Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, R.I.P.

The greatest and most effective prison reform advocate on the planet died yesterday at the ripe old age of 89. Russian novelist Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was perhaps best known for his literally and literarily awesome nonfiction tome, "The Gulag Archipelago," described in an early obituary as:

a monumental account of the Soviet labor camp system, a chain of prisons that by Solzhenitsyn's calculation some 60 million people had entered during the 20th century. The book led to his expulsion from his native land.

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize (he could not attend the award ceremony for fear the Soviets would not allow him to leave), Solzhenitsyn recalled his own prison experience:

in the midst of exhausting prison camp relocations, marching in a column of prisoners in the gloom of bitterly cold evenings, with strings of camp lights glimmering through the darkness, we would often feel rising in our breast what we would have wanted to shout out to the whole world — if only the whole world could have heard us.

The great writer's idiosyncratic criticisms of the United States left him as ignored in America after the fall of Communism as he was celebrated before its demise. But it's hard to overstate his impact on global politics, literature, and especially on how the world viewed prisons during his lifetime. This anecdote from the same International Herald Tribune obituary gives at least a sense of his contrarian influence at the height of the Cold War:

One story, a short novel, was "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," an account of a single day in an icy prison camp written in the voice of an inmate named Ivan Denisovich Shukov, a bricklayer. With little sentimentality, he recounts the trials and sufferings of "zeks," as the prisoners were known, peasants who were willing to risk punishment and pain as they seek seemingly small advantages like a few more minutes before a fire. He also reveals their survival skills, their loyalty to their work brigade and their pride.

The day ends with the prisoner in his bunk. "Shukov felt pleased with his life as he went to sleep," Solzhenitsyn wrote. Shukov was pleased because, among other things, he had not been put in an isolation cell, and his brigade had avoided a work assignment in a place unprotected from the bitter wind, and he had swiped some extra gruel, and had been able to buy a bit of tobacco from another prisoner.

"The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one," Solzhenitsyn wrote, adding: "Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from bell to bell. The extra three days were for leap years."

Solzhenitsyn typed the story single spaced, using both sides to save paper. He sent one copy to Lev Kopelev, an intellectual with whom he had shared a cell 16 years earlier. Kopelev, who later became a well known dissident, realized that under Khrushchev's policies of liberalization, it might be possible to have the story published by Novy Mir, or The New World, the most prestigious of the Soviet Union's so-called thick literary and cultural journals. Kopelev and his colleagues steered the manuscript around lower editors who might have blocked its publication and took it to Aleksandr Tvardovsky, the editor and a Politburo member who backed Khrushchev.

On reading the manuscript, Tvardovsky summoned Solzhenitsyn from Ryazan. "You have written a marvelous thing," he told him. "You have described only one day, and yet everything there is to say about prison has been said." He likened the story to Tolstoy's moral tales. Other editors compared it to Dostoyevski's "House of the Dead," which the author had based on his own experience of incarceration in czarist times. Tvardovsky offered Solzhenitsyn a contract worth more than twice his teacher's annual salary, but he cautioned that he was not certain he could publish the story.

Tvardovsky was eventually able to get Khrushchev himself to read "A Day in the Life." Khrushchev was impressed, and by mid-October 1962, the presidium of the Politburo took up the question of whether to allow it to be published. The presidium ultimately agreed, and in his biography "Solzhenitsyn" (Norton, 1985), Michael Scammell wrote that Khrushchev defended the decision and was reported to have declared: "There's a Stalinist in each of you; there's even a Stalinist in me. We must root out this evil."

The novel appeared in Novy Mir in early 1963. The critic Kornei Chukovsky pronounced the work "a literary miracle." Grigori Baklanov, a respected novelist and writer about World War II, declared that the story was one of those rare creations after which "it is impossible to go on writing as one did before."

R.I.P., Alexandr Solzhenitsyn.

Allowing invited graff best way to reduce unwanted graffiti

Last summer Grits featured a series proposing a three-pronged approach to graffiti enforcement based on restorative justice principles consisting of enforcement, rapid cleanup and provision of space for invited graffiti art. Everybody does the enforcement part, or tries; some municipalities have embraced the rapid cleanup idea; however scarce few have committed resources to providing spaces for invited art. In my view, all three legs of the stool must be in place to significantly reduce uninvited graffiti.

While writing that series, I was struck by the lack of significant public policy research on the subject given how long graffiti has been with us and how much the practice costs taxpayers. So I was pleased to see a report from the Denver Post ("New study on graffiti, crime correlation," July 20) about a criminologist's project to research graffiti and evaluate the effectiveness of government responses:

[Criminologist Noah] Fritz, a former crime analyst at an Arizona police department, will be the first one to say he doesn't have all the answers.

He knows that graffiti in Denver runs the gamut from obvious gang communication to the artful mural on the back of the garage. He knows that graffiti here, and probably nationally, is largely misunderstood and that painting over it sometimes dares the taggers into a cat-and-mouse game.

What he hopes to probe -- with the help of his criminology students -- is: how graffiti in a neighborhood correlates to crime (he'll layer graffiti-defacing maps over crime data); why do kids do it (he'll interview 18-year-olds who may know taggers and compile personal stories) and whether there's anything the city can do about it (a communal graffiti wall? A celebration of graffiti as art?) that would deter taggers from defacing private property.

Last fall, about 25 Metro students walked the perimeters of the census blocks included in the project, taking pictures of everything, even the smallest of graffiti scratches. ...

The students picked the blocks scientifically and are taking the summer and most of next school year to analyze the types of graffiti. Then they will look at possible crime correlations.

Fritz also wants to see if the graffiti elimination project underway is working. Most of the mapping research was completed last October. Fritz wants to see whether this October there are fewer marks.

"I think it's important, when a government entity puts resources into a project, to see if their strategies are effective," Fritz said. "We always try to be more efficient, but we should be thinking more about whether they are effective."

Key to addressing graffiti (it cannot be "solved," only managed) is recognizing Fritz's important observation that removal alone potentially "dares the taggers into a cat-and-mouse game." As Proximo from Dallas Sidebar put it, there is a "subversive component" to tagging - an element of youthful rebellion that drives the activity. As I wrote this spring, "Playing cat and mouse with law enforcement feeds into a cycle of gamesmanship taggers enjoy, and bored teens with a spray can will inevitably win those matchups just because there are too many of them and police have better things to do."

