POVIS Blog #6

Crimes against children are particularly depressing when heard about. I think everyone was shocked the day of the Connecticut elementary school shooting not so long ago.

Imagine the following:

A news anchor shows a face on your television screen; it is the face of a thirty-something man, smiling, a candid shot where a friend's face and body were cropped or blurred out to protect either identity or a lawsuit if permission wasn't granted by the friend. "This man," the anchor reports, "was murdered by a gun shot wound to the head. A family member of the deceased allegedly opened fire on the victim earlier this afternoon."

Switch. The face isn't that of a thirty-something male; now it's a ten year old boy.

When the victim of a murder or any other type of crime is not associated with us personally, we tend to blow it off. Too bad, so sad. I feel sorry for the family. That sort of thing; but then we move on. Some even look at reports of crimes, especially violent ones, as entertaining. But when it's a child as a victim everyone is up in arms. How could someone do something like this? If the offender is an adult, it's worse. Society calls for crucifixion. If the offender is another child, its deeply sad, and again, adults are blamed.

Children are symbolic of innocence. Pure. Whole. White as snow. They have no real means to protect themselves against victimization so it is up to the older members of society to keep the children safe. When the trust that is innately given to adults by children is violated, other, more responsible or stable adults see it as an abomination.

All the racial differences, cultural separations, religious beliefs...all are unified when a child is victimized. Universally, it is an act which is wrong.

But then, there are those who victimize. There are those who victimize as a profession. Human trafficking is still very much a problem around the world and children are often targeted. Documentaries such as Anonymously Yours looks at young female children who were sold into sex work by their parents or friends.
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 Let's bring it closer to home, though.

As Victimsofcrime.org will tell you, crimes against children include abuse, abandonment, and abduction. These categories are not limited, however; Abuse includes physical, sexual, and psychological; Abandonment includes neglect; And abduction includes being taken by strangers or relatives.

Maine, who has taken a strong stance against child victimization has set laws in place to protect the young and up-in-coming generation. Certain adults (typically those who deal with children regularly like teachers, school administration, or day care specialists) are required to report even reasonable suspicions of abuse, neglect, or child death immediately by telephone. After the Penn State scandal involving the exploitation of children, many states adopted a law like this if it wasn't already in place. Here is a link to more information on the mandatory reporting laws. On child pornography, Maine enacted the cyber-crime based Project Safe Childhood in 2006. In 2011, PSC was expanded to include child prostitution and human trafficking. The goals of PSC include harsher punishments for the offenders of these crimes and increased efforts to assist the victims, increased ability in law enforcement to investigate through training, and continuing education of the public, particularly children, on how to navigate the internet safely.
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So what do we do? How do we fix this problem? How do we make this world just a little bit better by protecting those who can't protect themselves?

Well, the simple answer is we report. Report, report, report. And educated. EDUCATE! Education seems to fix everything, doesn't it? Let's educate the kids on safety measures; we don't want to scare them, just make sure they're smart and know not to get in a car with a stranger offering candy - that sort of thing. And let's make sure we report the adults who target the innocent. Report even if it's not kids being victimized. If we all do our part, and make sure we're not purposefully turning a blind eye to bad things, we stand a chance of a least protecting those around us.

POVIS Blog #5

Murder is one of those crimes that happens everywhere. You can't escape it. Maine is obviously no exception then. Even though, as previously stated in other blogs, Maine has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the country, rates of murder show similar trends to that of the rest of the nation. A Uniform Crime Report (UCR) crime summary, shown here, gives a ten-year look at murder and other crimes; murder steadily increases until 2009 where the rates decrease and continue to decrease in 2010. They rise again as we look at 2011. This is consistent with even longer term data showing that murder rates tend to oscillate as the years and decades go on. For an even extensive look at the fluctuation of murder rates in Maine, take a look at the UCR crime survey from 1960-2011.

Maine isn't without the classic type murders that would be featured on shows like CSI:Whatever. The murder of two teens by a landord, aparently over something as trivial as where a car was parked during a snowstorm made headlines in December 2012. Or how about the murder of a drug dealer's girlfriend? That occured in 2009. I can almost hear Gil Grissom's voice quoting Shakespeare or somone with equal gravitas describing the fate that fell to a woman because of her relationships. The offender was recently sentenced to life in prison.


"'Blah, blah, blah.' Chaucer."

Blog #3

Sexual Assault






Gross.

Going to college and taking criminal justice classes was the first time I had really been exposed to sexual assault crimes. It's not talked about in lower levels of education. I'm constantly surprised by the statistics that I read.

When I read through this site's statistics I was shocked. One in five Maine residents have been the victim of rape or attempted rape. What? I started to wonder how Maine stacked up against the rest of the nation. After continuing to read through the stats offered by Maine's Coalition Against Sexual Assault, I was pleased to find those statistics listed on the same page. Good! Less research for me! Maine is pretty consistent with the specs of the nation. Personally...that blows my mind. One in five....

