crime

A True Crime

After murder came with shocking suddenness to my small town, I started questioning the storytelling ethics of a genre in which I myself had a stake.

January 22, 2022

Ellroy Confidential

“If I could eradicate any word in the English language,” Ellroy declared in 2001, “it would be the word ‘closure.’” The discipline of writing, from age thirty, became a lifejacket that kept Ellroy afloat above the tide of decrepitude that shaped his early years.

March 10, 2020

The Arab-Israeli Gun Violence Epidemic

The homicide rate in Israel generally is low by international standards, but what has emerged in Israel’s Arab streets is an alternate universe of lawlessness, where residents can no longer leave their homes without fearing for their lives. And this is a crisis that illuminates the limits to Arab citizenship in the Jewish State.

December 4, 2019

The Murderer, the Writer, the Reckoning

At Jack Abbott’s trial, Norman Mailer pleaded with the press. “At least let Abbott become a writer.” Then he said, “a democracy involves taking risks.” Reading this made me feel envious, and a bit confused. Wasn’t the idea to reaffirm literature itself, in Mailer’s words, “as a human expression that will survive all obstacles”?

July 9, 2019

Sweden as Symbol

This extraordinary focus on Sweden isn’t really an attack on the country itself. It is about using Sweden as a weapon in a far wider clash of values.

February 8, 2018

Caught in the Act

A sampling of meticulous mug shots, along with about forty crime-related images from American tabloids, police files, security cameras, and photographers both anonymous and widely known, comprise the fascinating exhibition “Crime Stories: Photography and Foul Play,” currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

April 7, 2016

The War We Aren’t Debating

It’s a social policy that, many experts agree, has failed miserably since it was introduced more than forty years ago, tearing apart families and communities across the United States, consuming tens of thousands of lives abroad, and squandering huge sums of money. Yet hardly any national politician is willing to challenge it, and it’s been completely ignored during the 2012 presidential campaign. I’m speaking of the war on drugs.

October 22, 2012

Train of Thought

As I went down the subway stairs, through the turnstile, and onto the darkened station platform, a sinking sense of fear gripped me. I grew alert, and looked around to see who might be standing by, waiting to attack. The subway was dangerous at any time of the day or night, and everyone who rode it knew this and was on guard at all times; a day didn’t go by without the newspapers reporting yet another hideous subway crime. Passengers on the platform looked at me, with my expensive camera around my neck, in a way that made me feel like a tourist—or a deranged person.

December 1, 2011

Immigrant Detainees: The New Sex Abuse Crisis

The PBS show Frontline, documenting harsh conditions in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention facilities, recently [told the story] (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/lost-in-detention/) of an immigrant whom it called “Mary.” During a routine traffic stop in Florida, police discovered that Mary’s visa had expired. They sent her to the Willacy Detention Center in southern Texas; there, over the course of three months, she was repeatedly raped by one of her guards. Finally, unable to endure further abuse and told by other detainees that she would face retaliation if she complained, she stopped fighting deportation and asked to be sent home to Canada, leaving behind four young children who were born in the US. It has now been two years since she has seen them. Perhaps the worst part of this immensely distressing story is how unexceptional it is. There is abundant evidence that rape is a systemic problem in our immigration detention facilities—for women, for men, and, as the Women’s Refugee Commission has documented, for children.

November 23, 2011

Day of the 40,000 Dead

In Mexico, the dearly beloved who are no longer in this world receive special dispensation to return to us once a year. To celebrate this miracle, we bring flowers to an elaborate, colorful altar, make a path with marigold petals to show them the way, sing to them, pamper them with offerings of their favorite foods, and generally laugh with them at death and other things. In certain parts of the country, the Day of the Dead, and the altar-building events that lead up to it, are a bigger deal than Christmas. This November 2nd has turned out slightly different from the preceding ones, however: as the number of fatalities in the current wave of narcowar violence approaches 40,000, a growing number of people have decided that these dead, too, should be remembered, although their killing is hardly a cause for celebration.

November 2, 2011