That's why I think creating invited graffiti spaces must be part of the solution. Indeed, it's often the solution private property owners come up with themselves after feuding with graff writers for years. From the Post:

Mike Allard said he thinks he has found one solution.

The manager of Headed West, a tobacco shop on South Broadway, battled the "gangbangers in Englewood" for months as they tagged the sides of his store. Businesses are fined if they don't paint or wash over graffiti in three days.

So a year and a half ago, he hired some former graffiti artists to draw a mural on both sides. Allard is now battling the city about signage laws but says the store hasn't been tagged since the drawings went up.

"If you don't consider the sides of our building art, then I don't think you can understand art," Allard said.

Fritz and Allard are on the right track, but Fritz's idea of a communal graffiti wall to me doesn't go far enough. One wall, after all, won't provide enough space for a long-term solution.

Mainstreaming graff artists with talent should be an overt goal of public graffiti policy. Make me philosopher king and I believe cities should have civilian graffiti coordinators who manage cleanup crews made up of probationers and coordinate making public and private spots available for invited graffiti art.

Our current approach to graffiti essentially punishes victims. Taggers are seldom caught or prosecuted, so the main way municipalities enforce anti-graffiti ordinances is by fining property owners, essentially victimizing them a second time.

I drive by spots every day that are either covered with graff or where the city is constantly painting over new graffiti - overpasses, storm drains, utility boxes in the right of way, light poles, backsides of road signs. We routinely see graff on these spots, anyway. In most of these cases I'd prefer Mr. Allard's solution - inviting graff artists to do a nicer, more significant piece that will "ride" for much longer than typical outlaw graff.

In many cities, authorities have identified the most prolific local taggers, though it's virtually impossible to arrest them. But knowledge of who they are opens up opportunities to solicit invited graff. Bottom line, in an era when graphic arts skills are in high demand, graff artists with talent should be brought out of the shadows and encouraged, where possible, instead of shamed and prosecuted.

A local graffiti coordinator could assist private interests to hook up with graffiti artists, inviting higher quality graff to preemptively fend off more routine, destructive tagging. Businesses whose walls are tagged repeatedly, homeowners with fences facing the street, utility companies whose boxes are constantly defaced - after years of scrubbing or painting over unwanted graff, I imagine quite a few property owners may be ready to decide, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

In its most fully developed form, perhaps a citywide web-based database could be accumulated of spots where property owners want to invite graffiti and graff artists could submit a sketch of what they want to do for approval by the landowner.

None of this will eliminate tags used for gang communications; for that brand of tagger, the rapid cleanup component and the risk of criminal prosecution remain the only viable tools. But given the immense sums cities routinely spend on graffiti cleanup now with little result, to the extent more artistically inclined graff writers can be diverted to invited venues it would save taxpayers money, reduce the volume of criminal graff, and increase the amount of public art in our cities. That result seems like a win-win all around.

See related Grits' posts on graffiti law and policy solutions:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti, art, vandalism and subversion
  
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
  
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings
  
• Adidas: Graffiti is legitimate art
• Grading graffiti? What do youth want?
  
• Graffiti on the brain and around the world
  
• Digital graffiti, or, Is there something to a wall that wants us to write on it?
• R.I.P. Victor Montano: Houston graffiti artist
• Can you be arrested for public knitting?
• Amarillo PD pressures businesses to file graffiti charges
  
• Out of our minds: Isn't felony graffiti overkill for sixth graders?
• Charging graffiti as a state jail felony?
• Reduce graffiti by pursuing the crime, not the criminal
• Graffiti in Austin up 400% since 2002
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy
  

Today in History: O. Henry leaves prison, launches literary career

Here's an interesting historical footnote for the literary minded among you; today's the anniversary of the release from prison of one of Texas' great short story writers:

July 24 - O. Henry is released from prison on this day in 1901. William Sydney Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, is released from prison ... after serving three years ... for embezzlement from a bank in Austin, Texas.

To escape imprisonment, Porter had fled the authorities and hidden in Honduras, but returned when his wife, still in the U.S., was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He went to jail and began writing stories to support his young daughter while he was in prison.

After his release, Porter moved to New York and worked for New York World, writing one short story a week from 1903 to 1906. In 1904, his first story collection, Cabbages and Kings, was published. His second, The Four Million (1906), contained one of his most beloved stories, The Gift of the Magi, about a poor couple who each sacrifice their most valuable possession to buy a gift for the other.

Additional collections appeared in 1906 and 1907, and two collections a year were published in 1908 until his death in 1910. He specialized in stories about everyday people, often ending with an unexpected twist. Despite the enormous popularity of the nearly 300 stories he published, he led a difficult life, struggling with financial problems and alcoholism until his death in 1910.

Via Focus News Agency.

Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy

A couple of weeks ago Austin PD launched its largest graffiti crackdown in recent memory, arresting 18 people, all adults, on felony and misdemeanor charges ("APD graffiti investigation sees 18 arrests," May 15), reported Channel 8 News:

A 10-month investigation led to the arrest of 18 people on graffiti-related charges.

An Austin Police Department detective carried out the investigation in an effort to charge those responsible, and cut down on property damage. It helped identify 130 suspects and at least two dozen graffiti gangs.

Police have worked together with citizens, neighborhood associations and business groups to identify new graffiti and identify taggers.

"In the past there was not a good way to identify them; and with the help of the neighborhoods and the people getting involved, it really enabled it,” Det. Kevin Bartles said. “Up until this point a lot of people had given up on it and they just accepted it.”

In 2007, the graffiti abatement unit painted over more than 16,000 pieces of graffiti in Austin.

It's estimated that graffiti in Austin causes more than half-a-million dollars in damage every year.

Once again government finds itself in a catch-22 with respect to petty crimes committed by many individuals, similar to the dilemma it faces in the drug war. The "trail 'em, nail 'em, and jail 'em" model works no better for reducing graffiti than pot smoking. After all, how many drug offenders quit for good after being arrested and prosecuted? You can expect no greater percentage to change their ways for petty crimes like graffiti, where incarceration serves little real, tangible deterrent because the likelihood of being caught is low.

