Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'crime'

April 08, 2014

Hidden No More: Exposing Human Trafficking in West Michigan

On March 28th, the Acton Institute hosted an important event for our local community. Hidden No More: Exposing Human Trafficking in West Michigan brought together representatives from Michigan’s state government and local community activists to shine a light on the very real and growing problem of human trafficking in West Michigan (and beyond). Continue Reading...
August 29, 2013

Slavery In America: 50 Years After ‘I Have A Dream’

Yesterday, as a nation, we spent time reflecting on the American landscape 50 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech. In it, Dr. King decried that our nation – while abolishing slavery legally – still had a long way to go “until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.'” Continue Reading...
April 10, 2013

Crime and the Nanny State

“Crime has been in decline,” says Acton Research Fellow Jonathan Witt, in an article for The American Spectator, “but current government policies are bound to reverse this trend.” Against the backdrop of sluggish growth and high unemployment, one bright spot has been declining crime rates, with levels in the United States now about half what they were 20 years ago. Continue Reading...
March 13, 2012

How to Steal a Bike in New York City

Edmund Burke didn’t really say it, but it still rings true: All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. In a test of this maxim, filmmaker Casey Neistat tries to steal his own bike in several locations around New York City and finds that most people do nothing about it—even when it’s done right in front of a police station. Continue Reading...
March 29, 2011

WSJ cites Rev. Sirico in ‘A Requiem for Detroit’

Writing in the Wall Street Journal today, William McGurn looks at some of the root causes of the catastrophic decline of the city of Detroit. Census information released last week showed the city — once the fifth largest in America and a place which had such awe-inspiring industrial might that President Roosevelt labeled it the Arsenal of Democracy — had lost more than 25 percent of its population in the last decade. Continue Reading...
February 02, 2011

Humor and Prison Rape Culture

Yesterday I noted some items related to the question of punishment and restorative justice in the American criminal justice system. And in the past we’ve looked here at the PowerBlog of the issues surrounding political and social activism on prison rape. Continue Reading...
February 01, 2011

Christianity and the Politics of Prison and Redemption

In a fine post over at the History News Network (HT: Religion in America), Jennifer Graber, assistant professor of religious studies at The College of Wooster and author of the forthcoming book, The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America, reflects on what the Michael Vick saga (to date) shows us about American attitudes towards crime, punishment, and redemption. Continue Reading...
August 20, 2010

Dehumanization and punishment

Two of the things I’ve paid some attention to, one more recently and the other as an ongoing area of interest, came together in an Instapundit update yesterday. Glenn Reynolds linked to a video of a NYC cop who “threatens a man taking cell phone video with arrest.” Continue Reading...
August 08, 2008

Poetic justice

On an episode of NPR’s Talk of the Nation last month, professor Jay Parini of Middlebury College discussed his role in the criminal justice sentences given to students who were involved in the vandalism of the former summer home of renowned poet Robert Frost. Continue Reading...