Unfortunately, the way that America has typically gotten “tougher on crime” has involved increasing sentence lengths rather than murder clearance rates, and making our prisons violent torture dungeons with rotten food rather than safe, well-provisioned rehabilitative centers.
We absolutely need to make our policing system much more reliable — people who commit violent crimes and theft should know the probability they’ll be caught is extremely high rather than minuscule.
But in our tack back to common sense after the excesses of the defund movement, we can’t forget the core humanitarian impulses behind that reformist energy. We need to make our police more professional and trustworthy, and our prisons much, much more humane, or our pursuit of justice will just become more violence.
The current on the ground issues in policing efficacy are expanding tech use that helps solve crime. One one hand you have private companies and police unions advocating for flock cameras, drones, and other solutions. On the other hand you have civil rights advocates advocating for… not using tech to solve crimes. There are many real world stories demonstrating the efficacy of this tech, SF used drones to ID car window smashing rings and reduced rates of that crime by 95% in the city. They also used drones to crack down on the dirt bike takeovers. Flock cameras across the US contribute significantly to murder clearance because it limits the pool of suspects to ~1-15 IDed cars, that combined with DNA improves clearance by 50%.
I do understand the anti-flock concerns, but to me the abstract concern of the government using it to surveil us is less a concern than thieves and murderers continuing to get away scott-free. Not to mention our ring cameras and iphones are already tracking us so...also autos are not private and where you go in your auto is not private.
Agree with this, but politically speaking I think the humane reforms need to be done via secret congress and largely not be a part of campaign rhetoric, they’re simply not a political winner.
Maybe, but I do think if we tack too far back towards toughness, it could also have political consequences -- the political and social forces behind the BLM protests still exist! We can't be a Markov chain only aware of the previous political moment.
The core problem that afflicted, and continues to afflict some liberal and leftist tastemakers is an insistence that we should tolerate disorder. When people talk about crime, it isn't crime per se -- it's felt and perceived disorder, and they want less of it. Cities are perceived as more dangerous than suburbs because disorder is more visible there, and recently the standard left-liberal response was to flash up a chart showing rural and suburban towns with higher per-capita crime rates. It completely misses what people actually care about. It's about the explicit experience of public space.
So the aim should not be to reduce crime. It should be to reduce disorder. Crime is a narrow formalization of a broader phenomenon, and optimizing on the formalization while the phenomenon gets worse is how you get falling homicide rates coupled with net lower public transit ridership.
"Victimless crime" was and is a category error. If we choose to formally tolerate open drug use, obvious addiction, and untreated psychosis on the streets, then we generate plenty of victims who now reorganize their daily lives around the legalized disorder. And disproportionately, those victims are poor people who can't move away from it.
It’s been memory-holed, but this sentiment was the impetus for the crime bill in the early 90s, and why it had broad support among the congressional black caucus.
The revisionist history was that it was an explicitly anti-black piece of legislation, completely ignoring the chaos that the crack epidemic unleashed. Violence in the late 80s and early 90s was at catastrophic levels, especially in poor black neighborhoods. The impact of the anti-crime bills were disproportionately felt by black communities, and there were no shortage of racist police, but so much of the interpretation of the 90s crime bill, including in the New Jim Crow, ignored the fact that there was constant gang violence happening that was creating an unlivable situation. I do think that criminalizing entire communities and treating youth gang members like violent animals that needed to be cages was terrible, but these overly harsh laws were coming in reaction to a real crisis.
American rates of violence are indeed really bad, but that has much bigger implications than Kelsey draws here. It is definitely true that we should provide everyone with the kind of safe neighborhood that I currently live in. On the other hand, Baltimore's policies, despite the big improvements, are not providing that to people in poor neighborhoods and neither are other safe cities in the US.
I think taking the moral point of this article seriously requires not just taking a position on the "moderate" side of debates on the left in the US about the range of policies we talk about in our domestic political debates. Instead, it requires really grappling with what it would take to provide the level of safety to everyone in Baltimore that they would experience in Oslo or Tokyo or Seoul. That might mean very different prison conditions, in multiple directions. And different gun laws. Or different rights for criminal defendants (look up Japanese conviction rates). Or other broader changes to the social fabric.
