Mug Shots: Transgender “Johns”

This is the second in a series of articles regarding a policy of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), in conjunction with the Mayor’s office, to make publicly available (online for 30 days) mug shots of all individuals who have been arrested (not convicted) for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution. Part One: The Public Shaming of “Johns”

When we first began examining Chicago “mug shot” data, something caught our attention: a disproportionate number of transgender individuals are apparently being arrested for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution. These individuals are designated as male (actually, only men are on the website) but appear fairly definitively dressed as women in their mug shots.

This sparked our interest and provoked some questions. What proportion of those arrested are transgender and why do so many transgender individuals appear on the website?

To answer these questions (and many others), we began a systematic categorization of the mug shot subjects by race and gender. A team of trained graduate students coded the data. To infer race, they examined surnames and mug shot photos. To infer transgender status, they used visual cues based on the mug shots, such as hairstyles, make-up, and clothes. All three team members had to agree before a final code was assigned. When they disagreed, the subject’s gender was coded “unknown.” We were conservative in categorizing variables.

The results of our analysis follows, starting with where in Chicago transgender arrests are occurring. (Note: For the maps, the arrests cover the period 3/8/2010 to 3/9/2012.  For the table, the arrest dates are from 3/8/2010 to 3/30/2012.)

Mug Shots: The Public Shaming of “Johns”

This is the first installment in a series regarding a policy of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), in conjunction with the Mayor’s office, to make publicly available (online for 30 days) mug shots of all individuals who have been arrested (not convicted) for patronizing or soliciting for prostitution.  On the website, anyone with internet access can see an arrestee’s:

• Mug shot
• Name
• Age
• Sex (although all are biological men)
• Home address (the city block)
• Arrest location
• Arrest date
• Arrest statute
• Whether their car was impounded

Since 2010, the SSRC has been monitoring the website and collecting screen shots every 30 days to create a database with all the available information.  We have begun some preliminary mapping of this data.

This first map shows where the prostitution arrests are taking place. For the maps, the arrest dates are from 3/8/2010 to 3/9/2012. Not surprisingly, most arrests occur on the West and South Sides. While the vast majority of these arrests are for street-based prostitution, one of the more interesting (surprising?) findings is the extreme street-nature of the arrests. Instead of being clustered in neighborhoods, they appear to follow major streets in Chicago, often crossing several neighborhoods.  (The exception to this is the cluster around the Englewood and Auburn Gresham neighborhoods.)

Data, Media, and “Scary Numbers”

I was reading the NPR news blog over a cup of tea when I came across an article called Housing Starts Drop, But Building Permits Are Up. Housing starts generally refer to the new construction of privately-owned residential buildings. My gut reaction to the headline was merely a thought, what does all of this mean?  As I read further I learned that there was a 5.8 percent drop in housing starts from February to March 2012. Bloomberg News reported that this unexpected drop leaves housing starts at a five-month low. Although both sources reported declining housing starts, based on a joint press release from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, they highlighted an increase (of 4.5 percent) in the number of building permits issued from February to March 2012. This statistic is certainly telling us something about the housing market but what are these economists and journalists really saying? Well, the increase in building permits is a proxy for new residential construction, so when there is an increase in permits, future construction is expected. Economists often use these statistics to project whether or not the housing market will expand or decline. In other words, these statistics are most often used to predict economic activity in the housing market. According to these articles, the development of new housing is on the decline even though permits for new privately-owned buildings have increased.

The haves and the have-nots

Most Americans are unaware of how unequally wealth is distributed in this country. As of 2007, the top 1% of Americans had a net worth of 34.6% (more than $12 trillion) and held 49.7% of all the investment assets according to sociologist William Domhoff and the IRS. These wealth-holders take home almost one-quarter of the national income (24%). More than 1.3 million of them are men, 0.97 million are women; 21.3% are under 50 years of age; 50% are married.

The same data indicate that in 2007, California had the most residents with a net worth of at least $2 million, followed by New York, Florida, New Mexico, and Texas. Illinois ranked sixth. However, if you consider the concentration of wealth alongside the population of each state, Wyoming ranks first followed by Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, California, South Dakota, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts.

Where is The Middle Ground between Mandatory and Discretionary Domestic Violence Legislation?

Image credit: Sodahead.com

Years ago when I was living in Boulder, Colorado, I volunteered as a legal advocate with the Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (SPAN) and learned about catastrophic cases of domestic violence. As part of my training to become a legal advocate, I became familiar with the federal and state-specific legislation covering domestic violence. Colorado is one of 22 states that apply mandatory or preferred arrest in cases of domestic violence. When they enacted the mandatory arrest law in 1994, legislation fostered by the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), policymakers had the best of intentions to protect former and potential victims from repeated intimate partner violence.

Mandatory arrest laws were enacted to protect women from experiences like that of Tracey Thurman, a Connecticut woman who was left for dead in the driveway by her husband who had beaten and stabbed her multiple times in 1984. Against all odds, Tracey not only survived her husband’s attack, but successfully sued the City of Torrington, Connecticut for failing to protect her after she had repeatedly reported her husband’s violent episodes to authorities. Unsurprisingly, after Thurman’s case, domestic violence advocates nationwide pushed legislators to pass mandatory and pro-arrest laws that transfer the decision to press charges from women to law enforcement officers.

However, empirical evidence in the last decade has caused some researchers and practitioners to raise their eyebrows.