Lara, in painting her story in "broad strokes" speaks of the horrible black man doing something heinous to the pretty white woman. When do you protect the black community? When do you acknowledge that most of the crimes will be in minority neighborhoods? This is why more people of color will be voting for candidates with R's behind their names in a few days.
The far left supposedly “loves” black communities just like it “loves” immigration, but is utterly indifferent to the lives of actual black people or actual illegal immigrants. People in both groups are looking for a better, safer, more prosperous life, not ideological statements in their name.
The fact that black people are always the ones who suffer as a result of these supposedly "anti-racist" laws suggests that the Democrats' approach views black suffering as a feature, not a bug.
The good news appears to be that after 60 years of voluntarily voting for the same idiots ruining their cities, blacks are no longer voluntarily voting for their own demise and have to be paid to do so (see Orlando)
Not a "feature" so much as an opportunity to massage their egos while blaming the unintended-but-how-could-you-not-see-it-coming blowback on everyone else.
When Hillary, in one of the revealed DNC communications, referred to Hispanic voters as "taco bowl," it became obvious that racism has persisted among Democrats, in spite of their efforts to pretend publicly that they are the ones who "care" about racial minorities.
It is also why most victims of the crimes are minorities from minority neighborhoods.
I am all for re-thinking the police function to less of a take-control approach to one of de-escalation. But to close our eyes to the locus of crime and the actors most prominent in its commission seems self-defeating.
And there lies the problem with a lot of these "reformers". To glorify themselves, they run grand social experiments, using innocent citizens as their lab rats. The sad thing is, they are discrediting the very concept of criminal justice reform.
"discrediting the very concept of criminal justice reform."
My frustration with the "left" right now is that we have real problems. We do need criminal justice reform. But they always take things to the extreme: We can't have commonsense abortion laws; we must have abortion up to and after the moment of birth. We can't have commonsense physician assisted suicide laws; we must face the possibility that like Canada we will use euthanasia as a way to avoid caring for people. We can't have a commonsense approach to the real, but rare, psychological condition called gender dysphoria; we must expose children to sex at an early age if not mutilate and sterilize them so that cross dressing adults (not gender dysphoric adults, but what would traditionally be considered transvestites) can feel "safe." And we can't have commonsense criminal justice reform because these nutcases end up letting violent criminals back out on the streets to terrorize vulnerable populations.
Well said. The pendulum always swings too far. And then those who swung it start whining when it inevitably starts to swing back.
The Dobbs case would never have existed- much less made it to the Supreme Court- if the leftists hadn’t gone too far. They are in large part responsible for the end of Roe v Wade.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. Certain groups have been trying to overturn Roe v Wade for a long time and we've never had this conservative a court, well, at least since Roe v Wade. So I think the challenge was coming at some point and the Democrats, even though they've been in power several times since Roe v Wade, have never codified abortion into federal law.
However, what I will say, which may strengthen your point, is that people care less about this issue because many of us that are fundamentally pro-choice are not so when you give us the option of no abortion (or states setting abortion law), on one hand, and what most people would describe as federal legalized infanticide, on the other. And then when you drop the economy into the toilet, start persecuting your political opponents with a corrupt DOJ, politicize every institution in this country, violate people's bodily autonomy over a virus, and get us into a war while censoring people pointing out what a horrid job you're doing, that issue becomes even less important to me, and I suspect many others.
It is unpopular to say that the Dobbs decision was not about abortion. But the fact is that it was not.
It was about where, constitutionally, the decisions concerning abortions were to be made. The Supreme Court said that they were not authorized to make such policies.
It doesn't. That is why someone like me, who is traditionally liberal, ends up sounding like the most rabid conservative ever because the slippery slope isn't a logical fallacy in this country. It's the modus operandi of one half of the political spectrum. And I end up deciding it's safer to not give them an inch because the next thing you know we'll have, well, what we have.
there is even more pressure on black women not to testify against black perps. Great articles on the black colleges in the US where the black women confess they don't want to send a brother to jail. It isn't just poor blacks suffering because of the violent crime, but even wealthier blacks. WAPO article showing wealthy blacks 15x more likely to die of violent crime than poor whites.
"WAPO article showing wealthy blacks 15x more likely to die of violent crime than poor whites."
my gut instinctive reaction is, it's not true. I would ask to see sources but at the end of the day, there is ZERO chance of a study like that being rigorous or meaningful. First of all, the reliance on binary "black / white" classifications.... how would an Obama be classified along that scale...? what about his daughters...?
there is ZERO chance of racial differences in America after you control for other factors.
Maybe the same way obama and eric holder did it to shake down Allybank. "His last name is Johnson and he lives in zip code 12345, therefore he's black." That is exactly what they did to "prove" disparate impact in Allybank lending.
It is based on many things, police reports, self identification etc. It isn't new. FBI and CDC have collected race and income based crime stats for decades.
Thing is, lenders cannot collect that data, by law. So obama and holder made it up, guessed. All to try to prove that somehow a bank was not interested in earning money off of interest from blacks and instead wanted the valuable underlying cars and signatures and houses that the blacks had borrowed against that had tanked in value, all the while having no interest in white peoples' "assets" even though the bank didn't have the racial information...
I debunk it thus: how are people who are 1/3 black accounted for in this study? what about black skinned dominicans?
race as used in studies like this (which are NOT even a little bit "sciency" btw) use arbirtrary and convenient definitions of "race" to suit their various ideological purposes.
I suppose I was just a arrogant as you when in my 20s.
you are surprised the FBI relies on self identification or police and coroners reports instead of 23 and me genomic analysis? wow you got me. race is often not entirely accurate in criminal law.
Wow aren't you confident? Here's one. Prison sentences are based on actual crimes committed. Now how on earth could researchers without your intelligence account for income and race? It's called a multivariate analysis.
FBI and CDI classifies all crimes by race. the only shade of grey here was a historic need to conflate latino and white, and that was done to make white crime rates look worse and to mask latino crime rates.
Oh I bet they do. And they get 100% pure garbage in result. And what qualifications does one need to become a professional FBI race sorter..? maybe a gender studies degree!
Bill Cosby was before #MeToo and some victims were black women, though not all of the 60 + victims made it to court. It is noteworthy that Cosby was defended by many black men and women. It was called a frame job up untill the conviction. Some famous black women finally conceded there was sufficient evidence.
Many black women like Mary J Blige were saying "ya'll don't even know" kind of threatening to blow whistle in entertainment/music and just everyday harrasment.
Haven't seen article. Does "wealthy Blacks" include those who do well financially, then try to help their old neighborhood and be killed as a reward? Or, successful Rap/Hip-Hop artists being "assassinatied" by competitors?
I don't think the study goes into individual cases. One might imagine that the violent rap wars are just one example of how money doesn't stop violence. Similar stories of famous black athletes getting into all sorts of trouble. And it stands to reason many blacks make it big on drug dealing or pimping alone. Jay Z was rich from that before even getting into music production. I've never even heard of philanthropists being gunned down "as a reward".
Well plenty of rich blacks that have histories of philanthropy are killed but not in that exact scenario. Jennifer Hudson's father. Bill Cosby's son. Clarence Avant's wife attacked and killed in their in their Beverly Hills homes last year. I think the majority of the violence that affect wealthy blacks are lifestyle related. It's not the safest thing to party all night every night doing illegal drugs but Whitney and Bobby were featured on TV doing just that.
We live 50 minutes from Kenosha. Our son's first year of college was in August, 2020 on the heels of the "Jacob Blake" riots, in Kenosha. They were forced to delay the start of the school year. Point being, we are close to this situation.
What got TOTALLY lost in all of the Kenosha riots was the criminal Jacob Blake. There was a black woman, the mother of his children, who had a restraining order against him, who called the police to her home because Blake was taking their children in her car, violating the restraining order. Then he resisted arrest and pulled a knife on the cops who responded to the call of JB's girlfriend.
I've yet to see anyone take a look at that part of the story. To me, she was victimized twice; once by the low life Blake and once by the people who put him up as some kind of victim, when in actuality, she and her children were the victims.
