whether it’s accusation, trial or conviction and also whether the crime was against children or adults.

The downtown zipcode is FULL of registered sex offenders who’ve done hard time and who have committed their crimes against adults. The faces are very familiar from my walks, and yep, one was the guy who tried to follow me.

Sarah Hoyt, “Of Books, Compassion And Cruelty A Blast From The Past From June 2013”, According to Hoyt, 2020-03-10.

May 13, 2020

“Why are you so upset at the gun ban? You don’t even have handguns or assault rifles”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Weapons — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In BC Outdoors Magazine, Steve Hamilton explains why he’s so upset about the Trudeau government’s rush to punish law-abiding gun owners for the actions of criminals:

There are a few reasons – some that should upset non-gun owners, and some that should upset Canadians as a whole. Let us take a walk, shall we?

First, it is directed at the wrong people. Gun owners know that this will not address the real issues. There is a lack of severe punishment for criminals, and an unfortunate mental health crisis. We need to fix those first and foremost – direct the money there. No more revolving door. Lock repeat criminals up and throw away the key and dramatically increase programs and support mechanisms to help those affected with mental illness.

Multiple premiers and police chiefs have said the same thing. This ban will do nothing to lower gun crime. Gun owners know the statistics and that criminals will continue to run rampant. Criminals will not turn in their guns, we know that. This new law means nothing to them.

This ban will not take illegal guns off the street, just legal ones out of the hands of lawful owners. The sound bite of, “No one needs an AR-15 to take down a deer,” is truthful. However, the part they left out is that it has been illegal to do so in Canada since 1977 when the AR became restricted class, which means it is only allowed on approved ranges. Strictly to and from, and for nothing except target shooting. It was designed as a deer rifle in the 1960s and has never been used in a military application in its current configuration, as it was found unsuitable.

[…]

“Assault rifle.” That very term makes me cringe. Select-fire and military capable is the definition of assault rifle. To have a rifle approved for sale and imported, it needs to be verified by the RCMP, who confirms that converting it to select fire or automatic is impossible. So, by definition, every single one in Canada is not capable by any means of being turned into the class of firearm they have banned.

Let us toss the firearm argument aside for a second. Every Canadian citizen should be outraged at how this was done. It was pushed through on the heels of a tragedy. The very foundation of our government is supposed to be about democratic debate and input. There was none. Your opposition had zero say against this, and no matter if you are for or against the ban, when your side cannot be heard, that goes against what we should stand for as Canadians. They also used an Order in Council to change the class of a firearm, something that is normally used to change ministerial appointments or expenses. This should not have been done without debate in the House.

Now on to how it is written. That is what is scary about this “assault rifle” situation. There is so much ambiguous wording in this order. Clearly it was rushed through and poorly considered. It is very unclear to the point multiple firearms expert lawyers have said that some shotguns are banned. Minister Blair issued a statement saying that was not the intent; however, the law is written already. A defense in court of, “The minister said on social media that this wasn’t the intent,” will obviously not stand up. Good luck if you try that. Please let us know how that goes.

May 8, 2020

Weapons as Political Protest: P.A. Luty’s Submachine Gun

Filed under: Britain, History, Law, Liberty, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Aug 2017

Armament Research Services (ARES) is a specialist technical intelligence consultancy, offering expertise and analysis to a range of government and non-government entities in the arms and munitions field. For detailed photos of the guns in this video, don’t miss the ARES companion blog post:

http://armamentresearch.com/pa-luty-9…

Phillip A. Luty was a Briton who took a hard philosophical line against gun control legislation in the UK in the 1990s. In response to more restrictive gun control laws, he set out to prove that all such laws were ultimately futile by showing that one could manufacture a functional firearm from hardware store goods, without using any purpose-made firearms parts.

