In the midst of researching an upcoming post on the cigarette economy in prisons, I came across this image of juvenile prisoners in Russia. I was struck by the extreme youth of these convicts, and thus motivated to look a bit more deeply into how Russia handles criminals who’ve yet to become adults. As I […]
The hooded lady above was not a bandit, but rather a New York City detective who worked the 21 Jump Street beat in the early 1970s. Kathleen Conlon earned her gold shield after surviving a scary incident in the Bronx: While working on an undercover narcotics unit, she was dragged into an alley, assaulted, and […]
Tags:Congress·crime·drugs·Joseph Valachi·Kathleen Conlon·Mark McGwire·New York City·police·politics·War on Drugs
Whenever my work involves looking at rolls of decades-old microfilm, I inevitably stumble across a handful of tremendous yarns that have been lost to time. Such was the case this past Saturday, as I whiled away the hours scrolling through old copies of The San Diego Union-Tribune. Lazily panning across the pages in search of […]
Tags:crime·Florida·Jacksoville·Lonnie Cross·murder·prisons·religion
The mere act of flicking on a light switch is something that can’t be taken for granted on the Navajo reservation, where tens of thousands of homes still lack electricity. Nowhere else in America do so many live in darkness, a fact driven home by this eye-popping stat: More than 18,000 households on the reservation […]
Tags:Arizona·corruption·crime·Native Americans·Navajo·New Mexico·politics
I’m scrambling to catch up after the whirlwind Florida jaunt, so today’s polymathism shall consist of a mere reference back to an oldie-but-goodie: My 2003 Slate piece about the veracity of Eric Rudolph‘s nutritional claims. The serial bomber stated that he managed to live on the lam for five-plus years by dining on North Carolina’s […]
My heart goes out to contemporary jai-alai players who must constantly answer a rather irritating question from casual observers: “Isn’t your sport fixed?” The stars of the circuit have gone to great lengths to assure the public of jai-alai’s credibility, but it’s still tough to overcome some of the extreme shadiness that dogged the sport […]
Tags:crime·gambling·jai-alai·mathematics·Miami Syndicate·sports
The Indonesian capital is still reeling in the wake of a deadly gang brawl outside a city courthouse. As in most cases of Jakartan gang violence, the young men involved belonged to rival ethnic groups, each with close ties to local politicians who rely on thuggery to manage their constituencies. In fact, it appears that […]
Tags:Batawi Brotherhood Forum·crime·gangs·Indonesia·Jakarta·politics
Filipinos can certaily be forgiven for having mixed feelings about jueteng, their nation’s equivalent of the ol’ numbers racket that used to flourish on these shores. After all, jueteng helped bring down the government of former President Joseph Estrada, who was later convicted of having close ties with the underworld characters who operate the lotteries. […]
I’m Vegas bound this morning, to work on a dynamite Wired piece that’s currently occupying my creative front burner. As is always the case when I journey out to Bugsy Siegel’s desert dream, my thoughts have recently turned to the ways in which folks work the angles in pursuit of wealth. Most of these schemes […]
My dad once had this chocolate-brown cardigan he’d wear on the rare occasions that the Los Angeles mercury dipped below 65 degrees. It had big knobby buttons and a thick rolled collar, and it generally made him look like the friendly postmaster of some microscopic English village. As a result, I have long associated button-up […]
I’ve recently been reading up on the history of the Blackstone Rangers, the gang whose criminal entanglements contributed greatly to the post-1965 increase in Chicago’s homicide rate. In the course of my research, I started wondering about how the Rangers’ impact on the Second City compared to that of Al Capone’s organization. I had long […]
Tags:Chicago·crime·dueling·Florida·Jacksonville·murder·Prohibition
Of the many death-defying sports that I’ve grown to admire over the years, few astound quite like elite ski jumping. Perhaps it’s not until you witness the sport in person that you really get a sense of just how bananas it is: TV can’t do justice to the true height of those hills, nor the […]
Tags:crime·Finland·Matti Nykänen·music·psychology·ski jumping·sports
The worst thing about this tale of a Sri Lankan maid’s suffering at the hands of her Saudi Arabian employers is that it’s completely unsurprising. Though the torture the woman endured is notable for its brutality, such abuse is evidently commonplace in Saudi Arabia—to the point that foreign workers are taught to expect beatings: The […]
Tags:crime·immigration·law·Philippines·politics·Saudi Arabia·Sri Lanka
If you haven’t yet checked out the Financial Times much-discussed breakdown on the economics of Somali piracy, do yourself a favor and allocate a few minutes’ worth of reading time. The piece won my heart by using buccaneer salary estimates to convey some perspective on how the notion of “dangerous work” differs so sharply between […]
A Wired deadline just snuck up on me, so off to hit the keyboard. In my brief absence, please check out this excellent history of Tenor Saw, the dancehall legend who never made it to his 23rd birthday. The singer’s violent demise remains one of music’s great unsolved mysteries: It shouldn’t have come as a […]
At the end of Wednesday’s post about one of the least heralded pioneers of refrigeration, we noted that the “ice lobby” had been instrumental in frustrating John Gorrie’s dreams of freezing water via mechanical means. This notion struck us as rather humorous since we can scarcely think of a less valuable commodity these days than […]
