“But then they tried something different. On the advice of David Kennedy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, they started talking to community leaders in West End. They found out who the street drug-dealers were. There were fewer than they had expected: only 16, of whom three were habitually violent. Patiently, they compiled dossiers on each of them. Then they arrested and prosecuted the violent ones, and invited the rest in for a chat.

“The young dealers were shown the evidence against them, and given a choice. If they stopped dealing drugs and carrying guns, they would not be prosecuted. A “community co-ordinator” sat down with each of them and asked him what he needed to go straight…. Then prosecutors warned them that if they did not stop that day, they would be sent to jail, possibly for the rest of their lives.

“It worked.”

In this case mercy seems to have served better than exacting justice, and we should more readily forgive if the evidence indicates it is a better solution than retribution.

“To deter, a punishment must be swift, certain and severe. Of these, severity matters the least, reckons Mr Kleiman, and there is a trade-off: the harsher the punishment, the more legal safeguards are required to ensure it is not misapplied…. It turns out that milder sanctions can be swifter and more certain.”

On another note, ”Mark Kleiman, the author of ‘When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment’, [says] The only good reason to punish is to prevent crime, either by locking criminals up so they cannot reoffend, or by deterring others.” While that sounds good, we ought not become entirely consequentialist and lose sight of the order of justice that has been disturbed in some measure by the evildoer. If we do not remember that, then punishment could theoretically be harshly disproportionate if that were proven to prevent crime.

In short, removing a choice can make the entire system function better. The evidence cited is generally with regard to roads, that different cities have seen improved traffic by closing off a road. “Because selfish drivers optimize a wrong function, they can be led to a better solution if you remove some of the network links,” says Michael Gastner, a computer scientist who researched the topic.

Removing the option that appears best from a selfish perspective, if it is intrinsically wrong, will make life better for everybody. That’s worth mentioning to someone who wants to talk about the “best choice” for a pregnant teenager or an unhappy spouse who wants out of his/her marriage (this recent Time cover article mentioned many benefits of marriage).

So what about the other half? How well were contraceptives working for them? Hopefully this doesn’t sound mean spirited, but I just want to point out a reason for reevaluating the presumption that more contraceptives will fix the problem. See Unsafe at Any Speed and Breaking Conventions for other related posts and articles.

So it is a chance for me to mention How to Teach Science to the Pope from last September’s Discover (sorry I’ve been remiss in linking to it). This feature length article feels like a bunch of small columns that were stitched together. It begins with Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, astronomer for the Vatican Observatory, moves to an institutional description of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, then the spotlight shifts to Richard Dawkins, and then bounces between the Pontifical Council for Culture and various controversies with further questions on the relations between science and religion. As you might expect from such an article, some parts are better than others, but it strikes me as fair, and a worthwhile read. Some snips in case you don’t have time for the whole thing:

“Though it is virtually unknown among laypeople, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences is an independent and remarkably influential body within the Holy See. Over the years its membership roster has read like a who’s who of 20th-century scientists…” [author] translates a JP2 statement inundated with philosophical language to say “In the pope’s eyes, the academy is an instrument that teases scientific fact from fiction.”

After talking with Dawkins the author muses, “In the many interviews I had with priests, each expressed a sophisticated theology that seemed far more abstract than what you might find occupying the mind of an average believer. Is belief in a deeply mysterious unknown root of the universe such a bad thing for science, even if it is perceived through the framework of Christian concepts and imagery?”

Father George Coyne, the well-respected retired head of the Vatican Observatory, when given the chance to respond to Dawkins’ reference to him: “I did not tell Richard Dawkins that there was no reason to believe in God, I said reasons are not adequate. Faith is not irrational, it is arational; it goes beyond reason. It doesn’t contradict reason. So my take is precisely that faith, to me, is a gift from God. I didn’t reason to it, I didn’t merit it—it was given to me as a gift through my family and my teachers…. My science helps to enrich that gift from God, because I see in his creation what a marvelous and loving god he is. For instance, by making the universe an evolutionary universe—he didn’t make it a ready-made, like a washing machine or a car—he made it a universe that has in it a participation of creativity.”

“It’s the nagging persistence of a mechanistic view of humanity that troubles Church officials. For that and other cultural concerns, the Vatican turns to the Pontifical Council for Culture…. ‘There is a myth that surrounds science,’ [undersecretary] Monsignor de Toca says. ‘Science with a capital S is seen by many people as a religion itself. There are also the myths of science itself: the Galileo affair, Darwin, creationism—they are not strictly scientific issues; they belong to culture. We are interested in those trends, those phenomena—for example, the struggle between creationists and evolutionists.’”

“Historically, theologians sometimes respond to scientific knowledge by changing their interpretation of Holy Scripture, moving from a literal perspective to a spiritual one. St. Augustine, for example, struggled in his acceptance of the idea of the earth as a sphere but eventually conceded to science. ‘When there are convincing reasons, we must interpret the Bible in a different way,’ de Toca explains.”

“In 2003 the Pontifical Council for Culture began coordinating a focused program called STOQ, which stands for Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest. The program traces its roots to John Paul II’s call for a renewed dialogue among scientists, theologians, and philosophers.”

I don’t know of any reason to think Park, who disdains any religion, has insider info; I report it more because it is troubling that this can be thought a plausible explanation.

“When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalised, increasingly internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news…

“The sociology major’s made-up quote – which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer’s death March 28 – flew straight on to dozens of US blogs and newspaper websites in Britain, Australia and India.

“They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia quickly caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it, but not quickly enough to keep some journalists from cutting and pasting it first.

“A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an email and the corrections began.”