Crime and Punishment Notes

Key Questions in Crime and Punishment

• How significant is crime in your community, state, or country?
• What should be the role of law enforcement?
• How should the courts be organized?
• Is the criminal justice system fair, effective, and impartial?
• What should be the purpose of incarceration?
• What roles do the federal, state, and local governments have in this?
  • Police are predominantly local
  • Criminal laws are passed by state legislature
  • Federal role is limited in criminal justice.
• Civil disputes are private.
  • Perpetrator of a crime acts against a society and against immediate victims.
• Law enforcement agencies include the FBI, state highway patrols, and local police agencies.
• The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments.
  • Amendments 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th relate to criminal justice procedures.

San Marcos City Budget (Adopted 9/21/21 by 4-3 vote)

• Hughson, Baker, Gleason, Derrick voted yes
• Gonzales, Garza, and Scott voted no
• Property tax: 60 cents per 100 of value
• 261 million dollars
• Population: 67,553
• 165 full time employees in police operations
• 20 million for SMPD
• SMPD Chief Stan Standridge is appointed by city manager.

Policing, Incarceration, and Criminal Justice

• Traditionally state and local issues.
• Federal role:
  • Limited to federal crimes and protecting the rights of minorities.
  • Most police and prisons are state or local.
• State:
  • Most criminal statutes are passed by state legislatures.
  • Prisons are mostly state.
• Local:
  • Police and prosecutors are primarily local.
• Austin “Freedom City” policy was voted for 11-0 by Council.
  • Reduce racial disparity by reducing discretionary arrests for Class C misdemeanors including traffic stops.
  • Austin has 124 arrests for 10,000 traffic stops
  • San Marcos has 42
  • Waco has 451
• Texas state senate Criminal Justice Committee voted 5-2 to support an anti-hazing bill.
  • Republican Senator Donna Campbell introduced it in the senate
  • Democrat Eric Zweiner wrote a companion bill for the Texas House.

District Attorneys

• County officials who are elected by the voters.
• Hays County just elected Democrat Kelly Higgins who promised progressive change.
• The DA and her assistants decide what charges to bring against criminal suspects.
  • The most serious crimes are called felonies.
  • Less serious crimes are misdemeanors.
• Candidates for DA may want to seek the harshest possible punishments so they are not seen as “soft on crime.”
• Prosecutors are appointed in other countries.

Texas Government Spending (2020-21 Budget)

• Public and higher education and health and human services accounted for 72.6\%.
• Medicaid:
  • Matching grant begun in 1965.
  • The federal government pays part of the cost of this health insurance program for poor residents while the state pays part.
• Public safety and criminal justice accounted for 5.1\%. (Legislative Budget Board)
• In 2001, Rick Perry proposed a “Trans-Texas Corridor” infrastructure project.
  • Combine highways for freight and passenger vehicles, rail lines, pipelines, electrical and internet infrastructure in quarter-mile-wide ribbons across the state.
  • Didn’t work, but changed the conversation.

Governance and Crime

• Nine new governors joined the 41 incumbent governors in 2023.
• Crime is often an issue in state and local campaigns.
• It can also come up in federal elections, but the federal role is historically limited.

Visuals and Data

• Campaign sign in Houston:

  • Republicans Support Law Enforcement, Economy & Jobs, America

• Some police departments try to increase gender diversity.

• San Marcos City Council vote on budget (9/21/21):

  • For: Jane Hughson, Maxfield Baker, Mark Gleason, Melissa Derrick.
  • Against: Saul Gonzales, Alyssa Garza, Shane Scott.

• Change relative to 1960:

  • Graphs showing percentage increase in violent crime rate, overall crime rate, and state/local spending on police per person (adjusted 2018 dollars).

• People report experiencing less crime:

  • Graphs showing violent victimization (per 1,000 people aged 12 and up) and violent victimization reported to police (per 1,000).

• People are less worried about crime in their own areas:

  • Bar graphs comparing perceptions of violent crime and property crime as “very serious” or “somewhat serious” near them versus in the U.S., broken down by Democrats and Republicans.

• Crime is steadily falling, but Americans don't believe it:

  • Line graphs showing share of respondents who believed U.S. crime had increased from the previous year, versus victims of violent crime (per 1,000 people) or property crime (per 1,000 households).

