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hopesiick · 4 years

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𝐉𝐎𝐑𝐃𝐀𝐍 𝐓𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐃 // vice detective, thirty-three, red ridge native.

— unflinching, grudging, brainy, irreverent, plucky, mulish. loosely inspired by dominique dipierro (mr robot), laurie blake (watchmen hbo), eve polastri (killing eve), wendy byrde (ozark), and allie pressman (the society). this vine, too.

howdy, folks! i’m dev. 🤠 this is my dearest brain babie, jordan. normally, this is where i’d get all mushy-gushy on y’all, but the rest of this introduction is already too long as it is, and i’d rather not add insult to injury hehe. just know i’m happy to be here & even more excited to get to know you all + your brain babies, too! 🥳 @redridgeimp

— pinterest, stats + connections page.

𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐑: bullet points marked with three asterisks (***) feature mentions of domestic abuse and unfit parenting. reader discretion is advised.

the toussards are old money. her mother’s side of the family have made their fortune off of hay farms scattered across the state of nevada, and her father’s side of the family have mostly been cattle and dairy farmers. together, they decided to venture into real estate, too, by buying up farm land plots and selling them at a higher price, along with residential plots, too.

they’re not showy people, but they definitely make good use of their money. jordan’s childhood home is a plantation-style house on a big ole plot of land situated on the outskirts of town. they had healthy green grass with sprinklers and a full garden. inside, everything was real wood, ivory, and silver. they had a maid and gardeners and the whole nine yards. still, if you hadn’t seen that or recognized their family name, you might have expected them to be any other family belonging to red ridge.

to many, they gave off the image of a picture-perfect, all-american nuclear family. it’s easy to pretend, seeing as they live so far away from all the glitz and none of them -- no matter how they feel -- are willing to shatter that golden reputation, but it isn’t real. elise, her mother, wanted a doll more than she wanted an actual child, and it was society’s pressure on women to give birth that forced her hand, not any sense of innate desire for expanding the family. joseph, her father, was too caught up in his wife’s every wish and whim to really pay attention to jordan in a deep way. he never turned his back on her, but jordan never felt any deep belonging to him either -- if anything, he felt more like a 2d stand in for the father she wished she’d had.

*** that meant there was only one adult left to really pick up her parent’s slack, and that was corinne, her aunt. corinne, who had an awful habit of bringing terrible men home. corinne, who was bipolar and unmedicated, and often in charge of taking care of jordan from the moment she was in diapers to the moment she graduated college. corinne, who was manipulated by her own sister. corinne, who was helpless to protect jordan against her mother’s attacks, and unable to shield her from the rage her boyfriends spat. corinne is like a mother to jordan. she was the hand that rubbed her back when she was sick. she was the open arms that held her when one of jordan’s teenage dates went sour. she was the one to cover for her when she snuck out and the one to teach her everything her mother considered too immoral and dirty. corinne is her mother in the way elise never could be, but still .. jordan can’t help but feel anger towards her.

*** jordan’s known how to use, fire, and clean a gun from the age of eight. she learned how to hunt at the age of ten. she knew and helped her father field dress a handful of animals by the age of twelve. you may think this was just a bit of heavy-handed bonding between a father and daughter, but it wasn’t. elise and joseph used to go away a lot, both for pleasure and business, which left jordan in corinne’s sole care. that wouldn’t be a problem, if it weren’t for the fact that a grand majority of corinne’s relationships were abusive, specifically physically. jordan was a child, but she was a child with a duty -- a duty to protect her caretaker if necessary. at the time, jordan didn’t think much of it. she liked feeling like she had an in with her father, liked feeling important. it was only when she got older that she realized how fucked up everything had been, and how that’s the driving factor behind the feeling of fear she just can’t drop, and the mistrust she has in others. the anger she feels towards corinne is rooted in that. she can’t help but feel like it’s corinne’s fault and she hates that her aunt -- a fully grown adult -- was the center of her childhood, instead of her own self.

skipping forward a bit, jordan went to college right after high school to major in criminal science. her lifelong exposure to such abuse left her with a taste for vengeance. see, jordan wanted to be a police officer to protect her hometown, sure, but she also wanted the badge so that she could finally dish out the punishment that so many of the officers she’d seen were unwilling to. the only way to stop that culture of turning a blind eye was to do it from the inside, and that’s exactly what she did.

