Criminal Law & Process – Page 41 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Violence in the Heartland, Part III: City Trends

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 26, 2014
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Legal History Milwaukee Public Wisconsin Criminal Law & Process

In earlier posts (here and here), I have explored state-level violence trends since 1960 in the seven midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. This post focuses on the data from the largest city of each of these states. Since Chicago does not report its rape numbers in conformity with FBI standards, it is omitted from the analysis.

Here are the city trends since 1985 (reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents):

What stands out most is the very wide, persistent gap between Detroit at the top of the chart and Des Moines at the bottom.

Violence in the Heartland, 1960-2012–Part Two: Crime Wave or Aggravated Assault Wave?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:January 13, 2014
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Legal History Public

In the first post in this series, I described overall violent crime trends in the seven Midwestern states since 1960. In all of the states except for Wisconsin, the basic story was identical: a dramatic spike in violent crime between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s was followed by a subsequent drop in violence that was nearly as sharp as the increases had been. Wisconsin had the spike, but not the sustained drop of the other states.

In this post, I disaggregate the four categories of crime that go into the overall violence number. Doing so changes the story a bit, as we can see that aggravated assault was by far the biggest driver of the violence spike, and since then has remained stubbornly high. From the standpoint of homicide and robbery, the contemporary Midwest looks only a little more dangerous than the Midwest of 1960; it is only when we add to the picture aggravated assault (and, to a lesser extent, rape) that the data look much worse. There are interesting and uncertain questions about the extent to which these a/a numbers reflect genuine changes in criminal behavior, as to opposed to changes in crime-reporting.

Before considering those questions, let’s look at the numbers. First, consider the seven-state trends for homicide rate (that is, homicides per 100,000 residents):

“Affluenza:” A Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for the Wealthy?

Post author:Jessica Simons
Post published:December 28, 2013
Post category:Criminal Law & Process Poverty & Law Public

Recently, news programs and papers have been flooded with stories regarding the 16 year-old boy from Texas, whose drunk-driving incident this past summer left four people dead, and a handful of people injured. The most troubling aspect of these stories for most people is the fact that the boy had received a very lenient sentence, a mere ten years’ of probation and some therapy, instead of the jail time that the prosecution asked for. The boy had been drinking prior to the accident, and his blood alcohol level at the time of the crash was about three times over the legal limit, not to mention the fact that an underage minor should have no alcohol in his system. The defense claimed that the boy suffered from what has been termed “affluenza,” which is defined as a condition where children who are from a wealthy and affluent background may not understand that “bad behavior has consequences.” (according to the Los Angeles Times). By touting the need for rehabilitation over a prison sentence, the defense was able to get the boy ten years’ probation, instead of the sentence sought for him.

This story has conjured up a lot of anger across the nation, and has left many people in shock over the fact that this seems to be one more case where the wealthy seem to be able to find their way around the legal system and be treated much more leniently than people of less affluent backgrounds. Many people believe that the outcome may have been different if the boy had not been wealthy, and this has created an outrage over the sense of entitlement that the teen was believed to have gotten. “Affluenza” is not a recognized disorder, but it has received national attention through this story. However, this “condition” that the boy’s defense team believed the teen suffered from prompts us to ask other questions: Don’t some people who live in impoverished conditions also suffer from the inability to see the consequences of certain actions, which is the same argument that “affluenza” gives for wealthy people, just at the opposite end of the spectrum? Should “affluenza” be recognized as a “trump card” of sorts for the wealthy, when others could just as likely have a similar argument about knowing right from wrong?