Prevention Works

Care to Give Me All Your Money?

You know the phrases. You may have even seen a few in that card you were given on your birthday last year, the one where you turned 40 for the 41st time. “Past your prime” and “Over the hill” are just a few of the phrases that are used when we all get a bit older. Unfortunately, as awful as those terms are, a few new and even more unwelcome terms are beginning to rear their ugly heads, words such as “target” and “victim.” These new terms all come courtesy of the emerging crime trend of caregiver exploitation.

People are starting to live longer and longer, yet unfortunately instead of being able to celebrate their longevity, some seniors are battling trusted family members and associates who attempt to steal their money or property. According to a report by the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), between 1 and 2 million Americans ages 65 or older have been exploited or mistreated by someone they have depended on for care. I imagine that this doesn’t even consider the cases that go unreported!

Fortunately, there are things that seniors can do to protect themselves from this shameful crime, such as using direct deposit for Social Security or retirement checks, reviewing financial statements every month, and being careful about letting tenants, even family members, stay in your house. For more resources and tips on how to report abuse and stay safe, visit www.ncea.aoa.gov.

Seniors are often characterized as being helpless or feeble. But times are changing, and I think it is only appropriate that all of those dated concepts be replaced with a few new and more fitting terms such as “aware,” “proactive,” and my personal favorite, “getting better with time.”

Crime prevention never gets old. And though I have no doubt there are many responsible and loving caregivers out there, all seniors can do their part in ensuring that they will not become victims. By empowering themselves and taking an active role in caring for themselves and their finances, they will be able to enjoy those wonder years that they’ve worked so hard for and deserve!

21 for 21?

CADCA recently published an article, based on a New York Times story, reporting on a new study that will soon be released by the University of Missouri, about 21st birthday binge drinking.  The CADCA article refers to this as “power hour” and two different New York Times articles call it “21 at 21” or “21 for 21.”  This refers to the indoctrination process of drinking 21 shots on your 21st birthday.  According to Urbandictionary.com, “power hour” also has another connotation, which is drinking one shot of beer every minute for an hour, typically to music where each track is one minute long so that the participants know when it’s time to take the next shot. 
The University of Missouri study, which was based on information provided by 2,518 students, found that, of those students who reported drinking alcohol to celebrate their 21st birthdays, 34 percent of the men and 24 percent of the women consumed 21 or more drinks.  Over one-third and almost one-quarter of all students in the study indulged in something that I have to believe most people, even 21-year-old, recognize as risky behavior!  We have all read human interest articles or heard on the news about a child dying on his or her 21st birthday because he or she drank too much.  So why does the behavior continue?  Is it lack of awareness and education?  The availability of alcohol?  Not enough regulation by bartenders?  The challenge of seeing if you can actually do it?  Whatever the reason, the researchers at University of Missouri have shown us that an alarming number of young adults continue to engage in this wild and crazy behavior.

How Are You Using Social Networks To Prevent Crimes?

Earlier this month, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) Department in Manchester, United Kingdom, set up a new application on the popular social networking site Facebook. The application delivers police news in real time to active users—or “friends”—and also gives users a single destination to report anonymous tips.

As technology progresses, law enforcement agencies are coming up with new ways to harness technology to solve crimes. This new application also involves younger members of the community while doing it. Many Facebook users check the site several times a day, even from mobile phones. Applications like the GMP’s make it easier for Facebook users to report crimes as they happen, thus making it easier for law enforcement to catch those criminals quickly and efficiently. These applications also make it easier for community members to get more involved in preventing crimes in their community. As an AMBER Alert goes out to users, 161 extra pairs of eyes (the current number of users of the GMP application) are out there looking for the suspected kidnapper, without having to wait for an evening news broadcast.

Toronto Crime Stoppers has also set up a page on YouTube to ask for tips on unsolved cases. One such case was an ongoing human-trafficking investigation, and appeals from a Russian-speaking officer resulted in several tips that helped police make an arrest. Constable Scott Mills, a Toronto Crime Stoppers schools officer, also has a Facebook account that he uses to communicate with the kids he meets on school visits. “We have to use the Internet as a violence-prevention tool, not just to go out there and ask for tips,” says Mills. He cites a Facebook posting that helped police thwart a school stabbing last year.

Programs like this one can also set up better crime-mapping of neighborhoods. Two students at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee set up a Facebook blog to report crimes, mostly armed robberies, in campus neighborhoods. The blog has 700 members who read and report crimes in real time, pinpointing them to the exact street address. One student, in an interview to WISN News, said, “I think that if everybody comes together and really starts working together, we can hopefully stop this from going around.”