Do you mean the Jacob Blake that Kamala Harrris visited by his hospital bed after he tried to kill his girlfriend? Again. She told him how proud she was of him. Did she even read his background file?!
Ms. Bazleon argues, in lockstep with fuzzy liberal beliefs "But with treatment, intervention, education, vocational training, mental health services, and yes, mercy, they turn their lives around." Yet, as Mr. Mangual notes "A recent meta-analysis of the literature on the “Effectiveness of psychological interventions in prison to reduce recidivism,” published in The Lancet, found little evidence in the form of rigorous, high-quality studies to support the suggestion that a solution to the recidivism problem is within reach. " As usual, good intentions, rather than facts, informs the fanciful policies of the Left.
With or without all these ministrations, the harsh reality is that we are releasing violent people into society to prey upon the innocent because there are individuals who remain violent, predatory sociopaths who have no business ever being loose among us. Then Bazleon predictably plays the race card. What difference does the color of a criminal's skin make to a victim? We are not incarcerating people because of their race. We are locking them up because they are a menace to the innocent people who are trying to live their lives.
The cold fact is that cashless bail and emptying the prisons was a knee-jerk reaction to the Floyd incident and the BLM sophistry that followed. It has created a disaster that will grow worse, aided and abetted by the Soros prosecutors who were installed to further the chaos. Criminals are criminals, irrespective of race. Sociopathic criminals are repeat offenders and a clear menace. Mr. Mangual muses "It seems to me that a “three-strikes”-type approach to repeat offending is a start. Maybe the right number of strikes isn’t three. Perhaps it’s five. " Five? Five what - murders? Violent assaults? Rapes? How about one?
Society has rules and, when they are ignored and mocked, the fabric of society frays and tears apart and people take matters into their own hands. We are fast approaching that point.
One good thing has happened and that is more and more people are recognizing the evil that Soros has unleashed upon the world. This guy has been demonic since WWII, seemingly hates the West, yet resides here. His funding of these DAs and other pols has made life in America so much worse and it’s good it’s being recognized. Here’s hoping the red wave drowns him.
she is using incarceration models from Europe to prove it can be coupled to low crime and higher rehabilitation but Europe never had US violent crime rate nor did they have the cultures of crime the US has.
She is implying that Europe has a low crime rate because it doesn't incarcerate many people, whereas I think it is pretty clear that crime makes society want to lock up criminals, not that locking up criminals creates more crime. I think people sitting in judgement of others is actually at the heart of leftist policy on crime - they think that society should take into account why a person committed a crime, insofar as it weighs on what the person deserves. I think we have no business "sitting in judgement" on our fellow man, and the only thing we should look at is public safety. So if Jimmy murdered his neighbor because that's Jimmy's nature or if he murdered his neighbor because someone slipped a homicide-producing drug in his whiskey is relevant to sentencing, in my opinion, because what are the chances someone will drug him and cause a murder again? But whether Jimmy was raised in foster care after being abused by his mother, vs he was from a rich and cold family and raised by a nanny, and he's a murderous sociopath either way, is not important to me. Even if he came from the most loving him and then decided he wanted to kill people, it would not matter to me - in all three cases, society would be safer with him locked away, and that is all that counts. People think "sitting in judgement" means condemning, but sometimes it means excusing. Neither is good.
It appalls me how Republicans are not explaining about George Soros’ outrageous interference or at least running ads about his shameful involvement in our criminal justice system. . It has made this intractable problem even worse
I think our chance might come with the overhaul of Twitter. Twitter is enormously a tool of the Woke generation, but not everyone on there is part of the far left.
Yes, I agree. And more people ARE believing they must take matters into their own hands. Unfortunately those are the stories MSM sensationalize, which feeds the Left.
Speaking of Europe - I mentioned before that I think reading Charles Dickens has to be a requirement...Such an old story - Do-gooders and criminals pretended to be reformed - Uriah Heep anyone?
There are really two different styles and tones, aren't there? The first uses logic and facts. The second chooses to focus on emotionally evocative language and fringe examples.
Here is the thing: young black kids, specifically, are being failed by society. Far too many of them, by the time they hit the age where they are eligible for adult prisons, are functional psychopaths. They have been traumatized too many times, by too many things, and in my personal view a very high percentage of them, being the children of what can only be called girls, have insecure or disordered attachments, that they then bring into an objectively unsafe world.
Moral order begins in earliest childhood. It begins in the sense that the world makes sense, is in general fair, and that somebody cares for you and will work to keep you safe. Far too many black kids in urban areas never feel any of these things. They react in predictable ways. In the ways any of us would have reacted, had we been born in the same way, in the same place, to the same single mother.
All of this is tragic. But to pretend that the damage can be undone or that most of these kids can ever be rehabilitated is insane. That incarcerating people who will NEVER STOP being criminals reduces the crime rate is obvious.
And we are unique in the world in the peculiarly codependent way in which we have failed the black community. Democrats have been claiming to be their saviors for many decades now, but the problem is that if the problems ever get fixed, then they won't need Democrats any more. So on the one hand they publicly claim to be friends, and on the other they sabotage everything. They incent single parenthood, oppose effective improvements in schooling, and do their best to prevent anyone from ever saying "this is my responsibility" by pushing it off on white people, Republicans, and anyone else who sounds at the given moment plausible.
All of these problems have solutions, but they require SPEAKING THE TRUTH. The single worst crime Democrats commit is making honest discussion impossible by personalizing everything, deflecting, denying, and lying. This is my honest opinion. I cannot see how embracing the Democrats has been anything but an unmitigated catastrophe for the black community.
Barry, yes, yes, yes!! Thank you putting in excellent words what I have been saying for years. The criminal isn’t born that way. Their crappy upbringing, if one can even call it that, is where it begins. How do we go back to marriage before children? How do we encourage dads to stay around? People eschew “conservative” values but it seems the dismantling of those values is what got us into this mess.
This is why I dislike the Obama so much. He had a great opportunity to not only heal race relations (which were actually nit bad at the time) but to speak truth to the black community . Instead he fomented hate.
Why was it Obama's unique responsibility to "heal race relations"? No other president before or since has been tasked with such a gargantuan, not to mention impossible, responsibility. Obama isn't even descended from enslaved Africans and, by his own admission, grew up outside of the traditional African American cultural paradigm.
Also, how precisely did he "foment hate"? By stating that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon? How exactly does such a statement cause anyone to hate anyone else?
So true! We all rebelled against those values when we were young, but it’s more and more apparent that those values are necessary for a civilized, safe, and prosperous society.
As a mental health professional, I could not agree more. The INDIVIDUAL is lost in these debates. Disordered attachments, family chaos, generational trauma, violence, neglect, etc. These conditions have a real and often permanent effect on human development. Once we zoom out to a group-level identity politics driven view, we lose all of it.
I still shake my head that most of my (super liberal) colleagues at work cannot make this connection but resort to fuzzy sloganeering.
That mental health professionals who understand intimately the mental health benefits of responsibility, emotional maturity, and resilience reliably gravitate to the people who more or less make all of those anathema has long puzzled me too.
Everything they are trying to communicate to their clients during the day they forget when it comes to politics. I don't get it.
I read a book some years ago that really influenced me. It was called "The Myth of Neurosis", by Grant or Garth Wood, and basically argued that most people who are having trouble just need to grow up and recognize LIFE IS HARD. Ironically, if you accept that life is hard, it gets easier.
I make notes to myself all the time, and one the other day was "you cannot place a heavier burden on a child than by teaching them that life is supposed to be easy."
We know that 70+% of black children are born to single mothers. Having been a single mother for over 10 years, I can tell you that it is not easy, even with a supportive spouse and living in a nice, safe suburb. I can’t imagine why anyone would think they are “helping” black mothers and children by continually releasing predators back into their neighborhoods.
If liberals want to improve the lives of black children and stop producing the next generation of predators, the first thing to do is give these mothers a chance by keeping the criminals locked up.
