McAdams: The Final Word on Locking Up Black Wisconsinites?

As we feel the reverberations of the 'study' by 'Professor' John McAdams Does Wisconsin Lock Up Too Many Blacks?, it seems that Rick Esenberg still takes exception to my analysis.  Rick: Still confused about facts

But, as Professor McAdams suggests, if the problem is, for example, racial disparities in the poverty rate leading to racial disparities in the crime rate leading to racial disparities in the incarceration rate, focusing on the last element in the chain won't eliminate poverty and may make it worse.

Allow me to try one more time. Let us assume Rick's position, that McAdams is simply using data about who is involved in the commission of crime to determine if Wisconsin is incarcerating too many blacks.

If that is the case, someone wasted a whole lot of money on McAdams. By 1959, when I was 14 years old, I knew that blacks were incarcerated at higher rates than whites and that it was linked to the commission of more crimes in low income areas. We, all of us who lived in the city of Chicago, knew that the solution was to eliminate poverty.

So here we are almost fifty years later, and someone spent good money for McAdams to tell us that we are not locking up too many blacks.

Rick does not like my analysis (or the Governor's Task Force) of working backwards: looking at the incarceration rate, looking at who commits the crime, looking at the underlying poverty, and suggesting that we do something about it.

O.K. I will start at the beginning. Let's eliminate poverty.  That suggestion is free.

For the thousands of dollars paid for his study, McAdams offers nothing except to keep locking up blacks.

Update: 11:06 am.

A blogger purporting to be John McAdams posted the following at Marquette Warrior (My sympathies to the institution, Black Incarceration in Wisconsin: More

Some leftist moonbat bloggers have taken a swing at it, and mostly proved they have no idea about the issues involved.

That would be moi.

Then he goes on to say:

Some of those proposed ideas for reducing black crime sound good to us (strengthen families and reintegrate fathers into communities, bringing people to God), and some sound like more of the same things that have failed (more spending on education, jobs programs).

To my friend Rick Esenberg: my sympathies to you. If this is where you and McAdams are coming from, there is little hope. The above statement by McAdams is so contrary to all of the evidence and research. Spending money on education, particularly, early childhood development provides extraordinary, tangible results.  And most of the work to strengthen families, the family enhancement programs are the very programs that McAdams suggests is "that warm fuzzy-sounding liberal program."

The next time some conservative brings up the name of University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill or University of Wisconsin Professor Kevin Barrett, not only will I repudiate them as not being part of the Left, but I will remind them that McAdams is one of theirs.

For those interested in one of the most comprehensive studies that demonstrate the benefits of family enhancement, health, and child development programs resulting in greater educational attainment and reduced incidents of criminal  activity, see:

Effects of a School-Based, Early Childhood Intervention on Adult Health and Well-being

A total of 1539 low-income participants who enrolled in the Child-Parent Center program in 20 sites or in an alternative kindergarten intervention...

...For preschool participation, by age 24 years, the preschool group relative to the comparison group had significantly lower rates of felony arrest (16.5% vs 21.1%, respectively; P = .02; a 22% reduction) and incarceration (20.6% vs 25.6%, respectively; P = .03; a 20% reduction). They also were less likely than the comparison group to be found guilty of a crime both overall and for a felony (15.8% vs 19.9%, respectively; P = .03; a 21% reduction)...

... That the impacts of intervention extend beyond educational performance is not surprising given the well-documented links between education outcomes and adult health, mental health, and social behavior.^{25-26,36-38 ..}

^{...This study provides evidence that established early educational interventions can positively influence the adult life course in several domains of functioning. The scope and magnitude of intervention effects reveal not only the benefits to participants in fundamental indicators of health and well-being but also the potential returns to society for investments in early educational programs.} 

And please contact Jessica McBride. This study reveals what health has to do with criminal behavior.

Comments

[Hermes]

Seriously. What does it take to get politicians to listen to social scientists?!? We figured everything out ages ago.

Keep up the good work, sir.

[Julie]

I'm wondering what your opinion is of the initiative to create a school of public health at UW-Milwaukee? I've wondered if it really worth the expense of creating another public health department at the university level, or if it might not be better to enroll students in Milwaukee, in nursing and medicine and social work, for example, in the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health and have them concentrate on problems in Milwaukee, and in this way avoid all the additional administrative costs of another university department. The money not spent on deans and associate deans and offices and computers, etc., could instead be used to implement solutions. One of the big solutions, of course, is eliminating poverty.

[I weep for Marquette Univeristy]

What a sad comment on laziness in academia when a professor refers to the thrice-elected mayor of of the second largest city in the state as a "leftist moonbat blogger."

McAdams is screaming not to be taken seriously, and makes Marquette University look like a joke for hiring somebody with so little self-control and a seething inability to comprehend anything outside the strictures of his rote ideology. What tired and stricture-bound doctrinaire Marxist profs were to the 20th Century, knee-jerk and unimaginitive social Darwinists like McAdams will be to the 21st, for both bad and worse.

Pathetic.

[Brian]

McAdams?
What do you expect? He's still maintaining Oswald shot JFK.

[I weep for Marquette University]

Is that you Chuckie? Nice try at a diversion. Try...

McAdams is still maintaining Dewey defeated Truman.

The "professor" clearly has no aptitude for counting, unless it's say the number of links floating down the sewer towards Marquette from his fellow antebellum edumacators.

[Milwaukeean]

Thank you for a reasoned reply. Yes, it would be nice if the Madison campus had done for Milwaukee's north and south sides what it did for Madison's south side. But it's had years to do so.

Let's clarify a few other things, too. The Milwaukee campus already has fine nursing and social work schools as well as other components in place for a public health school. And a school that can get accredited, as the one at Madison can't, because there is a medical school on its campus (weird rule, but that's what has been reported in much media coverage of this).

Some Madison readers might go to www.uwm.edu and find out more about the Milwaukee campus that could surprise them. It's a great big campus now, with almost 30,000 students -- if on fewer than 100 acres, compared to Madison's 1,000-plus acres. The Milwaukee campus also serves almost as many students at night as it does during the day.

And it also holds classes across the metro area and plans more, in part to compensate for Madison's decision to reduce its enrollments. With that decision, how does it make sense to call for the Madison campus to increase enrollments in public health?

And Milwaukee has more Wisconsin students than are at Madison or any other campus in the state (country, world, etc.:-). Why should all those Wisconsinites have to (use so much gas to) go 75 miles away for school? And how does all that additional freeway exhaust serve the health of the public living along I-94? The faculty and students in the only School of Architecture and Urban Planning could answer that. They're in Milwaukee, too, as are many other one-of-a-kind schools and programs in the UW System.

Madison long has determined to do what it does best, and determined that the Milwaukee campus is the better site for many schools and programs. Madison's medical school dean is supportive of a school of public health in Milwaukee. So are others who have spent years on this -- including in public hearings, when these questions were answered.

Why is this coming up again? What's the agenda?

[Marquette University]

We have a few college students online from college of Marquette University and we love your blog postings, so well add your RSS or news feed for them, Thanks and please post us and leave a comment back and well link to you. Thanks Jen , Blog Manager Marquette-University