• Comparing city law enforcement:

  • Arlington and Kansas City have similar populations; comparison of police budget per capita and homicides per 100,000 to determine which city may need to hire more officers.
    • Arlington: 712 police budget, 5 homicides per 100,000. Kansas City : 705 police budget, 31 homicides per 100,000.

• Percentage of Prison Population with a 10 year sentence

  • Bar graph comparing various countries.

• Cities with different outcomes:

  • Jacksonville, Fla., and Austin both spent about 445 per resident on police budgets in 2017. Jacksonville saw 12 homicides per 100,000, while Austin saw 3 homicides per 100,000.

• Average Length of Sentence

• Average Sentence of Homicide Convictions

• Inmates in federal and state prisons

  • Pie chart of U.S. population with percentage for Black (13%), Hispanic (18%) and White (61%).
  • Bar graph comparing numbers for Black, White and Hispanic prisoners in 2007 and 2017.

• Firearms in the world's most-developed countries

  • Gun homicides per 1 million residents
  • Privately owned guns per 1 million residents.
    • US : Gun homicides around 40, Privately owned guns are 1.2 million
    • Japan gun homicides less than 1 , privately owned guns are significantly below 0.4 million.

• Voters tend to shift Democratic after mass shootings in their communities

• Gun laws correlation to gun deaths

• Gun laws correlation to gun homicides

• Mentions of crime relative to first six months of 2022

Case Studies and Events

• Collin County sheriff looking into “security concerns” related to state Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano).

  • Leach said House Bill 896 (criminalizing abortion) would not leave the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence that he chairs.
  • Bill from state Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington) criminalizes abortion and opens up the possibility of prosecutors charging a woman who has an abortion with criminal homicide (punishable by the death penalty under current Texas law).

• Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) speak about police reform legislation.

• William Bryan’s video of Gregory and Travis McMichael shooting Ahmaud Arbery.

  • Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old black man, was fatally shot while jogging near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia on February 23, 2020.
  • From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States; 3,446 were black.

• Texas teacher was fired for continuing to wear a Black Lives Matter face mask after school officials asked her to stop.

  • Lillian White, an art teacher at Great Hearts Western Hills, a public charter school in San Antonio.

• Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina discussed unfair police scrutiny he has faced.

• University study shows Anglo students consistently express more positive views toward police than either Hispanic and African American students.

• Austin mass shooting events (March 12)

• Mass shootings:

  • Columbine (1999), Sandy Hook (2012), Marjory Stoneman Douglas (2018).
  • El Paso (August 3, 2019) was the deadliest American mass shooting since November 2017 (Sutherland Springs, Tex.).
  • Past Texas mass shootings: Killeen (1991), Fort Hood (2009), Sutherland Springs (2017), Santa Fe (2018), El Paso (2019), Midland-Odessa (2019), Uvalde (2022).

• Angry young men and guns: Mass shooter patterns emerge.

  • Salvador Rolando Ramos had just turned 18
  • Nikolas Cruz, who had been 19 when he shot a school in Parkland, Fla.
  • Adam Lanza, 20, in Newtown, Conn.
  • Seung-Hui Cho, 23, at Virginia Tech.
  • Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, in Columbine, Colo.

• Sutherland Springs voters shifted toward the Republican party after shooting.

• Civil forfeiture: power to seize property suspected of being produced by, or involved in, crime.

  • Property’s owners bear the burden of proving that they were not involved in such activity.

• Trump’s focus on crime during his presidential candidacy (terrorists, immigrants, crime spiking).

• Charles Ramsey and Laurie Robinson co-chair a task force “21st Century Policing.”

  • Law enforcement is traditionally a state and local policy matter.

• President Biden listens to New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) speak during an event at New York Police Department headquarters on Feb. 3.

• The Democratic administration is prosecuting more than 750 people who engaged in an armed insurrection at the Capitol.

• Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to undo the criminal justice policies of Obama and former attorney general Eric Holder (reduce prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders).

  • Sessions plans to prosecute more drug and gun cases and pursue mandatory minimum sentences.

• The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States.

  • FBI has 35,104 employees.

• Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a budget of 3 billion and has 152,303 offenders incarcerated.

  • The cost per inmate is 20,275.
  • It costs 8,261 to educate a student.

• Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Department of Public Safety to target drug cartels as fentanyl deaths continue in Texas.

• Ex-San Marcos Cpl. John A. Palermo pleaded guilty in January to aggravated assault by a public servant.

  • Attacked Alpha, a 22-year-old Texas State University student, in May 2013.

