What the hell is going on with America's crime wave?
There's record breaking violence, and a spike in murders. Rafael Mangual joins us to talk who's at fault and propose solutions.
Jen Psaki may not think so, but most Americans are looking with horror at spiraling murder rates, in many cities a rate of killing not seen in decades. Philadelphia just shattered its all-time annual homicide record, and so did Louisville, Ky, Indianapolis, In, Columbus, Ohio, Austin TX… and, well, you get the picture. Multiple states have passed laws allowing repeat offenders out with low to no bail, and many of the perpetrators of headline grabbing crimes have multiple offenses on their rap sheets.
An Economist/YouGov poll says it all: Asked whether, “in the last year would you say crime in the country has increased, decreased, or stayed about the same,” 68 percent answered “a lot” or “a little”, with “a lot” edging out “a little” by more than two to one. People know what they’re seeing, and increasingly, they understand why.
“Decarcerationist” prosecutors from New York to Philly, Detroit and the Left Coast, are declining to prosecute “petty” crimes, allowing repeat offenders to roam the streets without fear of the law. That’s led to the scenes we’ve all seen of shoplifters walking out of stores brazenly with scads of goods — think 70 inch TVs — and coming back for more.
Is there any end in sight to the lawlessness plague? Only, our guest says, at the ballot box. And in refunding the police. It’s not the laws per se that are the problem, it’s the hyper-progressives failing to apply the law as written. As usual, those suffering the most from this crime wave are the people who can least afford it — the poor, the marginalized. They can’t afford private security like members of congress and movie stars…. Listen to our pod with Rafael Mangual, an expert on crime at the Manhattan Institute, and the author of a new book called Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most — coming in July.
HIGHLIGHTS
Rafael: I think you'd have to go back to 1995 or 1996 to see national homicide numbers that we saw in 2020. And I think you'd have to go back to about the same period for Chicago and see its homicide numbers at the level that they're at now. So to say that that crime isn't as bad or it's not a real issue, I think really just doesn't fully appreciate the reality of crime concentration in the United States.
Rafael: There is no other force that could handle over a 100,000 calls a year for domestic violence or mentally disturbed individuals. So we have to start from that first, that police are going to be the ones responding. Every time there's a suspect whose name comes out almost inevitably that person has five, 10, 20 prior arrests. They're out on bail, they're out on probation, they're out on parole. They've been in and out of jail since they were teenagers.
Rafael : What that tells us is that the system is failing on a massive level to hold accountable and to incapacitate dangerous actors. When you see a murder suspect who has seven or eight prior arrests and four or five prior convictions, what that tells you is that the police are doing a relatively good job of identifying who the problems are. But it also tells you that the system more broadly is failing to do its part, to keep those people off the streets. And if you systematically lower the transaction costs of criminality, you're going to get more criminality. And I think that's what a lot of American cities are experiencing right now.
Rafael: I think the Left realized was that rather than spending all this money lobbying lawmakers to make changes. They could just elect one person and have that person unilaterally aggregate entire bodies of law that they don't like or upend charging decisions or upend sentencing practices. And that's really the way this has kind of taken shape…And we're now living in a point in which almost 50 million Americans now are living in jurisdictions with self described progressive prosecutors.
Rafael : So the basic mission of the Progressive Prosecutor Movement is really best understood as a mission to achieve decarceration on a mass scale and it's been working. The incarcerated population in this country has been going down for over a decade.
Rafael: Study after study after study shows that when you add more police officers to a given geographical area, crime will go down in that geographical area. The presence of police officers is in and of itself an effective deterring. Now we also know that hiring a single police officer will abate 0.1 homicides over the course of that officer's career. Which means that for every 10 officers you hire, you are saving one life at the very least. That benefit is actually enjoyed disproportionately again by Black Americans.
Rafael: we cannot at the same time claim to represent the interests of Black and Brown communities in the United States and call for the abolition of police for broad scale decarceration, for broad scale de-policing because it's those communities that stand to lose the most.
Rafael Mangual: … when you live in a country with 330 plus million people, almost all of whom have a camera phone, it's very, very easy to make a very rare occurrence seem incredibly common. And I think that's what driving a lot of these misguided policy decisions. You're talking about 700,000 officers making 10 million arrests a year and only fatally shooting about a 1,000 people. Almost all of whom were armed and dangerous at the time. Of course, police are going to make mistakes. Of course, they are imperfect. Policing is a human endeavor, no human is perfect.
Rafael: Lots of cities around the country, their police agencies have been reporting for quite some time even before 2020, that they are having real trouble retaining and recruiting high level talent. Why is that? Well, because we've demonized this profession.
