Lecture 1, Part 2 - Criminological Theories PDF

SPEAKER 0 Greetings everyone. This week we are going to conclude our discussion of crime and crime causation. I want to pick up where I left off last week. Um, I'm going to try to I'm going to cover, uh, hopefully in a brief and succinct fashion. Um, several different theories of criminal behavior,...

SPEAKER 0 Greetings everyone. This week we are going to conclude our discussion of crime and crime causation. I want to pick up where I left off last week. Um, I'm going to try to I'm going to cover, uh, hopefully in a brief and succinct fashion. Um, several different theories of criminal behavior, i.e. what people scholars assume, uh, causes people to engage in crime. So we're going to talk about choice theories. We're going to talk about biology, social structures, social processes, social conflict. Um, I'm going to move into contemporary choice theories, life course theories. And then we're going to conclude with, um, a discussion on equal opportunities. So when thinking about criminological theory, uh, theories of criminal behavior. Um, we can break theories down, um, according to two different schools of thought. The first is the classical school, and the second is the positive school. So the classical school is represented with kind of the scales you see there. It says benefits and cost. The insinuation is that, um, people evaluate, um, whether their behavior is going to benefit them or cause them to experience some, some form of harm. The other side, the positive school maintains that it's some force, either inside or external to the individual that propels them into, uh, criminality. And we're going to talk about these in a much more nuanced fashion as we unfold the lecture today. So starting with the classical school, um, Again, the idea being that individuals evaluate the, um, the utility of their behavior, and they're going to likely, um, engage in behaviors that they believe is going to be beneficial and they're going to, um, desist from behaviors that they think are going to cause them some form of harm or some associated, um, cost. There are two people that you should be familiar with, um, in this this classification of of theories. The first is Cesar Bechara. Uh, he's the father of classical criminology. Okay. So we'll talk about, um, another, um, very famous criminological scholar who is also considered the father of something. But Bakari is the father of classical criminology. In 1764, he wrote on Crimes and Punishment. Um. He advocated for a more, um, humanized and rationalized approach to addressing people who violate the the social contract. He advocated for punishments to reflect, um, interest in public safety, not revenge. Meaning we just don't punish people for vengeful purposes just because they did something. We we punish people to, um, bring about a public safety in some way. He advocated for, uh, a rational and fair system of processing people who violate the, uh, social codes. So here he's talking about he wanted to see written codes, what we would call now statutes, uh, that explicitly Identified what punishment could be meted out by the justice system instead of just willy nilly making decisions, um, on the fly when determining one's fate. He also advocated for limiting the discretion of judges, meaning not allowing them to have so much sway in the decision making right, which would obviously be assisted if we had written formal codes. Um, he also maintained that the punishment should be, um, commensurate to the crime, meaning, um, the harm in um exacted by punishment should be proportional to the harm caused by the criminal actions. So punishment fitting the crime, not necessarily fitting the criminal. Again, this is kind of all in an effort to make things, um, more fair. All right. We talk about punishing crimes, not people. That means kind of the extra legal considerations that we might talk about this week, or certainly we'll talk about as we move forward. Um, and the semester should not influence one's punishment. It doesn't matter what you look like where you come from. Uh, punishment should be similar for similar crimes. And that is one of Baker's most prominent, prominent, um, beliefs. Uh, another person that you should be familiar with is Jeremy Bentham. Uh, Bentham wrote, um, Principles of Morals and Legislation in 1789. He believed in this concept of utility, meaning people do things that they find valuable to them. Um, what is, you know, going to bring about the greatest amount of good for the individual and ultimately society too. Um, this very utilitarian perspective that, um, if it benefits the most, it doesn't have to benefit. All right. So we see this in in our laws, you don't need 100% of people to, to vote in favor of a law. You only need, you know, 51% to vote in favor of a law. Uh, or if we're talking about certain laws and the, you know, legislature, they need a supermajority. But the idea being that something doesn't have to benefit everyone. And this idea of utility also, um, maps to individuals, right? People who believe that, uh, their actions are going to bring them more benefit than harm are likely to engage in those those actions. And Bentham believed that man has two masters, pleasure and pain, and that those can be manipulated to, um, control behavior. Right. So we can make something less pleasurable, uh, or something more painful. Right. That's going to change the calculus in the individual's, um, decision making. And, um, might either lead them to do something that we want them to do or lead them not to do something we don't want them to do. Right. So these are kind of levers, if you will, um, that Bentham maintains society can play vis a vis punishment. Right? We can ramp up the consequences. We can ramp up the certainty of getting caught according to to to Bentham's principles, all of which