Luty succeeded in this task, designing a 9mm submachine gun made completely from scratch with a minimum of tools. In 1998, he published the plans for his gun as the book Expedient Homemade Firearms. Luty was not particularly discreet about his activities (actually, he was quite outspoken…) and was eventually caught by the police while out to test fire one of his guns, and arrested. He was convicted, and spent several years in prison. He continued to pursue a gun rights agenda after being released, and was facing legal trouble again when he passed away from cancer in 2011.

Several of Luty’s submachine guns are still held in the collection of the Royal Armouries’ National Firearms Centre, including the one that led to his original conviction. Many thanks to the NFC for allowing me to bring that weapon to you!

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

May 1, 2020

The Scottish Sentencing Council recommends that no under-25s be sent to prison

Filed under: Britain, Law — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Theodore Dalrymple isn’t impressed with this proposal:

A judges’s wig and advocate’s wig on temporary display in Parliament Hall, Edinburgh, 26 October 2013.
Photo by Kim Traynor via Wikimedia Commons.

Just as one begins to imagine that the liberal pseudo-conscience can go no further in foolishness, it comes up with new schemes to make the world a little worse. Its inventiveness, in fact, is infinite, and no victory over it by common sense is ever more than temporary. The price of sanity, at least in the modern world, is eternal vigilance.

This is not to say, of course, that no liberal reform in the past was ever justified or did no good, or that none will ever do any good in the future. It is simply that, as a matter of contingent sociological fact, many liberals seem to have lost their minds.

The Scottish Sentencing Council, an advisory body with no legislative powers but whose recommendations judges disregard at their peril, put forward a proposal earlier this year that those under the age of 25 should not be sent to prison because research shows that their brains have not yet fully matured. It is difficult to know where to begin in arguing with this fatuity.

Let us then start with the notion that no man under 25 is sufficiently mature to know that it is wrong to strangle old ladies in their beds and the further proposition that, until that age, they are unable to control their impulse to do so.

[…]

The idea that a man’s brain is so immature before age 25 that he does not know that all manner of crimes are wrong would suggest a revision of our electoral laws, for if a man can neither distinguish right from wrong nor control his impulses, should he have the vote? Should he, in fact, be considered of legal age? Should he be allowed even to choose his own career? I doubt that the Sentencing Council would preen itself on the corollaries of its proposal.

There is, of course, an element of truth in what the Sentencing Council says. Our characters are not fully formed by the age of 25 — mine certainly wasn’t. It is true also that there is a biological component to crime, inasmuch as the vast majority of criminals in all societies in which crime is a category of behaviour are young and male. The rate at which even recidivist criminals commit crimes declines with age and most often reaches zero. Time is the great therapist.

But punishment is not therapy. It is a very good thing, of course, if punishment (such as imprisonment) reforms the criminal, and I think that it is a moral obligation of the state, if it is to lock up people, to try to give them something purposeful and worthwhile to do. But that is not the primary purpose of punishment. If it could be shown that rewarding criminals with large fortunes would change their behaviour — as almost certainly it would in most cases — we should not advocate such a course, even if it were a better way of reforming them in the sense of reducing their recidivism rate.

March 17, 2020

When the state renounces enforcing the law, there are two alternatives

Filed under: Britain, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Yesterday, David Thompson linked to a post by Natalie Solent about how the police in London failed to do anything about a blatant theft at a Boots pharmacy because it was considered a “civil matter”. The accused thief was prosecuted privately by the parent corporation, which is apparently the first time this has happened in England. As Natalie says, this is the “nice” option when the government fails to enforce the law of the land — or enforces it only sporadically and unevenly.

In the latest edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, Eric Oppen provides an example from the US in the post-Civil War era that shows the other option for private law enforcement:

Many of the victims of the kind of small-time crime committed by vagrants and the “homeless” are, themselves, far from rich. Repeated thefts can drive a small, struggling business under, and loss of, for example, a bicycle can represent a catastrophic blow to a poor person’s finances. This doesn’t address the sense of violation felt by those victimized by crime.

The original San Francisco Committees of Vigilance formed because the “forces of law and order” either were not doing their jobs, or were actively in league with the very criminals they were supposed to be suppressing. Many police were incompetent or lazy, while others were often corrupt on a scale that would shock Boss Hogg.