The pasteup art at left, via Dirty Third Streets, was part of quite a bit of graff that went up in Austin the week following APD's big graffiti bust, so the deterrent effect of APD's sweep so far appears minimal.

Think how many resources were expended to achieve this result compared to the benefit: Even when announcing its "success" at busting 18 people, APD admits there are another 112 it knows about but cannot find evidence to arrest after a 10 month investigation.

Not only is arresting taggers hard to accomplish, using the justice system to punish graffiti feeds into the egos and anti-authoritarian presentiments of the tagger crowd. Austin PD claims to have identified 130 different taggers by their styles including the 18 they arrested, a feat which taggers must view on its face is a compliment - that somebody's paying enough attention to parse their stuff that closely. Playing cat and mouse with law enforcement feeds into a cycle of gamesmanship taggers enjoy, and bored teens with a spray can will inevitably win those matchups, just because there are too many of them and police have better things to do. My guess is APD has not identified close to all of Austin's taggers. Not long ago Corpus Christi police claimed to have identified more than 100 taggers in that much smaller town, and Austin is filled with graffiti and pasteup art.

Despite the aggregate cost of property damage, it's still hard for me to view an individual, isolated graffiti act as felonious, and anyway, it's a fool's errand to try to stop graffiti by taking graff writers "off the streets." There are too many of them, they're too hard to catch, and the penalties don't keep them behind bars long enough to matter, even when a felony is charged, because prisons are overcrowded with much more dangerous folks.

I've argued before that a misdemeanor charge is plenty, particularly if cities combine arrests with two additional approaches: Immediate cleanup and provision of public spaces to young artists.

Like several other Texas cities, Austin is putting significant resources into graffiti cleanup which is a bigger deterrent when done immediately, than the (remote) possibility of punishment. Graff writers will become discouraged if a night of fun and risk results in driving by the next day and seeing their work already removed. Part of the fun for graff writers is to see how long their work can "ride" at a given spot; as public policy matter it's best if that is a matter of hours instead of days or longer (Call 311 in Austin to request graffiti cleanup.)

The rapid cleanup approach can be implemented with much more certainty than punishment of the individual through the judicial system. Austin cleans up 16,000 graffiti sites per year, which doesn't get all of it but amounts to 43 sites per day, a significant effort. The city gets a lot of additional bang for the buck, IMO, when it spends money on cleanup compared to the cost of a criminal investigation. (Eighteen arrests resulting from more than 16,000 crimes isn't a very good ratio.)

The piece Austin doesn't do as well on is providing support and public spaces for young artists - not the scrawled gang tags, but those with real artistic talent, of which there are more than a few among graff writers, possibly even among those arrested. Austin should do a better job of giving them would-be graff writers legal and publicly acceptable outlets. In Australia, Europe, Mexico, and a few US cities including El Paso communities have made efforts to draw talented young artists out of the shadows, giving them legal graff spots or even turning over entire blocks to street artists (with residents' permission and cooperation).

We live in an information age where graphic artists' skills are in high demand. Hell, even the city routinely needs those services. To prosecute youthful talent instead of cultivate it IMO misses an opportunity.

All this to say, I'm mostly encouraged by Austin's approach. It's good to arrest the most frequent offenders, if you can catch them, and I'm glad the city council's commitment to funding graffiti cleanup is showing results. But if the police department spent ten months identifying 130 individual taggers and a couple dozen tagger crews but still can't arrest most of them, maybe they should try letting the Parks Department or some youth services division attempt to open lines of communication. In addition to enforcement and cleanup, I'd like to see the city creating legal venues around town and more opportunities for young artists.

That approach won't work with every graff writer, but whenever it does it'd be cheaper and more effective than prosecuting and jailing them by a country mile, not to mention generate more public art in invited spaces.

See past related Grits' posts:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti solutions: A cost benefit analysis
  
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
  
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at Azteca stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings
• Paint Responsibly: Museum offers hands on graffiti exhibit
  

Best way to terminate surveillance society is through cost-benefit analysis

In a recent episode of the Fox-TV sci-fi hit, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a spin-off from the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator movies about time travel and a future where intelligent machines took over the planet, the eponymous character (who'd returned to the past to eliminate the threat) discovers that, in the fictional plot, the key network that wound up allowing an artificial intelligence system to impose its will on humanity began with the implementation of red light cameras, giving the machines a near-ubiquitous surveillance and control of American cities.

Fictional fantasies aside, with technology advancing so rapidly, it's hard to know how concerned one should be about the possibility of some future, a la The Terminator, in which technology is used to enslave the public rather than liberate us from crime. My favorite quote from the show about the difficulty of that judgment came as Sarah Connor and her band of "heroes" contemplate whether to kill the maker of an artificial intelligence program at a 1997 computer chess tournament:

Cameron: “It could become Skynet.”
Sarah: “It could also become 'Pong.”

While we're a long way from any real world enactment of the "Skynet" scenario from Terminator, we're already to the point where human authorities, using increasingly intelligent machines, routinely use roadway cameras for purposes unrelated to traffic control, or even antithetical to it.

In Houston, tollway cameras have been configured to identify license plate numbers and run them against vehicle registration records and arrest warrants. Meanwhile, in California, red light cameras have been configured so that private vehicles owned by elected officials, public employees and their families will not be ticketed for red light running.

So these technologies already are used both to grant privileges and to bust "bad guys," not to mention (much more likely) low-level ticket scofflaws and other petty offenders not savvy enough to simply stay on the freeway.

Indeed, in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, police want to go even further in the direction of a human-run version of the the ubiquitous, automated surveillance society foreseen in Terminator, placing surveillance cameras in public spaces with feeds directly to the police department. The potential for real-time identification of individuals in the public sphere creates all sorts of scenarios worthy of a good sci-fi plot.

Whatever the merits though, of any arguments about privacy, a surveillance society, slippery slopes, and other debates about cameras centered around individual rights, the best argument against them when it comes to crime reduction is that they don't work. In Britain and other locations where they've been in place long enough to study the results, there's simply little impact on crime.