jordan’s been a cop for twelve years now. she started her career doing patrol and eventually working with the gangs and narcotics team for five years. after a lot of pestering and brown-nosing, jordan became a g&n detective. she was mostly in charge of surveillance, carrying out raids, and the planning of both. ( she had an opportunity early in her career to go undercover, but jordan’s too obvious for that. ) eventually, jordan switched departments over to the special victims unit, but that stint really only served as a segue into where she is now: the vice and support department. she used to specialize in community outreach, helping bridge the gap between the community and the precinct. she worked with groups focused on helping those affected by drugs and sex workers who have been abused. when one of the detectives assigned to missing persons cases left, jordan was quick to apply for it. needless to say, she got the job and has been doing that since.

she’s got the nose for it -- all the digging and reviewing and passion for the relentless pursuit. she doesn’t particularly like dealing with the families of those affected, but it’s part of the job. on most days, she genuinely enjoys it, but with the rise in crime and the amount of deaths at their feet, jordan can’t help but rethink her choices. she’s competitive by nature; she can’t handle these losing games.

jordan’s a very cutthroat cop -- especially in her g&n days, when it was all heat, all pressure, all the time. she’s got an eye for weakness and isn’t afraid to exploit that on the job. she’s not above making threats -- promises, really -- and has always been the type to gather as much evidence as humanly possible, because she wants prosecutors to see justice through. she’s just really efficient. she wouldn’t be where she was at only thirty-three if she wasn’t. most of the time, you can catch her putting in overtime hours.

that being said... jordan has a big heart. she doesn’t believe in institutions as a whole, but she does believe in people. the law is the law and rules are vital for a functioning society, but .. she may be willing to look the other way sometimes, if you’re close enough. ( i mean, she was married to a valencia member at one point, so. ) she may not agree with what some people do, but she’ll really only go after you if what you’re doing is truly heinous. ( but don’t tell her supervisors! 🥺 and don’t mention the hypocrisy to her face. )

outside of work, though, jordan’s pretty chill. she used to be a loudmouthed firecracker in her youth, but she’s calmed down significantly since then. really, she’s not so bad! maybe it's because she can't handle being alone, but she thrives from being in groups + will strike up a conversation with anyone and everyone. if she likes your shoes, she'll tell you. if you need a ride home then she’ll walk with you because she’s most likely equally as inebriated. kind of the person that you’re hesitant to approach, but when you do she treats you like you’re old friends -- even if you're not. you know that drunk girl in the bathroom that gives you sagely advice or tells you she loves your hair? that’s jordan, except she’s not drunk.

when jordan makes her mind up on something, it’s almost impossible to get her to budge. it doesn’t matter if she’s in the wrong, she’ll trudge on no matter what. her flippancy in the face of danger – a prized act at this point – has landed her in trouble before, and it most certainly will again. she’s unyielding and unapologetic; not willing to change herself for anyone. getting her to talk about her emotions is like pulling teeth, except even that would probably be easier. she’s incredibly honest about some things as a way to hide behind it; it’s a farce that distracts people into thinking she’s being honest with them, when really she’s not -- not entirely, anyway.

loves love, but she’s rotten at it. her anxiety gets in the way, tells her that she’ll mess it up somehow until she finally does, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. ( something-something abt the fact that she can’t comprehend someone loving her if not even her own parents could ). she’s a much better friend, and jordan thinks that’s more important anyhow. genuinely, if you’re her friend then she loves you endlessly and earnestly.

𝒇𝒖𝒏 𝒇𝒂𝒄𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒚 𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒓 !

jordan is that friend that gets a little bit too into car karaoke.

she’s also the type to order a screwdriver during an 11a brunch.

it’s a wonder that she doesn’t have tinnitus, considering she always blasts heavy metal music in her car.

makes jokes about getting married and divorced, because if you can’t laugh at your pain then you’re fucked.

if you ever visit her unannounced, you’ll spot her in t-shirts that say “milf in training”, “god looks like me”, and more.

if you’re mean to her she’ll give you a parking ticket.

she plays dirty in fights. used to bite a lot as a child and she still does. all is fair in love and war, babie! enjoy getting that tetanus shot and lovely hospital bill! 💋

pantsuits from monday to friday, and overalls without a bra on the weekend because fuck that shit. also extremely partial to shirts with low plunges. a lil bit of side titty for everyone.

if you’re leaving a drink behind she’ll finish it for you because daddy didn’t raise no quitters.

has a lot of self-worth issues, but she’d sooner die than ever tell anyone about them or even confront them herself.

don’t let the pantsuit fool you! there’s pure muscle underneath that two-piece, babie.

𝒎𝒊𝒔𝒄. 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔:

“i am the shape you made me. filth teaches filth.”

"can i be blamed for my efforts? all men are drawn to the sea, perilous though it may be."

"there is a place, deep in the heart of fear, where you trap yourself and claim that is safety."

"still, a great deal of light falls on everything."