Everybody coming together to prevent crimes—now that’s a great idea.

Garden Variety Terrorists

We generally think of environmentalists as a thoughtful lot, committed to achieving peaceful change. And virtually all of them—or us—are.

But a tiny environmental fringe group has been committing arson and other acts of violence in the name of environmental causes, causing monstrous damage and endangering lives. The worst of these groups calls itself the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and the FBI has termed it a domestic terrorist organization.

ELF has most recently been in the news for torching four multimillion dollar “green” model houses in the Woodinville suburb of Seattle. The terrorists left a sign on a white sheet that read, in big red letters, “Built Green? Nope Black.” The homes were built with “green” recycled materials and even had water-pervious sidewalks. But environmentalists were worried that the homes could pollute nearby wetlands and a creek that was home to endangered Chinook salmon.   

The Earth Liberation Front has left a trail of destruction in its wake. It torched the Center for Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington in 2001 in the mistaken belief that scientists there were genetically engineering trees. It cost $7 million to rebuild the center.

Much more recently, on March 11, four members of ELF were indicted for the December 31, 1999, arson of the Agriculture building at Michigan State University and a logging facility at Mesick, MI. In the MSU case, the defendants are accused of acting to protest genetic research on plants, and, indeed, the fire destroyed years of research documents and scientific experiments.

These radical environmentalists should have turned to the courts instead of resorting to their reign of terror. They have shown themselves to be no better than others who commit mayhem, destroy private property, and terrorize innocent people. Worse, with their attacks on research and research facilities they seem engaged in a war on ideas. They are no better than any other terrorists and they deserve prosecution to the fullest extent of the law.   

Troop 1500: Girl Scouts Breaking the Cycle of Crime

This Girl Scout troop doesn’t just sell Thin Mints and attend day camp.

Troop 1500, Austin, TX, busies itself with restoring families, growing children, reintegrating ex-offenders, and keeping another generation from becoming criminals. All the ex-offenders, however, are the scouts’ Moms, and the futures of the kids and Moms alike are in the balance. Depicted in the documentary film Troop 1500 (by director Ellen Spiro and producer Karen Bernstein), this Girl Scout troop, comprehensively served by social work professionals, addresses all aspects of the mother/daughter equation. The goal of the troop is to strengthen the bond of mother and daughter and break the cycle of crime.

Previously some of these girls involuntarily accompanied their mothers on drug-buying runs. Now, once a month, these Girl Scouts visit their incarcerated mothers in prison. The Moms are behind bars for significant crimes and the girls of the troop face up to that as best as eleven-year-olds can. One girl is asked what she tells people when they ask where her Mom is.

“She’s out of town in Las Vegas,” is the coping answer she supplies. The once-a-month visits are part love fest, part psychotherapy, equal measure heartening and heartbreak.

“How do you feel about your Mom being in prison?” can only be responded to with “It hurt,” and a quick dash out of camera range.

More than two million U.S. children at any one time have an incarcerated parent.  One-seventh of U.S. children have had an incarcerated parent during their childhood. The Girl Scouts Behind Bars movement (PDF) is in operation in 27 states.

Harford County (MD) State's Attorney Joseph Cassily recently reiterated the problem as he sees it.

“If you have children who are not disciplined in their formative years or given any values, all the government can do is kind of corral them until they end up in jail…. When you have a lack of parenting, that’s what leads to increased gang problems, increased drug use, increased violence. It all goes back to that.”

Girl Scout Troop 1500 is staffed by professional social workers and psychologists to support the Moms while they are in prison and once they get out. Both are scary times for the Moms, their children, and the kids’ interim caregivers (in some instances, grandparents who have more than a passing familiarity with drug use and incarceration.)  Since the beginning of the program 96 percent of the 45 Girl Scout participants have not gotten pregnant before age 18; 93 percent have not dropped out of high school; and none have been arrested.

That’s more than a start.

The award winning DVD Troop 1500 is available from the Women Make Movies website. 

Lights, Camera, Assault Charges

By now I’m sure everyone has seen or at least heard about the group of teenage girls in Florida who beat up one of their peers, videotaped the assault, and posted the video on YouTube. According to a story on Eyewitness News Everywhere in Tennessee, the girls planned to tape the attack as a way to get revenge on the victim for posting mean things about them on MySpace. Unfortunately, this incident is the latest of many in which kids and teens have been using the Internet to intentionally hurt and embarrass one another. This type of harassment is known as cyberbullying, and the National Crime Prevention Council has been working very hard to emphasize the severity of this issue.