On his blog this week, Bruce Schneier, who arguably ranks among the most important electronic security specialists in the country (he literally "wrote the book" about cryptography in the computer age), links to a past Grits post in an item about the results from San Francisco's anti-crime cameras. As in Britain and everywhere else I'm aware of, results from San Francisco;s long-term study found that the "best thing that can be said about [cameras] is they have a placebo effect for worried residents," but crime didn't go down overall as a result of their placement.

That's why, rather than waste too much breath arguing about the possibility of Big Brother's potential misuse of camera technologies, a better tactic IMO may be to vet such ideas to determine if they really produce the promised results.

In that respect, my thoughts regarding surveillance cameras aren't that different from those regarding new, state-level "fusion centers" that have aggregated mountains of private citizens' information. Yes, there may be legitimate Big-Brotherish concerns, but those arguments will only ever convince people who are predisposed to agree with them. If those opposed to general public surveillance can demonstrate, however, that promised public safety benefits do not result - another thing security cameras in public areas have in common with fusion centers - those arguments appeal to broader constituencies and situate such opposition much more favorably in the political arena.

Not only that, they have the added benefit of being true.

Are Wire writers promoting jury nullification guilty of aggravated perjury?

Reacting to writers from the brilliant TV series, The Wire, promoting jury nullification in drug cases in Time magazine, a Texas prosecutor submitted a guest piece over at Defending People to express his view that the writers, had they made the statements, in Texas, would be guilty of aggravated perjury by virtue of suggesting that others violate their jurors oath. Go read it for yourself and see what you think of the argument.

Sheriff real, unintentional star of 'Tulia' film

The slew of drug arrests in Tulia in 1999 set off a wave of legal wrangling and political action that turned the state's criminal justice establishment on its ear, and ultimately resulted in the pardoning of dozens of wrongfully convicted people and the dismantling of Texas 50+ Byrne-grant funded drug task forces.

Now, nearly a decade later, those ripples from the legal and political world are steadily filtering into the cultural milieu.

Yesterday afternoon I attended the premier of a new documentary - Tulia, Texas - which opened at the SXSW film festival. Tulia activist Freddie Brookins and his wife, parents of one of those wrongfully arrested, along with Nate Blakeslee, author of a book on the case, attended and answered questions afterward. The missus and I joined them and the filmmakers, Cassandra Herman and Kelly Whalen, afterward at Ruby's BBQ for a meal and a chat.

The hour-long film, which was funded through a public television grant and may wind up on PBS within the next year, featured more extensive interviews with undercover agent Tom Coleman and Sheriff Larry Stewart (the real star of the show) than have previously been available - Blakeslee told me he never got that kind of face time with Coleman in all his years covering the story, and I'm not sure anyone has. I've never heard the disgraced peace officer speak at such length except on the stand.

I say Sheriff Stewart was the star of the show, because his comments more than anyone made sense of the situation for outsiders - not because he explained it well, but because he epitomized the deep denial of any wrongdoing or wrong thinking shared by so many in Tulia. His statements seemed so oblivious to facts proven in both the courtroom and the extensive paper trail documentation, you almost felt sorry for the guy, who clearly was in way over his head.

Almost.

One's sympathy dried up, though, as evidence mounted through the film that Tom Coleman's statements repeatedly didn't match the facts (which resulted, ultimately, in his perjury conviction), and stories emerge of families losing loved ones for several years based on this man's uncorroborated word.

The film is visually gorgeous, and the filmmakers had been tracking the case since 2002, so they had lots of footage from the courtroom drama over the years. I attended several of the events and court hearing featured in the show, and found myself scanning the crowd scenes looking for (and finding) many familiar faces.

Attorney Jeff Blackburn similarly came off in the show as both a legal hero and quite a character, which if you know him is a pretty accurate portrayal. Jeff's a real piece of work, and it shows. Now that he's running the Innocence Project at Texas Tech, I'd guess this video should help significantly with his fundraising; I hope so, anyway.

Most coverage of what happened in Tulia falls along one of two paths - tracking the legal case, as this film and Nate's book do, or tracking the political process, which has dominated much of the MSM news coverage over the years. The piece that you didn't get from the film was that a large-scale, statewide movement developed around the case that passed several corrective laws and ultimately convinced the state to abolish Texas' drug task force system entirely.

It would be possible to view this film and think, "This is just a story about an aberration in a rural backwater, it doesn't happen anywhere else." But drug task forces nationwide operate on an essentially similar model to the one in Tulia. That's a point I wish the film more strongly emphasized, especially at a time when the Byrne grant program and drug task forces nationwide face major budget cuts. President Bush want to de-fund the task forces, which in some states are responsible for up to 85% of all drug arrests.

Indeed, the film only hinted at the odd, left-right coalition that worked together on the political end of the Tulia saga. A questioner after the show expressed surprise that Bill O'Reilly took up the Tulians cause, and the filmmakers were at a loss to explain why. But really, conservatives were as alarmed at this case as liberals. To me, that's one of the most important new developments from the whole episode.

Nationally, the Heritage Foundation and the National Taxpayers Union have been more active opposing drug task force funding than any liberal group. Then-House Criminal Jurisprudence Chairman Terry Keel (R) and Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa (D) spearheaded the relevant legislation that ultimately led to the task forces' demise in Texas and a requirement for corroborating evidence for testimony of undercover drug informants, while Gov. Perry's pardon placed his permanent imprimatur on the case.

Meanwhile, the Tulia episode taught organizations working at the capitol in Austin who'd previously been on opposite sides of the fence to work together for the first time, a development that contributed greatly to coalitions pursuing other criminal justice reforms like strengthening probation or expanding treatment capacity in the justice system.

All that to say, this film captured an important piece, but IMO not the full the legacy of the Tulia case, which in some ways has yet to fully play out. I've wondered if we may look back in a couple of decades and see Tulia as a major turning point for the criminal justice system, an event that permanently changed the terms of debate about America's war on drugs. I hope so.

BLOGVERSATION: See another early review from the Drug Law Blog. See also from Panhandle Truth Squad, a story about Jeff Blackburn demonstrating thta some men are born to greatness, and others have greatness "spilled upon them."