This. It's not about staking out a centrist claim on a losing issue for Democrats; we need to identify (and implement) practical, tested solutions to hard problems.
That said, IMO there's only so much you can solve with legislation when it comes to crime and antisocial behavior. Baltimore won't become Tokyo simply by passing the right laws — though I'd certainly be down to see us try.
IMO, we also need some sense of a shared culture and pro-social values. And that's much harder to create organically.
We would benefit from more pro-social values etc, definitely. But there's lots that could be done even without that. For example, we are tolerant of violence in numerous contexts, ranging from prison as discussed, to police violence when arresting people, to kids fighting at schools. In general we should just not tolerate that and violence should broadly be seen as unacceptable in all contexts.
I get that this is mainly a deontological argument, but I think it's always worth flagging when a topic is "punching above its weight" in utilitarian terms. Violent crime is responsible for less than 1% of disability-adjusted life-years lost in high-income countries. If liberals "should be really upset" about that, should we also be six times as upset about injuries from falling (4.22% of DALYs lost)? Are we callously apathetic about falling if we don't treat the thousands of children and young adults who die from it each year as a pressing political concern?
I think the article kept veering back and forth between violent crime and crime in general (which sucks but rarely costs life years) in a way that muddled the issue.
I think many people aren't really understanding just how much more criminals harm the marginalized and weak vs the powerful. I'm wondering if people have a misconception that for example car thieves are stealing wealthy people's luxury cars when in reality, they're robbing poor people of their cars and depriving them of their ability to go to work or to doctor's appointments etc. The data you've shown here should really help open people's eyes to how it is. Black Americans are like 14% of the population yet around 50% of murder victims.
Given how much more Black Americans are victimized by criminals than white Americans, I think we should just straight up equate soft on crime policies with anti-Black racism. Tell people that are soft on crime that the only reason they're like that is because criminals harm Black people far more than white people. I'm half serious. If criminals were terrorizing and victimizing wealthy white Americans at the same rate they are poor Black Americans most of these "progressives" would be singing a different tune.
Wait, wait, so your solution to getting liberals to be tougher on crime is to tell them they're racist? Are accusations of racism just a handy tool to use to bludgeon people into submission?
In terms of the effects, tolerating crime and public disorder is racist. The harm falls much more heavily on ethnic minorities, the poor, women, the disabled, etc. I think many who say we should tolerate public disorder and repeat offenders being freed would not think the same way if their own demographic made up such a disproportionate portion of the victims. It's not just a "tool to bludgeon people". It's getting to them think about how their stance corresponds to the values they claim to hold.
I don't want to go too far out over my skis on this, as it's not my area of expertise. I'm just a center right, lesbian mom in a suburb. But, it seems like the racist card has been overplayed. How about you just acknowledge that one of the actual, main roles of government - throughout time - is public safety. It is a precursor to commerce, it is a precursor to education, it is a precursor to roads/transportation... Name it, and none of these are successful without being able to leave your home with the assumption that you can and will come back safely. Dems can win if they just start practicing an adherence to first principles. Don't race bait each other, don't make this about gender, just keep it simple (stupid)!
The idea is to use this on people who already use race a lot in their own rhetoric. Someone who doesn't already view things this way won't see it as a valid framing, but the people who are already big on this kind of rhetoric do indeed frame a lot of issues in terms of race.
So yes, if you aren't dealing with someone who already talks about race a lot or doesn't already frame a lot of policy choices in those terms, that framing or angle isn't very fruitful. I agree. But if people are already going to be saying policies need to be race conscious, then pointing out how public disorder and crime affects ethnic minorities can be a way to get them to think about their stance.
I think Bradley makes a good point that "this policy has anti-racist effects" may be effective at winning intra-left debates. But Marlayna has a good point about how it's not great that Democrats reflexively frame things in racial terms.