"i hold a stalk in my hand. i am the stalk. my roots go down to the depth of the world."

“i always figured when i got older, god would sorta come into my life somehow. and he didn’t. i don’t blame him. if i was him i would have the same opinion of me that he does.”

“nothing washes off.”

“you cannot be stolen, ransacked, looted like an emptied bank account or a burgled house. you are the tough old tissues, the exquisite scars. you are the thing that would not die.”

𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚, 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒂𝒔 ! ( open to any gender )

jordan can’t function without a best friend, so.. gimme, please! 🥺🤲

i once read a passage talking about how the friendships you make in your childhood can never be mimicked in your adulthood, and you know what.. #true. where’s jordan’s childhood friends at? do they still keep in touch? did they have a massive fallout as teenagers where jordan told them to get hit by a truck because she was a very dramatic 16 yr old? were they frenemies? do they still have one of jordan’s things because she was terrible at remembering everything after a sleepover? did jordan’s parents help your muse’s family out? idc, just gimme!

exes / almost exes. remember what i said about jordan being a shit when it comes to love? they could’ve been serious at some point whether as adults or in their youth, maybe it was short-lived, maybe jordan never even let it get off the ground. could be on good terms or bad terms or no terms at all.

neighbors!! jordan pulls some odd hours n sometimes plays her music a little too loud and burns her food more often than she should at 33 yrs old. she may or may not be the best neighbor to have is all i’m saying, but she tries!!

friends!! platonic love is the most purest form of love there is and she’s got a lot of it to give!! come and get ya some!

enemies / hateships because sometimes .. it just be like that. whether this has to do with a falling out of some sort, just straight up hate at first sight, or something to do with an encounter on the job, or something else entirely i’m here for it!

one night stands / [old] fwb. i’m gonna be honest with y’all: if jordan likes you, then she can’t sleep with you. now, i’m gonna be honest with y’all again: jordan’s very much a yes-girl. she says and does things just to get a reaction sometimes or see what’ll happen ( something-something "sometimes if you let people do things to you, you're really doing it to them" ). that being said, she’ll sleep with just about anyone. maybe they don’t talk about it ever, maybe they only ever talk when they want something, maybe they regret it, maybe it’s all gucci, and maybe it was good until it wasn’t. idk!

jordan has been shot twice in her career thus far. the first time was during a noise disturbance call and the second time was during a narc raid. if your muse wants in on that we can discuss the deets!

and also literally whatever else your heart desires because i’m both here for the fluffiest deepest connections ever and also the angstiest makes-me-wanna-die type shit. i literally don’t say no to anything so if you have any ideas you think jordan can be a good fit for, i’m all ears!!

#redridgeintro #did i really have to write all of tht? no. but did i do it anyway bc i love jordan with my whole entire heart? yes. yes i unfortunately did.#tldr is that she's just a messy ole scaredy cat with a big marshmallow heart !!!!#domestic violence tw #domestic abuse tw

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connecticut-seo-adwords · 6 years

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Google Fred: The Best Ways To Recover From the Greatest SEO Update in 2017

Google has become increasingly cagey about its updates. If there is one, unless it’s gargantuan, you probably won’t hear about it from the search engine.

Take a look at some of their communications on Twitter via their spokespeople, John Mueller and Gary Illyes:

Yes, we make changes almost every day.

— John ☆.o(≧▽≦)o.☆ (@JohnMu) March 9, 2017

we have 3 updates a day in average. I think it’s pretty safe to assume there was one recently…

— Gary “鯨理” Illyes (@methode) March 9, 2017

It’s like it’s physically impossible for them to come out and say it.

Because of this secrecy and caginess, marketers and webmasters have to play a game of detective whenever they notice changes to search. This “volatility,” as it’s commonly termed, shows up in their automated statistics, particularly those for SEO visibility. From there, they have to read the clues and compile data to come to any conclusions.

The most recent Google update waves that rolled through the internet happened in March 2017. It’s now simply known as “Fred.” (Gary Illyes jokingly said all the updates should be called Fred, and it stuck for this one in particular.)

There was no announcement, no forewarning. SEOs and webmasters noticed the “volatility” affecting their stats and their rankings. Then they compared notes, which all lined up.

Here’s a good example from Glen Gabe, the marketer in front of G-Squared Interactive. He shared how Fred affected a site that had heavy advertising:

Overnight, the site lost almost 60% of its organic traffic from Google.

That’s a huge amount. Lots of other sites reported traffic losses just as deep, but Google kept mum about it.

So, that begs these questions: What did Fred do? What kind of sites, exactly, did it affect? How do you stay on Google’s good side if they won’t offer guidance about their algorithm updates?