SXSW features new "Tulia" documentary

The Tulia drug sting happened nearly nine years ago, but the reverberations from events in that small Texas town continue to ripple through the nation's psyche, both politically and increasingly, culturally. Though Halle Berry's feature-film version has been put on hold by her pregnancy, I received word yesterday via press release that the drug sting in Tulia, TX will be the focus of a new film - this one a documentary - released at the South by Southwest film festival next week. Here are the details:

TULIA, TEXAS Challenges War on Drugs

World premiere at SXSW Film Festival March 7 – 15, 2008

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Austin, Texas)--TULIA, TEXAS, a documentary film revisiting one of the biggest drug stings in Texas history, will make its world premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival (http://www.sxsw.com) March 7 – 15, 2008, in Austin, Texas.

In 1999, undercover narcotics officer Thomas Coleman and his drug task force rounded up and arrested dozens of residents of the small farming town of Tulia. Thirty-nine of the 46 people charged with selling cocaine to the man later heralded as “Texas Lawman of the Year” were African American. In the following years, disturbing evidence about the investigation and the police officer’s past began to surface.

Filmmakers Cassandra Herrman and Kelly Whalen visited Tulia in 2002 to discover how 46 people had been indicted on the testimony of one undercover cop. The imprisonment of more than 10 percent of Tulia’s adult black population sparked a high profile civil rights case that captured the attention of the national media. Over five years of filming, Herrman and Whalen set out to find meaning beyond the popular images in the mainstream media, developing the trust of key players on opposing sides, and gaining deeper insights into the injustices committed in Tulia.

TULIA, TEXAS tells the stories of the last remaining defendants in prison, the families and lawyers fighting for their freedom, and the sheriff, undercover agent and townspeople who stand against them. The small town's search for justice is a cautionary tale about the price American's pay for the war on drugs.

TULIA, TEXAS is a co-production of Cassandra Herrman and Kelly Whalen and the Independent Television Service. Major funding for the documentary was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

MORE INFORMATION:

To learn more about the film and the issues, visit the film’s website at http://www.tuliatexasfilm.com. A downloadable press kit, including a documentary summary, directors’ statement, and publicity photos, is available at www.tuliatexasfilm.com/press. To request a DVD preview copy of the film, send an email to info@tuliatexasfilm.com.

SXSW screening times of TULIA, TEXAS (showing with Josh Brolin’s “X”):

http://2008.sxsw.com/film/screenings/film/F11467.html

March 8, 2008 – 2:00pm (Dobie Theatre) *Special post-screening appearance by featured characters from Tulia

March 11, 2008 – 9:30pm Dobie Theatre)

March 13, 2008 – 2:30pm (Alamo Lamar 2)

Texas ultimately abolished its statewide system of regional drug task forces as a result of Tulia and other drug task force scandals. This movie release comes at a time when similar drug task forces nationwide are facing budget cuts that could finally put them out of business, too, but oddly their chief defenders have been among the most liberal Democrats in Congress.

Here's hoping that the NAACP, the Drug Policy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation, or somebody who lobbies against Byrne grants in D.C. walks around the capitol to give copies of the DVD to offices of Senate Democrats (Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama - I'm talking to you) whose past advocacy kept similar drug task forces alive.

Chuck Rosenthal Haiku Contest

As the media snowball continues to roll forward regarding Harris DA Chuck Rosenthal's indiscretions, part of me wants to cover the blow by blow, but Kuff is doing a great job at that. So let's for once take a somewhat lighter approach.

Why don't we hold a Haiku contest (that's a Japanese poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure)? Here are a couple I came up with this morning:

Chuck Rosenthal can't
blame anyone but himself
for losing his job.

Or,

The DA's mistress
gets a cushy job
and a county car.

I'll choose the best ones and highlight one per week in Grits' sidebar.

Give it a shot - it's a fun little diversion. Leave your submission in the comments, via email, or post it on your own blog and send me a link.

Fringe Criticisms of Snitching Tread Dangerous Ground

But if you're talking 'bout destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out.

- "Revolution," The Beatles

Long-time readers know I've never been a fan of the "Stop Snitching" mantra (although I think its popularity portends tremendous political and sociological implications). I don't believe it's possible or wise to 100% eliminate the tactic of "flipping" informants from law enforcement's repertoire.

The problems arise because coerced informants have become a major source of police corruption and the second leading cause of wrongful convictions. To me, a more effective rhetorical and strategic approach would focus on identifying policy changes to reduce or mitigate bad outcomes from police reliance on criminal informants.

Here are two more grass roots political responses to snitching that take approaches toward the problem I disagree with, even if I may share some of the participants' goals:

First, the Whosarat database (discussed earlier on Grits here, here, here and here), has offered a $500 bounty for the "most interesting" informant case:

Who’s A Rat (www.whosarat.com) is running a contest with a prize of $500 for the “Most Interesting” new informant profile. The contest will begin on January 8th and all new informant profiles posted between January 8th and February 8th will be considered for the prize. In order to be considered for the contest, all entries must contain documentation of their co-operation with the government.

I understand the impetus behind the Whosarat database and even consider it a quite clever activist business model. As I've written before, though, "Whatever the intent, the tactic risks becoming a stalking horse for thuggery -- protected by the First Amendment and existing case law, to be sure, but irresponsible, I think, to say the least. Bottom line, I think we shouldn't stop snitching, but reform it."

I don't mind naming informants who've been revealed in court documents or investigating their background. Not only have I done so on this blog, I think there needs to be a lot more disclosure and transparency about police use of criminal informants. But the Whosarat approach walks and IMO sometimes crosses a narrow line between generating information needed by attorneys, defendants and the media and intentionally creating and marketing a target list that invites retaliation against the people in it.

Meanwhile, I recently ran across another misguided approach to the topic of "snitching" from the "National Hip Hop Political Convention," which adopted as its theme for a political forum last summer in Atlanta: "F**k the Police: Why Hip Hop Does Not Cooperate."

I can't think of a more foolish and harmful message. The Whosarat people, IMO, are behaving more responsibly.

At least you can argue that Cam'ron was caught off guard on 60 Minutes when he gave his dumb as dirt declaration that he wouldn't snitch on a serial killer ... if you can imagine, a group of political activists actually sat down and thought about the "F**k the Police" event before coming up with that title and message! I wonder who they're trying to convince?