People who are willing to tolerate public disorder are doing so because they have compassion for the criminals and have been convinced it is their own morality that tells them they should be soft on crime. Telling them that if it affected their own communities they would think differently is saying that they will hold only to their principles as long as it doesn't cost them personally. Which may be true but is a whole different argument from that they secretly hate black people.
I think people should be harder on crime because they need to realize that ultimately the effect will reach them and people they love. Not because they need to care about marginalized people more. Marginalized people are at the margins of what we care about... that's why they're marginalized.
In the bay area many of defund the police/abolitionist activists are black or people of color, often who are or have loved ones involved in the criminal justice system. I totally see the argument that tolerating crime is racist, but that seems like a tough sell in the bay at least. Also made more awkward by the fact that much of the crime is committed by people of color....
This piece is so naive - or maybe slippery - about liberal ideas of crime and punishment. I think it’s undoubtedly true that some dumb ideas about police being causing more harm than good proliferated post Floyd. I think that is now widely seen as an error. But beyond that lapse it has traditionally been Democrats who invest in anti-violence initiatives of all sorts - including police.
The real debate is how harsh to be with people committing low-level public order offenses who mostly are not hurting others but leave people feeling unsafe. There is a case to be made that we should lock up street drug users and sex workers to keep the streets clean but it’s also not very humane and not justified by public safety. That said if you want to make that argument you should have the conviction to say it.
If someone does not pose any risks to other people, and does not go to places where they are not allowed to be, I do not want them imprisoned. That said I think it's good to ban people from specific public spaces just for repeatedly degrading those spaces and making them worse for others.
Furthermore, I think that a bunch of people insist that a bunch of crimes are victimless/not hurting anyone about crimes that are, in fact, hurting people. Leaving dirty needles exposed in the streets hurts people! Smearing public spaces with feces hurts people! Following someone down the street screaming at them hurts people! Those aren't victimless crimes at all!
I strongly suspect that if we use the rule "prosecute actions that do hurt people, ban people from specific spaces if they are making those spaces worse for their intended use through intoxicated conduct/soliciting sex on the street/having an out of control dog/screaming), we get the result ~everyone wants without sending anyone to prison for sex work (people might go to prison if they repeatedly trespass in a place they've been banned from. I'm fine with that.)
The bar of "any risks" is way too low. We pose risks to other humans all the time.
If you want to take a tough approach to public order issues, I understand that, though I think you're oversimplifying (as demonstrated by the "any risks" comment).
What I really object to is the way the piece suggests that liberals don't take violence seriously. We absolutely do, as evidenced by your Baltimore example (run by a liberal Democrat!) Republicans love to talk tough but they are regularly looking to flood communities with guns, cut funding for anti-violence programs, and route public safety funding to suburban areas instead of places really struggling with violence. What Republicans are willing to do is lock up more people and for longer. If that's what you like, I guess go off, but you are mistaken to suggest that's only way to take violence seriously.
The thing is... the way we've approached crime in the US is to criminalize people as opposed to acts. The self-proclaimed "tough on crime" people declare that the solution is always to hire more cops, let them do whatever they want, and pay them more.
But they pay little attention to what cops actually do. Which is to zoom in on harassing certain groups for so-called "public order" offenses, but essentially ignoring violent crimes committed against the same populations that are harassed for the same "public order" offenses.
Which pretty well explains the broken relationship between poor Black communities and the police departments that are supposed to protect them. Those communities are both over- and under-policed. Over-policed in the sense that a police officer is quite likely to give you a ticket for jaywalking or speeding or public urination if you live in Ferguson, Missouri. But if your cousin is murdered, the odds that the murderer will be brought to justice are exceptionally low (unless your cousin happens to be white, in which case clearance rates skyrocket).
