Al's Morning Meeting

One group of pollsters found that 80 percent of Americans displayed flags after the attacks in 2001. 

NFL fans were given miniature flags when games resumed Sept. 23. Over the July 4 holiday this year, I noticed our street was back to the pre-Sept. 11, 2001 habits of most people not displaying flags. Most anchors are pinless again. What happened to that patriotic fervor?

Likewise, after the attacks, military recruiting stations got lots of calls and walk-ins. But it didn't last.

International Interest

Sept. 11, 2001, was, in many ways, an end to the isolationism that had taken hold of America up to that point. On the one-year anniversary of the attacks, USA Today reported that applications for majors in Middle- and Near East Studies at New York University increased 53 percent from the fall 2001 semester to that of the following year.

Americans Taking Action

USA Today also noted that America's Blood Centers, a network of community blood banks, collected 251,370 units of blood -- nearly three times the normal intake -- in the four days following Sept. 11, 2001. The paper also reported that the Red Cross "collected more than 200,000 units, and saw its on-hand supply nearly double, from 80,000 units to 156,000 units, in days."

Last weekend, though, I noticed that blood banks are back to begging donors to come in and give blood. In some places, their supplies are critically short.

Matters of Faith

On the Sunday after the attacks, Sept. 16, 2001, churches were filled. But within the following year, pollsters said, there was no evidence of a lasting religious reawakening in America.

The PBS "Frontline" documentary, "Faith and Doubt," which examined the role of religion in the attacks and in how people saw the attacks, asked online readers in an online (unscientific) poll if the attacks caused them to doubt their faith. Eleven percent of respondents said they lost some faith, but 52 percent said their faith was stronger.

The documentary addressed a number of questeions in these chapters:

Voices of Sept. 11

The drama of faith and doubt began when the first plane disappeared into the North Tower. Here are testimonies of six people who suffered terrible losses on Sept. 11, and two who survived the destruction of the World Trade Center.

The Question of God

For many people of faith, the face of God was altered on Sept. 11; the old, comforting images no longer sufficed. For atheists and agnostics, it was not God but humanity that was called into question. How did Sept. 11 affect our notions of what God is and isn't?

The Question of Evil

On Sept. 11, the word "evil" gained new currency, as President Bush and others began using the term not as an adjective but as a noun. Did we look into the face of evil that day? What is it we talk about when we talk about evil?

The Question of Religion

Since Sept. 11, many are asking with urgency, and anger, how such things can be done in the name of God. Many have been forced to look at the potential for darkness within their own religious traditions. Is religion itself the problem, or the solution? Can it be both?

Epilogue: Ground Zero

In the end, what kind of faith can be salvaged from the ruins of Ground Zero?

Life-Changing Decisions

In the months after the attacks, we read stories about how people changed their lives -- they got involved in charitable work, started families and focused on things that mattered most to them. Did that re-prioritization last?

Children's lives changed, too, after Sept. 11. A lot of them drew pictures about how they were feeling after the attacks. Here is a small collection.

Always on Our Minds

Sept. 11, 2001, seems never to be far from our minds, even five years later. Nearly one out of five Americans polled told pollsters last month that they think about the attacks of five years ago daily. A CNN poll in August showed that more than one out of three Americans worry that "you or someone in your family will be a victim of terrorism."

Ninety-eight percent of those questioned by the CNN pollsters said they remember where they were when the news of the attacks broke on that day. I wonder if 9/11/01 holds the same historical equivalence for this generation as Pearl Harbor or JFK's assassination have for previous ones. Nearly every generation, it seems, has a catastrophic event burned into our brains.  

And yet, The Washington Post found that one-third of the people the paper questioned could not even say what year the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. 

Time and The Discovery Channel commissioned a poll that produced some interesting data:

"Do you believe there will be a time in the next ten years or so when the United States will have won the war on terrorism, or not?"
						.
		Will Be	Will Not Be	Unsure
		%	%	%
	8/22-24/06	23	69	7
						.
"On September 11, 2001, terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger planes and crashed two of them into the World Trade Center in New York and one into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Do you recall where you were when you first heard the news about the 9/11 terrorist attacks?"
						.
		Yes	No
		%	%
	8/22-24/06	98	2
						.
"How often would you say that you still think about the Sept. 11 attacks . . . ?"
						.
		Every Day	A Few Times a Week	A Few Times a Month	Hardly Ever	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
	8/22-24/06	18	35	33	13	1
						.
"How much would you say that the Sept. 11 attacks and the terrorist threats that followed have changed your own life personally . . . ?"
						.
		A Great Deal	Some	Not Much	Not at All	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
	8/22-24/06	27	39	22	11	1
						.
"And how much would you say that the Sept. 11 attacks and the terrorist threats that followed have changed life in the United States . . . ?"
						.
		A Great Deal	Some	Not Much	Not at All	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
	8/22-24/06	53	38	7	1	1
						.
"How likely do you think it is that an act of terrorism will occur somewhere in the United States in the next 12 months . . . ?"
						.
		Very Likely	Somewhat Likely	Somewhat Unlikely	Very Unlikely	Unsure
		%	%	%	%	%
	8/22-24/06	26	47	18	6	3

 

Foggy Facts

In 2003, seven out of ten Americans thought Saddam Hussein had something to do with the Sept. 11 attacks -- something that even the Bush administration now admits is wrong. The Wall Street Journal reported on a Harris poll that indicated that number had dropped to 22 percent by December 2005. 