And, perhaps most importantly, what does the biggest Google update in 2017 mean for you and your site? Let’s delve into this topic together. Grab a tea or a coffee, and join me!

Google’s “Fred” Algorithm Update: The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

This update sent shockwaves through the internet.

Some marketers discovered their traffic had been hit hard (down anywhere from 50% to 90%).

It was obvious that Google had done something big, but they wouldn’t cop to it outright.

This tight-lipped response was nothing new, but it understandably rankled the SEO community, and not just because it was/is frustrating. Not just because it was/is frustrating, but also because Google’s zipped lips are no help in the face of huge chunks of organic traffic gone overnight.

Kristine Schachinger for Search Engine Land summed up the frustration in her column:

Here’s What Fred Tweaked

So, we know that Fred was mainly a quality update – but what aspects of quality did it affect?

SEOs analyzed the stats from hundreds of affected sites to figure out what it did. They found that this update mainly affected content sites whose goal was revenue (as opposed to providing value to users). Specifically, Barry Schwartz termed these sites as “ad heavy, low value.”

These sites had features like:

1. Heavy Advertising

One of the defining features of all sites badly hit: ads. Each and every one had heavy servings of advertising. Or, they had generous helpings of affiliate links sprinkled into their content. These ads were liberally integrated, pushy, and deceptive. Lots looked like on-site links but actually took you elsewhere.

2. Redundant or Non-Expert Information

In most cases, sites that suffered an organic rankings dive also featured redundant, non-expert, or rehashed information. This was thin content – not well researched at all, stuff that merely skimmed the surface.

3. User Experience (UX) Interference

The user experience is how easily a visitor can navigate your site, click around, and find what they need. This is a big factor for site quality because a poor UX can totally impede that information-gathering process.

Here are some examples of roadblocks to a good UX. Glen Gabe calls these “low-quality user engagement problems”:

Disruptive pop-ups that take over the whole screen

Confusing navigation and site hierarchy

Too much advertising – so much so that it drowns out the content

Problems viewing the site on mobile

4. “Jacks-of-All-Trades, Masters of None” Content

Another common feature was that most of the sites with traffic hits had a content format, like a blog. However, topics covered a wide range of information without any rhyme or reason.

Some of these hit sites publicly shared their URLs. Here’s an example of a few posts from one of them:

The content was not published to inform users; rather, it only served as a vehicle for advertising. In particular, the above blog featured useless information that Wikipedia or the “help” section of a product website already covered better.

Here’s How to Keep Fred Happy

Now that you understand what the Fred update did and who was affected, you can keep your own site compliant and Fred-friendly.

This will be important for the future because Google is never going to stop throwing out updates. In fact, it’s pretty much a standard monthly thing these days.

Here’s how to stay on Fred’s (and Google’s) good side to keep your chances of getting blindsided by any future update slimmer.

1. Recommit Yourself to Quality Content and Good SEO Practices

If you’re already on top of your on-page SEO and content quality, good. Keep going. This commitment is one that builds on itself in terms of positive gains. The longer you stick with it, the better the results you’ll see.

If you’ve cut corners, tried some “shortcuts,” or are just plain unsure about where you stand, you need to recommit yourself to quality. That means you should start making improvements to your site and content right this second.

The sooner you start, the sooner you can get on your way to climbing the ranks, not falling into a black hole of Google penalties.

2. Pay Attention to UX

UX (user experience) is the first determiner of your site’s quality. If your UX is terrible, your visitors won’t be able to read your content at all. That’s a big no-no.

To keep things up to standard, first look at the basic structure of your site. Approach it like an average visitor would. Ask yourself these questions:

Is it easy to read?

Is it easy to navigate and/or find what you’re looking for?

Do your pages use SEO properly?

Is the page layout clear and logical?

Do all the links point to where they should?

You need to make the user experience as seamless and enjoyable as possible. Using disruptive or deceptive site design, on-page advertising, or links will do the opposite. Google will penalize you.

3. Rethink Your On-Page Advertising

Ads are fine to use on your site – within reason. For example, the Fred update targeted sites who used ads so aggressively, they messed with the UX. When ads get in the way of somebody gleaning the information they need, Google has a problem with it. You should, too.

If your focus has been on monetizing your site, think again. Cut back on ads, especially ones that break up or interfere with content. Make them less intrusive, and try to improve your advertising for the user. This often means getting rid of most of your ads and making the ones you have left more intentional.

4. Check Your Old Content

When your site-wide experience is optimized for your audience, then you can move on to your content and link quality.

First, critically analyze your blog posts and content pages. If they’re thin, badly organized, or full of errors, you’ll get penalized. Rewrite them, improve them, and add depth and value.

