While I Was Gone

Here's some of the stuff that you would have gotten had I not deserted the blog for a couple of days. Many thanks to Ben for pitching in with the post below that I'm sure has left a large bruise in the middle of his forehead.

• Flooding in OR? Inmates able to help? Good human interest story here.
• Still trying to figure out if building a new prison or adding on to existing to deal with prison pop crowding in ND is the better idea, and this consultant apparently didn't solve the problem.
• ACLU firing on all cylinders in corr sent, going after care of women in NV prisons and just plain old-fashioned general overcrowding in CT.
• The meth ad project in ID has only gotten half the contributions it said it needed, but that's not stopping them from starting, although, if folks aren't contributing, maybe they aren't convinced it's the problem the media says or they maybe just don't care?
• USA Today has a very thorough piece on juvenile justice, the movement of juvies to adult systems, and how even some of the hardcore types of a few years back are having the predictable second thoughts--predictable because, uh, some of us did way back then but got listened to then about the same as now. If only we'd had blogs then . . . .
• Prevention Works has a couple of good posts up, one on scanning for sex offenders at schools and the other on the importance of framing our messages better in competing with the other messages kids get to get into drinking and other substance abuse.
• Speaking of good links, Psychology and Crime News provides them in this post that can get you to a number of things you'll like, including, I bet, how to disrupt street-level drug markets, the psychology of judges (!!!), the emotional core of death penalty support, and yet another economist telling us in corr sent what our business is . . . did I say business, that topic economists are supposed to be experts in and yet . . . hmmm.
• And it wouldn't be a post with TECHNOCORRECTIONS, so let's link to some stories that whet that whistle. Here's one on how nicotine addiction might be controlled through influencing certain brain mechanisms and, if that addiction can, then others? Yet another cigarette one--teens who are involved in extracurricular activities have lower risks of smoking later, and if that can work for that addiction, then others? A muscle relaxer turns out to keep alcoholics with bad livers away from further abuse here, and, for you who think there's too much cynicism here, looks like they found gene variants associated with generosity, which could mean other behaviors have genetic bases as well and thus be susceptible to the T word. Unlike me.