The BBC has an interesting page on how much American defense spending has increased after Sept. 11, 2001.

The News Before the Attacks

I wondered what we were talking about on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, the paper landed on the driveway and we had no clue that everything would soon change. Poynter librarian/researcher David Shedden pulled some front pages for me.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush called for a "war on illiteracy." That is what he was doing that morning in Florida.

The front page of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times mentioned that the federal budget surplus (remember that?) was shrinking.

The New York Times and The Washington Post both played front-page stories about stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water -- and both had front-page stories about the use of stem cells in research. President Bush had just spoken about his opposition to federal funding for stem-cell research.

The week before Sept. 11, "Jack: Straight From the Gut," by Jack Welch, topped the Amazon.com 100. The week after, "Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center," by Angus Kress Gillespie, was number one.

Time magazine's cover, dated the morning of the attack, asked, "Where have you gone, Colin Powell?"

Facts and Figures

Here is a USA Today collection of Sept. 11 facts and figures.

These numbers stand out to me:

• The youngest passenger on the hijacked jets was Christine Hanson on United Airlines Flight 175. She was 2 and on her first trip to Disneyland.
• Two-thousand children lost a parent Sept. 11, including 146 who lost a parent at the Pentagon.
• The oldest passenger on the hijacked jets was Robert Norton on American Airlines Flight 11. He was 82.
• The New York City Fire Department lost 343 firefighters, almost half the number of on-duty deaths in the department's 100-year history.
• The south tower collapsed at a magnitude of 2.1 on a seismograph; the north tower collapsed with a magnitude of 2.3, according to Columbia University in New York.

And let's not forget: the man behind the attacks, Osama Bin Laden, is still out there somewhere. There has been very little progress in finding him.

Mentally Ill in Jails and Prisons

The Department of Justice just released a study about how many mentally ill inmates and prisoners fill our country's prisons and jails. In state prisons, almost 75 percent of women prisoners and more than half of men were found to have mental-health issues.

In county jails, the figures for men were even higher. These are not mild problems. Many prisoners had severe enough issues that, if they were to find themselves on the street with little or no support, they could ultimately land back in jail. The study clearly pushes journalists to take a look at the level of the problem in our own local lockups. In many ways, the study shows, your county jails and prisons have taken the place of mental hospitals. 

The study found:

Among the inmates who reported symptoms of a mental disorder:

• 54 percent of local jail inmates had symptoms of mania, 30 percent major depression and 24 percent psychotic disorder, such as delusions or hallucinations.
• 43 percent of state prisoners had symptoms of mania, 23 percent major depression and 15 percent psychotic disorder.
• 35 percent of federal prisoners had symptoms of mania, 16 percent major depression and 10 percent psychotic disorder.

And still, most inmates with problems were not receiving much in the way of treatment while locked up. The study continued:

About one in three state prisoners with mental health problems, one in four federal prisoners and one in six jail inmates had received mental health treatment since admission. Taking a prescribed medication was the most common type of treatment -- 27 percent in state prisons, 19 percent in federal prisons, and 15 percent in local jails.

The study also found [PDF]:

• Nearly a quarter of both state prisoners and jail inmates who had a mental health problem, compared to a fifth of those without, had served three or more prior incarcerations.

• Female inmates had higher rates of mental health problems than male inmates (state prisons: 73 percent of females and 55 percent of males; federal prisons: 61 percent of females and 44 percent of males; local jails: 75 percent of females and 63 percent of males). ...
  

• [More than] one in three state prisoners, one in four federal prisoners and one in six jail inmates who had a mental-health problem had received treatment since admission.

And the study said:

Inmates with a mental health problem also had high rates of substance dependence or abuse in the year before their admission --

• 74 percent of state prisoners and 76 percent of local jail inmates were dependent on or abusing drugs or alcohol.
• 37 percent of state prisoners and 34 percent of jail inmates said they had used drugs at the time of their offense.
• 13 percent of state prisoners and 12 percent of jail inmates had used methamphetamines in the month before their offense.

Among inmates who had mental health problems, 13 percent of state prisoners and 17 percent of jail inmates said they were homeless in the year before their incarceration. About a quarter of both state prisoners (27 percent) and jail inmates (24 percent) who had a mental health problem reported past physical or sexual abuse.

The communications director for the Treatment Advocacy Center sent me this statement about the study:

This is one of those times that I have a deep hope in the intellect of the press -- that reporter[s] will read the actual report. I would urge them to dig deeper than the shocking numbers and look at how they got them. (And I say that knowing full well that high numbers like these would actually make our organization's efforts easier.)

The data in the report comes from surveys completed by the inmates themselves, where they were asked if they had symptoms in the past 12 months, or since admission, of things like "feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt," "increased/decreased interest in sexual activities" or even "thoughts of revenge." One wonders why they didn't ask if any of these jailed prisoners felt a sense of social isolation.

The surveys did not assess the severity or duration of the symptoms and did not exclude "symptoms" due to medical illness, bereavement or substance abuse. Considering the methods, it is surprising the numbers weren't even higher.

The very real problem of criminalizing the mentally ill can only be addressed by identifying the failures of the mental health system responsible for keeping them out of jail.

Here is more from the Center.  

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