This is a fascinating and well made argument, thanks for writing it. Setting aside the politics, what solutions would you offer to these problems? America has failed its black community since we dragged the first slave off the first ship. How do we un-fail this community, and how do we reduce the tribal warfare among all our cultural subgroups, the tribalism that generates the hate that brings the crime? Thoughts?
The absolute first step has to be committing to honesty. This has been missing for many decades. If something is a fact, it is not racist. And if it is a fact, it is relevant and should belong in the discussion.
The second would be decoupling the black community from Democrats. The problems persist because the people who would lose from solving them ensure that they persist. In my personal view, Malcom X was right in calling black people who voted reflexively for Democrats, despite having nothing, ever, to show for it, Chumps.
Third, we need to provide incentives for two parent families, and we need to figure out what educational forms enable kids from poor and violent neighborhoods to thrive. My reading says that is Charter Schools, where kids progress at their own pace under the tutelage of floating teachers, and using computer modules.
Fourth we need to stop with the victimization rhetoric. Blacks are not helpless children. They are not inferior. They don't need the help of patronizing white people. Frederick Douglass said long ago "Just leave us alone." And he was a slave. Not the descendant of a slave, but an actual slave.
I personally have faith that if they are not being taken out at the knees continually with bad ideas designed to weaken them, black folks in this country have everything it takes to do exceptionally well.
The story to me is not why black folks in this country have not thrived more, but how much work it has taken to impede and prevent their success, all by the very people who claimed to be their friends.
Oh yeah, that's why I keep saying it's a cultural problem. I actually think that a lot of people who live in those neighborhoods would actually support a strong police presence and the breaking up of the gangs, if they had confidence that it would actually happen. But as it is, they don't dare speak out, because the gangs will come looking for them.
If an academic figures out that personal responsibility is the cause, then their job of designing a solution is unessential.
Dan Rather in "National Disgrace" about the Detroit Schools shows the harsh realities facing these kids, it is disgusting. However, it also reveals that even the kids that can overcome the obstacles and get a free ride to college are simply not up to the task.
Another example: Try finding data on the success rates of Baltimore City Schools kids that get the free ride to Johns Hopkins for having a HS GPA of like 3.2 or something. I can't find any for whatever reason. You can crunch the available numbers and find that, for instance, a 6th grader in a BCPS in the early 2000s, had a 4% (iirc) likelihood of graduating from any college, even a 2-year community college within 6-years of HS graduation.
My point is that we are, imo, mis-allocating tens of billions of dollars a year in the urban schools' and running it simply as a public works project instead of preparing kids (and future parents) for adulthood. Kids in those districts don't stand a chance.
If we wait for the person black, white or purple to be incarcerated, we have lost the battle- intervention needs to start in grade school and then we may make a difference in crime rates. Our public education system needs to be challenged. It is our only hope as a society!
Both seem to oppose lengthy overly punitive punishment for minor first offenses, or even second. Neither support railroading minorities. The issue is at what point have you exhausted your chances given either increasing severity of criminal activity or how many felonies are too many?
The DA’s should not over charge, plea agreements cant be so one sided in that the risk of trial to a defendant is so onerous so as to cause the Govt never to have to prove its case.
But clearly incorrigible anti social criminals should live in a different society from the norm.
Its where to draw the line and how to hold the police/ prosecution accountable when charging first or second offenders?
The injustice system is much simpler than we pretend when we go round and round debating straw man arguments. It goes like this - if we have equal application of the law - we have a justice system and it works. If we have unequal application of the law we have an injustice system and we get exactly what we’re seeing today. Through the 80’s we had an injustice system intended to punish the weak. From the 90’s going forward we have an injustice system meant to protect the powerful and endanger the weak. The issue is always the same - the mechanism the only difference. We used to throw poor people in jail for petty crimes, to “protect” the wealthy, now we allow Chicago a higher murder rate than Baghdad with little to no punishment but if you trespass on public property with the assistance of the police you’ll rot in solitary confinement indefinitely. Until we fix the injustice part of the system how we apply “justice” to criminals is and will always be just a distraction from the actual distinction on the system.
The problem isn't unequal treatment. A major bug in the adversarial system is unequal LAWYERS. Us bottom-feeders can't afford an O.J.-Class mouthpiece.
The most important goal of incarceration is not punishment - it is public safety. This is the emphasis properly offered by the first essay and virtually ignored in the second.
Let's be realistic. You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth. Their views are always colored by visions of rainbows and unicorns. A "Why can't all just get along." philosophy.
Ms. Bazelon says long prison terms do not deter crime. I read an article several years back that long prison sentences do deter crime by keeping the bad guys off the streets. I think that makes more sense than her left wing propaganda.
Another leftist wail is that there is racial misjustice because there are more blacks than other races in prisons yet blacks make up only 13% of the population. Well blacks commit 51% of the murders and the vast majority of these murderers are males so 6.5% of the population are committing these murders so why are leftists so surprised that blacks make up so much of the prison population? The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 35% of prison population are white and 38% are black. The rest are of other races.
The left always looks at every problem this nation has through the prism of race. In every argument with a Dem, their first irrational retort is to call you a racist. You just can't trust them to make rational policy decisions. I think they are mentally unbalanced. If you don't believe me just look at comprof's postings. Don't reply to them. Just look at them and shake your head and think Polecat is right. This guy is nutz.
They are the people who want to abolish the police, empty prisons and force our children to believe in the racist CRT that teaches all whites are evil. Why would any rational person except a left wing nut case vote Democrat/Communist?
The results of these policies were stunning. By 1992, as more violent offenders were incarcerated, the trajectory of violent crime started falling for the first time in decades. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush continued these policies, and from 1991 to 2013, the total prison population in the U.S. doubled—from roughly 800,000 to 1.6 million. At the same time, violent crime plummeted, dropping for 23 years. By 2014 it had been cut in half—to a level not seen since 1970—and homicides of black victims were down by about 5,000 a year.
Nevertheless, progressives complained: Why were we imprisoning record numbers when crime was receding? They missed the point. Crime was dropping precisely because we were keeping violent criminals in prison. Progressives call this “mass incarceration,” but their rhetoric is deceptive. It implies people are being locked up indiscriminately. On the contrary, incapacitation is a precision strategy. It targets and uses prison space primarily for violent criminals who pose the greatest threat to public safety.
--William Barr in The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2022
Rising Crime Rates Are a Policy Choice
Progressives can’t solve the problem because they won’t abandon the practices that cause it
That's the thing that Ms. Bazelon does not seem to understand--the point of incarceration is not to deter people from *choosing* to become criminals. We have known for a very long time that criminals are not detered by the punishment of other criminals, because no criminal plans to get caught. The point of incarceration is to prevent crime by keeping criminals away from the rest of society. That is only effective to extent that we keep criminals locked up for as long as possible.
Yet more often now (since George Floyd & Biden/Harris) arrest has become a revolving door, IF arrested at all. Defunding police & cashless bail has not created the utopia the Left advocates.
You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth.
If this statement is true (can we trust it?), then there is no real opportunity for interaction or discussion. And one wonders how the ‘left winger’ would be encouraged to consider the ‘other side’ to be trustworthy…?
Well, let's see. When the Tea Party exercised their first amendment rights to peaceful assemblies, Nancy Pelosi called them NAZIs but she yet has to call BLM and ANTIFA communists thugs, when they have burned down dozens and dozens of businesses and looted them. They assaulted police and murdered people. Democrat, Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Justice Committe when Portland was on fire, when people asked him about Portland burning said, "That is just a myth, a rumor." AOC is a joke.
You tell me. How do you have a rational conversation with people like this?
The right has their share of nuts but none of them want to dissolve the police, empty prisons, have no bail policies or have CRT taught in the classrooms.
Please give me a civil point by point rebuttal and prove me wrong.
“You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth”
That they have come to different conclusions on the world’s ills is not necessarily dishonest. Their life experiences are different. I have many friends, folks of goodwill and empathy, whose thinking I see as naive, incomplete or shallow. But they’re honestly held views.
