"Prisoners" and hurting people

The US Government has just released a report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, in other words on the use of torture by the CIA. You can get it as a pdf if you like >500-page documents full of horrifying details and the word [REDACTED].

David Simon has written the most basic and heartfelt howl of pain and outrage about it, echoed here by Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism. Doug Muder at The Weekly Sift does a more analytical breakdown which is also good. The fellas over at Mind Hacks have a really interesting article about how the directors of this particular torture initiative either totally misunderstood or criminally misrepresented the psychology that they based their operations on, and how (terrifyingly) the CIA fell for it regardless.

Between the Doug Muder and Libby Anne piece, there's a pretty good indication as to how the CIA got it so badly wrong here. What Muder refers to as the "bomb in New York scenario"* is seductive because it connects the very human desire for immediate revenge on wrongdoers with the promise of an immediate, tangible, and morally valuable aim. If you read Libby Anne's roundup of right wing US commentary on this report, you'll see the basic structure of the bomb in New York repeated over and over again.

In his article, Doug Muder does a pretty good job of taking this argument to bits, moral-logic-wise.

On the other hand, I've been reading a bit of research that suggests that humans cling to stories above all else, and tend to reject facts that get in the way of our preferred story (hence the persistence of Andrew Wakefield's MMR-causes-autism thesis, flouridation panics, so on and so forth). The suggestion seems to be that having a counter-story is a more effective way of dealing with faulty information.

If that's the case, I would strongly recommend watching Prisoners, and getting other people to do so as well. The basic setup is that two young girls disappear, and in the absence of any progress from the police, one of their fathers kidnaps the initial suspect in order to try and beat the truth out of him. Without getting too deep into spoiler territory, the striking thing about Prisoners is its absolute condemnation of revenge and vigilantism. In this film, without fail, every single act of vigilantism, torture or retributive violence is counter-productive, and makes the overall situation much much worse.

I think that's a story we need to hear told more often.

* This scenario (and variations thereof) is beloved of people who want to be able to say that torturing people is OK when the "good guys" do it, and it goes as follows: "There's a bomb planted in New York that will kill thousands - maybe tens of thousands when it goes off/ You have a guy in custody who knows where it is, and torturing him is the only way to get that information. What would you do?" 

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Review update for those interested in such...

It's been a while since I posted anything, but I've kept writing reviews so those have been stacking up a bit. Love & Pop has currently got my reviews of:

• Muscle Shoals - a fascinating look at the disproportionately influential Muscle Shoals music scene, and the improbably tragic life of one of its central figures. It's a must for music nerds (like me) but my less-nerdy co-watchers said they could have used more music and fewer talking heads.
• Lucky Bastard - a found-footage thriller about murders at a porn shoot which is also a commentary of a sort on male entitlement and the violence it engenders.
• The Angriest Man In Brooklyn - a minor Robin Williams vehicle that suffers (I think) from unfortunate proximity to his death. If it could be safely ignored, it'd probably annoy people less.
• Enemy - Jake Gyllenhaal plays two unpleasant men who are exact doubles. Giant spiders stalk above the Toronto skyline. Everything is a ghastly piss-yellow. (It's actually frustratingly, tantalisingly good, and will glue itself to your brainpipes tenaciously.)
• Savages Crossing - an Aussie thriller hoping to capitalise on the menace of John Jarrat's "Mick Taylor" character from Wolf Creek, and the star power of Craig McLachlan. Falls flat through lack of commitment.

I'm working my way through a giant boxed set of Jacques Tati films, and will be reviewing those in a bit. It's slow going at the moment, though as people in my household are resistant to the (to me) obvious charms of French-language physical comedy.

Calling (out) the Cops

A while back, I wrote this post here about the philosophies that I thought should underpin policing, based on what we as a society actually want the cops to do for us.

I think  that with recent events in the States, we can see the end point of an adversarial relationship between the police and everyone else. The issue there (as I guessed at in my post) seems to be strongly tied to a very particular kind of police culture. That link goes to a post by an ex-cop called Redditt Hudson (a glorious name for the Internet Age) and makes, in my view, a very strong case that it's a lack of real consequences for police who misbehave that leads to this kind of culture flourishing.

Based on my personal contact with the police (I do sounds and play music at a number of community events, and so have a bit to do with Community Liaison-type officers) I had been reasonably comfortable that New Zealand (despite the obvious issues I mentioned in my original post) was still some distance from this kind of scenario.

