Tookie, Murder, and Other Academic Abstractions

As the governor prepares to approach a life-or-death decision for which he prepared by taking steroids, lifting weights, going to parties, and starring in muscle movies, I got to thinking about murder.

First of all, L.A.'s doing a steady 500 murders a year - not too far off the pace the Iraqi insurgency is setting for killing Americans. Still, it's good news if you compare it with the 658 in 2002, 854 in 1994, or even higher rates of the 1980s. About 60% are gang related, and the LA Almanac reports gang membership at in L.A. at a suspiciously precise 48,289 (is it on the census forms, or what?).

Everyone talks about it but no on knows much about it. We failed to note the passing in June of Eric Monkkonen, who did a great service by studying the history of murder in America. This LA Times piece is worth a look. Key points:

• ...it remains a crime committed mostly by men in the heat of passion, ''to assert manliness, power, or territory."
• He also found convincing proof that violence is endemic to American culture. Over two centuries, New York's murder rate was more than five times as high as London's [and higher] even after taking out murders with guns... ''The United States has tolerated a homicide rate much higher than all of the rest of the Western world except Russia," he told the Los Angeles Times recently in an unpublished interview.
• He also showed that murder rates dipped in LA after WWII, contradicting theories that soldiers would bring their violent skills home with them.

Superstar best-selling pop economist Steven Levitt thinks abortion has something to do with it, but it turns out he may have done his study wrong.

As the stars come out for Tookie, and LA and the prison system brace for riots if clemency it not granted, it raises the stakes on what already is a pretty bad set of options: 1) Grant clemency and appear to give in to pressure and give special treatment to the founder of the Crips; or 2) Don't grant clemency and perpetuate a death penalty system that is racist and frequently kills innocent people.

David Hackett Fischer once attacked Hegelian logic on the grounds that "an argument between two lunatics is unlikely to result in a triumph of reason." Looks like we'll have a nice test case here.