Tags:Charles W. Morse·crime·economics·Ice Trust·New York City·politics·pseudoscience
Yesterday’s arrest of a suspect in the long-running “Grim Sleeper” killings was made possible by familial DNA searching—in a nutshell, the suspect’s genetic material wasn’t in California’s database, but a family member’s was. A paper from earlier this year explains how the Golden State decides when such a search is enough to warrant further investigation: […]
Tags:California·crime·DNA·Grim Sleeper·law
The man to the right is Pradeep Sharma, once renowned as one of Mumbai’s top “encounter specialists”—that is, a cop whose not-so-secret mission is to assassinate underworld figures. Though these killings are said to take place during chases or confrontations gone awry, the Indian public knows full well that they are usually the product of […]
One of our favorite cop-show cliches is the one about the streetwise detective who’s consigned to desk duty after committing some grievous procedural sin. The implication is that doing paperwork is significantly less useful than pounding the pavement, not to mention less manly. “Pencil pusher,” after all, is invariably an insult, is it not? In […]
Tags:crime·FBI·Joe Luis Saenz
In response to a rash of homicides, the bedraggled city of Chester, Penn., has instituted an unusually harsh curfew, which mandates that everyone be off the streets of certain crime-plagued neighborhoods by 9 p.m. A noble effort to reduce violence, perhaps, but the evidence doesn’t bear out the crime-prevention strategy. Just ask the good citizens […]
Tags:crime·curfews·Pennsylvania·Scotland
Those of you who follow Microkhan’s microblog know that the situation near headquarters was beyond hectic yesterday—not just because we had the kid on our hands, but also due to our physical proximity to a senseless tragedy. A police pursuit of two robbery suspects ended with a massive collision about 50 feet from our front […]
If you’ve ever been curious about the day-to-day operations of outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMGs), the recent federal racketeering indictment against the Outlaws is an absolute goldmine. The lengthy document lays out exactly how a multi-chapter “one percenter” organization generates revenue, enforces discipline, and has a raucous (albeit morally objectionable) good time. What struck us most, […]
Despite a government ban, Cambodian dredgers are once again raking the floor of the Koh Pao River in search of vast quantities of sand. The risk of running afoul of the authorities is apparently far outweighed by the riches to be gained from exporting sand to Singapore, which desperately needs the granular commodity to expand […]
Tags:Cambodia·crime·economics·Indonesia·sand·Singapore·smuggling·trade·War on Drugs
As the violence continues in Kingston, let’s pause to consider the scope of Jamaica’s problems. By any measure, the nation should have long ago started working its way toward the middle of the development tables. Think about how much the place has going for it: lots of bauxite, fertile soil, an English-speaking populace, a thriving […]
Tags:Christopher Coke·corruption·crime·economics·Jamaica·politics
In the latest account of NBA big man Eddy Curry’s never-ending money woes, this passage jumped out at us: On Friday, a Manhattan court ordered Curry to pay $75,000 a month to lender Allstar Capital Inc. to resolve a debt that swelled to $1.2 million with interest. The court also has issued an order letting […]
Tags:basketball·crime·economics·Eddy Curry·loan sharking·Nevada·sports
The politics in our native state never cease to entertain, especially when the gubernatorial elections roll around. Who could forget, for example, the ill-fated candidacy of Gary Coleman? This year’s contest seems similarly likely to offer its share of oddities, starting with reactionary Douglas Hughes. Though he has positions on all the major topics of […]
Tags:California·crime·exile·law·politics
America’s long-running (and endlessly futile) War on Drugs is on the verge of claiming another casualty: the government of Jamaica. The Caribbean nation’s capital is partly in flames today, as residents of Tivoli Gardens battle police with fire bombs and heavy weaponry. The reason for the bloodshed is the government’s call for the surrender of […]
Tags:Christopher Coke·corruption·crime·economics·IMF·Jamaica·poverty·War on Drugs
A treasured Friend o’ Microkhan recently directed us toward this insightful yet depressing Foreign Policy piece, about the seemingly endless nature of Africa’s various armed conflicts. The author makes a convincing case that we do ourselves a disservice by trying to understand these ultra-violent clashes as wars, since one side usually has no interest in […]
Tags:Africa·British Empire·crime·Foreign Policy·India·thuggee
The always excellent Early American Crime just wrapped up a multi-part series on Levi Ames, a Massachusetts burglar who was hanged in 1773. Ames’ story survives in large part because of his last words, delivered on the gallows and commemorated in an illustrated pamphlet bearing the ridiculously non-concise name An address to the inhabitants of […]
Tags:burglary·crime·Massachusetts·McGruff the Crime Dog·U.S. history
Our hearts got out to Roy Glauber, a Nobel Laureate physicist who was recently victimized by an extremely dumb burglar. (Note to aspiring master criminals: Don’t leave your food-stamp cards at the scene.) Though the local cops have nabbed the crook, they’ve so far been unable to locate Glauber’s Nobel gold medal, which he received […]
Tags:commodities·crime·gold·Massachusetts·Nobel Prize·Roy Glauber