Rafael : If you have somebody who is committed a low level offense but a holistic assessment of their profile indicates that, "Hey, this person's in the gang database, this person has gun arrest in their history. A social network analysis shows that this person has one or two degrees removed from other people who have shooting histories. Well, hey, maybe let's take full advantage of the law here and try and get them off the street at least for a weekend." And so I think there needs to be more of that.
Rafael: So start there, hiring more police officers. … the data do show that when you can identify people who are at a high likelihood of committing really serious crimes, you should get them off the street for as long as possible. And if you do that, you will give the communities that they would've otherwise stayed in the room to breathe and to grow. And that growth will ultimately insulate those communities from further crime.
Full transcript here.
SHOW NOTES
Want to read more? See how we formulated our questions…? Here’s the research!
§ “A reflection on NYPD's fallen officers and their sacrifices,” by Rafael A. Mangual (Fox News, 1/28/22)
§ “Nothing to Bragg About,” by Rafael A. Mangual (City Journal, 1/7/22)
§ “Yes, the Crime Wave Is as Bad as You Think,” by Rafael A. Mangual (WSJ, 12/8/21)
§ “Refunding police is necessary but not sufficient to stop crime spiral,” by Rafael A. Mangual (NY Post, 8/2/21)
§ “Forgotten Lessons of the War on Crime,” by William J. Bratton and Rafael A. Mangual (National Review, 9/16/21)
§ “Progressive Policies Won’t Stop the Crime Wave,” by Charles Fain Lehman and Rafael A. Mangual (City Journal, 7/8/21)
§ “Biden’s soft-on-crime posture will wreak havoc on US cities,” by Rafael A. Mangual (NY Post, 2/2/21)
§ “You can’t claim to support both abolition and ‘evidence-based solutions’ to rising crime. NYC went from 2,262 murders in 1990 to 292 in 2017. If you think that kind of victory can be achieved without police, prosecutors, jails, and prisons, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.” (Twitter, Rafael A. Mangual, 1/29/22)
§ “I can’t help but find it frustrating when people describe peace in otherwise violent neighborhoods as ‘uneasy’ simply because it is provided by the only institutions currently capable of delivering it immediately—especially in places like N. Philly where it is desperately needed. Policing, prosecution, and incarceration—particularly when targeted at the places with the most pressing violence problems and at the individuals driving violence in those places—are the most effective, scalable, and immediate solutions to criminal violence. If there’s anything we should be uneasy about, it’s denying the people living in violence-plagued communities the benefits these institutions can provide because you’d rather try to fix problems that no society has figured out how to fix to date.” (Twitter, Rafael A. Mangual, 1/23/22)
§ “These are what—the 4th and 5th—@NYPDnews officers shot in the last 10 days?! I’m so grateful that, at a time when police officers are: demonized in the public square and hamstrung by ‘reforms,’ so many men and women in blue continue to serve and protect. Two yrs ago, in @CityJournal, I wrote that w/ political momentum in favor of leniency & decarceration, more repeat offenders would walk free on city streets, which would disproportionately endanger the lives of those who live *and work* in high-crime ‘hoods—including the police,” (Twitter, Rafael A. Mangual, 1/21/22)
§ “In criminal justice policy circles, we tend to focus exclusively on the empirical questions raised in reform debates, which makes sense. But sometimes I worry that we lose sight of the fact that punishing those who cause this kind of pain is a perfectly legitimate enterprise.” (Twitter, Rafael A. Mangual, 1/17/22)
§ “Police attacked in at least 5 states in about a week. Are officers being targeted?” (USA Today, 1/30/22)
§ “Examining the Spike in Murders,” (NYT, 1/18/22)
§ “Murders in U.S. Cities Were Near Record Highs in 2021,” (WSJ, 1/6/22)
§ “'It's just crazy': 12 major cities hit all-time homicide records,” (ABC News, 12/8/21)
§ “Will the Crime Wave Soon Crest?” By Barry Latzer (WSJ, 1/2/22)
§ “Remarks by President Biden and Attorney General Garland on Gun Crime Prevention Strategy,” (The White House, 6/23/21)
§ “The Economist/YouGov Poll January 22 - 25, 2022,” (The Economist & YouGov, 1/22/22-1/25/22)
§ “CBS News Poll – January 12-14, 2022,” (CBS News & YouGov, 1/12/22-1/14/22)
§ “Joe Biden Administration Approval Ratings and Hypothetical Voting Intention (8-9 January 2022),” (Redfield & Wilton Strategies, 1/13/22)
§ “The Economist/YouGov Poll, December 19 - 21, 2021,” (The Economist & YouGov, 12/19/21-12/21/21)