Both the self-proclaimed criminal justice reformers and the "tough on crime" people focus on the former; the result in liberal cities is police who stop enforcing public order offenses and essentially do nothing. And there's never a focus on actually making the police a force for public safety, by focusing the police on clearing violent crimes. That also has the effect of sapping criminal gangs of their potency; street gangs came about as a form of self-help; if the police are essentially hidden tax collectors, out to assess fines to poor people but completely disinterested in solving violent crimes, people don't report violent crime to them. Instead, they turn to street gangs as a form of self-help. The LAPD won't solve the crime, the thinking goes, but the Crips can extract street justice if a member is a relative.
That cycle desperately needs to be broken. Whether it will be is... much tougher to consider.
Something that goes unstated here is that as long as disparate impact of incarceration is treated like a social justice issue, then you're not going to have much left-of-center support for incarcerating violent offenders.
Largely agree with the takes here — but the elephant in the room is that conservative propaganda and viral social media clips contribute largely to the avg. person's perceived levels of disorder. Especially for rural voters who don't live in cities.
My Alabama-born-and-raised brother-in-law is convinced that California is a fiery hellscape populated almost entirely with homeless folks and sex offenders. He's never been there, naturally.
And my own — normally rational — parents won't even consider riding the subway in an upcoming trip to NYC because of perceived crime; despite it being much safer to do so today than their last visit in 2004...
Sure, cities have a lot of room to improve here, and Dems do need to focus on reducing public disorder — but you can slash crime rates in half and that won't help you win if voters don't *feel* safe. And that's the harder challenge.
> I notice liberals and progressives tend to take this for granted when it comes to foreign policy but often fail to think about what it means at home.
Is this true? It took until Bush to get the original PEPFAR out, and there's been far less outrage on the DOGE cancellations of USAID than I might've hoped for.
Unfortunately, the way that America has typically gotten “tougher on crime” has involved increasing sentence lengths rather than murder clearance rates, and making our prisons violent torture dungeons with rotten food rather than safe, well-provisioned rehabilitative centers.
We absolutely need to make our policing system much more reliable — people who commit violent crimes and theft should know the probability they’ll be caught is extremely high rather than minuscule.
But in our tack back to common sense after the excesses of the defund movement, we can’t forget the core humanitarian impulses behind that reformist energy. We need to make our police more professional and trustworthy, and our prisons much, much more humane, or our pursuit of justice will just become more violence.
The current on the ground issues in policing efficacy are expanding tech use that helps solve crime. One one hand you have private companies and police unions advocating for flock cameras, drones, and other solutions. On the other hand you have civil rights advocates advocating for… not using tech to solve crimes. There are many real world stories demonstrating the efficacy of this tech, SF used drones to ID car window smashing rings and reduced rates of that crime by 95% in the city. They also used drones to crack down on the dirt bike takeovers. Flock cameras across the US contribute significantly to murder clearance because it limits the pool of suspects to ~1-15 IDed cars, that combined with DNA improves clearance by 50%.
I do understand the anti-flock concerns, but to me the abstract concern of the government using it to surveil us is less a concern than thieves and murderers continuing to get away scott-free. Not to mention our ring cameras and iphones are already tracking us so...also autos are not private and where you go in your auto is not private.
And the concerns about bias in facial recognition technology seems a lot more fixable than the bias in humans providing evidence.
Totally agreed!
Agree with this, but politically speaking I think the humane reforms need to be done via secret congress and largely not be a part of campaign rhetoric, they’re simply not a political winner.
Maybe, but I do think if we tack too far back towards toughness, it could also have political consequences -- the political and social forces behind the BLM protests still exist! We can't be a Markov chain only aware of the previous political moment.
The core problem that afflicted, and continues to afflict some liberal and leftist tastemakers is an insistence that we should tolerate disorder. When people talk about crime, it isn't crime per se -- it's felt and perceived disorder, and they want less of it. Cities are perceived as more dangerous than suburbs because disorder is more visible there, and recently the standard left-liberal response was to flash up a chart showing rural and suburban towns with higher per-capita crime rates. It completely misses what people actually care about. It's about the explicit experience of public space.
