Good Neighbors

September 4, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Where can we put this terrific little toxic waste dump?

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a short article reminding us that poisonous facilities --power plants, waste-transfer stations, truck fleets, refineries – usually get put in poor neighborhoods. Poor people pay the price with their health.

Conservative, individual-based explanations of poverty often blame the poor for their condition. Those people don’t work hard enough, don’t get enough education, aren’t smart enough, spend their money foolishly, have too many kids, don’t stay married, and so on. Some explanations blame the victims for their poor health as well. If only they’d practice good health habits, eat the right foods, etc.

It’s hard to see how conservatives can apply this logic to environmentally caused diseases like lead poisoning. But they try.

“It’s neither possible nor desirable in a free society to have all groups living equally close to everything — be it libraries or landfills,” argues Michael Steinberg, a Washington lawyer with clients in the chemical industry.” The mere fact of disparate impact, he says, is not evidence of intentional discrimination in the placement of polluting facilities — it’s just economics.

See, it’s economics. Polluters choose the cheapest locations. So if a polluter puts a waste dump next door, don’t blame the polluter; blame yourself for not having the money to move to a better neighborhood.

Social Organization of Newsgathering - Larry Craig Department

September 2, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston


Larry Craig was arrested in June, but the story didn’t hit the news until late August. A US Senator arrested for soliciting homosexual acts in a public restroom – not the sort of thing that would normally go unnoticed.

Mark Kleiman has a link to the Minnesota newspaper that should have caught this one. The Star Tribune ran an article explaining how it missed the arrest. The story, worth reading in its entirety, gives an idea of how crime news is normally reported and why normal procedures didn't work this time. The important factors were:

• the place – the crime desk doesn’t expect much to happen at the airport
• the commonplace – the name Larry Craig is so ordinary that it didn’t ring a bell with the people who monitor the police blotter
• structure of police reports – the arrestee’s occupation doesn’t appear until page 3
• other news – Craig’s guilty plea occurred just after the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, which still commanded most of the media’s attention.

Fashion Police (literally) - A Tale of Two (or more) Cities

August 31, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

Speaking of victimless crimes* (as I was in the last post), the New York Times yesterday reported on baggy pants laws that have been passed in some towns. In Mansfield, LA, wear your jeans so low that they expose your boxers, and you can wind up with a $500 fine or even jail time.

Other towns have passed similar laws; state legislatures have come close. The laws are couched as “indecency” laws. But that seems pretty lame since the law is about cloth, not skin. It’s not about showing your butt, it’s about what you use to cover your butt: jeans, good; jeans with boxers, bad. Presumably, if the offender stripped off his jeans entirely and walked around in basketball shorts – maybe even plaid ones – there’d be no problem.

The real issue, as the Times points out, is hip-hop and all its implied attitudes and ideas. (I’m surprised that Rachel hasn’t blogged this one.)

People have often reacted to outward appearance in this way. We all judge others on their appearance, and sometimes the judgments become extreme. Violent fashionistas beat up zoot suiters in the 1940s, longhairs in the 60s and 70s. Institutions, notably schools, are similarly sensitive to seemingly small matters of style. At my school, leaving your shirttail out or turning your collar up in back were punishable offenses. The NBA has regulations limiting the length of basketball shorts. It’s not that the players are showing too much leg but too little.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale and the other end of the Eastern time zone, Brattleboro, VT, has just overturned its ban on public nudity. (Sorry, no pictures, but here’s a link to the story.) If you want to walk around downtown letting it all hang out, Brattleboro’s the place to be, at least for the next few weeks before the weather starts to turn.

(* I realize that we are now supposed to refer to these as “public-order offenses” or “non-predatory crimes,” but I think Schur’s original term, if less strictly accurate, better conveys the moral idea.)

(Hat tip on the Brattleboro story to my friend Alice, whose young grandchildren live there.)

Who's a Criminal?

August 29, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

When I look at the news these days, I sometimes think that labeling theorists have been running the show.

If you’ve taken even one sociology course, you probably know that labeling theory revolutionized the study of deviance starting about fifty years ago by expanding that topic to include social control. Most approaches to deviance and crime start from two basic questions: Why do those weird (or evil) people do those weird (or evil) things? And how can we get them to stop?

Labeling theory, by contrast, focuses less on the rule breakers and more on the people who make and enforce those rules.

So here we have Republican Senator Larry Craig, a family values kind of guy from Idaho, who got busted for soliciting homosexual sex in the men’s room of the Minneapolis airport. Several things are worth noting from the labeling perspective.

1. First, none of the accounts in the media are asking why Craig was doing what he did. Instead, the questions are about the law and its enforcement.

2. The cop who arrested him was sitting on the toilet in a stall for one and only one purpose – to get solicited for sex. It’s not technically entrapment in the legal sense, but clearly rule enforcement had a lot to do with what happened. If the decoy cop hadn't been there, it's quite possible Craig wouldn't have violated the law.

3. Craig tried to use his high status to avoid labeling. The arresting officer reported “Craig handed me a card that identified himself as a United States Senator as he stated 'What do you think about that?'”

4. No sex occurred, only “signals” like foot tapping. So Craig might have beaten the charges had he contested them. Instead he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge. Now he says he regrets that plea, and he insists that he’s not gay. His major battle is not about what he did and whether it was illegal; it’s about avoiding the label “gay.”

5. Others people are trying very hard to label Craig, whether as gay, hypocrite, criminal, etc. The incident happened in June, but it got press coverage only in the last week or so. Whether something is covered up or disclosed is not automatic. It’s the result of enterprise and work on the part of people with an interest in the outcome.


Meanwhile, the New York Times today reports that police are cracking down on people who sell tickets at the US Tennis Open. Here too, the police take an active role in soliciting the crime, approaching people as they go to the Tennis Center and asking them to sell their extra tickets. It is a crime to sell a ticket, even at less than face value, within 1500 feet of the event. Still, the people busted are outraged, and they deny the label of criminal:

“We weren’t trying to make a profit, but it didn’t matter.”
The Levines were trying to sell the tickets to help friends, two couples who were unable to attend the Open because their homes were damaged by Hurricane Dean. The four tickets cost $55 each.
“I’m in shock,” said Sharon Levine, a 50-year-old lawyer whose eyes were wet with frustration. “We were just trying to help out our friends whose homes were hit by the hurricane. We’re not criminals.”

The Times takes a labeling theory approach. The cops are enforcing the law not against real scalpers but against ordinary citizens. Who, the Times asks, benefits from this moral entrepreneurship? Answer: Ticketmaster.

Of course, the police claim that they are just enforcing the law: “A New York City Police Department official said . . . that the number [of undercover cops] was determined by the department and not influenced by event coordinators or box offices.” Yeah, right.

I’m going to the Open tomorrow. But I’m not selling my extra ticket – at least not without a 1500-foot tape measure. And I’m not tapping my foot in the men’s room either.