Listen to the video for examples of the kind of narcissistic, short-sighted BS that apparently passes for Hip Hop political analysis these days.

Indeed, art and political strategy are two entirely different things. (Though there is surely "art" to political strategy, the tactics, sadly, do not typically translate across media.) I'm not sure Hip Hop has its own "politics" any more than one can embrace the politics of the violin concerto or of barrelhouse piano. But I know for sure the overall political message promoted at this event was destructive.

Thankfully at least one speaker, Dereka Blackmon, had the courage to tell the crowd that the "F**k the Police" theme was "irresponsible," basically selling kids a political message that was likely to get a bunch of them killed. (She got applause for the line, but hers was a minority opinion.)

A real-world political approach must insist on and reinforce the distinctions between a "witness" and a "snitch" or government informant who trades away their own culpability for a crime in exchange for testimony. Failing to report crime harms real people, just as it harms the neighborhood when criminals are allowed by police to ply their trade because they gave information on someone else. In other words, by framing the debate this way, IMO the Hip Hop Political Convention emboldens and empowers their most bitter and disingenuous critics.

And yes, before it's said in the comments, some speakers did make that distinction, criticizing those who don't take responsibility for their own actions in the justice system as "dishonorable" and distinct from typical witnesses. But who would come to the event to hear those distinctions given how they promoted it?

Just telling youth they should "not cooperate" plays directly into reactionary dismissals of the recently publicized "stop snitching" campaigns. Though several speakers criticized Cam'ron's 60 Minutes response, the truth is that organizers of this event made the same mistake he did, and then some.

Warden threw a party in the county jail ...

Happy 72nd Birthday, Elvis!

In looking up a version of Jailhouse Rock to post here, I ran across some background on the two authors of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" classic, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, that I didn't know, from a recent column in the UK Guardian (Dec. 28):

Jailhouse Rock was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a preposterously successful songwriting team. With tunes such as Kansas City, On Broadway, Love Potion No. 9, Stand By Me, Spanish Harlem, I Who Have Nothing and Hound Dog to their credit, the pair wrote many hits for many different kinds of artist, ranging from forgettable novelty acts to the blues icon Big Mama Thornton to the sultry torch singer Peggy Lee. They also helped launch the career of producer Phil Spector, who helped launch the career of Sonny Bono, who actually did launch the career of Cher. Spector, whose trial on murder charges recently ended in a mistrial in Los Angeles, ruined the soundtrack for Let It Be and produced the Ramones worst LP End of the Century.

Since revulsion at what they had wrought with Let It Be contributed to the Beatles decision to disband, and since End of the Century was viewed as a sellout from which the Ramones never recovered, it can be argued that Leiber and Stoller, by giving Spector work at this pivotal stage in his career, may have planted the seeds for two of the greatest tragedies in the history of popular music. But as neither man could have foreseen or foreheard any of this, they are no more responsible for the strings on "The Long and Winding Road" and "Baby, I Love You" than Richard Wagner is for the rise of the Third Reich.

Thirty-nine songs by Leiber and Stoller were used in the Broadway revue Smoky Joe's Café, the most successful show of its kind ever. Unlike similar revues based on songs by Billy Joel or the Four Seasons, Smoky Joe's Café does not have the fingerprints of Moloch all over it. Jailhouse Rock is one of the last numbers in the show. One verse contains the lyrics:

Number forty-seven said to number three,
You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see;
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.

It has elsewhere been suggested that, even though songwriters didn't generally dwell on such subjects back in 1957, these lyrics may refer to homosexual acts practiced within the walls of American penitentiaries.

Gosh. Do you think?

Snitching dillemmas confronted on the small screen

For those like myself interested in the pros and cons of using police informants, last night was a strong TV night.

First CBS' 60 Minutes offered a high-profile snitching two-fer: An interview with a mob assassin whose testimony implicated Boston mobster Whitey Bulger, and a face to face sit down with Texas pitching ace Roger Clemens over allegations by an uncorroborated informant that he used steroids. Then later in the evening, HBO launched the fifth and final season of The Wire, which arguably has done more to illuminate problems with reliance on informants than any journalist. A few quick comments about each:

Fingering Whitey Bulger: Is it snitching to snitch on a snitch?
Not long after Whitey Bulger was supposedly spotted on the lam in Italy, 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft interviewed John Martorano, a trigger man for the Irish Mob in Boston led by Bulger. Bulger used his position as a federal snitch for more than 30 years to target his opposition, and his FBI handlers supplied information on competitors and rats within Bulger's organization that led to numerous killings. It interested me to hear Martorano's thought process about what he'd done (he received just 12 years for more than 20 murders thanks to a sentence reduction in exchange for his testimony against Bulger's crew - approximately seven months for each admitted killing). Martorano didn't view himself as a mass murderer or a snitch, he said, but as a "vigilante" with a strong moral sense. He considered himself a "witness" instead of a "snitch," and said he came forward to STOP Whitey Bulger from snitching. He would have killed his former boss instead if he hadn't already disappeared from the scene, he said, so cooperating with the feds was his next best avenue for revenge. Watch the whole thing, and also see CBS' interactive portrait on the FBI, including several informant related scandals..

Pitching ace Clemens angry at uncorroborated snitch testimony
Meanwhile, Mike Wallace's interview with Roger Clemens I found equally interesting: As I've written before, these he-said he-said disputes can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and while the interview broke no new ground, it fleshed out the whys and wherefores of the dispute. A key moment came when Wallace confronted Clemens about the informant, Brian McNamee, who accused him in the Mitchell report of using steroids:

"George Mitchell says he believes McNamee and this is why: McNamee got caught up in a federal steroids investigation, and the federal prosecutors agreed not to charge him if he told the truth about his involvement with steroids. But they would charge him if he gave any false information. So Mitchell says McNamee had strong incentives to tell the truth," Wallace says. "What did McNamee gain by lying?"

"Evidently not going to jail," Clemens says.

"Jail time for what?" Wallace asks.

"Well, I think he's been buying and movin' steroids," Clemens says.