Going forward, it will help to have a set of quality guidelines in place for each and every piece of content you create. Rigorously adhering to these will help you keep publishing top-notch content and improve your rankings.

Via Google

5. Look at Your Backlinks

To stay on the right side of Google, check on who’s linking to you. Make sure your link profile is made up of relevant, quality sites.

If sites with zero value are linking to you, this can hurt your rankings. However, there are ways to rectify the situation.

Just say no to link schemes, including paid links and spam.

Check the quality of your backlinks with tools like Moz, Monitor Backlinks, or Google Webmasters.

Contact sites with low quality and ask them to take down your link.

6. Stay on Top of Google Announcements (and Non-Announcements)

Yes, Google is notorious for keeping quiet about updates, but they do still announce a few (sometimes). It’s important to keep your ear to the ground so you know about important changes as soon as possible.

As for unannounced important changes, keep yourself in the loop with the help of your social network. Many SEOs and marketers take to Twitter when they see something fishy going on. Other major sites like Search Engine Land will post updates and attempt to confirm the situation with Google.

Follow these blogs and fellow marketers so you’re always in the loop:

Check out my list of recommended SEO and content marketer bloggers here.

To get almost instantaneous SEO updates, one marketer who stays on top of updates like none other is Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick).

Earlier today, November Google Algorithm Search Results Update? https://t.co/9Bj2vV4TdI

— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) November 3, 2017

7. Avoid These Practices Like the Plague

Link schemes aren’t the only bad SEO practices to avoid (there’s a reason it’s called “black hat SEO”). There’s a host of others out there. They may sound like great shortcuts to ranking, but they’re actually ethically unsound in Google’s eyes.

Cloaking– This technique presents one page to human visitors and another to search engine crawlers in order to deceptively boost the site’s rank.

“Thin” content– Thin content has no meat to it. It’s shallow, short, vague, rehashed, or unhelpful information that provides no additional depth to a topic.

Content scraping – This is the web equivalent of plagiarizing. It involves taking content from another site and passing it off as your own. You can do it with old-fashioned copy-and-paste, but lots of people employ software or special programming language that does it for them.

Automatically generated content– Perhaps the laziest black hat technique on this list, automatically generated content is created through programming. It gathers paragraphs of random text interspersed with keywords.

Google has an even bigger list of deceptive, spammy, confusing, or manipulative tactics they have targeted. Sites who use them will get penalized –so not worth it.

Stay Ahead of Google’s Update Waves and Ride the Tide to Great SEO

Here’s the bottom line about unexpected yet gargantuan Google updates like Fred.

To avoid equally huge penalties that hurt your business, you have to attempt to stay ahead of the curve.

This means committing yourself to only producing and publishing high-quality content. It means never engaging in link schemes. It means focusing on your site users, first and foremost, rather than monetization, A.K.A. lining your pockets.

It can definitely be frustrating when Google pulls the rug out from under you with a big update they won’t confirm. You’ll be less worried, though, if you know you already have great policies and standards in place for your site and your content.

In fact, websites with this commitment to quality often see a boost in traffic after an unannounced update. This is the ideal scenario, no?

Many times, after an algorithm change, with the amount of organic content on our site we’ll see an increase in rankings. Our SEMrush rankings show steady growth with some decrease here and there. Here’s a typical month of position rankings for our site (screenshot taken of September 2017 rankings):

If all of this information seems overwhelming and leaves you wondering where to go from here, the answer is simple. Start with your content, make it better, then work outward from there.

If you need help, we can write quality content that will make a difference. Our authority content level is one of the best ways to stand out on the web!

Source

https://expresswriters.com/google-fred-and-how-it-affects-your-content/

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bluewatsons · 7 years

Conversation

Matt Ford, Rethinking Mass Incarceration in America, Medium (March 2, 2017)

Matt Ford: What do you think we’re getting wrong about mass incarceration?

John Pfaff: I think it’s less that we’re getting something wrong, and more that we’re paying too much attention to secondary causes and ignoring more fundamental causes. So what I argue is that it’s not the war on drugs, it’s not longer sentences, it’s not private prisons—none of those things are irrelevant, they all matter, but we overemphasize their importance. As a result, we don’t pay enough attention to prosecutors, to violent crimes, to public-sector unions, and to the politicians. So it’s more about reframing how we look at it rather than saying we’re looking at the wrong thing.

Matt Ford: In your book, you describe those overemphasized aspects of mass incarceration as the “standard story” of its origins. Why has that narrative become so dominant?

