Tag: crime

Predicting Deception

a text analysis program correctly classified liars and truth-tellers at a rate of 67% when the topic was constant and a rate of 61% overall. Compared to truth-tellers, liars showed lower cognitive complexity, used fewer self-references and other-references, and used more negative emotion words.

61% is not very useful (close to a coin toss), but it is an interesting start. of course, this research suffers from the usual problems (only 5 samples, wtf?), but given a few 100K samples, might be much more accurate.

Citizens customers

One of the simplest and yet most profound changes is a shift away from calling people in the system “probationers” or “offenders” and instead referring to them, and treating them, as “clients” of city services. Helping to re-think the entire process of probation was a task force that included probation officers and clients from across the city

the description how the culture of endless waiting on plastic chairs was turned around is very inspiring, as is the directive to treat nyc citizens as customers, not as subjects.

The Mafia Government

the mexican mafia acts like a government: collecting taxes, enforcing property rights and adjudicating disputes.

as the MM grew in power it started to provide public goods, i.e. it became a kind of government. Thus, the MM protects taxpayers both in prison and on the street, it produces property rights by enforcing gang claims to territory and it adjudicates disputes, all to the extent that such actions increase tax revenue of course. The MM is so powerful that it often doesn’t even have to use its own enforcers; instead, the MM can issue what amounts to a letter of marque and reprisal, a signal that a non-taxpaying gang is no longer under its protection, and privateers will do the rest.

Mob Pizza Cheese

Al Capone – who owned a string of dairy farms – forced New York pizzerias to use his rubbery mob cheese, so different from the real mozzarella produced here in New York City since the first immigrants from Naples arrived in Brooklyn around 1900.

The only places permitted to use good mozzarella made locally were the old-fashioned pizza parlors like Lombardi’s, Patsy’s, and John’s, who could continue doing so only if they promised to never serve slices.