should, um, have an influence on individuals behavior. Moving on to the positive school, I'm going to talk about a lot of different, um, theoretical perspectives that fall under the positive school. And as I said, um, at the outset here, the the primary perspective of, of positivist scholars is that, you know, something makes people commit crime. The question is, what is it? Right. So they all believe that there are um, or is an outside or inside force that compels someone to, um, engage in criminality. But different scholars point to different features that propel individuals to engage in criminality. So we're going to start off talking about, um, you know, scholars who have identified biology as well as, um, social structure. Um, but again, the main point here is that something, you know, that's outside of the individual's control leads him or her to deviant or criminal behavior. So the first person we're going to talk about is, uh, César Ambrosio, who is considered to be the father of modern criminology. So whereas Baccala was the considered or is considered the father of classical um, Ambrosio is considered the father of modern criminology. And 1876 he penned um criminal man and ultimately um. He identified atavism as the key feature, uh, leading individuals to engage in crime. And so he maintained that individuals who looked like evolutionary throwbacks. So he identified some, some distinct markers, um, big heads, protruding foreheads, um, large ears, um, to name a few. Later on, he also went on to to identify tattoos as being something that was indicative of of criminality. Um, Ambrose's work has been, uh, discredited, for sure, but it's an important, um, for you to, to to know of its existence. Um, particularly the criminal man, which is considered to be the first writings devoted to criminality. Certainly other people had written about, uh, crime and criminality, but this is considered to be the first text devoted solely to, um, criminality. And as scholars began to, to move away from kind of the biological explanations of crime, other explanations began to emerge. Um, social structure is one. So Sean Mackay, um, put forth their social disorganization theory, um, in which they maintain that it's areas, not people, um, that are criminal genic, meaning that, um, create criminality. And they pointed to, um, four key, um, social constructs that they believed influenced, um, social disorganization. So social mobility, so people, you know, constantly moving in and out of areas poverty and maintained high rates of poverty or associated with social disorganization, population heterogeneity. We're talking about the differences among the people living in certain areas. And again, when they were writing in the early 1900s, this took on a little bit of a different meaning than it does today, because at that time they weren't talking about, you know, uh, successive waves of immigrants from other countries coming to they specifically studied in Chicago to look for employment and how cultural and language differences impeded the transmission of pro-social norms. Right. So they thought, okay, if you have a bunch of French and Italian and German, um, and Slavic individuals coming and they can't communicate with one another, they all have their own set of cultural norms, um, that they're bringing with them from back home. And this creates an environment where people don't necessarily know what, um, they should be and should not be doing. And then the fourth is urbanism. And here we're talking about density. Lots of people living in close proximity to one another. There's a lack of autonomy, lack of privacy. All of these things can kind of feed into, um, creating a disorganized and criminal genic environment. And so Sean Mackay maintained that high levels of social disorganization lead to crime. And their research is really interesting because they they didn't longitudinal studies over time. And what they showed was that it didn't matter what which immigrant population was living in, um, the areas closest to the city center. That crime was always most rampant in that area. So as immigrant populations moved out, once they save money from the city center, the crime didn't move with them. And so that's what led them to this conclusion that it's really the area, not the people, that are criminal. Genic, uh, another theory, social structure theory that you should be familiar with is Robert Mertens anomie or strain theory. Um, and Merton maintained that, you know, one of the culprits in criminality is, um, the idea of the American dream, right? Um, because the American dream cannot be achieved by. All right. The economic system just doesn't have the resources for everyone to achieve the American dream. And so he maintained that it's the gap between what people expect and what they can legitimately achieve. That leads to strain. And then when people experience strain, they have, um, a choice to make, according to to Merton and its different adaptations that people can, um, engage in. And he maintained that people who are innovators are most likely to turn to crime. So some people just kind of adopt some people withdrawal and then some people, um, innovate. And innovators are most likely to turn to crime. And again, here we're talking about this idea that the American dream is, um. You know, widely believed in. Um, everyone is told that our most everyone is told that anyone can achieve it. And Merton said, and you know, that's not true because the social and economic structure of society cannot possibly provide, um. Uh, enough resources for everyone to, um, achieve the, the American dream. And so these scholars, so focused on social structure were recognizing that crime patterns tended to not be random, particularly, uh, Sean McKay. But even Merton's work applied cross-culturally, you know, looking at other, he was looking at other