Do-it-yourself justice was far from uncommon in nineteenth-century America, including in the “civilized” East. In upstate New York, after decades of unpunished crime, the Loomis family gang received an epic comeuppance in 1865. Fifteen years earlier, their outraged neighbors had tried staging a raid on the Loomis farm, but uncertainty about who owned the stolen goods they found prevented any Loomis from being convicted. In 1865, many of their neighbors were returned Civil War combat veterans. They had become inured to violence, and they were tired of the Loomis’ thefts, arsons and intimidation. They killed George “Wash” Loomis, the leader of the gang, nearly lynched one of his brothers, and burned down the family’s home. After that, the Loomis family’s power was broken and their reign of crime was pretty much over.

These things happened because there was no other way to deal with these situations. Law enforcement, in those days, was primitive, especially outside of the major cities. Large corporations often had their own private police simply because of this fact.

The “social contract” is supposed to read something like “renounce personally avenging your wrongs, and society will do it for you.” But what can one do, when society is visibly abrogating the contract? Take it to court?

Vigilantism is not unknown even in Canada.

“Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park” by August Rode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

March 16, 2020

QotD: Company incentives to prevent sexual harassment

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the predictions I’m seeing everywhere, for instance, is how now Human Resources will need a lot more power over companies to prevent more #metoo incidents of sexual importuning of women.

The funny thing about this is that anyone with two eyes and a modicum of understanding of the world knows that this is not where the crazy is headed. As the attempt to drown out the legitimate cases of harassment — mostly by leftists, in leftist-dominated institutions — by claiming #metoo and that all men were essentially harassers becomes more frantic, it has become obvious that any man can be accused of harassment at any time by anyone.

So, here is a genuine prediction: I predict that instead of giving HR more power, this will give companies pause before hiring women, which will lead to a lot of decent and qualified women being left unemployed.

The second-order effect of that, for companies that can’t avoid hiring women, is two-fold: they’ll either hire women to “make-believe” positions, in which they interact only or primarily with other women, creating a drain on the bottom line, or they will allow a lot more work-at-home by both men and women. I predict we’ll see a great move towards that in the next year. Sure, it’s still possible to claim someone is harassing you via the phone, but one-party consent states at least will allow men to record everything in order to defend themselves.

Weirdly, I believe the long-term result of this will be the dismantling of the daycare and child-warehousing practice which has led to a lot of the left’s ascendency in education.

This is because no matter how much you wish to wishful think that companies will just give Human Resources more power, people who actually live and work in the world know this isn’t likely. Human Resources would mostly just make it impossible for anyone to get any work done.

Sarah Hoyt, “Nobody Expects These Predictions”, PJ Media, 2017-12-31.

February 28, 2020

The Robin Hood complex – Social banditry theory and myth making

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Cynical Historian
Published 15 Dec 2016

There’s one historical theory that people keep deluding themselves with, and it’s about time I pointed it out. Social banditry, or the “Robin Hood theory” is problematic at best and cultural misanthropy at worst.

Social bandit or social crime is a term invented by the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in his 1959 book Primitive Rebels, a study of popular forms of resistance that also incorporate behavior characterized by law as illegal. He further expanded the field in the 1969 study Bandits. Social banditry is a widespread phenomenon that has occurred in many societies throughout recorded history, and forms of social banditry still exist, as evidenced by piracy and organized crime syndicates. Later social scientists have also discussed the term’s applicability to more modern forms of crime, like street gangs and the economy associated with the trade in illegal drugs.
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References:
Boessenecker, John. “California Bandidos.” Southern California Quarterly 80, i4 (Dec. 1, 1998), 419-434.

