baby guns – women, weapons and design

Female body guards for the Royals and the Prime Minister in Britain may carry Baby Glocks:

Often seen as a ‘girl’ gun in the hands of female detectives in TV programmes like CSI Miami and Criminal Minds, the Baby Glock is smaller, lighter and easier to use for those with smaller hands.

But critics have warned that police chiefs are putting political correctness before security as officers from Scotland Yard’s elite protection squad could be hampered by the smaller weapon if they come under attack.

Police want to recruit more women. Women (supposedly) feel more comfortable with smaller guns. It seems a simple enough formula: Offer smaller guns to female officers, and see if women swarm to police academy.

But when I read the article above, I immediately aimed my sights on the name of the pistol: “Baby Glock.”

If Glock designed this gun for female hands, why not call it a “Lady Glock” (as I have seen with several other small pistols)? I did a little sleuthing to find out, and to be fair, the gun was not necessarily designed for women. Nowhere does the Glock website call the “Baby Glock” a “women’s gun.” However, it certainly gets marketed that way. And if Glock participates in product placement ala CSI Miami, then the company benefits from the “girl gun” label. 

Or on the flip side: Why do crime shows present the Baby Glock as a “girl gun?” 

The term “baby” feels, well, infantalizing. Insulting. Women are not “baby” versions of men. And let’s get real. It does not refer to actual, you know, babies.

All of this reminds me of when my husband wanted to get me interested in pistol shooting. I challenged him to find me a pink gun, thinking that no such pistol could possibly exist. Really, though, I felt secretly drawn to the mix of the girlish with the deadly. It felt very Bond Girl—garter-style holsters, poisonous lipsticks, spy cameras. I would never admit it to him (at the time, anyway), but I wanted that gun. I wanted a little design with my deadly force. 

Besides practical issues such as the size of their hands, do women have a different aesthetic relationship with weapons? If so, why? What does it signify?

rules of evidence for writers part two: self-incrimination

One of my long-time writing friends believes the highest responsibility for writers is to explore artistic truth—not truth, mind you, but artistic truth. Memoirs and personal essays should strive for coherence, beauty and order even if it means doctoring (or dirtying up) the details to suit an aesthetic objective. 

He never advocates changing a major detail or fact, but he feels no qualms about messing with the color of a dress or screwing with chronology to suit the demands of the narrative. Of course, he leaves open the question of what constitutes minor or major details.

Other writer friends draw a line in the sand at even the most minor details (the weather on the day grandma died, the color of your sister’s sneakers) and suggest that anything short of the hard facts represents a betrayal of writer ethics and audience trust. 

Self-Incrimination

In graduate school, I worked with a mentor who suggested a sort of middle ground: incriminating ourselves by leaving clues to our biases and personal failings right there in our manuscripts. Undermining our own authority would, in turn, undermine our power. 

He wanted writers to confront their complicity in their experiences, their writing, their own misery—everything. 

That last idea appeals to me.  I like to poke holes in my own case. I like to plant the seeds of reasonable doubt about my own ideas. I consider my own point of view unreliable at best, and I drop hints in my writing in the hopes readers will feel the need to cross-examine my characters (including me).

But what about when “complicity” is itself a false construct – or at the very least, an ethically slippery one?  For example, one of my graduate-school essays depicted abuse I endured growing up, and a mentor wrote notes in the margin along these lines:

Good work here, but try to explore what you did to incite this. How were you complicit?

The scene: a five-year-old me, beaten with the buckle end of a belt.  

The very suggestion that I incited this violence set me back at least several years in my process of healing. More importantly, it seemed to me an unethical direction for the essay, given that other abuse survivors – and abusers – might read it.  I did not want to perpetuate myths that pin blame on victims. 

Perhaps “complicity” in this context has to imply something other than culpability or responsibility. Maybe it has to refer to process instead: recognizing our complicity in manufacturing truth whether we stick to the facts or not.

Doe Network Featured Cases: Eugene Martin and John Gosch

I have decided to feature Doe Network missing persons cases each week. Although Forensic Writerfocuses on creative writing and forensics, I feel that the blog should also feature unresolved cases—both to help spread awareness and to promote the Doe Network’s amazing work.If you have a case you want featured, email me at forensic (dot) writer at gmail (dot) com.

This week, I want to focus on two cases in Iowa from the early 80s: Eugene Martin and John Gosch. Both boys went missing from their newspaper delivery routes in Polk County, Iowa. Gosch went missing at the age of 12 in 1982. Martin was 13 when he vanished in 1984.