Domestic violence and sexual assault are the two categories of crime where the focus is placed so heavily on the gender disproportion. Women are more likely to be the victims with men being the offenders. It's unlike other crimes which are usually perpetrated by men against men. It's discrimination. It's what feminists insist are the ever-present ideals that men are superior to women and women are property - analogous to a dog that needs discipline. Women have often been blamed for the crimes against them.



Sad.

There needs to be more education. It needs to be talked about. So many victims become victims before they're out of high school. And sexual assault on college campuses is a huge problem on its own.



We should move away from victim blaming as a society.
 

 The following link will bring you to a YouTube video of a movie trailer for The Invisible War which was nominated for an Academy Award as well as a ton of others.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3fBaFQk6aE0

POVIS Blog #2

The term hate crime makes me cringe; not the term itself, but the story that almost always follows. Unfortunately we live in a world where people don't always get along based simply on some type of personal characteristic. Someone's of a different sexual orientation, someone's of a different color, someone speaks a different language, someone doesn't believe in the same deity or doesn't believe in one at all. Someone has a mental disability or a physical one; someone doesn't think or doesn't feel the way you do. People clash. Ideas clash. Hate.

I think hate springs mostly from misunderstanding and fear. I would love for everyone to take the time out to be educated on various cultures or ideas and beliefs but I know the vast majority of those committing these hate crimes wouldn't voluntarily do so. The prejudice runs too deep. And even if they had to undergo some court-ordered educational process, it wouldn't work for all. Then again nothing does.

Maine's hate crime laws protect a great deal of people who may be subject to hate crimes including the disabled and the lesbian and gay community. The state's website (maine.gov) has loads of general information on state laws and procedures, but this from the site has information on hate crimes committed in Maine for 2011 as reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR). Particular emphasis is placed on motivation for the crime. As shown on the pie chart on the first page of the report, sexual orientation made up nearly half of motivating circumstances in the 58 incidents reported. Listed as the most common type of hate crime committed is vandalism and the most common place for the offenses is at a residence. The Portland, ME police department reported the most hate crimes as seen in the table on the final page of the report. 

The Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders organization, commonly known as GLAD, has a plethora of information on the rights of Maine citizens both homosexual and heterosexual and state laws pertaining to hate crimes. This information can be found here. It is important to recognize the "last updated" date at the top of the page listed as early 2010.

Hate is also not always aimed at one particular group. Take this man for example who plead guilty a few years back to an assault of a black man when a few years before that he had been served a civil injunction for a hate crime against a Jewish man.

As mentioned in the UCR, vandalism was the most common means of carrying out a hate crime. In 2012, Maine was seeing increased vandalism, including vandalism of places of worship - a Class D crime. In September, two synagogues were vandalized with spray painted swastikas and other religious symbols like an inverted cross with "666" around it. 

Hate is everywhere and it's gross. Even Maine, which as reported in my first blog entry, has one of the lowest crime rates in the country, has hate thriving in its cities. Someone's hate for a particular group or groups isn't going to go away just because of incarceration. This may be a case where rehabilitation works best. Programs geared toward educating individuals on the cultures of the world may be a solution. Sort of like a Batter's Intervention Program for hate crime offenders. As I pointed out above, nothing works for everyone, but it seems like the most reasonable conclusion. Or maybe just some counseling that says "Hey! Not everyone is alike. Not everyone is going to be like you. Let's figure out a way for you to deal with that!"

Now, I'll leave you with some "Faith in Humanity" posts from this great site called Pinterest! Maybe you've heard of it? It's pretty great. These posts all have something or other to do with hate and discrimination.

POVIS Blog #1

It's been shown through numerous studies that big inner cities are home to the most crime. There are a number of theories surrounding this phenomenon including strain and conflict. Regardless of the reason, it seems to hold true for the most part.

For SYOP4514, I chose Maine as the state I would blog about. Had I known Maine is consistently one of the least violent states, I maybe would have held out for another. The FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2011 listed Maine as having 1,636 violent crimes for the year. That's third place. Wyoming had 1,246 and Vermont came next with 847. Of course, population is something to be considered here; Maine was censused as having over 1.3 million people living in the state during that year while Wyoming and Vermont had just over half a million citizens. This concludes that less violent crime occurs per a greater amount of people. NBCNews.com shows this in a study reported here.

But, holding true with the theories briefly discussed above, Maine has more people than those two other states and therefore more crime. Urban cities are significantly more likely to house this criminal activity. This map shows the various areas of Maine and their propensity for crime compared to it's surroundings. The relatively heavily populated cities like Augusta (the capital) have more crime than some of the less populated areas such as the northern cities. The UCR also breaks down violent crime on the table by "Metropolitan Areas," "Cities Outside Metropolitan Areas," and "Non-metropolitan Areas." This makes it super easy to see that the more people in any given area, the more likely violent crime will occur.