Hall-Patton, Joseph. Pacifying Paradise: Violence and Vigilantism in San Luis Obispo. San Luis Obispo: California Polytechnic – San Luis Obispo thesis, 2016. http://www.digitalcommons.calpoly.edu…

Hobsbawm, Eric. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: WW Norton & Company, 1965. https://amzn.to/2L6TDY0

Hobsbawm, Eric. Bandits. Rev. ed. New York: The New Press, 2000. https://amzn.to/2L4RagK

Rediker, Marcus. Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailor, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2014. https://amzn.to/2OasYf4

Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2000. https://amzn.to/2JKq8tN

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joaquin…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_B…
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Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/CynicalHistorian

LET’S CONNECT:
https://twitter.com/Cynical_History
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Hashtags: #History #SocialBanditry #PrimitiveRebellion #RobinHood #BillyTheKid

February 15, 2020

Theodore Dalrymple on the death penalty

Filed under: Books, Britain, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

From the New English Review:

“Tombstone Courthouse State Historic Park” by August Rode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I happened to read a book published in 1965, the year Britain legislated to end the death penalty, titled Murder Followed by Suicide, by the distinguished criminologist, D.J. West. For forty years up to that date, about a third of homicides had been followed by the suicide of those who committed them.

Most people who committed homicide followed by suicide were highly disturbed psychologically, if not outright mad. For example, in killing their families they imagined that they were saving them from a worse fate. They were not the kind of people who would be deterred by anything, including the death penalty.

Here was a natural experiment. I hypothesized that if the death penalty acted as a deterrent, the homicide rate would increase but the proportion of homicide followed by suicide, which in absolute numbers would remain more or less the same, would decrease. My friend, the criminologist David Fraser, looked at the actual figures and found that this was indeed the case. Some sane people who might otherwise be inclined to kill managed to control themselves knowing that they might be executed if they did.

For the death penalty to deter, it was not necessary for it to be applied in every case. Although the death penalty for murder was mandatory in Britain, it was commuted in nine cases out of ten. All that was necessary for it to deter was that execution was a real possibility. We shall never know whether the death penalty would have deterred even more if it had been applied more rigorously.

Does its deterrent effect, then, establish the case for the death penalty, at least in Britain? No, for two reasons. First, effectiveness of a punishment is not a sufficient justification for it. For example, it might well be that the death penalty would deter people from parking in the wrong place, but we would not therefore advocate it. Second, the fact is that in all jurisdictions, no matter how scrupulously fair they try to be, errors are sometime made, and innocent people have been put to death. This seems to me the strongest, and perhaps decisive, argument against the death penalty.

Against this might be urged the undoubted fact that some convicted murderers who have been spared death have gone on to kill again, and this will continue to be so. Victims of those who murder a second time are probably more numerous than those executed in error. Therefore, utilitarians might argue, even if mistakes are sometimes made, that the death penalty overall would save lives. (Let us disregard the fact that those murderers who go on to murder a second time would not necessarily have been executed after their first murder, for nowhere are all murderers executed.)

The argument holds only if utilitarianism is accepted as a true ground of ethics. But few of us would accept that it is. It might be that hanging the wrong person after the commission of a terrible crime would have a better social outcome than hanging no one at all, provided only that it was never publicly known that the wrong person had been hanged: but we would still be horrified at the prospect. Moreover, in practice, the execution of the innocent, once it is known, serves disproportionately to undermine faith in the justice system. And surely it is true that for the state to kill an innocent man is peculiarly horrific.

January 28, 2020

QotD: Drinking and driving

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I have another brochure on my desk. Actually, I’ve got a lot of stuff on my desk, including possibly a cat or two, but it’s the brochure that’s at the top of the pile. It comes from the Ontario government and it’s called Break The Law Pay The Price. Personally, I’d have put a comma in there somewhere, but the Ontario government laid off the punctuation guy in a cost-cutting drive. (I gather he lasted longer than the water inspection guy.)

According to BTLPTP, “Drinking drivers are responsible for one-quarter of all people killed on Ontario roads.” In other words, only 75 percent of Ontario traffic fatalities are the work of sober people. Either we have more drunks in Ontario or our sober drivers are better drivers than Britain’s. [Where “one in seven of all deaths on the road involve drivers who are over the legal limit.”]