Here are pictures of the two boys from the Doe Network website, including age progressions:

John David Gosch 
Missing since September 5, 1982 from West Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa.

Left: Gosch, circa 1982; Right: Age-progressed to age 35 (circa 2005) source: doenetwork.org

Eugene Wade Martin 
Missing since August 12, 1984 from Des Moines, Polk County, Iowa.

Right: Age-Progression to age 34 (circa 2004) source: doenetwork.org

I was just a kid when the Gosch case made headlines in Iowa. Gosch had gone missing while delivering newspapers on his regular morning route, and parents all over the state suddenly felt very squeamish about allowing their kids to sign up as newspaper delivery boys (yes, a decidedly non-gender-neutral term, but that’s how people talked in Iowa in the 1980s). My older sister wanted a paper route, but our dad promptly crushed those dreams, citing Johnny Gosch. I suppose I cannot blame him.

The Eugene Martin case seemed to confirm worries that Johnny Gosch was not an isolated incident. Innocent, sweet, safe Iowa no longer lived up to any of those images.

For some reason, though, the Johnny Gosch case cast the darkest shadows in Iowans’ psyches. I do not know why or how—maybe just because he hit the headlines first—but his case is iconic. Eugene Martin gets less coverage and recognition. However, the cases may actually be connected.

A case summary about Gosch on Iowa Cold Cases details how his mother, Noreen, has received mysterious photographs of her son in captivity (warning: images are disturbing). According to Noreen’s Johnny Gosch Foundation website, those photographs indicate that her son was taken captive by a human-trafficking ring. Forensic experts have verified that the photos are of Johnny Gosch, and evidence indicates he is still alive—but in hiding to protect his life. 

Noreen also indicates that she received a tipoff from a local private investigator about another newspaper delivery boy kidnapping that would occur. The tip said it would happen the second weekend of August 1984 in south Des Moines—the weekend and location of Eugene Martin’s disappearance. 

Take a look at these composite drawings released on Noreen’s website. Do you recognize this man? He may be involved in the Johnny Gosch kidnapping:

 Updated ten years after Johnny’s kidnapping:
 

From the Johnny Gosch foundation website: “The dark areas on his cheeks are “severe pock marks from acne scarring”. This has been consistent in the description given by all witness’s.”

Thank you to the Doe Network, Iowa Cold Cases and the Johnny Gosch Foundation for all that you do. 

Prostitutes as Victims vs. Prostitutes as Sex Workers

In Chapter 8 of The Guilt Project, “The Ballad of Mac the Pimp,” Place presents two sides of a debate about the oldest profession:

  • All sex workers suffer from “false consciousness”— an internalization of patriarchal ideology. 
  • On the other side stands the sex worker’s rights movement, which characterizes sex work as an option that some women choose. 

She describes a case in which an expert testified that pimps overcome the wills of their “ho’s” through force, violence and threats. In contrast, Place characterizes the pimp-ho relationship as a game. Everyone plays by the rules—and some of those rules allow pimps to sample the goods for free, so to speak. Prostitutes and pimps understand forced sex acts as part of the game. 

Is it all just a game?

I agree with Place that not all prostitutes are forced into prostitution. Some choose it.

However, I question the game analogy. If I accept the concept of the pimp-prostitute “game” and therefore accept forced sex acts as acceptable per the “rules,” I have to accept similar arguments when it comes to gang violence, organized crime, hazings—and on and on.  A mob boss might be completely and totally “ethical” within the rules of the organized crime “game,” but does that diminish his moral—not to mention, legal—guilt or responsibility when he whacks a hapless underboss or associate in his organization? 

Which is where my mob analogy falls apart. Unlike sex crimes, the crime of murder does not typically involve questions of consent (one famous cannibalism case aside). Unless, of course, you accept that mobsters consent to the possibility of being murdered.

What do you think? Does the prostitute-pimp relationship complicate questions about consent?

lost frequencies

For the past five years, forensic scientists in London have been recording frequency variations in electricity on the National Grid. It turns out that variations occur regularly, and they create a “unique signature of the electrical frequency” at any particular moment, according to “The Register.” Digital recording devices that plug into the grid register these frequency changes—meaning that they also register a “time stamp.” This time stamp can help authenticate the recording. Even battery-powered devices pick up on the frequencies, since they transmit over a distance, says “The Register.”

