December 3, 2009
Laurence Steinberg, a leading expert on adolescent brain biology, believes that adolescents are different from adults in ways that mitigate their criminal responsibility, according to The New York Times.
The brain systems in the prefrontal cortex providing for impulse control are still maturing during adolescence. This area of the brain is involved in complicated decision-making, thinking ahead, planning, comparing risks and rewards.
For policy makers, the tough question becomes how to decide when the brain has matured enough that the person must take full responsibility for their behavior. This is not easy. Right now we use a simple test of chronological age making 18 the presumed age of adulthood.
But we all know 16 year olds that have the maturity of 32 year olds and 32 year olds with the maturity of 16 year olds. Should this be taken into account? What is maturity anyway? Should responsibility be abdicated for all kinds of adolescent-like behavior, from huge credit card debt to being promiscuous? The short answer is no. Until we know more about the biology of the brain and its effect on decision-making, we need to have a consistent, fair test and chronological age works well.
But let’s also be clear that knowing what we know about adolescent brains it is criminal to lock away children under 18 for the rest of their lives, no matter what they did.
November 6, 2009
A shocking expose in The New York Times published on 11/2/09 details the Kafka nightmare that immigrant detainees fall into in the United States. Rights that we take for granted like having an attorney and habeas corpus are denied deportable aliens.
Approximately 400,000 people are detained in immigrant detention centers each year. Their rights are minimal; they are routinely denied medical care, they are moved to far away locations without notice, and they are effectively prevented from having legal counsel.
Access to legal representation is the critical lynchpin for fairness. The famous case of Clarence Gideon earned defendants the right to have an attorney even if they couldn’t afford one. Why aren’t deportable aliens given the same rights? Are they not people, do they not bleed if we prick them?
The Supreme Court is asleep on this one. According to the article, “a century-long line of Supreme Court decisions holds that immigrant detention is not a punishment or deprivation of liberty, and does not require legal counsel for fundamental fairness.”
That’s Orwellian. By definition, detaining someone deprives them of liberty! Why is the Supreme Court refusing to grant basic American rights to immigrant detainees? Can the cost be that draconian that we should deny rights to people in our country, no matter what their legal status or circumstances?
According to legal volunteers, nearly 40% of the detainees held at the Varick Street Detention Facility have legal grounds to contest deportation. Give them an attorney and a trial and let the truth prevail.
October 29, 2009
Big ideas are little ideas that no one killed too soon.
Seth Godin is right, but it takes a commitment to nurturing and evaluating ideas to ensure that little ideas live.
October 25, 2009
Why are intellectuals hostile to capitalism? Rush Limbaugh paraphrases George Will’s interview with Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek:
“Professor von Hayek, how do you explain that so many intellectuals and particularly economists do not see right in front of them the success and bounties of capitalism, and want to do away with it?” And von Hayek says, “I have troubled over this for years, and the only thing I can conclude is that for intellectuals, the excitement is in controlling things — and you don’t control things in capitalism. You control things in socialism.”
Friedrich von Hayek brilliantly laid it right out. It’s all about power. It’s all about control.
Here is the transcript of George Will’s question:
George Will: “Dr. von Hayek, capitalism and particularly American capitalism is seemed to have a good record at giving people a rising standard of living. Why are so many intellectuals, and particularly so many economists, skeptical about and even hostile to capitalism?”
Friedrich Hayek: “Well, I’ve been puzzling about it for a long time, particularly about the economists who ought to understand better. It’s very difficult to know why they don’t. Ah.. I think it’s a attraction of a system which you can…an intellectual attraction of a system you can deliberately control, which is fascinating to the intellectual.”
The idea of “control” is more important that the idea of “freedom” to intellectuals. The very system that allows intellectuals to thrive is condemned for their own pleasure.
October 25, 2009
“Human beings are social creatures,” says Atul Gawande in his New Yorker article (3/30/09) entitled “Hellhole,” a lengthy article that lays out the case for solitary confinement being defined as torture. He documents how solitary confinement gradually induces psychosis by eliminating the social contact that makes us human. If our Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment,” how did we get to the place where we subject tens of thousand of people a/k/a prisoners to punishment that most often destroys their ability to be human?