I am less confident now.

We need police who are supported and trained in effective de-escalation, who see themselves as public servants rather than superheroes, and who can expect clear consequences when they act inappropriately.

We do not need to start having our own Michael Browns, Eric Garners and Tamir Rices.

EDITED TO ADD: People who follow that "I am less confident" link will find that the Bay of Plenty District Commander Superintendent is listed as "pictured" but that the picture has been replaced by an ad. I am sure that neither the Bay Of Plenty Times nor the New Zealand Herald meant to imply that the man in question is actually Skrillex.

Well, fuck.

So the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill went through under urgency last week. For those not in NZ, that means a) all the synthetic cannabis products excluded from the previous version of this legislation (about 40 products from the previous about-a-gazillion) are now banned until they can be proved to be of "very low risk" and b) the government might well have shot a giant gaping hole in what could have been the first thing to approach sensible drug legislation in this country.

Russell Brown has a good post about this over at Public Address, but here's my take on what happened. There are two "official" narratives, one from the government and one from grassroots anti-drugs people which are both wrong, or at least, they're quite selective in the ways that they're right.

The anti-drugs crowd seem to believe that the passing of the original Psychoactive Substances Act put a bunch of synthetic cannabis products on the market as "safe". These products were anything but, and caused massive problems, with addiction and emergency visits becoming rife (see the horrifying photos of queues around the block from legal high stores for evidence). Eventually, in response to public outcry, the government finally acted (after too long) and put a stop to it. The moral tenor of the marketers of these drugs can easily be determined by the fact that they proposed to test this stuff on innocent animals.

The government contend that they were on the right track, but overlooked the risk posed by the synthetic cannabinomimetics that they allowed to remain on sale. They have now rightly removed these products from shelves, and put the burden of proof back where it belongs - with the manufacturers.

Actually, these drugs have been around for a long time. Ten years at the very minimum. The first ones appeared all over the place in little metal single-smoke cylinders, and seem to have been pretty close to inactive. The recipe quickly got refined and they started to sell by the packet. The attraction at this point was pretty clear - these products seemed to fairly closely mirror actual weed (which has a strong social niche in New Zealand culture) and were all legal to buy. It's important to note that all through this story, legality has been the main drawcard with these drugs - along with the ability to get high and still pass drug tests for pot.

Four or five years in, there was the first surge of media attention addressed at these specific "legal highs". I talked about that here. As a result of that, a large number of these products (if you're a New Zealander you'll probably recall the brand names "Spice" and "Kronic") were banned, along with their active ingredient. Because we were still operating under our original drug legislation which required the government to ban individual chemicals one by one, a raft of new products sprang up to take the place of the banned ones.

It's probably at this point that the real damage starts to get done. The evidence suggests that it's at this point that the chemicals on the market start to be seriously habit-forming and people start having panic attacks, heart palpitations and the like. However, these things are available everywhere - corner dairies all over the country stock this stuff, so if you're an addict it's fairly easy to stay under the radar.

When the government passed the Psychoactive Substances Act, they did two things. They gave councils the power to control where these substances could be sold, and they reduced the products available from hundreds to around 40 (considered to be "low-risk") which were allowed as an interim measure until councils finished deciding where their OK zones for legal high sale were going to be. Unfortunately at this point councils decided more or less en masse to throw all their toys out of the cot at once. Many protested at not just being able to ban the sale of non old-white-men drugs entirely and refused to zone, while others zoned as punitively as they could get away with.

As a result, the number of outlets selling these new more habit-forming drugs dropped dramatically. Can you imagine the queues that would appear if, tomorrow, all supermarkets and dairies were banned from selling alcohol and liquor stores were cut down to 2 or 3 per hundred thousand people? Do you think that it might look as though there was a sudden plague of alcoholism all around the country?

I must stress that this is not to claim that this newest batch of cannabis substitutes were good drugs. They appear to be very bad for their users both mentally and physically, and the people who sold them are probably not nice people.

The issue is that we're now back in blanket-ban territory, and these drugs have probably been bought up cheap by people who intend to stockpile them and sell them for vastly inflated prices on the street (they still get around drug tests for pot, and there are still addicts out there - money to be made...) Why? Because we had a media panic. I also want to restate that the reason we have this particularly vicious and addictive batch on our hands in the first place is because the previous safer generation were also banned as the result of a media panic. And we got that generation because we swallowed someone else's media panic about cannabis way back in the '50s. This is not a sensible way to make laws - look at the Sex Offender Registry in the US, and its many many abuses if you want a stunning example.