In my early twenties, I went through a phase when I smuggled a mini-tape recorder to holiday dinners with my family. After I listened, I destroyed the tapes, yanking the tape off the reels and snipping them with barber shears. I never knew those tapes connected each dinner to something bigger—that just by recording them at all, I had plugged my family into the electric pulse of an entire historical moment.

A friend once told me I made the tapes to fulfill a validation fantasy. She believed I secretly wanted to share them someday—to enter them into evidence.

Maybe she was right. Because now I wish there was some way to document the electrical frequency signatures on all of them, even though I created those tapes years before anyone kept records of variations in the grid. Even though the tape snippets have long since rotted in an Iowa landfill.

But do I want authentication or validation—or something else? I fantasize about matching the shifting patterns of the electrical frequencies to these. But all I have are notebooks, memories, retracted statements, medical charts and EEG’s. No tapes. No records of electrical frequency variations. No corroborating evidence at all.

The Guilt Project by Vanessa Place: a response no. 2

In my earlier response to Vanessa Place’s forthcoming book, The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality, and Law, I posed a question about whether intentions matter in the context of sex offender civil commitments. 

I focused on two clashing models for corrections:

  • incapacitation: lock up offenders for the longest possible time to prevent future crimes
  • medical: treat and rehabilitate

Sex-offender laws in the United States attempt both at the same time: incapacitation through civil commitment. However, the medical part of the equation seems to get lost, in part because standardized assessments such as the Static-99 (used to determine sexually violent predator status) fail to consider offenders as individuals. This failure also makes it impossible to recognize real rehabilitation.

As Place writes:

We have to allow for real rehabilitation or true conversion, the fact of the thunderclap, the lightning bolt, the heaving collapse under the awful knowledge of absolute guilt, and the ridiculous hope of one person’s puny atonement, one insignificant redemption that constitutes that flash of transcendence that passes for transcendence in our drive-by lives. 

Place suggests that clinical diagnoses should replace standardized assessments. Currently, psychologists simply confirm Sexually Violent Predator assessment results—a circular process whereby they confirm the test results by pointing to … the test results.

I like the idea of the middle path that Place suggests: Offenders still get locked up, but they get treated as individuals. This aligns better with constitutional ideals. 

Think of it this way:  Would you want your whole future determined by a standardized test?  How about a test that was not even designed for that purpose?  How about a test that only measures “static” (in other words: set in stone) aspects of your personality?

DSM-IV

But here is where I get skeptical. This clinical process would rely on the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association.  But the DSM-IV does not necessarily mesh neatly with the law. As Levenson (2004) writes, the DSM-IV “specifies that Pedophilia generally involves prepubescent children. However, all states have statutes rendering it unlawful for an adult to engage in sexual activity with a child under age 16, and many offenders being considered for civil commitment have adolescent victims” (p.360) – emphasis added.

Subjective Diagnosis?

To muddy the waters further, Levenson (2004) cites a study that examined offenders diagnosed with sexual sadism as compared to those without the diagnosis. The results? Offenders deemed “sexual sadists” were the least likely to commit the particular acts associated with that diagnosis. In other words, the clinical assessments failed to get it right. 

Anyone who has ever seen a shrink will not be surprised by this. Clinical psychology is notoriously subjective. To wit: Levenson (2004) also looked closely at SVP determinations in Florida, and found that “reliability was poor for most diagnoses” (p. 363). Different evaluators came to different diagnoses.

Reliability vs. Accuracy

On the other hand, standardized assessments scored quite high in terms of reliability (Levenson, 2004). In other words, separate evaluators consistently rated offenders with the same “score” on the risk assessment.  Does that mean the risk assessment works better than clinical diagnosis?  Not really.  Accuracy and reliability are two very different animals. If you weigh yourself over & over on a poorly calibrated scale, you might get the same result, but it will not be an accurate one. 

If individualized justice means unreliable diagnostic procedures, is it any better than the system we have now? 

References

Levenson, J. (2004, August). Reliability of sexually violent predator civil commitment criteria in Florida. 

Law and Human Behavior 28(4), 357-368. Retrieved on January 18, 2010, from ProQuest Criminal Justice.

Place, V. (2010). The guilt project: rape, morality, and law. New York: Other Press. 

The Guilt Project: a response no. 1

As mentioned in my previous post about The Guilt Project: Rape, Morality, and Law by Vanessa Place, I plan to spend several posts responding to chapters and issues in the book.  