nations that have far less, uh, crime than than the United States. And so this has kind of evolved over time to, to a pretty firm understanding that crime is not, um, randomly distributed. Okay. So what we have here is, um, a map of Columbus, Ohio. This is some research that colleague and I did in 2004. We were looking at, um, violent crimes. Okay. So this is all about crimes that were reported to the Columbus Police Department 2004. And what you can see if you look at the map is that, you know, some areas have a lot of blue dots, some areas have very few and some areas have none. Right. And so if crime were random, um, we wouldn't see these patterns. Right. Uh, and if crime were random, we would expect it to look something like the smaller, uh, and Inlay on on the right, right where there's no patterning to those dots. There just literally dots in a space that cannot you cannot detect any meaningful patterns. So the important thing you know from a criminological or. Criminal justice perspective is to try to understand why is crime happening in these areas. And that's where, you know, the, the social, structural, um, theorists as well as some of the other ones that we're going to talk about momentarily, come in there trying to explain why is it that crime is occurring where it is occurring, when it is occurring? As we move on from social structure, we start to see scholars focusing on social processes. So Edwin Sutherland, who also studied crime and in Chicago and was a part of the Chicago School of Criminology, much like Shawn McKay. Looked at Shawn McKay's work and said, well, it's fascinating. You're on to something. But I have another question. Not everyone that lives in these energetic areas commits crime, so it cannot just be the area in and of itself that leads to, uh, crime. There has to be something else. And so he put forth, um, his theory of differential association. Now his theory is comprised of nine propositions. I'm not going to talk about all of them. Um, I'm only going to mention two and just very briefly. But his contention was that criminal behavior is is learned behavior just like any other behavior, just as you have learned to go to school, work hard to, uh, get a job in a career, Individuals who engage in criminality learn that behavior. And he maintained that it's learned through personal interaction with intimate others. So what he's saying here is that it's it's not, um. Instances where people are watching something from afar or reading about something and then adopting that, that behavior, you know, that they're learning through personal interactions with other individuals who engage in those behaviors. And these are people that they know well. Another social process theory is social reaction or labeling theory, put forth by Edwin uh Lampert. Now, Lampert, um, had an interesting take. He maintained that society is the one that creates criminals Through its reaction. So he identified the distinction between primary and secondary deviance. And so he maintained that, um, most people engage in deviant behavior, and it's society's reaction to that primary deviance that can lead to sustain deviance or secondary deviance, as he maintained. Um, and so when someone deviates from society's expectations and, and they're punished, that punishment is very static. Right. And he maintained that it cuts individuals off from legitimate opportunities. And so ultimately, it's the way that society responds that creates the criminal, according to Lambda and other social reaction theorists. Um, now, this is obviously, um. Likely hard to hard to accept, um, with 100%, um, veracity. But there is some truth to this that once someone is punished, they are stigmatized and legitimate opportunities are often, um, severed. Okay. Um, and then I don't think that lemma or any social reaction theorists, um, suggest that punishment, um, should not occur, but I think it's the stigmatization of punishment that really is the culprit here. Um, another social process theory that you should be familiar with is, uh, Sykes and Matt's neutralization theory. Okay. Um, they maintain That it's not only the behaviors of engaging in crime that people need to to learn, but they also need to learn how to neutralize their feelings of guilt. And so they maintain that criminals know right from wrong. It's impossible for them to not because examples of right and wrong, good and evil, bad, good. However we want to to to frame it, are omnipresent. Okay. Um, so individuals know that what they're doing is wrong and they must learn to neutralize their feelings of guilt for violating the social expectations. And they identified five techniques that offenders might use to neutralize guilt. So they might deny that their be their behavior, caused anyone any harm. They might deny responsibility for their behavior. They might deny that there is actually a victim. They might condemn the condemns, or they might appeal to a higher loyalty. And for the purposes of of this class, you know, we don't have to really dive into any of those tech techniques in a meaningful way. But when you get to crime theory, um, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll explore what these mean in a more nuanced way to provide a better, uh, better context. But it's important for you to understand kind of the meat of, um, Sikes and Moses neutralization theory, and that is that it's not simply behaviors and techniques that people need to learn, uh, to engage in crime, but it's also they need to learn how to alleviate their, um, their, their feelings of guilt so that they can maintain a positive self-image of themselves. Right. Because that's another thing that Sykes and Mazza um noted that people don't want to have a negative Of self-image of themselves. So in order to preserve a positive self-image, they they make these excuses for their behavior. And if we probably