Now, despite the damning evidence in these brochures that sober people are causing carnage on our roads, the people who know what’s good for us are busy trying to lower the legal blood alcohol limit. Early in 2001 the Quebec government announced that it was lowering the limit from eighty milligrams to fifty, throwing in a complete drinking ban for professional drivers — cabbies, bus drivers, and the like. This last measure was a reaction to — well, nothing at all. Were drunk ambulance drivers creating havoc on the roads of Quebec? No. But it gave the government of Quebec the appearance of having taken a strong stand on something. Predictably, the Ontario government immediately made noises about following suit.

Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.

January 4, 2020

Australia, the firebug country

Filed under: Australia, Environment, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Arthur Chrenkoff rounds up the surprisingly numerous reports of arson over the last few months in Australia:

The Green Wattle Creek bushfire moves towards the Southern Highlands township of Yanderra as police evacuate residents from Yanderra Road, 21 December, 2019.
Photo by Helitak430 via Wikimedia Commons

According to my calculations and estimates, the number of individuals around Australia whose arson has contributed to the current bushfire crisis has now passed 200.

This figure is not presented as a counter-argument to those who blame the fires on climate change. Most people (I hope) understand that trees tend not to spontaneously combust, no matter what the air temperature is; when we talk about bushfires starting naturally, we are talking about lightning strikes igniting tinder. The climate change argument posits that the more extreme weather conditions – higher temperatures, drought, etc. – make fires, however started, much more destructive and much more difficult to control and extinguish. These are debates to be had between climatologists, forestry experts and fire fighters. What is painfully clear, however, that Australia has a firebug crisis. It will no doubt be up to future royal commissions and inquiries to calculate exactly what proportion of the current loss and destruction can be attributed to human action, but I suspect it will be a significant one. Man might be making climate change, but man is most definitely making fires start.

Below, a sample of news reports from around the country for the past several months.

[…]

There are no conspiracies here. Though arson has been tried and called for before as a tool of terror, the Australian fires seem to result from the actions of unconnected individuals who are either disturbed or reckless. This is nothing new; as ecological criminologist Paul Read wrote back in November:

    A 2015 satellite analysis of 113,000 fires from 1997-2009 confirmed what we had known for some time — 40 per cent of fires are deliberately lit, another 47 per cent accidental. This generally matches previous data published a decade earlier that about half of all fires were suspected or deliberate arson, and 37 per cent accidental. Combined, they reach the same conclusion: 87 per cent are man-made …

    If I had to guess, I’d say about 10,000 arsonists lurk from the top of Queensland to the southern-most tip of Victoria, but not all are active and some light fires during winter. The most dangerous light fires on the hottest days, generally closer to communities and during other blazes, suggesting more malicious motives. Only a tiny minority will gaze with wonder at the destruction they have wrought, deeply fascinated and empowered. Others get caught up with the excitement of chaos and behave like impulsive idiots.

    As for children, they are not always malicious. Children and youths follow the age-crime curve where delinquency peaks in their late teens. Fire is just one of many misbehaviours. The great majority grow out of it. Four overlapping subgroups include: accidental fire-play getting out of control; victims of child abuse — including sexual abuse — and neglect; children with autism and developmental disorders; and conduct disorder from a younger age, which can be genuinely dangerous.

The more fires, proportionally the more arsonists. And the recent mega-fires are really bringing out all the fire bugs out of the woodwork (or into the woodwork to be more accurate). It is disturbing, but sadly not surprising or unexpected. As some have suggested already, the current crisis, with its large sample of arsonists, provides a good opportunity for more research into the psychology, motivation and behaviour of fire-starters. This might help in the future, but clearly arsonists will always be with us. The task is to make their work more difficult, for example through better management of our forests to make them less combustible. But as much as bushfires are an environmental and land management problem, as we search for solution we can’t forget that they are also a criminal one.

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