So the aim should not be to reduce crime. It should be to reduce disorder. Crime is a narrow formalization of a broader phenomenon, and optimizing on the formalization while the phenomenon gets worse is how you get falling homicide rates coupled with net lower public transit ridership.
"Victimless crime" was and is a category error. If we choose to formally tolerate open drug use, obvious addiction, and untreated psychosis on the streets, then we generate plenty of victims who now reorganize their daily lives around the legalized disorder. And disproportionately, those victims are poor people who can't move away from it.
It’s been memory-holed, but this sentiment was the impetus for the crime bill in the early 90s, and why it had broad support among the congressional black caucus.
The revisionist history was that it was an explicitly anti-black piece of legislation, completely ignoring the chaos that the crack epidemic unleashed. Violence in the late 80s and early 90s was at catastrophic levels, especially in poor black neighborhoods. The impact of the anti-crime bills were disproportionately felt by black communities, and there were no shortage of racist police, but so much of the interpretation of the 90s crime bill, including in the New Jim Crow, ignored the fact that there was constant gang violence happening that was creating an unlivable situation. I do think that criminalizing entire communities and treating youth gang members like violent animals that needed to be cages was terrible, but these overly harsh laws were coming in reaction to a real crisis.
American rates of violence are indeed really bad, but that has much bigger implications than Kelsey draws here. It is definitely true that we should provide everyone with the kind of safe neighborhood that I currently live in. On the other hand, Baltimore's policies, despite the big improvements, are not providing that to people in poor neighborhoods and neither are other safe cities in the US.
I think taking the moral point of this article seriously requires not just taking a position on the "moderate" side of debates on the left in the US about the range of policies we talk about in our domestic political debates. Instead, it requires really grappling with what it would take to provide the level of safety to everyone in Baltimore that they would experience in Oslo or Tokyo or Seoul. That might mean very different prison conditions, in multiple directions. And different gun laws. Or different rights for criminal defendants (look up Japanese conviction rates). Or other broader changes to the social fabric.
This. It's not about staking out a centrist claim on a losing issue for Democrats; we need to identify (and implement) practical, tested solutions to hard problems.
That said, IMO there's only so much you can solve with legislation when it comes to crime and antisocial behavior. Baltimore won't become Tokyo simply by passing the right laws — though I'd certainly be down to see us try.
IMO, we also need some sense of a shared culture and pro-social values. And that's much harder to create organically.
We would benefit from more pro-social values etc, definitely. But there's lots that could be done even without that. For example, we are tolerant of violence in numerous contexts, ranging from prison as discussed, to police violence when arresting people, to kids fighting at schools. In general we should just not tolerate that and violence should broadly be seen as unacceptable in all contexts.
I get that this is mainly a deontological argument, but I think it's always worth flagging when a topic is "punching above its weight" in utilitarian terms. Violent crime is responsible for less than 1% of disability-adjusted life-years lost in high-income countries. If liberals "should be really upset" about that, should we also be six times as upset about injuries from falling (4.22% of DALYs lost)? Are we callously apathetic about falling if we don't treat the thousands of children and young adults who die from it each year as a pressing political concern?
I think the article kept veering back and forth between violent crime and crime in general (which sucks but rarely costs life years) in a way that muddled the issue.
Thanks for this article Kelsey, I pointed this out myself several days ago on another post here.
https://theargument.substack.com/p/why-democrats-cant-win-more-trump?r=5ltvau&utm_campaign=comment-list-share-cta&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=250939443
I think many people aren't really understanding just how much more criminals harm the marginalized and weak vs the powerful. I'm wondering if people have a misconception that for example car thieves are stealing wealthy people's luxury cars when in reality, they're robbing poor people of their cars and depriving them of their ability to go to work or to doctor's appointments etc. The data you've shown here should really help open people's eyes to how it is. Black Americans are like 14% of the population yet around 50% of murder victims.
Given how much more Black Americans are victimized by criminals than white Americans, I think we should just straight up equate soft on crime policies with anti-Black racism. Tell people that are soft on crime that the only reason they're like that is because criminals harm Black people far more than white people. I'm half serious. If criminals were terrorizing and victimizing wealthy white Americans at the same rate they are poor Black Americans most of these "progressives" would be singing a different tune.