Gawande states that our supermax prisons and the extensive use of solitary confinement is a phenomenon of the past twenty years. But now that”public opinion” wants to be tough on crime, it is virtually impossible for prison commissioners to end the widespread use of prolonged isolation without calls to be fired or funding being withheld.
The Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s prison published an extensive study “Confronting Confinement. Some legislators appear to understand the issue. Senators Corbin and Durbin held hearings, and Senator Feingold’s statement argues that spending $60 billion on prisons and having a 60% recidivism rate is appalling.
The British noted that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. So when conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. The British reduced those conditions to great success and the use of long-term isolation is now negligible. Solitary confinement cannot be justified as necessary for prison safety.
Gawande concludes that “violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration.” So the very things that trigger an outburst that is punished with solitary confinement are to a great extent dependent upon situations created by the prison. This “tautology of violence” would be very familiar to Kafka.
It’s outrageous that the exceptional country of America has 5% of the world’s population yet 25% of its prisoners. This was supposed to be a land of freedom, different from the dictatorships that imprison people to preserve power. We have no excuse. We’re not reforming prisoners; we’re torturing them to please the cynical idea of “public opinion.”
October 24, 2009
Michael Graczyk of the Associated Press witnesses every execution in the state of Texas. He has witnessed more than 300 deaths, and many of those were people he had come to know. The New York Times chronicles his journey without comment.
Graczyk does not state his view on capital punishment as he says that becoming emotional would open himself to criticism. Yet I wonder how his clinical, detached view of an anti-climactic injection affects him. Is he gradually becoming inured to death or hardened to the pain of each victim?
An online search of his name turned up the Stand Down project in Texas, which advocates a moratorium on capital punishment in Texas. It states that loyal readers are familiar with Graczyk’s dispatches. Maybe just showing up to be a witness is what matters.
October 21, 2009
Why are new ideas so exciting when they come together? For me it’s the same thrill that sports fans get from touchdowns or home runs. It’s life-affirming.
But how do you know if you can trust your idea? Here’s my 3-step process for evaluating exciting ideas.
1) You have to have the idea. More on that later.
2) You have to be open to serendipity and inspiration in your life from all sources as you test and explore the idea in various forms.
3) You need discernment to sort through the random results and decide what actually is exciting and worth following up or just plain exciting. Sleep on it and see if the idea makes sense the next day. Play the devil’s advocate and expose the weaknesses. If you still love it, then bounce it off a trusted partner. Only then can you decide if it’s worth executing.
October 10, 2009
In a recent Time magazine, columnist Joel Stein tackles the controversial issue of vaccines. He comes out in favor of vaccines, but what I thought was most interesting was his reasoning process.
The author chooses to get his information in a passive manner. He doesn’t search for detailed information. Instead he accepts the consensus of mainstream media, academia and government. He admits they’re not always right, but right far more often than not.
What a total abrogation of responsibility! Where is the clear-thinking Jeffersonian American that engages in issues from a principled viewpoint and an independent examination of the facts? He represents the ideal citizen in our post-Orwellian world, ready to accept anything from authority.
October 6, 2009
Without a Big Plan, we seek nothing other than short term gratification, be it food, Friday and fun. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
But to transcend simple living we need to have a Big Plan, something that keeps us awake at nights, planning, hoping and dreaming. That Big Plan is the perpetual motion that keeps our lives going and interesting. It can be made up of several themes or ideas that unite to give us purpose and meaning. Do you have a Big Plan, something that helps you make sense of life? If not, get one.
October 6, 2009
Daniel Burnham, the great Chicago architect, tells us to make “big plans.”
“Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence. Remember that our sons and our grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty.”
Do the “big plans” need to be achievable to motivate action? Are “big plans” no different than the carrot dangling in front of the donkey, i.e., a way to trick ourselves into achieving more than we would otherwise? Are they a way to grasp at immortality? Perhaps all of the above are true and serve to focus our energy and passion.