thought about this, um, long enough, we could identify that we ourselves do this. Um, maybe not, um, for serious criminal actions, but if you're texting and driving, you might make some excuses to why? Why you were doing so. You needed to to know what was going on or find out where something was happening. Like it's all an excuse because at the end of the day, texting and driving is illegal and but you're making an excuse so that you don't feel that sense of guilt. At least that's what Sykes and Montse would say. And then the final social process theory that we're going to talk about is Travis Hirsch's social bond, um, or social control theory. Um, and Hershey had a very interesting, um, question that he asked instead of asking, why do people commit crime? He asked, um, why don't more people commit crime, right? Because he believed that people were, um, kind of naturally hedonistic, if you will, self-serving. And he came up with, um, a social bond or social control theory that maintains, you know, individuals who are highly bonded to, uh, conventional people or institutions are less likely to engage in crime, uh, because they don't want to disappoint either the people or the institutions, and they have less time to commit to running afoul. So he identified four elements of a social bond. That's an attachment. So people who are highly attached to pro-social people or pro-social institutions commitment. So people who have a high level of commitment to pro-social people or pro-social institutions involvement. So if you're highly committed and you're highly involved, less likely to, um, engage in crime and then belief, if you believe in the, the, the institution or the relationship, um, you're less likely to run afoul. And so people who are highly bonded, um, have strong social bonds to, to pro-social people and institutions are less likely to engage in crime. Flip that around. He maintained that people with weak bonds, um, are more likely to engage in crime because they don't feel the same, uh, sense of disappointment. Right? They're not bonded to any one or anything in a meaningful way. And so their criminality is unlikely to, um, induce a sense of disappointment as we move on through the chronological time of of criminological theory, we get to social conflict theory. Um. Prominent scholar associated with social conflict theory is Karl Marx, who maintained that capitalism creates conflict. So he maintained that the elite own all the means of production and pay the the working class low wages. Um, over time, uh, the profits are used to replace human labor with technology. So the working class are underpaid, they're paid enough, you know, to keep coming back. Um, but not enough to to maintain or enjoy a good life. And over time, this, um, kind of percolates into dissatisfaction and then ultimately, uh, conflict. So we can talk about two different classifications of crime here. Um, you can talk about expressive crimes. So expressive crimes are those that demonstrate dissatisfaction with one's with one's treatment. Right. So engaging in criminality because one feels like they've been mistreated. Instrumental crimes are those that serve a purpose to the offender. So as an example, um, a gang member killing another gang member is expressive, whereas stealing food or money for food would be instrumental, right? Stealing for the purpose of providing a necessity would be considered an instrumental crime. And. killing, um, another person because they have a different perspective or belong to a different group would be considered expressive. It's important to note that not all conflict is over financial reasons. Okay. Uh, virtually anything that challenges the status quo can result in class conflict. So we can look at the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam, anti-Vietnam War movement as examples that created a lot of social, social conflict, um, among individuals sometimes rising to, um, instances of violence. Um, certainly, um, not all conflict, uh, or social conflict rises to, to, to violent actions. But, um, a lot of times that is the case as we move on now, we're getting into more contemporary choice theories. So there was a resurgence, kind of of the classical school's notion of what leads to crime. So crime is a choice, a result of opportunity. Um, and choices are structured by opportunity. That's something that we need to, um, need to be aware of too. Right. And the choices that we have before us, um, are structured by the opportunity that we have before us. And so this kind of contemporary choice theory was really largely, um, brought about by Clark and Cornish in 1985 when they wrote Modeling Offender's Decisions, A framework for Research and Policy, in which they maintain that there's a two stage of funding model. Um, they also noted that rationality is bound by what we know, how we process info and other features around us. So this two stage of funding model they maintain. First, someone has to decide that they're willing to engage in crime, and then they have to decide which crime they're going to engage in. Okay, so it's not as simplistic as we might think. According to Clark and Cornish, even if we're looking at the decision to burgle, um, rarely do burglars just burgle the first dwelling that they encounter. No, they they decide which dwelling or which dwellings are most appropriate for the taking. And that's all based on a lot of different factors that Clark and Cornish and others have identified, um, that play into the potential offenders Calculus. Deterrence theory is also a theory that you should be familiar with. Thomas Schelling, who is an economist, and James Q Wilson, who was a political scientist or prominent, um, you know, scholars working in this area both contributed to deterrence theory. And the idea behind deterrence theory is that crime can be prevented by the use or threat