NR PLUS
Magazine December 22, 2019, Issue

The Need to Discuss Black-on-Black Crime

By
A suspect is handcuffed and detained by policemen (Jean Pierre Aime Harerimama/Reuters)
In defense of a term

Thomas Abt’s book Bleeding Out (2019) has garnered a fair amount of attention for its proposals to deal with gun violence in mainly black urban neighborhoods. The entire focus of the book is on interventions in high-crime locations to stem the violence, including: hot-spots policing, working with young males at high risk of engaging in violence by offering carrots (“we’re here to help you”) and sticks (“we’ll stop you if you don’t let us help”), and locking up known violent offenders.

Lest you think this book is not about black crime, Abt states quite explicitly that “race matters when it comes …

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Barry Latzer is an emeritus professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. His most recent book is The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America. His history of violent crime pre-1940, The Roots of Violent Crime in America: From the Gilded Age through the Great Depression, will be published in 2021.

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Science & Tech

Google Services Suffer Major Outage

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Google services including Gmail and YouTube suffered a major outage on Monday morning, with services down across the globe for about 40 minutes. The Google search engine was not affected by the outage, however other services were down from about 6:55 a.m. to 7:35 a.m. worldwide. The cause of the outage was not ... Read More
Science & Tech

Google Services Suffer Major Outage

By
Google services including Gmail and YouTube suffered a major outage on Monday morning, with services down across the globe for about 40 minutes. The Google search engine was not affected by the outage, however other services were down from about 6:55 a.m. to 7:35 a.m. worldwide. The cause of the outage was not ... Read More
Music

The Broken-Hearted Bee Gees

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The Bee Gees died professionally twice, in less than a decade, then three of the four Brothers Gibb (two of them Bee Gees) died too young. This is why HBO’s documentary about one of the biggest pop groups of all time is called The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart instead of The Bee Gees: You Should Be ... Read More
Music

The Broken-Hearted Bee Gees

By
The Bee Gees died professionally twice, in less than a decade, then three of the four Brothers Gibb (two of them Bee Gees) died too young. This is why HBO’s documentary about one of the biggest pop groups of all time is called The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart instead of The Bee Gees: You Should Be ... Read More
Capital Matters

In Defense of Capitalism

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Somehow, I doubt even Bill Buckley could have predicted that “standing athwart history, yelling stop” would have meant, in 2020, an actual plea in the United States of America to repudiate the failed and catastrophic economic worldview of the 20th century. Yet here we are. And perhaps even more surprisingly ... Read More
Capital Matters

In Defense of Capitalism

By
Somehow, I doubt even Bill Buckley could have predicted that “standing athwart history, yelling stop” would have meant, in 2020, an actual plea in the United States of America to repudiate the failed and catastrophic economic worldview of the 20th century. Yet here we are. And perhaps even more surprisingly ... Read More
National Security & Defense

Hackers Strike Again

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On the menu today: The Electoral College gathers today, and the Cleveland Indians will cease to exist under that moniker after 2021. But we will start with the kind of story that won’t get as much attention as, say, what title the First Lady uses, because it is complicated and technical. Sadly, complicated and ... Read More
National Security & Defense

Hackers Strike Again

By
On the menu today: The Electoral College gathers today, and the Cleveland Indians will cease to exist under that moniker after 2021. But we will start with the kind of story that won’t get as much attention as, say, what title the First Lady uses, because it is complicated and technical. Sadly, complicated and ... Read More
NR PLUS Business

California’s Business-Climate Deniers

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With the news that yet another Silicon Valley software innovator, Oracle, is moving its headquarters and most of its employees to Texas, cynics are declaring that California should adopt a new state song: “All of My Ex’s (Executives) Live in Texas.” Oracle joins a growing list of companies that have ... Read More
NR PLUS Business

California’s Business-Climate Deniers

By
With the news that yet another Silicon Valley software innovator, Oracle, is moving its headquarters and most of its employees to Texas, cynics are declaring that California should adopt a new state song: “All of My Ex’s (Executives) Live in Texas.” Oracle joins a growing list of companies that have ... Read More
Culture

The Dawning of the ’20s

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We face a pandemic, the dawn of the new ’20s, and -- we hope -- the giddy rush of prosperity as reward and consolation for the world’s recent troubles. It won’t be as good as that. The first Jazz Age, wasn’t, either. I was reminded of this when returning to Edith Wharton’s overlooked satire of the ... Read More
Culture

The Dawning of the ’20s

By
We face a pandemic, the dawn of the new ’20s, and -- we hope -- the giddy rush of prosperity as reward and consolation for the world’s recent troubles. It won’t be as good as that. The first Jazz Age, wasn’t, either. I was reminded of this when returning to Edith Wharton’s overlooked satire of the ... Read More