I believe 80% or more of traditional US liberals would caucus with us on the big issues. Sure there would be weirdness at the fringes but overall we can get this done with an open hearted approach.
What I see as naive - people who believe and hold out hope we can come together and reach a solution to address the ills that plague this country. Sadly, bought & paid for politicians MUST keep us divided and therefore campaign on, then follow through on their rhetoric. “IF” our elected leaders would join forces to solve these problems
we might have a chance to right these wrongs. It’s naive to believe that will ever happen.
I know I painted all of them with the same brush but it seems to me, looking at the left wing press and the Dem politicians, they are all on board with the PC, woke and the CRT crazies. If they aren't on board, how come they haven't condemned these brutal nut cases for the tyrants they are and they are tyrants. They destroy people's lives. Paula Deen lost her TV show for something she said 20 or 30 years ago.
Bill Maher nails it in this video. Like him, all of us, the press and our politician show be laughing at the PC/Work crowd for the vicious tyrants they are. None of us should be taking these nuts seriously but the left does and I find this dangerous:
There is no question in my mind that working with prisoners and helping educate them, help them with starting even relatively simple careers where they can work and earn a living is quite effective or could be. I don't know about the Massachusetts program mentioned in the article and its 99% success rate. That would require some time devoted to the nuts and bolts of the program and their outcome measurements. But it sounds very hopeful. I think another overlooked aspect to prison reform is prison pay. Prisoners so I have read, earn about $1 a day for their labor. Even when fighting fires in the liberal state of CA. To me, this just seems like exploitation/slavery of the worst kind. I hope the legislature passes a bill which requires prisoners to be earning at least federal minimum wage to start and then incremental increases as they show and develop skills and expereince. This would not, of course be tax free. But half their net earnings could be held in a trust account and so, when they are released it would not be straight on to the crowded homelesss streets of the city.
Of course they also get room and board. Prisoners probably should not be paid better than honest people working low-income jobs on the outside. Giving them money when they are released so they have some resources to get started on a better life is a good idea, though.
They used to pay prisoners more reasonably for their work but all of the big unions lobbied heavily to stop it. They view it as labor competition. But I agree with you.
I believe I read this in one of the early chapters on the history of prisons in the U.S. in a book called "Prison & Slavery" by John Gleissner. But I can't find my copy of it at the moment, which means I probably loaned it out. As I recall, he makes a strong case for the beneficial reforming effects of teaching trades in prisons which earn income and a means for post-prison independence. He has a long litany (referenced) of all the various federal and state laws and reforms which have frustrated this kind of project for the most part. I never realized prior to reading this book, that the whole penitentiary system was a Quaker invention (the word itself comes from becoming a 'penitent'). They had this bizarre notion that putting people in solitary confinement to pray over their sins and reform themselves would actually work rather than drive them mad.
Instead of having a “line”, we could just have the jail time increase with prior felony count. An extreme version: double with each prior conviction, or maybe with each prior 2 convictions etc.
One of the problems is how many felony crimes are plea-bargained down to misdemeanors. I think there should be a record of these bargains and the original charge considered during sentencing for subsequent cases.
That is true and I was going to raise the issue but my comment was too long. But it also works the other way. I see a lot of overcharging both in terms of the offense charged and the number of offenses charged. When I started practicing in the 80s there would be an offense or two, sometimes a misdemeanor and a felony. Even multiple laws were arguably committed the officer would arrest for only the strongest case or two (for the most part there were some exceptions). Now it seems to be a real throw the book at them and see what sticks. I think that is to impact crime ststistics which impacts funding and politicol support. And the prosecutors here frequently charge differently than what the arrest was for, either (according to them) insufficient proof so the case is downcharged, or the ADA believes a higher degree of offense is provable, in which case they upcharge. And the upcharge means a new, higher bond and a new arrest. I had clients charged with a litany of non-violent crimes. But in terms of the 3 strike laws the prior convictions have to have occurred at different times. And actually if a pre-sentence investigation is conducted and report prepared (and they usually are in felonies) a sentencing judge does know a defendant's entire criminal history including a arrests and dispositions thereof.
Some particular offenses are treated that way. DWI/DUI for example. Each subsequent offense is subject to a harsher penalty. That is one type of "enhancement". The 3 strike laws are a different type. The theory is if an offender has been to the penitentiary 3 times already and still commits offenses he/she should be punished more harshly. In theory that is true but it does produce some miscarriages of justice usually where the old convictions are not just.
I kept reading Ms. Bazelon's part of the article looking for answers. She cites other nations with low crime rates and low incarceration but never explains how they do it. I'd like to know. She targets the horrific crimes but, sadly, the increase in crime is mostly within minority communities. The abduction, rape, and murder of a woman off the streets is rare. The accidental shooting of kids through windows in minority communities, less so. When she suggests fixes, instead of woe is criminals, then she might sway me.
It always bothers me when the criminal justice reformers cite Scandinavian countries with low incarceration rates. None of these other countries are similar to the U.S. in any capacity. The U.S. is one of the youngest, most diverse nations in the world, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not work here. We need a unique solution for a unique country.
Scandinavia's storied small sentences used to work just fine before the waves of immigrants from Africa and Middle East came. They are now experiencing massive violent crime waves and the lenient sentences are not sufficient to reform their criminal populace. Take a good look at what just happened to Sweden. I assure you leftists will not be touting Sweden's incarceration policies in 10 years.
This is true in my view. I’m currently in Europe (5:17am!!) and what I’ve observed is that lower sentences are the norm in countries we’d consider non-diverse.
Just read a news article here -two convictions for accessory to murder (supplying the firearm & get away driver). A father and son.
The sentences were:
1 year for Dad
3 years for Junior
With the policies in this particular country neither will serve even half of their sentences.
I am not a fan of harsh sentencing and have thrown a few bucks at the Innocence Project in the past
My cousin being falsely convicted on rape charges was the impetous for the creation of Innocence project. He was a white Jewish man in NY. Kerry Kotler. My father always believed Kerry was innocent and I have the letters he wrote from prison. Since then Innocence Project has been hijacked by race activists very confortable in their proclamations that all the injustices are systemic racism of whites against blacks, which I find insulting and more than a tad ironic.
Absolutely. Although covered already ad nauseum the corruption of really impressive institutions (ACLU, Innocence Project, Notre Dame, FBI etc) is the saddest phenomenon of the past years
Much of the problems with false convictions can be laid at the feet of corrupt cops and prosecutors. I've said before that, if every cop or prosecutor who falsified or lied about evidence was made to serve twice the sentence they sought, that practice would stop in a heartbeat.
To be fair Bruce, although the cops frequently get the wrong guy I believe where they do so knowingly is still very rare. The risks seriously outweigh any benefit.
Incarceration for even a couple-three months could irreparably up-end a person's life. How about the miscreant lawman do the original sentence plus one year?
The post industrial countries she is refering to are in Europe and they have 200 year trends of declining murder rates, yes even during the world wars homicide rates decreased in Europe. This is due to strong judicial systems and cultures that became accostumed to outsourcing conflict to the State. No frontier cultures have such long histories of Jurisprudence. The US was settled by honor cultures. We've always had higher homicide rates than Europe. Thomas Sowell attributes black criminality in the US to southern honor cultures. "Black Rednecks and white Liberals". Blacks commit over 50% of homicides in the US per year and it's been that way for a half century now.
I've read Sowell's book and there's a lot of truth to it. A lot of urban street culture had its antecedents in the antebellum South, and in Scotch-Irish culture before that.
And yeah, comparisons to European crime rates are irrelevant, due to the cultural differences. Although I note that rates in many European nations are going up as immigration increases. Most European nations are fairly culturally monolithic, and they don't do immigration well.