The problem is, depending on the circumstances, both arguments are equally plausible: McNamee could have told the whole truth in order to avoid prosecution, or if investigators were pressuring him with threat of jail time if he didn't name names, he could just as easily have manufactured allegations from a decade ago that can no longer be proved or disproved. While other players included in the Mitchell report frequently were identified through sales records and internet credit card transactions, no one has presented such corroborating evidence against Clemens.

Even though some view the upcoming Congressional hearings as a perjury trap for Clemens, from the evidence publicly described so far I can't see either libel or perjury suits sticking - neither side possesses corroborating evidence for their story, so I doubt we'll see libel suits in either direction.

Besides McNamee's allegations, the main reason many question Clemens' veracity is that his pitching career, especially toward the end, seemed almost superhuman, particularly as he aged into his mid-40s when most ball players have long since retired. As I listened to Wallace's questions along those lines, I thought to myself, what about Satchell Paige whose legendary pitching dominance endured past age 50 (though no one ever knew his exact birthday)? What about Nolan Ryan, whose ferocious fastball was as feared in his 40s as in his 20s? There aren't a lot of iron-men hurlers in Major League Baseball history, but we've seen others before Clemens and before the steroid era - simply his productivity at an advanced age, to me, provides no conclusive proof of his guilt.

We just can't know from the currently available evidence what is the truth. Clemens rightly complained that it's becoming virtually impossible for him to clear his name, since he can't prove a negative - that he DIDN'T do something - and that many people will never believe him:

"I don’t know if I can defend myself, I think people, a lot of people, have already made their decisions," he says.

"Well, a lot of people have made…," Wallace says.

"And that's our country, isn't it? Guilty before innocent. That that's the way our country works now. And then everybody's talking about sue, sue, sue. Should I sue? Well, let me exhaust. Let me just spend. How about, let's keep spending," Clemens says. "But I’m gonna explore what I can do and then I want to see if it’s gonna be worth it, worth all the headache." (UPDATE: Clemens had filed suit against McNamee by the time the interview was broadcast.)

Clearly, he's right; few are giving him the benefit of the doubt. At a certain point among journalists in particular a sense of schadenfreude sets in. Like Barry Bonds, lots of people want Clemens' accomplishments to appear tainted, and it shows in the ferocity of the coverage about him.

The Wire, Prop Joe, and Motives for Snitching
There are many reasons to welcome the much-anticipated final season of The Wire, HBO's crime drama set in Baltimore which has provided the most realistic small-screen portrayal of the drug trade and criminal justice politics ever produced.

Though I don't want to turn this blog into a center for TV criticism, to me the series has nearly morphed into a truly historic cultural event - the first ever attempt at a realistic, multi-dimensional approach to storytelling about crime and punishment, particularly as it relates to the War on Drugs.

To promote the new season, HBO has created an outstanding website that gives story summaries from every episode from season one to the present, and even crafted short "prequel" videos to give a sense of some of the characters before the storyline begins.

Click through here and watch the short video portraying a young "Prop Joe," a drug kingpin from Baltimore's East Side, plying his black market trade (selling stolen multiple choice test scores) as a plump high-school youth. When an older thug threatens him and shorts him on payment for the test scores, Prop Joe pulls aside a teacher to sell her information about who's walking around with tomorrow's test scores in his pocket.

The story to me seems nearly iconic: Prop Joe was the one selling test scores in every subject, but his customer was the one who ended up getting caught and presumably punished. It's an old story: The Big Fish get off, the Little Fish get eaten.

Are You Excited About the Final Season of The Wire?

New York magazine featured an interview with Andre Royo, the actor who plays "Bubbles," the noble hero, homeless junkie and sometime confidential informant on the hit HBO series The Wire. The series' final season launches Sunday night, and I'm looking forward to it as much as any TV show in quite a long while. If nothing else, given my interest in "snitching," Royo's character surely is the most graphic portrayal of the cold realities of a street informant in the history of television.

Since we've been recently discussing public attitudes toward snitching, I found interesting his recollection of the real "Bubbles," who he'd met, and the informant's attitude toward working with police, revealed in the response to this question:

"Snitches or potential snitches on The Wire tend to get clipped. How is it that Bubbles, a confidential informant, has stayed alive for so long?
Being a snitch has a negative connotation in our community. I thought that might reflect on me. But Bubbles was a real-life character, he was an informant for [series producer] Ed Burns. He said that the whole neighborhood knew Bubbles was snitching, but they also knew he was a junkie and he was killing himself. What would be the point of getting a body when that person’s already killing himself? Snitching has more weight when it comes to turning on your boys, lying to your friends. If I come into a group and then I turn on my group, that’s a snitch. If I’m on the street, there’s no loyalty there. I’m just doing what I have to do to get high."

RELATED:

• Witness intimidation makes solving crimes harder, but so does public distrust of the justice system, Toronto Star
• So many crimes and reasons not to cooperate, NY Times
• Beauty and the Snitch: Art meets the police state, American Chronicle

Is it reasonable to believe taxation policy will influence sexual assault, or is Texas' "pole tax" just another boondoggle?

I don't closely watch the Ways and Means Committee in the Texas House or Finance in the Senate, so somehow I missed the creation of this new tax during the 80th Texas Legislature.

In what some have dubbed the “pole tax,” Texas will require its 150 or so strip clubs to collect a $5-per-customer levy, with most proceeds going to help rape victims.

Helping rape victims is certainly a noble cause, but why link that to strip clubs? Why not pay for services with extra drivers license fees, or better yet through regular ol' property or sales taxes? Do legislators really believe strip club devotees are somehow collectively, esoterically responsible for rape? More than, say, beer commercials and music videos filled with scantily clad women on TV every day?

And where are all the anti-tax hawks when it comes to sin taxes? That's a LOT of money: State officials estimate it will raise $40 million per year, which would mean about 22,000 people per day visit strip clubs, but by my own back of the envelope calculations, that figure probably underestimates revenue just like they did with the cigarette tax. I suppose legislators assume these taxpayers a) don't vote and b) won't mind being unfairly, officially blamed for causing sex crimes.