John Pfaff: There are several reasons. Part of it, I think, was sort of out of necessity. After 40 years of steady, unrelenting prison growth, we weren’t going to start pushing back on that by passing a be-lenient-towards-murderers bill. Drugs was a natural place to start pushing back against mass incarceration, so I think part of it was understandable and a justifiable political necessity. Part of the problem is that we tend to talk a lot about the federal system. Federal prison sentences are about half drugs and the states are about 16 percent drugs, but the feds get a tremendous amount of attention. Vox had a survey a couple of months ago in which they asked people, “Do you think about a majority of people in prison nationwide are there for drugs?” And a majority of liberals, moderates, and conservatives all said yes. As for the focus on private prisons over the public sector, I think that probably reflects the political biases of the early reformers, who tend to be more liberal and tend to distrust the private sector. The failure to pay attention to prosecutors, that’s the one I find hardest to understand—why they’ve been able to skate through the cracks for so long. Part of it is just that we don’t have data on prosecutors the way we do on policing and judging and sentencing—but then again, maybe we don’t really have data on them because we don’t focus on them. I’m not sure which is the chicken and which is the egg there. But they occupy this sort of middle area. They’re not the ones out there with the sirens and the badges that get our attention on the front end. They’re not the ones in the courtroom announcing sentences, the way we view judges culturally in the criminal-justice system. So they somehow manage to escape detection.

Matt Ford: Your focus on prosecutors really stood out to me because we usually think of mass incarceration as the product of judges and legislatures. But you’re telling us to look at the district attorney’s office instead?

John Pfaff: Exactly. My own empirical work is constrained to the 1990s onward, just because of the data that’s available. But at least during that period, when prison populations continued to rise even as crime steadily fell, the one thing that seemed to drive that growth was an increased willingness on the part of prosecutors to file felony charges against people who were arrested. We’re arresting fewer and fewer people over that time, and charging more and more people with felonies. Once they’re charged with a felony, the probability they went to prison didn’t change and the time they spent in prison didn’t change. But the risk of your arrest turning into that felony case grew substantially.

Matt Ford: So in a way it sounds like activists don’t have one criminal-justice system or 50 systems to reform, they have about 3,000 of them, one for each county with a prosecutor, then?

John Pfaff: Yes and no. There’s policing that we have to reform, and that’s at the city level, so it’s even more of those—about 17,000 or 18,000 law-enforcement agencies. There’s reforming of prosecutors—that’s not quite one per county, but there are about 2,500 prosecutors’ offices. There are some parole reforms you can make, and that’s a state-level change. So each stage requires work, and I think it’s important to stress that the term “criminal-justice system” is very misleading. What we have is not a system at all, but a patchwork of competing bureaucracies with different constituencies, different incentives, who oftentimes might have similar political ideologies, but very different goals and very different pressures on them.

Matt Ford: Does that make reform less likely to succeed? I mean, if activists don’t have a single system to target, are they less likely to effectively marshal resources to change it?

John Pfaff: There are two reasons to be fairly optimistic. First is that while there are over 2,000 prosecutors’ offices, over 60 percent of all felony cases are processed by the 11 percent that are in the counties with 250,000 people or more. The majority of cases are managed by some 200 or so prosecutors’ offices, so it’s more manageable to have a big impact. You can accomplish a lot with a small number of these districts. The other thing is the decentralization: On the one hand, it does make work harder, you have to go to more places, but it can also be protective in that one bad decision or one bad approach at the very top has a much harder time percolating down. It’s why, at least on the prison side, I remain fairly optimistic that reform will keep pushing ahead despite the Trump and [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions administration. It’s hard for D.C. to sort of push the system in one direction or the other because there’s no single system for it to push on. And there’s reason, I think, to be optimistic that local efforts are working. 2016 was a very interesting election cycle because at the same time that a large number of Americans voted for Donald Trump, with his very 1980s-style tough-on-crime rhetoric, about 20 or so tough-on-crime prosecutors were voted out of office and were succeeded by reform-minded challengers.

Matt Ford: How does the war on drugs play into this? In the standard story, it’s a central feature, but it seems less focal in the view you offer.