Wait, wait, so your solution to getting liberals to be tougher on crime is to tell them they're racist? Are accusations of racism just a handy tool to use to bludgeon people into submission?
In terms of the effects, tolerating crime and public disorder is racist. The harm falls much more heavily on ethnic minorities, the poor, women, the disabled, etc. I think many who say we should tolerate public disorder and repeat offenders being freed would not think the same way if their own demographic made up such a disproportionate portion of the victims. It's not just a "tool to bludgeon people". It's getting to them think about how their stance corresponds to the values they claim to hold.
I don't want to go too far out over my skis on this, as it's not my area of expertise. I'm just a center right, lesbian mom in a suburb. But, it seems like the racist card has been overplayed. How about you just acknowledge that one of the actual, main roles of government - throughout time - is public safety. It is a precursor to commerce, it is a precursor to education, it is a precursor to roads/transportation... Name it, and none of these are successful without being able to leave your home with the assumption that you can and will come back safely. Dems can win if they just start practicing an adherence to first principles. Don't race bait each other, don't make this about gender, just keep it simple (stupid)!
The idea is to use this on people who already use race a lot in their own rhetoric. Someone who doesn't already view things this way won't see it as a valid framing, but the people who are already big on this kind of rhetoric do indeed frame a lot of issues in terms of race.
So yes, if you aren't dealing with someone who already talks about race a lot or doesn't already frame a lot of policy choices in those terms, that framing or angle isn't very fruitful. I agree. But if people are already going to be saying policies need to be race conscious, then pointing out how public disorder and crime affects ethnic minorities can be a way to get them to think about their stance.
I think Bradley makes a good point that "this policy has anti-racist effects" may be effective at winning intra-left debates. But Marlayna has a good point about how it's not great that Democrats reflexively frame things in racial terms.
Thanks for saying my point a lot better than I did.
This is why I'm a commenter not an author myself =)
People who are willing to tolerate public disorder are doing so because they have compassion for the criminals and have been convinced it is their own morality that tells them they should be soft on crime. Telling them that if it affected their own communities they would think differently is saying that they will hold only to their principles as long as it doesn't cost them personally. Which may be true but is a whole different argument from that they secretly hate black people.
I think people should be harder on crime because they need to realize that ultimately the effect will reach them and people they love. Not because they need to care about marginalized people more. Marginalized people are at the margins of what we care about... that's why they're marginalized.
In the bay area many of defund the police/abolitionist activists are black or people of color, often who are or have loved ones involved in the criminal justice system. I totally see the argument that tolerating crime is racist, but that seems like a tough sell in the bay at least. Also made more awkward by the fact that much of the crime is committed by people of color....
CAP had a long doc out that looked good to me, and I am hoping more Democrats sign on to this or something similar: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/delivering-accountability-a-plan-to-stop-crime-in-our-communities/
Curious if others have read it and have any concerns.
This piece is so naive - or maybe slippery - about liberal ideas of crime and punishment. I think it’s undoubtedly true that some dumb ideas about police being causing more harm than good proliferated post Floyd. I think that is now widely seen as an error. But beyond that lapse it has traditionally been Democrats who invest in anti-violence initiatives of all sorts - including police.
The real debate is how harsh to be with people committing low-level public order offenses who mostly are not hurting others but leave people feeling unsafe. There is a case to be made that we should lock up street drug users and sex workers to keep the streets clean but it’s also not very humane and not justified by public safety. That said if you want to make that argument you should have the conviction to say it.
If someone does not pose any risks to other people, and does not go to places where they are not allowed to be, I do not want them imprisoned. That said I think it's good to ban people from specific public spaces just for repeatedly degrading those spaces and making them worse for others.
Furthermore, I think that a bunch of people insist that a bunch of crimes are victimless/not hurting anyone about crimes that are, in fact, hurting people. Leaving dirty needles exposed in the streets hurts people! Smearing public spaces with feces hurts people! Following someone down the street screaming at them hurts people! Those aren't victimless crimes at all!