The one thing about this particular case however, is that these girls took it a step further and created a bullying hybrid. Not only did they physically hurt the victim, but they used the web to further her pain and humiliation, causing her emotional harm as well. And for what? Revenge? To impress Johnny B. Cool in third period? To show the other girls in school how tough they are? I remember teenage girls and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a combination of all of these things, if not more. Popularity can be a dangerous thing, especially when it’s achieved through malicious means. The Florida girls were obviously hoping to gain some sort of attention from the video, but I doubt they were expecting to find themselves in the position they are in today.

It’s amazing to me that there are kids and teens out there who use the Internet to post awful things about one another for everyone to see, yet seem surprised at the consequences of their visibility. They’re shocked when the authorities come knocking at their door and serve them with arrest warrants for assault and battery. And I’m sure the same kids will be just as surprised when they apply for that dream job years down the road (if they’re not in prison), only to be rejected because the director of Human Resources found an incriminating Internet post or a malicious video when Googling their names. The Internet, like an elephant, never forgets and it’s imperative that kids, teens, and even adults understand this. Cyberbullying hurts everyone.

The Florida girls had a chance to break the cyberbullying cycle, but instead of defusing the situation, they chose to escalate it. And now, according to the Washington Post, “they face charges of kidnapping, battery and witness tampering.” They tried so hard to ruin one girl’s life that they didn’t stop to think for one second that they would be ruining their own.

For more information about cyberbullying visit www.ncpc.org/cyberbullying.

Think Happy Thoughts

A sinister thought, just the one. It’s fleeting. There are no twisted machinations, just one ephemeral idea. But what if someone saw that thought, or at the very least, the emotions pushing it at the very moment that it arose? What if a government official or police officer could detain you, arrest you, try and sentence you, based on an emotion…a thought…on which you never acted? I’ve written about these Minority Report tactics on this blog before, but I’ve never heard of the unbelievably interesting and unjust technology described by Nita Farahany in The Washington Post. 

While it may be too early to panic, I’m not keen on the technology Farahany details: streaming video analytics using algorithms to predict the patterns of a loitering group of teens or a remote electroencephalogram detecting changes in the brain. Farahany makes a point that “the government can't read our minds—yet. So far, these tools simply measure changes in the brain; they don't detect thoughts and intentions.” But, she says that scientists are working to decipher people’s intentions and perceptions.

Frankly, while other people may not be afraid of this technology, I am. But my fear doesn’t stem only from the “Big Brother” abilities of this technology. It also comes from the fact that assumptions will be made from imperfect technology (not that I want this technology to ever be perfected, or even used as is).

What if someone has high levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and when pulled over by an officer panics not because their car is filled with cadavers or meth, but simply because their adrenal glands secrete more cortisol than the average person’s? Can this sophisticated equipment detect a person’s Cushing’s Syndrome, or will an officer register their response as probable cause to search a car, or to ticket, detain, or arrest the driver? While I don’t want this equipment scanning my body for possible causes of an emotive response, I do want society and scientists to think about what it is that makes a criminal. Does an errant thought, an emotion, an illness, a change in heart rate or neural activity determine that a crime will occur?

I’m not a scientist, just someone fascinated with science. But as someone who works in crime prevention, I don’t know where this technology could take my field. While I believe that people do exhibit warning signs and behaviors before engaging in some crimes, I will never support criminalizing someone for a thought that might come from one fleeting emotion (or from recurrent thoughts on which they never act). To prevent crime, we should educate people and engage them in their communities, not invade someone’s thoughts and construe their behavior as potentially criminal.

As always, your comments are encouraged, as I can’t (and don’t want to) read your minds.

Hat tip to All in the Mind.

Who’s to Blame?

Over the past week there have been several national headlines about crimes committed by children and teens. There was the story about a group of third graders who plotted to kill their teacher after being disciplined during class time, the murder of Chicago public school student , Chavez Clarke, who was fatally gunned down as he left school (which led to another story—20 Chicago public school students have been fatally shot over the past three months), and in our own backyard, the story about a local 15-year-old student fatally stabbed just minutes after school dismissal.  Mental health practitioners, law enforcement personnel, and school administrators have gone on record attributing these acts of senseless violence on a number of factors, including undiagnosed mental illness and learning disabilities, gang affiliations, and lax gun control policies.