Well Europe has its own type of multicuturalism, which is now being questioned by populists like Macron. It was previously posited they could not even integrate the immigrant cultures. So multicultural meant every immigrant culture is an island distinct living in Europe. A very different model than the US melting pot. Macron is just one of many leaders now saying the immigrants must adopt French values. They cannot be an island. These details and the fact that violent crime is changing Europe are all too sensitive for leftist reformers to discuss honestly. It has been radioactive for decades and Sowell retreated from all TV appearances because every single liberal reporter just ignored all nuance and tried to character assasinate him. Same happened to Clarence Thomas, who was fundamentally changed after reading Sowell.
Yes/no. A far wider range of “offenses” are likely to entrap citizens in Europe in the justice system. A colleague is sporting a record for having shotgun shells in his locked trunk.
In the US it’s actually harder to end up caught in the legal system but the penalties are far harsher.
I think Europeans obsessed with speech policing are dystopian. ACLU used to be on the correct side of this. Ideological persecution and thought crime is very real and growing issue in Europe. I would say they became too obsessed with statism, judicial intervention and that too isn't a new thing. In many ways our frontier culture drives libertarianism.
I don't want to go too far into the weeds here but there is plenty of high resolution details to comb over. Not all European cultures are the same by any means. The Europeans that settled the US show regional differences in their adherence to Judicial systems. So the northern US was settled by Dutch and Scandinavians whereas the South was settled by Scotch and Irish farmers. Those settling cultures have measurably distinct attitudes when it comes to conflict resolution.
Ironically those with the highest tolerance for interpersonal violence have the least harsh sentencing. Honor cultures in the South are much more likely to forgive murderers than Northerners. A great study in Better Angels proves the massive differences. Researches created fake resumes/applications for employment of a convicted murderer released from jail to companies in the south and the north. Southerners, though equally unlikely to employ convict, would write back with sympathy and encouragement. Northerners wouldn't even respond.
I’ve yet to see a comparative study controlling for racial/ethnic demographics. I did review one years back for educational results. When broken out by race and ethnicity, some states demonstrated better results in individual categories than states typically lauded as being leaders in education
Yeah, Lara lost me when she injected the “coded” racism line instead of just arguing on the merits. And then to see that she is employing her skills in the festering criminal hellscape of San Fransicko I had to snicker. I’m willing to bet that she was a Chesa Boudin cheerleader. I cleave to the simple mantra of “make crime illegal again”. Then enforce the laws fairly and consistently. Who among us doesn’t believe that Paul Pelosi’s assailant, had he assaulted a commoner like us, wouldn’t have walked free later that same night of the assault with a cash free bail?
And believe that Paul Pelosi's assailant has a history of violent crimes against other citizens without famous names that were dismissed or very lightly punished.
I found it instructive that Pelosi’s attacker was caught so quickly. Other people in SF report that the police take a long time to respond, and then they take notes and leave—to the point where most people have stopped reporting crimes.
Someone else up-thread made the point: The people who most support coddling criminals can afford private security, or better yet, have the government provide it for them. It's class warfare.
Paul Pelosi's assailant would have been held without bail regardless of whom he assaulted because he's a white extremist. Look at the Jan 6 rioters, still imprisoned for being misguided idiots.
I saw an interview with Lara Bazelon on Professor Glen Loury's YouTube show. She's a nice person. They had a touching exchange at the end, about Professor Loury writing his autobiography.
Sorry, but prior to that, M. Bazelon was the stereotypical bleeding-heart, delusional progressive regarding the issues discussed. She's guilty of wishful thinking, is the main problem. Yeah, she's got her statistics, but that's about it. Funny she should be here. "Common Sense?"
This is the frustrating thing: we need a functioning left that intelligently advocates for those poorly served by society. Instead, the left is dominated by these people with such simplistic takes that the policies they advocate for seem to almost always backfire. That is, not only are their policies repugnant to those of us who believe people should be judged by their individual worth, rather than identity group, but they also fail to help the people they advocate for in the first place. Normies can no longer afford to let these bleeding hearts cry and / or bully others into getting their way, we gotta stand up for rational solutions or they’ll destroy the world.
Now, my understanding is that there's an inordinate number of people (mostly Blacks) who have long sentences for relatively minor (mostly drug) charges. M. Bazelon points out one case. She says 60 years for next to nothing. That could even be true. To me, anyway, there should be a way to review sentences vs. crimes.
But as a general rule? Letting out the kind-a people who are just gonna commit more crime? What's the sense of it? Letting people out instead-a having bail? Again. These are the things that make normies think the system is being used against them, right?
In general, in the U.S., receiving a ridiculous sentence for simple drug possession is pretty much a myth now. You see stories like "man gets 5,000,000-year sentence for possessing 50 grams of meth". And then you dig deeper, and you find out that the "drug user" actually was sentenced for knocking over a convenience store and shooting the proprietor. In general, police don't have time to mess with small-time drug users.
By the time the vast, vast, vast majority of criminals visit the big house they have violated conditions of probation many, many, many times. There are exceptions but not many.
It’s a particular versus general argument. Tough cases make bad law.
We as a society used to be beyond this facile reasoning. Carlos is a wonderful person and talented gardener. Therefore we must throw the border open.
Valuing Carlos and advocating for reasonable immigration policies are not mutually contradictory. The second writer fails to grasp this notion is my read jt.
"we need a functioning left that intelligently advocates for those poorly served by society."
We have that, it is called the right. But until you decouple 'advocating' from 'blaming others' and 'poorly served' from 'not pandered to,' you will not see it.
The left has built a monstrously huge failure called the inner city public education system that for generations has destroyed cities, families, businesses, and people while consuming hundreds of billions of dollars.
Kids (future parents) don't stand much of a chance with that kind of infrastructure. The entire concept that it is desirable and beneficial for all kids to have a pre-K through 12th grade 'education' in an urban school is sadly one of the most laughable concepts foisted on society.
I cannot even imagine what people in 200 years are gonna think when they look back at this. It's mind-blowing.
I think having her here served the purpose of demonstrating that people with her views are lacking common sense. I didn’t see much concern about public safety or practical suggestions which will make American cities run by liberals any safer than they are now. Her focus is on “over-incarceration”.
Blacks make up 12.8% of the population but commit the majority of violent crime in the country — mostly against other blacks, mostly in inner cities and mostly with illegal guns.
I was surprised in this discussion that one highly effective means of reducing this violence was not discussed: stop and frisk — a small inconvenience to a community versus innocent people being shot and killed.
In the 1990s, NYC was overwhelmed by gang killings and stop-and-frisk got guns and their carriers off the streets. New York became the nation’s safest large city. But in 2013, after a campaign claiming it was biased against black people (even though it was aimed at protecting black people in dangerous black neighborhoods), a federal judge declared stop-and-frisk “unconstitutional”.
Then came BLM villianizing police and police becoming less proactive in inner cities, and shootings and killings have surged. The people most hurt: innocent black people.
So with all the talk about changing gun laws (which I support), the reality is that these laws will do little to stop the majority of shootings with illegal guns. But one thing will work: stop and frisk.
Ms. Bazelon’s script is not a debate, It’s a sermon. Its also one day too early for me to be preached to about it somehow being the fault of decent law-abiding people that some folks are hell-bent on being miserable fuck-ups. I mean, what kind of sheltered privileged scum don’t want people freely burglarizing, robbing, slinging dope, raping, and murdering people in their neighborhoods? The audacity! When someone like Ms. Bazelon tries to tell you that you have no empathy or foresight when you want bad people incarcerated, you need to look them right in the eye and tell them they are full of shit, because they are.
Just enforce the damn law. Second chances? Perhaps if there is some significant remorse and willingness on the part of the guilty to change, then sure. That is common sense. Third, fourth, fifteenth chance? No. Full stop. You know what people in prison aren’t doing. They’re not taking advantage of good natured folks who are trying to do the right thing and live their lives honestly and peacefully. That’s the point.
Also, since the author included her own little sob story, here’s one of mine (chosen from a fairly long canon).
There was a domestic violence case I was involved in where the offender had been arrested multiple times for (wait for it), domestic violence against his wife. His penultimate arrest was for aggravated assault, specifically strangulation. He plead guilty to that charge and was on probation (yes, you read that correctly) when he entered his wife’s apartment and shot her point blank in the chest with a .410 shotgun in front of their three young children. He then fled.