There are two consolations here. The first is that we do have the Psychoactive Substances Act, which has probably got the government out of playing whack-a-mole with drug designers for the time being. It's been mauled (the government is now in the bizarre position of being legally forced to ignore all data from animal tests, conducted anywhere in the world unless they prove a drug is unfit for sale) and drugs are going to be inhumanly hard to pass through it in the short term, but it's still around - so that's something.

The second is that this whole debacle does seem to have reopened the debate on which drugs should be legal and why. Let's hope we can actually talk about that this time, eh?

This is really not very good.

The National Party (for any non-NZers, that's the government right now) have just done a number of things of serious concern. You can read a fairly comprehensive list (and assessment of the list) by Claire Browning here.

Most alarming in my book, are the pending changes to the remit of the GCSB and the framework for paying family carers.

Again for any non-NZers, the GCSB are the spy bureau responsible for keeping an eye on foreign nationals operating in New Zealand in order to preserve our security and such. They've recently been discovered spying on NZ citizens, and the government's response is to change the law to make this OK. 

I've talked before about why I think this kind of law making is a Bad Idea, and my view hasn't really changed on that. What's alarming is that the underlying attitude seems to bleed through to the framework set up for the payment of family carers. There's a comprehensive explanation of that here, and a to-the-point and sweary one here, but the very very brief version is as follows:

• A bunch of families of people with disabilities took the government to court several times over the fact that they weren't paid for looking after their family members, while a stranger they hired would have been.
• They won, a lot.
• The government's now put into law a provision that lets people who care for disabled family members get paid minimum wage by their local DHB if they and the person they care for meet the criteria contained in the bill. If they don't meet those criteria, the bill actually prohibits them from getting paid and (here's the kicker) prevents them from taking the government to court again if they think this bill is unfairly discriminatory*.
• The law was passed despite the Attorney General saying it's against the Bill Of Rights, and without any of the MPs who voted actually knowing what the impact of the bill would be**.

A while back, Danyl at the Dim Post*** suggested that the National Party have pretty much given up hope of winning the next election, and are simply trying to cram through as much stuff as possible before they go. I suspect he may be right, but I'm getting pretty worried about the damage that might get done in the interim.

Edited to add:
I completely forgot to mention that National have also unlilaterally decided to ignore the recommendations of the Electoral Commission on reforming the way that MMP works. A more diverse and representative parliament would apparently not be in their best interests, which is a concern in and of itself, really.

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* It is.

** This here is the Regulatory Impact Statement they got. No, really.

*** Link just goes to main page - can't remember the specific post.

The Society for Cruel and Inhumane treatment of Kitten-Burners

Cases of child abuse, and particularly cases of child abuse that end in the deaths of small children are big news here in New Zealand. They stir up a huge amount of public opinion, and due to the glories of social networking this means that my Facebook news feed is occasionally dominated by my internet-friends (as opposed to actual-friends) signing up to sites and events like this one.

Now, that link will only work if you're on Facebook, so for those who aren't (or can't be bothered to click through) here's a brief rundown on where it goes: Norefjell Davis is a 36-year old woman who was sentenced earlier this month for killing her 2 year old daughter in a particularly horrible way.

The Facebook "event" I've linked to is an attempt to prevent her from being eligible for parole, and in fact an attempt to somehow get judges to give people convicted of this kind of crime mandatory life sentences. It's also full of the usual rage and hatred that random people on the internet feel entitled to dish out, including the traditional "hanging's too good for 'em" and "if I had a chance I'd rape/torture/murder/lynch that awful person" sentiments, and the classic "how dare our culture let people like this get away with their crimes" plaint.

When I see this stuff, it creeps me out on a number of levels.

Firstly, it's just not very smart. The whole point of our legal system is that it can't be swayed by random people on Facebook. Just imagine, for a second, if these people actually had the power they think they have - anyone who was publicly unpopular for some reason would be virtually guaranteed to have an unfair trial.

People can already get convictions overturned on the basis that the jury was biased against them from the start - and if judges, juries or parole boards started listening to Facebook petitions, that would happen all the time. Anyone who could afford a sharp enough lawyer (and in this case that would simply mean "not currently dead") would be basically unconvictable.