These may all very well be contributing factors, but if we’re talking about reducing, preventing, or eliminating these types of violent crimes and delinquent behavior, it has to start in the home. Children need parental guidance, love, and support to thrive in school and their communities. I believe most parents strive daily to provide their children with a safe and loving home environment, but when parents are faced with social and economic hardship, many struggle to provide the consistency in rule setting, discipline, and interaction and communication essential to the healthy development of a child.

As a full-time working parent I understand how difficult it can be to find and maintain a balance. Good parenting is not easy. Good parenting requires sacrifice, commitment, and discipline. Good parents live a positive lifestyle that their children can emulate. Good parents listen to their children. Good parents show affection to their children. Good parents set boundaries. Good parents find a way to be involved in their child’s life. And finally, good parents are those who recognize when their children need help and responsibly use “the village”. The village (attributed to the African proverb: "It takes a village to raise a child”) may include extended family members, close friends, or spiritual leaders who can support parents or a combination of the many social services programs designed to support the healthy development of a child. The concept of the village and its place in child rearing cannot be overstated although some conservative thinkers believe that the responsibility for child development should lie solely in the hands of the family. Many of today’s family dynamics are complex and many exist in circumstances that place it outside what may be considered the traditional family structure. Thus, parents need to be able to look to the village--the schools, faith community, community centers, and social service agencies that can provide them with the support they need.

I’ll conclude by sharing the comment (posted by a reader, in response to the Washington Post’s coverage of the recent Chicago students murders) that struck me as so poignant and kindled my need to really think about who’s to blame, “Where are the biological creators of these killers?”

Got Gas?

Perhaps it is a sign of the times and ridiculously high gas prices. Or maybe thieves are simply getting bolder. Whatever the case may be, when my sister told me that someone had stolen the gas out of her car and 20 others along her street I was completely dumbfounded. I couldn’t imagine the time and effort it took to commit such a crime, not to mention how incredibly risky it was.

As gas prices reach all-time highs I have heard that the old pump-and-run scheme has been rearing its ugly head at a few gas stations. However, most gas stations have adopted the pay-first, pump-later structure that seems to adequately protect them from serious loss. Indeed, I am happy that our local stations have a way to combat the cunning thieves among us; however I can’t help but think, what about the rest of us? What about the 20 people on my sister’s street that had their gas stolen while they slept?  Unlike a purse or wallet, we can’t simply take our gas out of our cars and carry it into our house or the supermarket with us. No, we just have to leave it there and hope that we don’t become a victim, right? Wrong. Though it is difficult to prevent the theft of gas from a personal vehicle, it is not impossible.  We can all be proactive in fighting this crime by taking simple steps to protect ourselves such as parking our vehicles in well lighted areas and investing in locking gas caps (which can be found at most auto parts stores).  Sadly, we may not be able to stop the rise of gas prices, but we can do something to protect ourselves from gas theft!

Don’t Let Someone Steal Your House

When I think of house stealing I think of squatters and home invasion. Well, recently con artists have turned to identity theft to steal your home. The FBI reports that house stealing combines two of the nation’s fastest growing crimes, identity theft and mortgage fraud.

Con artists start the process by choosing a house; it could be a vacant vacation property or your year-round residence. They then research the owner of the house and obtain as much information as possible to create a fake ID and Social Security card. Once they have your personal information, they get forms to transfer property. Using the fake ID and forging your signature, they file paperwork asserting to the property authorities that the property has been sold or transferred and the house becomes theirs. Cuyahoga County Recorder Patrick O'Malley told CBS evening news correspondent Randall Pinkston that “Anyone with ill intent could actually fraudulently transfer property from an honest owner to a dishonest owner, without the honest owner even knowing it."

The FBI report cites a scam that occurred last year in Los Angeles:  A real estate business owner in Southeast Los Angeles pled guilty to leading a scam that defrauded more than 100 homeowners and lenders out of some $12 million. She promised to help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages by refinancing their loans. Instead, she and her partners in crime used stolen identities or “straw buyers” to purchase these homes. They then pocketed the money they borrowed but never made any mortgage payments. In the process, the true owners lost the title to their homes and the banks were out the money they had loaned to fake buyers.

There are a couple of ways that you can prevent this from happening. If you receive information from your mortgage company that isn’t yours, but is sent to your address, open it immediately and contact the mortgage company and local police. Once every six months, check with your county deeds office to make sure that no paperwork or signatures you don’t recognize are included in your file. If you find that someone has victimized you, contact your local police, your mortgage company, and the county deeds office right away.