Congressional Criminals – Worse Than Society at Large?

A study was documented, back in 1999, on the ‘criminal’ backgrounds for numerous members of Congress.   According to America’s Criminal Class: The Congress of the United States, the sources for this study were “public records, past newspaper articles, civil court cases and criminal records of both current and recent members of the United States Congress (since 1992).”  

With the arrest of Tom Delay today, this information seems worth another review.

The following from Random Ramblings – Just like you and me! seems to be a summary that research, but it’s somewhat inaccurate and out of context.   The items in () are from the original study .

36(29) have been accused of spousal abuse
7(7) have been arrested for fraud
19(19) have been accused of writing bad checks
117(117) have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3(3) have done time (arrested) for assault
71(71) cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14(14) have been arrested on drug-related charges
8(8) have been arrested for shoplifting
21(21) currently are defendants in lawsuits. and
84(27) have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

One item from the original study that was not included in this list was:

53 were denied government security clearances.

Since information from the internet should always be suspect, I wondered how meaningful these numbers were – assuming they are fact to start with.   They are for a select group from society, but how does this group compare to society as a whole?

As to the spousal abuse arrests, Violence Against Women in the United States had this to say about spousal abuse: “BATTERING . Although only 572,000 reports of assault by intimates are officially reported to federal officials each year, the most conservative estimates indicate two to four million women of all races and classes are battered each year.   At least 170,000 of those violent incidents are serious enough to require hospitalization, emergency room care or a doctor’s attention.” Keep in mind that these numbers do not represent arrests made and the number of related arrests are probably smaller.

If you take the above range of values for assaults and relate it to the July 2005 USA population of 295,734,134, you get an abuse rate ranging from 0.02% to 1.35% of the population.   Using the Congressional abuse number of 29, you get an abuse rate of 6.7% for member of Congress – assuming that it’s 29 out of 535 Congressman.   This is 5 time the worst case for society.   Should we be concerned?

Since the original Capital Blue Hill study did not give the number of Congressman they researched to find the 29 abusers, how many Congressmen would they have research to find these 29 just to match the societal rate above?   Somewhere between 2148 and 145,000.   That doesn’t seem very likely, but 29 still seems worse than society at large.

Also, comparing the original article to the short summary above, you find that the 71 with bad credit applies to some group of 117 Congressmen – not all 535.   But that is still 61%!!

Well, regardless of the study results, the out of context summary, and the fact that the study results can’t be easily compared to society, they still are of concern.