…In general, mixed groups were likelier to solve the crime than the homogeneous groups were, but — perhaps reflecting feelings of disloyalty that come from making common cause with a perceived rival — the teams didn’t realize they were working together so well. Even as they convicted the right man, the heterogeneous teams were likelier to report afterward that they’d done the job inefficiently and not very collegially. Unmixed teams that picked the wrong guy believed they’d worked pleasantly and well. Their watch ran smoothly; it just kept the wrong time…
Archive for April 6th, 2009
As reported in TIME
…But there are big issues here, issues of economy and simple justice, especially on the sentencing side. As Webb pointed out in a cover story in Parade magazine, the U.S. is, by far, the most “criminal” country in the world, with 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its prisoners. We spend $68 billion per year on corrections, and one-third of those being corrected are serving time for nonviolent drug crimes. We spend about $150 billion on policing and courts, and 47.5% of all arrests are marijuana-related. That is an awful lot of money, most of it nonfederal, that could be spent on better schools or infrastructure — or simply returned to the public….
