Crime Expert BURL BARER. Edgar Award Winner and NYT Bestselling Author

KAREN AND LINDA ON THE VIEW

SET THE TIVO!!! KAREN AND LINDA ARE ON "THE VIEW" THURSDAY MORNING (TODAY!)
Karen and Linda are my sister's daughters. I am their Uncle Burl. They have a book that is selling like crazy and they are becoming more famous than the rest of the family put together -- and that's pretty damn famous!
<<<< that's them. They are sisters, honest!

PRISONS AND CRIME

Prisons are big in the United States. There are more people behind bars literally, and proportionally, than any time in our history. We have a higher percentage of our population in prison than any other nation. And, we keep building more prisons, in fact many locales lobby for new prisons as a tool of economic recovery. What are the actual numbers that put American prison populations in historical and international perspective?

Between 1973 and 2000 the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled. The International Centre for Prison Studies at Kings College, London now calculates the U.S. rate at 700 people per 100,000. There are now more than two million Americans behind bars. Add to that another four and a half million on probation or parole and three million ex-convicts. This trend shows no sign of slowing. Look at this pie chart showing America's population by racial percentage.

  Now, look at this pie chart showing prison population by racial percentage.  Notice something?


In NNpi

NoptAlthough blacks account for only 12 percent of the U.S. population, 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States are black. This is NOT because 12% of the population (blacks) are responsible for 44% of crime.

The proportion of blacks in prison populations exceeds the proportion among state residents in every single state. In twenty states, the percent of blacks incarcerated is at least five times greater than their share of resident population.

The national war on drugs has perhaps been the primary factor behind the extraordinary rates at which blacks are incarcerated. Drug offenses account for nearly two out of five of the blacks sent to state prison. More blacks are sent to state prison for drug offenses (38 percent) than for crimes of violence In contrast, drug offenders constitute 24 percent of whites admitted to prison and violent offenders constitute 27 percent African-Americans are arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned for drug offenses at far higher rates than whites. This racial disparity bears little relationship to racial differences in drug offending. For example, although the proportion of all drug users who are black is generally in the range of 13 to 15 percent, blacks constitute 36 percent of arrests for drug possession. Blacks constitute 63 percent of all drug offenders admitted to state prisons. In at least fifteen states, black men were sent to prison on drug charges at rates ranging from twenty to fifty-seven times those of white men.

In 2001, nearly 6.6 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year end. That number represents 3.1% of all U.S. adult residents or one in every 32 adults.

Don Woldman and I will discuss this situation, among other things, this Saturday pm PDT on our Internet radio show. Please listen. 

DRUG WAR CRIMES EXPOSED

Narcotics detectives usually know the truth about America's so-called War on Drugs, but having the integrity the speak out is another matter.  The savvy cops of LEAP understand all too well the havoc and heartbreak of the drug war, and are not afraid to tell the truth.

Prohibition Aids Terrorist Activities

According to the United Nations United Nations Office of Drugs & Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan's opium production will increase by nearly 50 percent this year to a record "6,100 tons of opium -- a staggering 92 percent of total world supply and exceed[ing] global consumption by 30 percent."

"The drugs trade" has long been linked to the sponsorship of terrorist activities but LEAP knows that sponsorship is more properly linked to to drug prohibition; No prohibition--no money for terrorists. LEAP Advisory Board member, former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper explains:

"Illegal drugs are expensive precisely because they are illegal. The products themselves are worthless weeds--marijuana from the cannabis plant, cocaine from the coca bush, and heroin from opium poppies--but today, marijuana is worth as much as gold, heroin more than uranium, with cocaine somewhere in between. It is the U.S. policy of prohibition that has spawned this ever-expanding international industry of torture, murder, and corruption."

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is an organization of current and former members of law enforcement and criminal justice communities who have come to oppose the "War on Drugs", favoring a system of legalized regulation as a more ethical and efficient measure for dealing with drug use, abuse and addiction. When our speakers entered into a career of law enforcement, they pledged to protect and serve. Realizing that their participation in the "War on Drugs" undermined the fulfillment of that pledge, the men and women of LEAP joined forces to take action.

LEAP Office: (781) 393-6985 [email protected]

THE IMPORTANCE OF AN EDITOR

"Dear Mr. Barer: what is an editor, what do they do, and do I need one?"

If you pour steel for a living, an editor is not imperative. If you pour out hyperbolic pararaphs and run on sentences with wild abandon, digressing into sociological subtexts that outdistance Dennis Miller, and unintentionally overlook essentials such as "who, what, when and where," you need an editor.

I received my editorial baptism by fire on my first book, THE SAINT: A Complete History. Steve Wilson is a brilliant insightful editor who told me what to expand, what to contract, what needed more detail and why, what needed less emphasis and why. He pushed me to give the best work I could give the publisher and the reader. The reward was an Edgar Award, consistent sales, and a quality product all the way around. 

While some authors chafe at their editor's comments, I love working with an editor. She or he will see things that I don't see; ask for things that didn't occur to me, or even remove things on which I spent a lot of time, but just didn't move the story forward.

My Pinnacle True Crime books had the same editor for the first two in the series, and we became very adept at working together. She left 3/4 of the way into BODY COUNT and that rather threw both the publisher and me into a bit of chaos, but it all came out allright.  If you're lucky, you will gradually develop a relationship with your editor that, as with all successfull relationships, is based on trust and respect.  Soon, you can almost anticipate each other's approach...and I would ask myself "what will (editor) think of this?"

When writing media tie ins such as The Saint novel for Paramount, Maverick for Warner Bros. or Stealth for Sony Entertainment in Japan, there are many other editorial considerations because the "world" you are writing about, and the characters in that world are not "yours."  You didn't create them, they were created by someone else. You must be creative in translating a screenplay into a novel, or adaptation of another form, but remain loyal to the source material.

I love writing, writers, but most of all, readers. My personal motto is this: A book isn't a book until someone reads it.  I write for you, I write to you. Hence, I love hearing back from you.