• Texas remains the deadliest state for law enforcement

• Robb Elementary School in Uvalde shooting (May 24, 2022).

• Sara Mutschlechner, UNT student, murder by gunfire when leaving a party as designated driver

Police and Law Enforcement

• There are 18,000 police agencies in the United States, employing about 765,246 sworn officers.
  • Half of police departments employ fewer than 10 officers; three-quarters serve areas with fewer than 10,000 people.
• Training and policies vary from town to town, leading to inconsistencies in officer behavior and acceptable use of force.
• Consolidation of local departments into statewide agencies could improve professionalism and training.
• Concerns about consolidation: threatens local governance, reduces responsiveness to community needs.

Community and Crime Statistics

• Bowie County has the highest violent crime (13 per 1,000) and property crime (50 per 1,000) in Texas.
• Baltimore had the highest homicide rate in the first months of 2017.
• Texas became the eighth state to require state colleges and universities to allow civilians with permits to carry concealed guns in public places.
• High crime rates affect schools, employment, land use planning, physical health, and financial well-being.
• The FBI has the Uniform Crime Report which gives crime rates per capita.
• The FBI reported that 1,197,704 violent crimes were committed in 2015, up 3.9% from 2014.
• The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 provided for 100,000 new police officers, 9.7 billion in funding for prisons and 6.1 billion in funding for prevention programs.

Other Crime Data/Stats

• The United States saw a 0.2 percent drop in violent crime between 2013 and 2014.
• Violent crime has been falling for a couple decades now throughout Texas and the rest of the U.S
• Houston had 10,106 reported violent crimes in the first six months of 2013.
  • Houston's crime rate was 4.64 per 1,000.
  • Dallas' rate was 3.44.
  • Odessa had the highest rate among the 26 largest cities, with 5.48 per 1,000.
  • Richardson and Round Rock tied for the lowest crime rate per 1,000 inhabitants, 0.66.
• The probation rate dropped to its lowest level since 1994: 1,522 per 100,000.

San Marcos Specific Discussions

• San Marcos Police Department meet and confer agreement with the SMPOA would allow him to hire more bilingual officers (every fifth officer hired based on criteria besides merely highest test score). Second language pay incentive also part of the agreement
• Four shootings in San Marcos:
  • Aug. 26: resident shot in his apartment.
  • Sept. 4: four armed Luling teenagers invaded a San Marcos home.
  • Oct. 20: two armed San Antonio men entered a San Marcos apartment and fled after shooting a resident.
  • Oct. 21: individual armed with a BB gun who was shot several times after invading a San Marcos home.
• Business Week named San Marcos Texas winner in its “Best Places to Raise Your Kids: 2010” survey.
• San Marcos has a lower crime rate than comparable cities.

Broader Social Issues

• One theory claims that police pulled back in response to racial justice protests and calls to cut funding in 2020.
  • Problems: the surge in violence happened across the board, in urban areas and rural ones, in blue cities and red.
  • American policing is decentralized, with some 15,000 local departments and sheriff’s offices.
• Politicians often invoke mental health after shootings.
  • However, research shows that people with mental illness are responsible for a small percentage of interpersonal and gun violence.
  • People with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence.
• A study shows many UTEP students had been raped, stalked, sexually harassed or were victims of domestic violence during college – yet most of them never spoke about the incident to anyone.
• Judge Roy Bean, the 'Law West of the Pecos', holding court at the town of Langtry, Texas, trying a horse thief.
• Community policing is a feel-good term, one so broad that it seems difficult to oppose. It's a strategy for building trust between police and the community through cooperative efforts of law enforcement and local leaders

Understanding Crime

• Why Does Crime Happen?
  • In the 1960s, many American cities began to experience an increase in criminal activity.
• The Underclass: people not integrated into the broader economy.
  • Racism (Kerner Commission in 1968): attributed rioting to discrimination against ethnic minorities. “We have two Americas.”
  • Culture of poverty (Edward Banfield): criminals have a “present orientation” rather than a future orientation and commit crime for “fun and profit.”
  • Loss of Jobs (William Julius Wilson): loss of manufacturing jobs reduces communities’ ties to the legitimate economy. Job training is the answer.
• Some inner city men suffer from a culture that does not value hard work.
• Theories of Law Enforcement
  • Community focus and more officers walking a beat (or on bikes or horses)
  • Broken windows: try to reduce signs of social decay
• Some worry that police are becoming more like soldiers.