I will start with a section entitled “Sexually Violent Predators: The Parapsychology of Guilt,” which discusses involuntary commitments for sexually violent predators.  Most Americans support civil commitment laws. After all, who wants a bogeyman man lurking by the middle-school bus stop?

However, from a correctional programming perspective, civil commitments raise serious questions.

First, some background: In several states, the law allows for the civil commitment of sex offenders who have been designated Sexually Violent Predators (SVP).  In practice, this means commitment to a state mental hospital for an indefinite period of time – often, for life. The designation of SVP might seem simple enough on its face; after all, juries already found these scumbags guilty of sex crimes, right? Doesn’t that make them predators by definition?  Not quite.  The designation involves more than just a review of the offender’s prior acts. Otherwise, it would never pass constitutional muster. After all, civil commitment occurs after an offender does his time for the crime.

The Supreme Court has specified that offenders who are designated SVP must have “a mental abnormality or personality disorder predisposing the individual to sexual violence, and a likelihood of future sexually violent behavior” (Levenson, 2004, p. 357).  Since the offender can lose his liberty as a result of the SVP designation, due process is in order.  In California, where Place (2010) practices, SVP designation requires “two or more sexually violent offenses” and “a diagnosed mental disorder making him a present danger to others” + being “likely to engage in sexually violent criminal behavior in the near future” (p. 59).

Neat and Tidy Theories

My criminology studies placed a high premium on neat and tidy theories. Ideally, a theory about the roots of crime leads to a related correctional theory to address that root cause.  In fact, a good portion of our studies were dedicated to the policy implications of theories about “born” vs. “made” criminals – nature vs. nurture. 

We studied commitments primarily as an incapacitation theory phenomenon. Incapacitation is fairly simple: Lock up the bad guys for as long as possible, and they cannot re-offend (at least, not outside the prison walls – anything on the inside is apparently fair game).   Mandatory life sentences, truth in sentencing, and three-strikes-you’re-out-laws: incapacitation, all of them (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2002). Where such sentences do not exist, the law has found a way to incapacitate sex offenders all the same: through civil commitments. 

Incapacitation theorists do not care one lick about rehabilitation. They aim solely to stop criminals from committing future crimes (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball, 2002).  Note that this is entirely different from a “just desserts” approach, wherein society inflicts punishment as harshly as possible solely for retribution (although, there is obvious overlap here – incapacitation can be retributive & vice versa). Incapacitation theories, by their nature, believe criminals “are beyond reform” (Lilly, Cullen & Ball, 2002, p. 227).

The problem with civil-commitment-as-incapacitation – at least from a criminological perspective – is that it runs headlong into an entirely incompatible correctional and criminological theory: the medical model of crime and corrections.  The medical model, predictably, sees crime as treatable. If you can cure the hormone imbalance or psychosis or whatever, then you can stop an offender from striking again. Rehabilitation, obviously, drives correctional programming under this theory.

Theory vs. Practice in a Procedural Context

The Guilt Project approaches the issue in a different context: procedural justice.  While criminology & procedural justice/law do overlap, they are not always one and the same.  Criminology certainly has direct policy implications (particularly where it concerns correctional programming or lack thereof), but it does not always (and I would contend, rarely) considers questions of constitutional rights.  Place’s (2010) chapter challenges readers to consider several issues:

If the courts can qualify “crime as a mental disorder, then real treatment would be the protocol” (p.73)  But are the state hospitals engaging in “real treatment” or just plain “warehousing” (p. 73)?

Can the current testing instruments and diagnostic procedures + expert testimony accurately (and beyond reasonable doubt) identify sexually violent predators?

Are the same instruments incapable of detecting genuine rehabilitation?

Is there any way to know that incapacitation policies even prevent further sex crimes in the first place?

That third question is the one that haunts me, and when you really think about it, it drags most of the others into its undertow.  If the state cannot detect (or simply refuses to acknowledge) legitimate rehabilitation, it likewise has no yardstick by which to measure the effectiveness of its treatments. The implication: nobody had any intention of treating offenders in the first place. 

So the question I have is this: Do intentions matter in a procedural context?  Does the theory need to match the practice?  And if it doesn’t, what are the consequences?  

References

Levenson, J. (2004, August). Reliability of sexually violent predator civil commitment criteria in Florida.

Law and Human Behavior 28(4), 357-368. Retrieved on January 18, 2010, from ProQuest Criminal Justice.

Lilly R.J., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R.A. (2002). Criminological theory: Context and consequences. London: Sage.

Place, V. (2010). The guilt project: rape, morality, and law. New York: Other Press.