of punishment. So we need to be cognizant of two different types of deterrence. We have specific deterrence and then general deterrence. Specific deterrence is um, focusing on a specific individual or group of individuals or crime type. Right. So an example of specific deterrence would be someone commits, um, a robbery and gets caught. That person is punished, sentenced to prison. That individual is specifically deterred from engaging in crime while serving their prison sentence. General deterrence, on the other hand, is aimed at all would be criminals. And here we're talking about kind of making an example of people who get punished so that others don't engage in that behavior. Right. So again, not super important that you understand the nuances of it. Um, but more importantly, that deterrence is centered on this idea that the use or threat of punishment can deter individuals from engaging in criminality. Then lastly, we're going to talk about, um, Cohen and Flynn's routine activities theory. Okay. So this is a theory they put forth in 1979, and they proposed that during the 1960s, things that thought that were thought to, um, cause crime were generally improving, yet crime was still increasing. And so they suggested that it was structural changes in society that led to changes in routine activities, and it created more opportunity for criminality. So they're pointing to things such as, um, women entering the workforce in large numbers, which left more homes unattended. It also meant more people were moving about in public. And they maintain that the more opportunity, um, that there was more opportunity for crime. And they identified three necessary elements for a crime to occur. Right. You need a motivated offender. You need a suitable target and you need, in the absence of capable guardianship. And when those three things, um, converge in space and time. Right. So we're talking about motivated offender, suitable target, no guardianship. A criminal act is, um, engaged in. And so they maintain that the routine activities of society influences opportunity and criminal events. And by, um, kind of manipulating routine activities, we can prevent criminality. The next group of theories that we're going to talk about briefly in life, course theories, um, they also go by, uh, a variety of different names, biosocial theories, integrated theories. Um, I like to refer to them as life course theories. Uh, they look at and they try to look at, um. How one's life is impacted by features and situations from the very beginning or shortly after birth. Um, and so Terry Moffatt is one of the most prominent, um. Scholars in this area. And she identified, uh, two types of antisocial persons. Uh, the adolescent limited, which I've listed here is al. And then the life course persistent, which is the LCP in Moffat's uh, contention is and this is based on a lot of, uh, research of cohorts that the vast majority of males, for sure, um, adolescent males engage in Anti-social behavior. Right. Most of us do things that we should not do. Um, at some point in time in our during our adolescence. Right. But then most of us also move out of that period and become pro-social, uh, individuals. And she estimated that about 95% of society fits that pattern. Right. They may deviate from societal expectations, um, very early on and during their adolescence. But by the time they get to, to early adulthood, um, they begin to conform to societal expectations. Much smaller percentage, about 5% is what she estimates in life course persistent. And these are individuals that seemingly, uh, behave in an antisocial Anti-social way for the entirety of their life. Course. Um, and it's important to note that Moffitt has identified that social environment can interact with genetic composition to create these unique outcomes. And that's kind of the picture there is. The on the left hand is kind of the the DNA sequencing, and the right hand is an image of the, uh, surrounding environment. And you put those two together, um, because it's it's no longer debated. I don't think, anyway, that whether it's nature or nurture, it's nature and nurture, we know that under certain conditions, um, uh, certain issues can be exacerbated and certain issues can be overcome. Right. So if you have a child with a learning disability who comes from a nurturing family with resources that can get that child into the appropriate programs. That child can lead a very successful life. Take that same child and place him or her in an un nurturing, unloving environment. Without resources, that child is likely going to have a very different outcome. And so it's not just kind of the, uh, the genetic composition of an individual that matters. It's that it's really the the blending of the gene and environment. And it's very it's a very slippery slope to talk about genetics and criminality, um, or antisocial behavior, because oftentimes people only hear about the bio and they don't think about the social right. And we can envision some really horrific, likely envision some really horrific social policies that might flow if people were to, um, Think that genetic composition was the primary culprit in criminality. Um, and we don't have to, to look too far back in history, in the history of even this country, back to the 1920s. Um, to see where programs such as forced sterilization for criminals were once advocated for. So this is coming from Buck. Buck versus Bell. Uh, Supreme Court case was argued, um, in April of 1927 and decided in May of 27. And what we can see here is that there was a Virginia law that allowed for the sexual sterilization of inmates, um, of institutions to promote the health of the patient and the welfare of society. And so the question before the court was, did the Virginia statute which authorized sterilization, deny Buck the right to due process of the law and equal