Is MADD Mad?
Eric Peters, who frequently writes on matters automotive, celebrates the decline in the number of traffic deaths attributed to alcohol: they've dropped 50 percent since the early 1980s.

The decline has been brought about by both changing societal expectations and stricter laws. But he takes on Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for suggesting that the legal threshold for intoxicated driving be dropped even lower, to a blood alcohol count (BAC) of 0.04. (Most states, at the risk of running afoul of federal requirements, have already lowered the limit from 0.10 to 0.08.) Such amounts, he says, impose minimal risks.

He also attacks the use of sobriety checkpoints. "It's one thing to lock up the person who is weaving all over the road -- quite another to arrest a person at a sobriety checkpoint simply because he has trace amounts of alcohol in his blood."

MADD does itself no favors, he concludes, when it argues that opponents of its measures are simply drive while drunk. "One can legitimately object to the use of random stops by police absent probable cause ... just as one doesn't have to ... 'support criminals' because one believes that police should be required to secure a warrant before conducting a wiretap or search of anyone's home."
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Will Collecting Racial Data of Motorists Lead to De-Policing?
Starting in the new year, police in Illinois will be required to record the race and sex of every motorist they stop. The goal is to track the extent of "racial profiling" among police.

As this story in the Chicago Sun-Times says, however, "Two suburban departments that have been reporting such data to the U.S. Justice Department for several years both have experienced decreases in traffic citations."

This has lead some concerns that the extra hassle will lead to de-policing, or fewer stops.

UPDATE: Arab and Hispanic activists complain about the new law. No, they don't mind being counted. They're afraid that they won't be counted.

"You can't tell whether Arab-Americans are being profiled if we're counted with whites," said [Rouhay] Shalabi, president of the Chicago-based Arab American Bar Association. "Ideally, there should be another box ... to be more specific."

The days when rock singer Bob Seger complained that government and corporate forms were making him Feel Like a Number have long passed us.
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Policy Issues for 2004
Also from the NCSL: a list of the top 10 issues likely to dominate state policy debates in the new year. Among the issues are state budgets, responding to the No Child Left Behind Act, the cry for cheap prescription drugs, and the role of incarceration in criminal justice.
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There Ought to Be a Law
Be careful what you wish for. The National Conference of State Legislatures says that 21 states will enact 500 new laws on January 1, 2004. A few are good, many bad, and most will have unintended consequences.
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Crime Pays
According to the Detroit News, The Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending says that Michigan ought to be paroling more prisoners than it does.

Among the facts noted in the story:

• 5 percent of the state's budget is spent on prisons


• They employ one out of every three Michigan state employees


• Of 50,000 prisoners, 17,000 are eligible for parole


• Over 3,600 prisoners are there because they violated a technical rule concerning their parole, which may be something as simple as missing an appointment.


• Prior to get-tough reforms enacted in 1992, 68 percent of prisoners were paroled at the earliest possible date. That number is now 48 percent.


• Parole for violent criminals has decreased from 1990 to 2000 (61 to 35 percent), while the percentage of sex offenders paroled dropped from 46 percent to 10 percent.

The story points out a need for matching judicial expectations with parole board practices. It points to an anonymous survey of circuit court judges, and found that "Of the 95 judges who anonymously responded, two-thirds said the prospect of parole for deserving defendants was a factor in their imposing life sentences. A majority said they thought the defendants would be released in 10, 12 or 15 years."

So much "life" sentences. Granted, some lifers may not deserve life, but in that case, their stated sentences ought to reflect that fact.

In the abstract, spending money on prisons is a good use of taxpayer money: criminal justice goes to the core of the state's function. Once we wander into the details, though, things get murkier: should drug use result in prison time? Should parole never be an option? When should a prisoner be paroled? Should taxpayers hold criminals in prison decades after their crime, when they are old and fragile, unlikely to commit crime, but likely to impose huge costs for health care? Are we spending too much, or too little on prisons? Money isn't free, and the costs and benefits must be carefully weighed--if they can be measured.

Compounding the problem of knowing when to release a prisoner is the fact that "rehabilitation" seldom works, if prompted by the outside. The most certain route to change is through a religious commitment--hardly the thing that government should, or even can bring about.

I will close with another excerpt from the article:
"They [members of the parole board] are ducking their responsibility and not making judgments at all, and just not releasing people," said Frank Eaman, a Harper Woods lawyer who has successfully challenged the board's actions in court to gain the release of a client. "It's just easier to pass on people. Inevitably, somebody is going to get out of prison and commit a crime, and the parole board doesn't want to be blamed for anything. The easiest way is to never let anyone out."
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Minnesota Makes Small Move Towards Toll Roads
According to a report by Minnesota Public Radio (link is likely to decay soon), "Gov. Tim Pawlenty says his administration is moving forward with plans to build toll lanes in the metro area."

Sounds like a plan. With state taxes already among the highest in the country, there's little room for raising taxes to pay for road expansion. Unfortunately, there is often little room for new lanes themselves.
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Moments in the History of the U.S. Postal Service
I got someone else's mail today. Now, I know that's nothing usual. Periodically, for example, I have throughout my life gotten mail addressed to the previous occupant of my apartment or house--or if not that person, the occupant before that.

But today's mail takes this misdirection one step forward. Mr. A. wrote Mr. B. a letter and dropped it in the mail. It ended up in my mailbox. Checking the return address and the destination address with Mapquest, I find that A and B live about 2 miles away from each other--and 12 miles from me.

Now again, routing an item through a far-away destination is not unusual, either: FedEx packages from A to B would probably go through Memphis. But they wouldn't end up in, say, Montgomery.
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Yet Another Reason for School Choice: Gifted Minority Students are Left Behind
Today's Wall Street Journal (paid subscription required) says that the No Child Left Behind Act may be leaving behind some children after all: gifted students.

NCLB distributes federal money to schools based on how well they raise the academic performance of the lowest achievers, in all identified racial subgroups. A school of underachievers that raises performance gets a lot of money; one with already satisfactory performance gets none.

Responding to this incentive, states are shifting money meant to attract and develop gifted and talented students to efforts to raise the lowest performers.

From some point of justice, this is fine. But lost are children such as seven-year old Devion Ross. He was the only African-American child in his Springfield, Ill. Elementary school to qualify for the gifted program. But the school dropped the program after the state dropped its funding to focus on the incentives offered by NCLB. As a result, "Devion now daydreams in the back of his second-grade class." He's the typical smart kid who is doing poorly in school because he isn't challenged.

Devion's parents can't afford to send him to a better school, since their household income is $12,000. If, on the other hand, they were given a voucher or refundable tax credit, they could find another (private) school for him. Thanks to the publicity of the Journal article, Devion will be able to transfer to a magnet school (which is already overcrowded). Other kids won't be so lucky. At a time when minority children are underrepresented in gifted and talented programs, that's a shame.
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Democracy and Football
How is the method of determining the national championship of big-time college football like republican government? Jeffrey H. Anderson explains why.

By using both expert opinion (computer models that focus on win-loss records) and popular opinion (surveys of football coaches and sports writers, which are in theory more subjective), the BCS ranking system steers a middle ground between majority and elite rule. Anderson, a professor of political science at the Air Force Academy, runs one of the seven computers used in the BCS.

Even if you're not a football fan, the controversy over which teams should meet which for a championship game (and more importantly, how they are determined) shows how political and popular culture are intertwined.
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