I was the first officer to arrive. One of those lady’s little girls came flying up as my patrol car squealed to a stop. She screamed “please help, my mom’s been shot!” I’ll never forget it. Her mom was also one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. While I was trying to apply a chest seal to her wound, she calmly told me who shot her, what he was probably driving, and where he was probably going. Then she asked me if she was going to die. I told her she wasn’t. At thee time, I figured that was a lie. We said the Lord’s Prayer.
As it turns out, by the grace of God, she did not. The human pile of dog shit who tried to end her life is now doing 50 years, a small consolation to be sure for that little family. No laws were named after the victim or her children. The existing laws were just finally enforced. Had justice been done the first time(s), he would have been locked up long before he pulled the trigger that night. He was quite simply a bad person who was given more than one chance to do the right thing. He chose otherwise, and while in this case he did not kill anyone, he surely scarred his own family forever.
There are definitely more good people out there than bad, and there a lot of very intelligent people on this forum. Trust in your own ability to know right from wrong, and expect others (especially those in positions of power and influence) to do the same. This concludes my own sermon.
You have supported my statement that nobody goes straight to the big house from the get go. They always ride the probation carousel first. So by the time they are sentenced they have already had at least one chance and often far more. God bless you. I cannot imagine what you have witnessed first hand and what the cost thereof is.
The probation “carousel” (love that descriptor) can be an overused easy button for sure.
Thank you for the kind word as well. I’m doing something else now. I’ll note here though what a great police officer (and all-around exceptional human) told me about policing on more than one occasion: “Remember that this is something we have the privilege to do, not something we have to do.” It was always a poignant reminder (and is also true of most things in life).
I’m very thankful policing was something I got to do; but, I’m equally glad to be elsewhere. God bless those with the fortitude to stay the course.
Lovely sentiment. I always felt it was my privilege to defend the citizen accused. I think if more of us felt privileged to do our work the world would be a better place. I think that belief is why I find the thought of "elites" and "elitism" so vile.
TY. *Great* comment. You had me 100%, all the way up to the very end...
"Trust in your own ability to know right from wrong, and expect others (especially those in positions of power and influence) to do the same."
As I see it, IMO, we can trust and expect other people to have the ability "to know right from wrong." From what I've seen over the decades, we can have that expectation but we would be sorely disappointed on too many occasions to count. Especially lately. That's just me.
But when it comes to people in positions of power and influence, my gut feel is that it'd be better to have the opposite this kind-a trust and expectation. Mebbe I'm just cynical in my old age, so there is that.
But, from what I can tell, the very notion of right and wrong would require some people to get uncomfortable at times, people not being perfect. And it's the WORST SIN in the world these days, especially for the younger folks, for someone to be made to feel uncomfortable about *anything,* right? *Can't* have that happen, right?
That's the end of my sermon. Sorry. But TY again for the story.
You are right; I did not articulate that last part all that well. What I really wanted to get across was that quite a number of decent people have been cowed into believing that an apathetic and/or racist society at large is the only reason people break the law (or that laws exist). People like Ms. Bazelon, wittingly or not, use race, poverty, and other useless statistics to bully people into ignoring or excusing criminal behavior by individuals. Statistics for or against the accused or the victim do not belong in the courtroom. Period. That’s not Justice. Facts and circumstances regarding the people and the crime in question are all that should and do matter. My last remarks above were simply a plea for folks of good nature and common sense to have the courage to call a spade a spade when they see one, statistics and hand wringing be damned.
Thanks for pointing out my possible wishful thinking. That people can be disappointing is true beyond a doubt. I still believe though that there a lot of quiet people with upstanding character and resolve, who given a chance will usually do the right thing. Perhaps our biggest collective shortcoming is having come to expect less of our leaders than ourselves.
Ah. Agree with *all*-a that. All-a it. And I think, or at least would like to think, that the majority of people will do the right thing, when push comes to shove.
But it's just hard to stand out from the crowd and make a stand some times, when the bullies have the megaphone to shout down anyone who disagrees with them.
Despite what the sociology professors will have you believe, it is not a mystery how to solve this problem . NYC did it in the 1990’s , you strictly enforce the law. Now we’re witnessing a crime wave as a result of the undoing of all those policies. Remember when they released like half the prison population during Covid and told us it would have no effect on crime?
Bazaleons essay is filled with logical errors. she states other industrialized countries have lower rates of incarceration and yet have lower rates of crime without considering maybe that’s true BECAUSE they have lower rates of violent crime. The proportion of the population that is incarcerated is irrelevant without considering the proportion that commits crimes. She laments the cost of keeping people locked up but does not consider the costs of having a society ravaged by crime. Most of all she has very little empathy or compassion for the real people victimized as a result of her policies and instead treats them as a statistical anomaly.
My state is loaded for bear, has no concealed carry licensing (lady that cuts my hair carries), is 5x bigger than Baltimore City, and we had 300 fewer (90% fewer) homicides.
Baltimore City has more homicides in a year than my state has in 11. If you wiggle the stats for population (5x) and gun ownership (2x (by state)) that number become 110 years.
If you discount 'urban areas' from your statistics, you find that our numbers align pretty similarly to other western nations...shocker, right?
Yes, she seems rather cold-blooded and heartless. I'm not sure why we have long called "bleeding heart liberals" those people who support policies that lead to misery and bloodshed. It feeds into their narcissism, and is dishonest.
My local police department publishes a blotter every two weeks. Each time when they talk about an arrest made, they also note how many arrests the perpetrator has in his/her past. Nearly every one (especially those involved in non-violent robberies) has has 20+ arrests in the local area. But NYS had bail reform pass, so nearly all nonviolent offenders get appearance tickets. And so they repeatedly commit these sorts of crimes, because they have no consequences.
Something missed in those "non violent" offenses is how much it costs society over the long-term, especially offenses involving drugs. I live in a wooded, rural area with quite a few meth labs and other drug trade going on. The generational problems created grow geometrically, along with the cost to taxpayers. Some of us are working to clean it up but it's a struggle.
I do not dispute what you are saying but you have illustrated a different problem. How in the double hockey sticks do you have a non-violent robbery? Robbery is by definition a face-to-face taking by force or threat of force. But my WORDS can be violence. I swear the toddlers are running that side of the debate.
Very good point. Most of these robberies are high scale shoplifting from stores. Where people walk in at take carts of stuff. No weapons, no intimidation.
The #1 job of government is security, both domestically and internationally. We have failed in the former and are failing in the latter. Clearly. Yes, there are plenty of examples where the innocent have been convicted or the guilty over-incarcerated (but she ignores those many many cases where the guilty are never brought to justice at all), and we can do our best to minimize and hopefully eliminate those, but Ms. Bazelon has zero solutions for that and the fact that she falls back on "racism" is evidence that she has no solutions other than opening the jails.
So true. The only “opening the jails” I’d like would be literally Open More Jails.
The social contract of liberty should be easy to accomplish. Let me and the vast majority of citizens be free to live our lives without the interference of crime. I’ve advocated many times on this forum to build more prisons. Let sentences run their course. Concurrently we also should be able to truly determine the innocent from the guilty, and act accordingly.
I used to think the Singapore justice system was too harsh. I long ago dissuaded myself of that delusion.
And I think most of over-incarcerated and wrongfully convicted are in the area of white-collar crime, where prosecutors often over-charge, withhold exculpatory evidence, and just generally make it difficult for the accused to defend themselves. There's a disturbing number of people who are pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit, because they cannot afford the cost of mounting a defense. And there's a lot of bullcrap charges like "making a false statement" and "obstruction of justice". This is why Glenn Reynolds keeps saying "don't talk to cops".