John Pfaff: If you define the war on drugs as arresting people for drug offenses, then as it stands right now, only about 16 percent of all people in state prison are there on a drug charge. The increase in sending people to prison for drugs explains about 20 percent of all prison growth between 1980 and 2010, so it’s not the dominant driver. What a majority of people are in prison for are for crimes of violence, so at some point we have to start confronting how we punish people for violent crimes. And I think that does point to one risk of our standard-story approach: By emphasizing the war on drugs and telling people we can accomplish reform by decarcerating people for drug offenses, we don’t encourage them to think about how to punish violence differently. In that same Vox survey that showed a majority of Americans think a majority of prisoners are there for drugs, a more disturbing question they asked was something like, “Are you willing to punish those who are convicted of violence and pose little threat of recidivism, are you willing to punish them less?” And a majority of liberals, moderates, and conservatives said no, that they are unwilling—even for those who pose a low risk of recidivism—they’re unwilling to contemplate punishing those convicted of violence less. I think we’ve convinced people that we can really impose deep cuts just by focusing on the safe, easy cases of the nonviolent drug offender. And the fact is, any sort of deep cut in our prison population will require us to reduce the number of people in prison for violence. And I think we can do that and maintain public safety. One statistic that doesn’t get enough attention is that our violent crime rate right now is about where it was in 1970—it might be even better than that depending on which numbers you use—but our incarceration rate is five times higher. So unless you think Americans are five times more violent today than in 1970, that’s hard to justify. And if anything, I’d say the crime-age American citizen today is probably less violent than the same person in the 1970s, so it’s even harder to justify that way.

Matt Ford: If I’m a state legislator who’s worried about being painted as soft on crime, and I’m worried about all the traditional political attacks that go with it, what steps could I take to reduce the number of people in prison for violent offenses that would be safe and equitable and just?

John Pfaff: One thing they could focus on would be expanding parole options for people convicted of violence. Often when we see states push to expand parole choices, more often than not they explicitly exclude those convicted of a current violent offense, or sometimes even any prior violent offense. And that’s kind of self-defeating, because the fact is our popular model of violent behavior is not really accurate. We tend to use the term “violent offender.” I work very hard to never use it if I can, because it defines someone who commits a violent act as that’s who they are: They are a violent person, it’s a state of being. And violence isn’t a state of being, it’s at most a phase. People also age into and age out of crime. Someone who commits a violent crime when they’re 16 isn’t going to be nearly as violent when they’re 30 or 35. There’s hormonal changes, there’s cultural changes, social changes—you get married, you have a job, and that helps you desist from offending. We tend to lock them up for longer periods of time just as they’re aging out of crime. So the thing a legislator could do is expand parole options for people who have been convicted of violence and stop excluding violent crimes from eligibility. But I think the central role violent crimes have played in prison growth suggests that this isn’t necessarily something legislators can fix for us. These are not acts that we necessarily want the legislature to decriminalize, and even current sentence lengths aren’t that long. The median time in prison of someone convicted of violence remains about four to four-and-a-half years. That’s a long time in prison, but not some staggeringly long sentence. I think what it points to is a greater need on the part of prosecutors to either use their discretion better or for us to figure out ways to channel or limit their discretion so they’re not quite so aggressive, to rely on prison less, and focus more on preventative approaches that prevent the violence from happening in the first place.

Matt Ford: One of the themes that really struck me throughout your book was sort of the statistical gaps we have—especially about prosecutors but also about other parts of the criminal-justice system. How does that shape how we understand criminal justice itself, as well as the efforts to reform it?

John Pfaff: It’s important to stress that however weak our data is on policing and prisons and crime, our data on prosecutors is almost nonexistent. There’s no centralized data set on what they do, and most of the offices don’t provide information of a meaningful sort themselves, so you have almost no idea what they do. And from a policy point of view, that makes it hard for us to regulate them. It makes it hard for voters to make careful decisions about what the DA is doing and whether they support that policy or not. From a policymaker’s perspective, it means that we don’t really know how legal changes will actually play out in practice.

Matt Ford: We’ve seen a lot of states experimenting with various criminal-justice reforms in recent years. Are there many states where you think they’re much more accurately addressing the causes of mass incarceration—looking at violent crime, looking at prosecutors—than others?