I strongly suspect that if we use the rule "prosecute actions that do hurt people, ban people from specific spaces if they are making those spaces worse for their intended use through intoxicated conduct/soliciting sex on the street/having an out of control dog/screaming), we get the result ~everyone wants without sending anyone to prison for sex work (people might go to prison if they repeatedly trespass in a place they've been banned from. I'm fine with that.)
Appreciate the response.
The bar of "any risks" is way too low. We pose risks to other humans all the time.
If you want to take a tough approach to public order issues, I understand that, though I think you're oversimplifying (as demonstrated by the "any risks" comment).
What I really object to is the way the piece suggests that liberals don't take violence seriously. We absolutely do, as evidenced by your Baltimore example (run by a liberal Democrat!) Republicans love to talk tough but they are regularly looking to flood communities with guns, cut funding for anti-violence programs, and route public safety funding to suburban areas instead of places really struggling with violence. What Republicans are willing to do is lock up more people and for longer. If that's what you like, I guess go off, but you are mistaken to suggest that's only way to take violence seriously.
The thing is... the way we've approached crime in the US is to criminalize people as opposed to acts. The self-proclaimed "tough on crime" people declare that the solution is always to hire more cops, let them do whatever they want, and pay them more.
But they pay little attention to what cops actually do. Which is to zoom in on harassing certain groups for so-called "public order" offenses, but essentially ignoring violent crimes committed against the same populations that are harassed for the same "public order" offenses.
Which pretty well explains the broken relationship between poor Black communities and the police departments that are supposed to protect them. Those communities are both over- and under-policed. Over-policed in the sense that a police officer is quite likely to give you a ticket for jaywalking or speeding or public urination if you live in Ferguson, Missouri. But if your cousin is murdered, the odds that the murderer will be brought to justice are exceptionally low (unless your cousin happens to be white, in which case clearance rates skyrocket).
Both the self-proclaimed criminal justice reformers and the "tough on crime" people focus on the former; the result in liberal cities is police who stop enforcing public order offenses and essentially do nothing. And there's never a focus on actually making the police a force for public safety, by focusing the police on clearing violent crimes. That also has the effect of sapping criminal gangs of their potency; street gangs came about as a form of self-help; if the police are essentially hidden tax collectors, out to assess fines to poor people but completely disinterested in solving violent crimes, people don't report violent crime to them. Instead, they turn to street gangs as a form of self-help. The LAPD won't solve the crime, the thinking goes, but the Crips can extract street justice if a member is a relative.
That cycle desperately needs to be broken. Whether it will be is... much tougher to consider.
Something that goes unstated here is that as long as disparate impact of incarceration is treated like a social justice issue, then you're not going to have much left-of-center support for incarcerating violent offenders.
I think are long term options is to really do something about handguns, and or mass aerial autonomous drone surveillance
Largely agree with the takes here — but the elephant in the room is that conservative propaganda and viral social media clips contribute largely to the avg. person's perceived levels of disorder. Especially for rural voters who don't live in cities.
My Alabama-born-and-raised brother-in-law is convinced that California is a fiery hellscape populated almost entirely with homeless folks and sex offenders. He's never been there, naturally.
And my own — normally rational — parents won't even consider riding the subway in an upcoming trip to NYC because of perceived crime; despite it being much safer to do so today than their last visit in 2004...
Sure, cities have a lot of room to improve here, and Dems do need to focus on reducing public disorder — but you can slash crime rates in half and that won't help you win if voters don't *feel* safe. And that's the harder challenge.
> I notice liberals and progressives tend to take this for granted when it comes to foreign policy but often fail to think about what it means at home.
Is this true? It took until Bush to get the original PEPFAR out, and there's been far less outrage on the DOGE cancellations of USAID than I might've hoped for.
What are people screaming threats and throwing junk at people crossing the street? I hope that's not a regular occurence in these neighborhoods.