The decision to accept or reject a plea offer is always done by the accused not the lawyer. I have had several accept deals I thought they should take to trial. I always hand them a legsl.pad and have them write in their hand that they want to accept the offer and that I advised against it. This is because I know they are going to regret it. So plea bargains and prosecutorial abuse of it is where I would like to see reform. There is nothing in thd criminal justice system that I despise more than a "creative" prosecutor with political ambitions.
Lara Bazelon has a screw loose. It’s clear as day that repeat violent offenders must be given lengthy prison terms. This new crime wave in America is due to the early release of thousands of criminals due to COVID-19. Progressive prosecutors are playing Russian roulette with innocent people's safety and lives. One can only hope it’s these sick Soros Funded progressives who are the ones that become victims first so they can learn firsthand how reckless and dangerous their bad ideas are.
Shellenberger wrote about the drugged out criminals roaming free in SF downtown, while the cops look on and DAs hand out no cash bail.
So now apparently one has found his way to a mansion in Pacific Heights, smashed in a glass door and done something, the facts of which are still very much in question and so far don’t add up.
But the story is already about MAGA republicans and their far right violence. And gee, just before a disastrous election for democrats.
All a bit too “on the nose”?
Why did Paul go to the bathroom and call 911, and then come out of the bathroom? Why not hide there until the cops arrived?
Are we to believe the Pelosis don’t have an elaborate security system that would alert the cops to an intruder? Why did Paul even have to dial 911?
Why would an 82 yr old guy struggle with a 42 yr old guy, just as the cops arrive to see it?
How did someone traveling with Nancy in DC know the assailant was trying to tie Paul up? Was a rope recovered from the scene?
And the claims the assailant asked, Where’s Nancy. Just heresay? How convenient.
The story ought to be about the hellish condition of SF enabled by dems for decades.
But when it happens to SF’s royal family, they are the victims of Trump’s MAGA radicals.
Most Americans can see past the dumb subterfuge put up by Biden and MSM at this point. We've been asked to disbelieve what we are seeing for years now.
Ms. Bazelton's argument is weak and contains almost no data to back up her claims. More needs to be done to rehab offenders and help prevent people from choosing crime. However, this should not come at the expense of law abiding citizens.
Lara, in painting her story in "broad strokes" speaks of the horrible black man doing something heinous to the pretty white woman. When do you protect the black community? When do you acknowledge that most of the crimes will be in minority neighborhoods? This is why more people of color will be voting for candidates with R's behind their names in a few days.
The far left supposedly “loves” black communities just like it “loves” immigration, but is utterly indifferent to the lives of actual black people or actual illegal immigrants. People in both groups are looking for a better, safer, more prosperous life, not ideological statements in their name.
The fact that black people are always the ones who suffer as a result of these supposedly "anti-racist" laws suggests that the Democrats' approach views black suffering as a feature, not a bug.
The good news appears to be that after 60 years of voluntarily voting for the same idiots ruining their cities, blacks are no longer voluntarily voting for their own demise and have to be paid to do so (see Orlando)
Not a "feature" so much as an opportunity to massage their egos while blaming the unintended-but-how-could-you-not-see-it-coming blowback on everyone else.
When Hillary, in one of the revealed DNC communications, referred to Hispanic voters as "taco bowl," it became obvious that racism has persisted among Democrats, in spite of their efforts to pretend publicly that they are the ones who "care" about racial minorities.
Dems are pathologically preoccupied with our differences . . . ANY differences . . . instead of what we have in common. To the detriment of ALL.
It is also why most victims of the crimes are minorities from minority neighborhoods.
I am all for re-thinking the police function to less of a take-control approach to one of de-escalation. But to close our eyes to the locus of crime and the actors most prominent in its commission seems self-defeating.
And there lies the problem with a lot of these "reformers". To glorify themselves, they run grand social experiments, using innocent citizens as their lab rats. The sad thing is, they are discrediting the very concept of criminal justice reform.
"discrediting the very concept of criminal justice reform."
My frustration with the "left" right now is that we have real problems. We do need criminal justice reform. But they always take things to the extreme: We can't have commonsense abortion laws; we must have abortion up to and after the moment of birth. We can't have commonsense physician assisted suicide laws; we must face the possibility that like Canada we will use euthanasia as a way to avoid caring for people. We can't have a commonsense approach to the real, but rare, psychological condition called gender dysphoria; we must expose children to sex at an early age if not mutilate and sterilize them so that cross dressing adults (not gender dysphoric adults, but what would traditionally be considered transvestites) can feel "safe." And we can't have commonsense criminal justice reform because these nutcases end up letting violent criminals back out on the streets to terrorize vulnerable populations.
Well said. The pendulum always swings too far. And then those who swung it start whining when it inevitably starts to swing back.
The Dobbs case would never have existed- much less made it to the Supreme Court- if the leftists hadn’t gone too far. They are in large part responsible for the end of Roe v Wade.
I'm not entirely sure that's true. Certain groups have been trying to overturn Roe v Wade for a long time and we've never had this conservative a court, well, at least since Roe v Wade. So I think the challenge was coming at some point and the Democrats, even though they've been in power several times since Roe v Wade, have never codified abortion into federal law.
However, what I will say, which may strengthen your point, is that people care less about this issue because many of us that are fundamentally pro-choice are not so when you give us the option of no abortion (or states setting abortion law), on one hand, and what most people would describe as federal legalized infanticide, on the other. And then when you drop the economy into the toilet, start persecuting your political opponents with a corrupt DOJ, politicize every institution in this country, violate people's bodily autonomy over a virus, and get us into a war while censoring people pointing out what a horrid job you're doing, that issue becomes even less important to me, and I suspect many others.
An aside, if I may.
It is unpopular to say that the Dobbs decision was not about abortion. But the fact is that it was not.
It was about where, constitutionally, the decisions concerning abortions were to be made. The Supreme Court said that they were not authorized to make such policies.
For 15 years I worked as a paraeducator in the public school system. We called this phenomenon "inch - mile". Where does it end?
It doesn't. That is why someone like me, who is traditionally liberal, ends up sounding like the most rabid conservative ever because the slippery slope isn't a logical fallacy in this country. It's the modus operandi of one half of the political spectrum. And I end up deciding it's safer to not give them an inch because the next thing you know we'll have, well, what we have.
Ypeople. sound rational to me. That is what we need. More rational people.
Inch - mile - astronomical unit - light year.
So far, the end appears to be 12.5 billion light-years away!
Agree!
there is even more pressure on black women not to testify against black perps. Great articles on the black colleges in the US where the black women confess they don't want to send a brother to jail. It isn't just poor blacks suffering because of the violent crime, but even wealthier blacks. WAPO article showing wealthy blacks 15x more likely to die of violent crime than poor whites.
"WAPO article showing wealthy blacks 15x more likely to die of violent crime than poor whites."
my gut instinctive reaction is, it's not true. I would ask to see sources but at the end of the day, there is ZERO chance of a study like that being rigorous or meaningful. First of all, the reliance on binary "black / white" classifications.... how would an Obama be classified along that scale...? what about his daughters...?
there is ZERO chance of racial differences in America after you control for other factors.
Maybe the same way obama and eric holder did it to shake down Allybank. "His last name is Johnson and he lives in zip code 12345, therefore he's black." That is exactly what they did to "prove" disparate impact in Allybank lending.
It is based on many things, police reports, self identification etc. It isn't new. FBI and CDC have collected race and income based crime stats for decades.
Thing is, lenders cannot collect that data, by law. So obama and holder made it up, guessed. All to try to prove that somehow a bank was not interested in earning money off of interest from blacks and instead wanted the valuable underlying cars and signatures and houses that the blacks had borrowed against that had tanked in value, all the while having no interest in white peoples' "assets" even though the bank didn't have the racial information...
"Regardless of socioeconomic status, Black communities face higher gun homicides"
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/regardless-socioeconomic-status-black-communities-face-higher-gun-homicides-says-wharton-study
Feel free to debunk the UPenn study.
I debunk it thus: how are people who are 1/3 black accounted for in this study? what about black skinned dominicans?
race as used in studies like this (which are NOT even a little bit "sciency" btw) use arbirtrary and convenient definitions of "race" to suit their various ideological purposes.