I understand that people are very angry about this woman's actions, but that's part of what worries me. See, there's a reason why Schopenhauer, in his 38 Ways To Win An Argument said:

"Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgement or perceiving where his or her advantage lies."

Basically, angry people - particularly angry people en masse - are stupid, and it's best not to have legislation and public policy dictated by stupid people. This is why it always annoys me when the media get in the faces of victims of crime on the court-house steps, incidentally. I think people should be given a chance to get back in their right minds before being forced to give a public opinion they'll end up feeling obliged to stick to later.

One of the things that this particular angry mob is currently ignoring is that "our culture" (whatever that means) has already given the judiciary the power to deal with people who kill children. Killing people is always against the law, and children equally if not more so. If caught and convicted, people who do these things are sentenced to jail terms. That's how a legal system works.

Judges are already entitled to pronounce whatever sentence they feel is appropriate for the crime (within certain bounds). That means they can, if they choose, punish people more harshly if they feel they have been particularly awful, or reduce the sentence (or the conviction) to a lesser one if they feel there are extenuating circumstances.

I'm also concerned about the source of this anger. It looks to me like a case of what the Slacktivist called "The Anti-Kitten-Burning Coalition". Specifically this refers to an organised and vocal response to a non-existent "Movement of Evildoers".

See, I'm pretty certain that no-one, including Norefjell Davis, thinks that what she did to her daughter was admirable or that the world needs more of that sort of behaviour. I'm also reasonably sure that she doesn't belong to a group who meet up on Saturdays to swap child-abusing stories, and compare notes on the best ways to murder toddlers. I'd even go so far as to speculate that while she was in the process of bashing her daughter, she wasn't thinking about the effect her actions would have on public perceptions of her and people who commit similar crimes or the length of the prison sentence she'd be likely to face if she got caught.

There is a mythical creature referred to in the field of economics which is known as the Rational Consumer. A Rational Consumer is someone who does all of their spending entirely rationally with the goal of "maximising utility" (for non-economists, the closest idiomatic approximation is "getting the most bang for your buck"). Now, while I won't deny that doing some cost-benefit analysis in the supermarket is a good idea, I think that if we're totally honest most of us will admit that that's not how we work 100% of the time. We make choices for non-rational reasons enough of the time that there is advertising specifically designed to appeal to us on that basis.

My point is that all of the people clamouring on the Facebook event that if Norefjell Davis "didn't want children she should have kept her legs shut", or screaming for harsher sentences to deter other potential child abusers, are assuming that people who commit crimes perform an entirely rational cost-benefit analysis before they do so. This is nonsense, particularly in the case of people who commit violent crimes.

Moreover, if we look more deeply at the specific factors surrounding Davis's crime, we see something far darker and nastier than a simple case of an evil woman who needs to be punished. We see someone who was in an abusive relationship with a man many years her senior (if you're thinking "Well, why didn't she just leave him then?" go here, and then come back wiser.) We also see that both of them had abused both alcohol and methamphetamine (aka "those ANGRY drugs") for an extended period.

So, are we looking at a Rational Criminal who decided "Well, I want to bash my daughter to death, and the jail term won't be too bad - what the hell, let's do it!" or are we looking at an angry, stressed, mentally unbalanced person with a severe emotional detachment from her child and her situation in general? Because if we factor in a total lack of normal emotional attachment to her child, and severe emotional control issues, launching an assault of that kind looks less and less like a rational conscious action, and more and more like the reflex of a wounded animal biting who or whatever comes within reach.

Once we look at the situation from that perspective it becomes a simple either-or. Either someone had to to intervene in that family in some way, or either Davis or her partner were eventually going to attack that child for some reason. And since killing a child is trivially easy for an adult, even by accident, the outcome of that was always going to be horrible.

Let me make something abundantly clear. I think that what Norefjell Davis did to her daughter is terrible. I think it's tragic that a young child died in such a horrible way, and was betrayed by someone in such a trusted position. She shouldn't be excused responsibility for that, and importantly,  I don't think she has been.

However, I also believe that the Society for the Cruel and Inhumane Treatment of Kitten-Burners are after something different from justice. They  want revenge for the assault against their principles, and above all they want their righteous anger to remain intact.

Why do they need the anger? Because it's that righteous fury that protects them from the realisation that, in almost all cases, violent child abusers are made, not born. And if that's the case, then the appropriate response is not "How dare she?!" but rather "There but for the grace of God, go you or I."