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Going Upstream: Prisons and the Social Determinants of Health
A couple of weeks ago, I joined with hundreds of other students and scholars at Johns Hopkins for a conference on prisons and the social determinants of health. The star of the conference was this story: One day three men were fishing in the river when they noticed a baby floating towards them. Two of the men jumped…
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The Conservative War on Prisons, etc.
Via Metafilter’s kliuless (who definitely has a kliu): The Conservative War on Prisons: “Right-wing operatives have decided that prisons are a lot like schools: hugely expensive, inefficient, and in need of root-and-branch reform. Is this how progress will happen in a hyper-polarized world?” Raise The Crime Rate: “Statistics are notoriously slippery, but the figures that suggest that…
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Status Emotions and Punishment
I haven’t written much about status emotions, recently, but I came across one of my favorite Facebook memes and remembered again how central it seems. I don’t endorse the misogyny here, but it perfectly describes the way that fundamental attribution bias transforms resentment into contempt, and thus leads, in my view, to both epistemic and…
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What is “Public Philosophy”?
My department invited Sharon Meagher to do a seminar last Friday on how to redirect our energies towards “public philosophy.” Meagher has a great textbook for introducing philosophy through an exploration of urban issues that offers a situated approach to philosophical inquiry, and she’s done a lot of work trying to organize and advocate for…
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Dom and I drop some more “science” on crime
Sentiments of Rationality is at it again. Dom seems to have convinced himself that conservatives are actually right about criminal justice, since they care about victims and safety more than liberals, and trust their authority figures. He goes on to suggest electric shocks in order to speed punishment and reduce incarceration time. Here’s the gist:…