John Pfaff: When it comes to violent crime, very little. But one state that does deserve credit is actually Mississippi, which is, as far as I can tell, the only state I’ve seen that actually explicitly cut time served for people convicted of violence. Like many states, Mississippi had what’s called a truth-in-sentencing law that said for certain categories of offenses, often for violent crimes, an inmate must serve a minimum of 75 percent of the sentence before he’s parole-eligible. And a couple of years ago, they actually cut that back from 75 percent of the sentence to 50 percent of the sentence, and that was just for people convicted of violence. But you see very little of that. More often you see the exact opposite. Even states that have gotten praise for their reforms, like South Carolina, what they often do is agree to cut time served for drug and property crimes, or raise the threshold for a felony so they move how much you have to steal for felony theft—but then they pair it with an increase in punishment for violent offenses. So they sort of say, “We’ll cut sentences for the nonviolent crimes to free up space for people convicted of violence, and we’ll increase the sanctions for violent offenses.” It’s happened in South Carolina, it’s happened in Maryland, it’s happened in other places. I wouldn’t say it’s backwards, but it’s concerning, because while the cuts for the property and drug offenses make sense and are laudable, we also need to start figuring out how to cut back on violent crimes, and we’re doing the exact opposite. When it comes to prosecutors, I’ve seen nothing by any state that really aggressively goes after them. California’s very complicated realignment approach, which was their response to the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Ninth Circuit’s overcrowding litigation, has had an impact on prosecutors. They told counties that if you convict someone of what’s called a “triple non”—a nonviolent, non-serious, non-sexual offense—even if he’s supposed to go to prison for years and years, you have to keep him imprisoned in the county jail. And what that does is have important—and I would say somewhat boring—budgetary implications. One reason why prosecutors can be so tough on crime is that they are county officials, but prisons are paid for by the state. So if you convict someone of a felony and send them to the state, your county doesn’t pick up the cost, the state does. So being tough on crime is actually financially free and political popular. Jails, on the other hand, where we send people convicted of misdemeanors, those are paid for by the county. So what California’s basically said is that for these triple nons, the county has to pay for their incarceration, not the state, which undermines to some extent this free-riding opportunity that prosecutors had. It’s complicated, it’s imperfect, but that’s the only real effort I’ve seen that affects prosecutors. I think more consistent with what we see towards them was Hillary Clinton’s end-to-end criminal-justice-reform plan that talked about policing and talked about parole and completely ignored the prosecutor, didn’t mention it once. To me, it wasn’t so much end-to-end as it was end-and-end. It got the ends, but it missed that critical middle of the prosecutor.

Matt Ford: Activists enjoyed a few years under the Obama administration where they had a combination of low crime and bipartisan support to really try to change the conversation. Now that there’s a president who’s willing to be not only as vocally tough on crime as politicians during the peak era, but also in some cases even more so—does that change the dynamic for criminal-justice reformers and how they should look at the other aspects of the system you mentioned?

John Pfaff: I’m less concerned about Trump’s rhetoric and more concerned about the actual uptick in violent crime we’ve seen over the past two years. Here’s why I’m somewhat less concerned about Donald Trump than I think many people are: Partly, like I said, I think it’s the localism that’s what matters—that decisions being made are being made by local prosecutors and they respond to their own local interests. So there’s not much that Trump can do to move them one way or the other. I think the example that I find most striking for this isn’t a federal one, it’s actually a state one, which is the Rockefeller drug laws. In 1973, New York passed some of the harshest drug laws in the country. [Governor Nelson] Rockefeller passed them to appear tough on crime in his effort to do a sort of end-run on the right as part of his national political aspirations. Yet what’s interesting is that shortly after these laws were passed, there was a slight uptick in New York state prisons for drugs—but then it drops. And by 1984, 11 years after the laws were passed, there were actually fewer people in New York state prisons for drugs than there were in 1973 when the laws were adopted. So New York passes these tough drug laws, the governor is using them as a statement to show he is tough on crime—and all the local prosecutors just ignore them. Then, in 1984, the number of people in prison for drugs starts to rise, and rises precipitously for the next 10 or 12 years. That’s not just drugs, that’s crack. When the crack-related violence broke out across New York and the rest of the country, the prosecutors responded by using the drug laws as one way to target that violence. And then the number of people in New York state prisons for drugs starts to drop in 1999, years before the first reform law. When those reform laws were passed, there’s no change in the decline of the number of people in prison for drugs in New York. So basically what happened is the New York City DAs who led this decline had decided to stop sending people to prison for drugs independent of what was happening in Albany. What that story tells me is that DAs are very local and they’ll respond to local conditions. If crime is going up, they will become tougher. And it will look perhaps like Trump’s rhetoric is pushing it, but I think it’s more that if things get tougher, Trump’s rhetoric will be a mirror of the underlying changes, not so much the cause of them. And I would say that even if crime is going up, I don’t think that means we should turn more to incarceration. Even if violent crime is rising, there are other, far better options that we can and should use, and I think reformers need to get out ahead of that. Oftentimes we see a lot of the big reform groups saying, “Look, don’t worry, crime isn’t going up that much, it’s not really going up at all, we can still reduce prisons and reduce violence,” and that troubles me because that ties prison reform to low crime. The fact is that whether crime is high or low, prison is not the most efficient way to respond to it, and I think we need to start telling a story that there are better ways—even if violent crime is rising, say, “Look, even if this is a real upward trend, prison is not what is going to rein it in. We can do this much better, much more smartly, in a much less costly way by focusing on well-established interventions that are good at disrupting violence.”

#law #criminal justice #reform #prison #controversy #violent crime #crime #incarceration

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