protection of the laws as protected by the 14th amendment of the Constitution? And what the court concluded was that the statute did not violate the Constitution. Moving further down in this conclusion, citing the best interests of the state, Justice Holmes affirmed the value of the law, like Virginia's, is in order to prevent the nation from being swamped with incompetence. Three generations of imbeciles is enough, right? And so later on, he goes on to say, it is better for all the world. If instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes. And so we can see if people have any, uh, idea that crime is linked genetically. The horrible, horrible social policies that might be implemented and advocated for. Okay, now, clearly we are in a much different place nearly a hundred years, um, past this Buck V Bell decision. And people think about this more clearly. But these are the types of discussions that have been had over time. And it's important to contextualize kind of where we are from, where we started, um, in this criminological, um, theory evolution, because theory oftentimes, um, if not Explicitly is implicitly involved in policy making. I'm going to move on to, um, opportunity because something that I've said a few times here, um, but I'm going to kind of talk about a different side of opportunity, if you will. So equal opportunities. People often, um, I think, misspeak when talking about equal opportunity. Um, we know that education is one of the most powerful vehicles, um, out of, you know, poverty and away from the criminal justice system. And this comes from an NAACP report. Uh, what you're looking at here on the right hand side is Indianapolis, Indiana. And these are census tracks. And what they were um, trying to to understand in this report is the correlation between areas with high prison admissions and low performing educational institutions. And so you can see here in this quote that incarceration costs for two zip codes alone in Indianapolis, each amount to more than 20 million. For one, taxpayers are spending 27 million. The other 25 million. Right. And so what we see here is that, um, areas that have, uh, dark red or even kind of lighter red are most likely to be in areas where math proficiency is low, which is represented by the yellow, um, circles. Right. So the idea being that students who are underserved educationally are more likely to find themselves, um, on a path to. Uh, incarceration. And I don't think we, you know, we need to think about this. And I say, don't get it twisted. Opportunity to attend school is not the same as the opportunity to attend a good school, right? If we have a system which we do, that people know. Moving to certain areas provides a better educational experience for their child. That is a problem, right? If people that live in Detroit know that they can move to Grosse Pointe or Troy or West Bloomfield and have access to better schools. That's a problem. Right. So the idea that, oh, everyone gets to go to school is not the same as everyone gets to go to a quality school. Everyone gets to go to a good school, right? And the fact that we do know we have lots of data to support that. Schools across districts vary drastically in terms of achievement. Um, that becomes a problem. As an example, what you're looking at here are 2022 math and reading proficiency scores for, uh, Detroit Public Schools for fourth and eighth grade students. And what you, uh, will see if you look closely, is that the vast majority of Detroit public School fourth graders. So let's see, in 2022, 77%, um, scored below basic in math. Okay. Um. If we look at reading the fourth grade level, 79% scored below basic. Okay. Moving forward to eighth grade in 2022. You can see that it got worse for eighth graders in math. 80% tested below basic. There was a slight improvement for eighth graders in reading. Okay, so 68% below basic. But the moral of the story is, and this isn't an aberration, you can see 2009 2019, 2020. More than half, almost two thirds of fourth graders for math, over two thirds of fourth graders for reading. Over two thirds of eighth graders for math, and almost two thirds of eighth graders for reading were testing below basic. Right. And so that suggests that, um, there's a serious problem with the educational system. And if we look at this and we think about it meaningfully, we would probably be accurate. And asking, what opportunities do students that come out reading or computing math at below Basic have ahead of them, and where are they likely to? What path are they likely to end up on? SPEAKER 1 In my very living room right here, a woman whose husband is really brilliant. All right. Here, I don't want to put my client out of business because. Because what they do is they build prisons. They look at failure rates of black holes in the fourth and fifth grades, and they determine purposes of the future. You know, I heard that and I thought, oh, no, no one's actually actually doing that. I was wrong. SPEAKER 0 So this adds another kind of piece to the puzzle, if you will. So we have underperforming school systems or school districts that are not serving students effectively. And then we have another segment of society that's capitalizing on that. Right. And projecting that if x percent of students and specifically black and brown students in fourth and fifth grade drop out, how many prison beds are we going to need in the future to house them? because we know if they don't succeed educationally, the future for them is pretty grim. Right. This is a reality. I don't think that a lot of folks invest a lot of time in, in thinking about these things and how interconnected they are. Okay. So that's all I have for this week. If you have any questions or comments, uh, please either email me or post them to the canvas discussion board and I will respond accordingly. Have a great week!