Any SEO guru worth his fee will tell you that, once your blog gets some mention or award or whatnot, you need to pump out a lot of content right away. Otherwise, people who come to visit out of curiosity will stop coming back when they don’t see updates. And I have no reason to doubt that they’re right.
Nevertheless, we don’t write this for the hits. So after the ABA Journal very kindly put us on their blawg list a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t start churning out more posts — on the contrary, we’ve only had one substantive post since then. There has been plenty to write about, but we just haven’t gotten to it.
The reason, of course, is that we started doing our illustrated guide to criminal law about the same time, and the response has been so unexpected and overwhelming that we’ve felt obligated to get at least the introductory sections finished before the holidays. Starting off with first principles, we’ve covered what crime and punishment are, and the various purposes of punishment, and now we’re working on a sixth installment on mens rea and culpability. With any luck, we’ll have that out this week.
And then we’re taking a break with the family, which usually means even less time to write than usual, so there might not be another update here until after New Year’s.
So if we don’t get a chance to rap at ya before then, here’s wishing you a merry Christmas, happy Hannukah, cool Kwanzaa, super Solstice, and a very happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Nathan
Your illustrated guide to criminal law is amazing. Well done.
Thanks, I really appreciate it!
In you illustrated guide you said that 85% of those arrested were arrested only once. Do you have a reference for that factoid? My guess is that the measurements of that quantity cluster between 80% to 90% and the 85% figure is typical value.
Most recidivism studies focus on those who were imprisoned, who tend to have a recidivism rate around 65% according to various Bureau of Justice Statistics studies. But there are studies out there on general recidivism that I’ve read over the years. The first one I read, around 1996, was strictly for juveniles, and it used the 83% figure. Each one I’ve seen since then has been pretty close to that number. But I don’t have a source at my fingertips at the moment (I’m on vacation out of state).