"Meth Free Texas" backs drug treatment

I ran across a pro-drug treatment website from the Texas Panhandle titled Meth Free Texas, whose founder Charlene Cheek had a column earlier this year (9/26) in the Amarillo Globe News titled "Drug addiction a matter for medicine, not the courts." The Globe News piece uniquely frames the problem of criminalizing drug addiction as something out of science fiction:

In his novel about the imaginary land called Erewhon, Samuel Butler deals with the criminal code of the Erewhonians, which makes it a crime to have tuberculosis.

The very notion of punishing someone for a disease seems preposterous, yet we do it a thousand times a day, every day, in courtrooms across our nation.

A hard hitting analogy, huh? Cheek quotes a judge from Butler's novel offering justifications for criminalizing tuberculosis that can be heard in courtrooms and DA's press conferences every day across the country where drug prohibition is enforced:

"It is all very well to say that you came of unhealthy parents, and had a severe accident in your childhood which permanently undermined your constitution; excuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the criminal; but they cannot for one moment be listened to by the ear of justice."

Meth Free Texas advocates for expanding drug treatment alternatives, particularly in the Texas Panhandle. On the MFT website, Cheek laments:

The sad truth is, there are no "Treament" facilities in the Texas Panhandle. Why is that? It certainly is not because we do not have a need.

In Lubbock, Texas, Managed Care is our nearest state funded facility. Even then, there is a very long waiting list and a limited number of "beds" available. Anyone that has tried to find help for a loved one, understands this frustration. Unless you have the monetary resources and are willing to spend some "big bucks" for treatment...indigent treatment is almost non-existent

Good work, Charlene, and good luck! Finding this site reminds me I need to check up to see how new treatment dollars allocated to the TX Department of Criminal Justice this year have been spent so far, and where.

TYC Documentary Project Launches Website

Say "Howdy" to Emily Pyle and Co. over at their new website, the TYC Documentary Project. The film, which last I heard is scheduled to come out in January 2009, tracks the stories of four kids incarcerated in the Texas Youth Commission. I hope they come up with a catchier title before the movie opens! - just kidding, Emily. :)

Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings

Here are some folks who've taken the idea of "invited" graffiti to its logical extreme. Via Russia Today, with permission from government authorities, Moscow residents have turned to graffiti artists to liven up dull, Soviet-era buildings. Is that one of the coolest pieces of graff you've ever seen, or what?

As you drive around town the next few days, look around to identify spots with blank walls or other public spaces that might be put to better, more artistic use - ask yourself whether you'd rather see something like this there instead?

Graffiti in Austin up 400% from 2002

A reader recently asked what percentage of graffiti comes from self-styled "artists" and how many were gangbangers. I didn't have an answer, and before now have never seen anyone offer even an educated guesstimate. But according to The Daily Texan ("Illegal graffiti on the rise, but can be artistic expression," Sept. 21):

Most cases do not reflect the gang-tagging community, but instead represent a growing art subculture within youth.

Gang-related graffiti accounts for 15 percent to 20 percent of the clean-ups, Casarez said, but the most common offenders are young adults influenced by a pop culture art phenomenon.

"If you go back in 2002, you can see this weird tagging subculture pop out along with the skater revolution," he said. "In five years, this art revolution has just developed not only at UT, but has grown nationwide into such a serious problem."

I didn't realize the universities had secured special enhancements for graffiti on school property. Said a UTPD Sgt, "Under the penal code, anyone who defaces university property is automatically charged with a first-degree felony and will be arrested." A first degree felony is 5-99 years. Yikes! Can that really be true? Rape, by comparison, is a second degree felony (2-20). I'll bet most students don't know about that high penalty any more than I did, so I bet it doesn't create that big of a deterrent - not nearly as much as the university's longstanding commitment to rapid cleanup.

I'd also never seen documentation that graffiti in Austin (and likely elsewhere) has enjoyed such a massive growth spurt, though I suppose I've seen the visual evidence. Citywide:

Every year, graffiti cases in the city increase by nearly 2,000. In 2002, there were 3,900 cases, with 15,750 in 2007, said Tony Casarez, the program coordinator for Austin Graffiti Abatement Program.

Graffiti removal cost the city more than $295,000 in 2007, according to the city's budget Web site.

That means reported graffiti crime has increased 400+% in Austin since 2002. That's quite a spike. See prior Grits graffiti coverage.

Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff

I've been arguing that part of the public policy solution to graffiti must be the creation of legitimate, invited public spaces for artwork in addition to banning uninvited graff.

El Paso has begun an experiment in that direction, with the local police department sponsoring a graffiti mural contest and selecting four teenage winners who were given carte blanche to illustrate four highway support poles. Two of the four winners will continue to work with the city on other projects, reports the El Paso Times ("Graffiti murals, artists take bows at Lincoln Park," Sept. 17).

Lately, as I've considered the possibility of creating spaces for "invited" graffiti, I've realized that support pylons holding up elevated highways and roads, like over- and underpasses, are prime real estate for potential invited graffiti projects. Electrical boxes are another obvious spot where graffiti could be invited, and also scaffolding at construction sites. (Indeed, in Brooklyn, NY a developer has begun using scaffolding with graffiti pre-installed to reduce uninvited graff.)

In fact, as you drive around town over the next few days, start to pay attention to the spots where you most commonly see graffiti and ask yourself, would I object if a quality, youth-drawn mural were allowed here instead? Anywhere you see quickly scrawled graff that you consider a blight could potentially be a spot hosting an invited youth mural. In most cases, as with the support poles along the highways, such illustrations would improve the landscape, not mar it. That's the idea behind a project in Brownsville where the local alternative education program takes kids out to paint murals over graffiti-ridden walls. And taggers are much less likely to deface property that's covered with recognizably intentional art.

There are two prongs, in my mind, to a successful graffiti strategy for municipalities: Eliminating uninvited graffiti as quickly as possible at minimum or no expense to the property owner, and creating (in cooperation with private interests) invited public spaces and opportunities for graff writers to display their work.

Graff writers are seldom caught by police, so jacking up criminal penalties against taggers has resulted in little decline in the amount of graffiti in most Texas cities. Rapid elimination of uninvited tags creates a stronger disincentive, while inviting talented artists to decorate public spaces gives them a reason to come out of the shadows and behave more responsibly, disrupting the culture of alienation that fuels petty vandalism. (Photos from the El Paso Times.)