I suppose I was just a arrogant as you when in my 20s.
you are surprised the FBI relies on self identification or police and coroners reports instead of 23 and me genomic analysis? wow you got me. race is often not entirely accurate in criminal law.
Wow aren't you confident? Here's one. Prison sentences are based on actual crimes committed. Now how on earth could researchers without your intelligence account for income and race? It's called a multivariate analysis.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-black-kids/
FBI and CDI classifies all crimes by race. the only shade of grey here was a historic need to conflate latino and white, and that was done to make white crime rates look worse and to mask latino crime rates.
"FBI and CDI classifies all crimes by race. "
Oh I bet they do. And they get 100% pure garbage in result. And what qualifications does one need to become a professional FBI race sorter..? maybe a gender studies degree!
even self described race and mere phenotypes are sufficient for extremely high levels of scientific inference https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
the exact genetic admixture isn't needed to describe large scale trends.
You’ve got me thinking… how many of the #MeToo stories were from black women?
Bill Cosby was before #MeToo and some victims were black women, though not all of the 60 + victims made it to court. It is noteworthy that Cosby was defended by many black men and women. It was called a frame job up untill the conviction. Some famous black women finally conceded there was sufficient evidence.
Many black women like Mary J Blige were saying "ya'll don't even know" kind of threatening to blow whistle in entertainment/music and just everyday harrasment.
Haven't seen article. Does "wealthy Blacks" include those who do well financially, then try to help their old neighborhood and be killed as a reward? Or, successful Rap/Hip-Hop artists being "assassinatied" by competitors?
I don't think the study goes into individual cases. One might imagine that the violent rap wars are just one example of how money doesn't stop violence. Similar stories of famous black athletes getting into all sorts of trouble. And it stands to reason many blacks make it big on drug dealing or pimping alone. Jay Z was rich from that before even getting into music production. I've never even heard of philanthropists being gunned down "as a reward".
David, the man's name escapes me at the moment, but his death made national news a year or two ago.
He was in his thirties i believe. Was opening a business in his old neighborhood and was killed.
HIS story made headlines. I can't help but wonder how many don't.
Well plenty of rich blacks that have histories of philanthropy are killed but not in that exact scenario. Jennifer Hudson's father. Bill Cosby's son. Clarence Avant's wife attacked and killed in their in their Beverly Hills homes last year. I think the majority of the violence that affect wealthy blacks are lifestyle related. It's not the safest thing to party all night every night doing illegal drugs but Whitney and Bobby were featured on TV doing just that.
Yes and I would it’s going to be working class and poorer communities that suffer as well
We live 50 minutes from Kenosha. Our son's first year of college was in August, 2020 on the heels of the "Jacob Blake" riots, in Kenosha. They were forced to delay the start of the school year. Point being, we are close to this situation.
What got TOTALLY lost in all of the Kenosha riots was the criminal Jacob Blake. There was a black woman, the mother of his children, who had a restraining order against him, who called the police to her home because Blake was taking their children in her car, violating the restraining order. Then he resisted arrest and pulled a knife on the cops who responded to the call of JB's girlfriend.
I've yet to see anyone take a look at that part of the story. To me, she was victimized twice; once by the low life Blake and once by the people who put him up as some kind of victim, when in actuality, she and her children were the victims.
Do you mean the Jacob Blake that Kamala Harrris visited by his hospital bed after he tried to kill his girlfriend? Again. She told him how proud she was of him. Did she even read his background file?!
Ms. Bazleon argues, in lockstep with fuzzy liberal beliefs "But with treatment, intervention, education, vocational training, mental health services, and yes, mercy, they turn their lives around." Yet, as Mr. Mangual notes "A recent meta-analysis of the literature on the “Effectiveness of psychological interventions in prison to reduce recidivism,” published in The Lancet, found little evidence in the form of rigorous, high-quality studies to support the suggestion that a solution to the recidivism problem is within reach. " As usual, good intentions, rather than facts, informs the fanciful policies of the Left.
With or without all these ministrations, the harsh reality is that we are releasing violent people into society to prey upon the innocent because there are individuals who remain violent, predatory sociopaths who have no business ever being loose among us. Then Bazleon predictably plays the race card. What difference does the color of a criminal's skin make to a victim? We are not incarcerating people because of their race. We are locking them up because they are a menace to the innocent people who are trying to live their lives.
The cold fact is that cashless bail and emptying the prisons was a knee-jerk reaction to the Floyd incident and the BLM sophistry that followed. It has created a disaster that will grow worse, aided and abetted by the Soros prosecutors who were installed to further the chaos. Criminals are criminals, irrespective of race. Sociopathic criminals are repeat offenders and a clear menace. Mr. Mangual muses "It seems to me that a “three-strikes”-type approach to repeat offending is a start. Maybe the right number of strikes isn’t three. Perhaps it’s five. " Five? Five what - murders? Violent assaults? Rapes? How about one?
Society has rules and, when they are ignored and mocked, the fabric of society frays and tears apart and people take matters into their own hands. We are fast approaching that point.
One good thing has happened and that is more and more people are recognizing the evil that Soros has unleashed upon the world. This guy has been demonic since WWII, seemingly hates the West, yet resides here. His funding of these DAs and other pols has made life in America so much worse and it’s good it’s being recognized. Here’s hoping the red wave drowns him.
she is using incarceration models from Europe to prove it can be coupled to low crime and higher rehabilitation but Europe never had US violent crime rate nor did they have the cultures of crime the US has.
She is implying that Europe has a low crime rate because it doesn't incarcerate many people, whereas I think it is pretty clear that crime makes society want to lock up criminals, not that locking up criminals creates more crime. I think people sitting in judgement of others is actually at the heart of leftist policy on crime - they think that society should take into account why a person committed a crime, insofar as it weighs on what the person deserves. I think we have no business "sitting in judgement" on our fellow man, and the only thing we should look at is public safety. So if Jimmy murdered his neighbor because that's Jimmy's nature or if he murdered his neighbor because someone slipped a homicide-producing drug in his whiskey is relevant to sentencing, in my opinion, because what are the chances someone will drug him and cause a murder again? But whether Jimmy was raised in foster care after being abused by his mother, vs he was from a rich and cold family and raised by a nanny, and he's a murderous sociopath either way, is not important to me. Even if he came from the most loving him and then decided he wanted to kill people, it would not matter to me - in all three cases, society would be safer with him locked away, and that is all that counts. People think "sitting in judgement" means condemning, but sometimes it means excusing. Neither is good.
It appalls me how Republicans are not explaining about George Soros’ outrageous interference or at least running ads about his shameful involvement in our criminal justice system. . It has made this intractable problem even worse
He’s protected by the media. Commenting the truth about Soros in the WSJ comment sections oftentimes gets you banned and/or deleted.
I think our chance might come with the overhaul of Twitter. Twitter is enormously a tool of the Woke generation, but not everyone on there is part of the far left.
Yes, I agree. And more people ARE believing they must take matters into their own hands. Unfortunately those are the stories MSM sensationalize, which feeds the Left.
Speaking of Europe - I mentioned before that I think reading Charles Dickens has to be a requirement...Such an old story - Do-gooders and criminals pretended to be reformed - Uriah Heep anyone?
There are really two different styles and tones, aren't there? The first uses logic and facts. The second chooses to focus on emotionally evocative language and fringe examples.
Here is the thing: young black kids, specifically, are being failed by society. Far too many of them, by the time they hit the age where they are eligible for adult prisons, are functional psychopaths. They have been traumatized too many times, by too many things, and in my personal view a very high percentage of them, being the children of what can only be called girls, have insecure or disordered attachments, that they then bring into an objectively unsafe world.
Moral order begins in earliest childhood. It begins in the sense that the world makes sense, is in general fair, and that somebody cares for you and will work to keep you safe. Far too many black kids in urban areas never feel any of these things. They react in predictable ways. In the ways any of us would have reacted, had we been born in the same way, in the same place, to the same single mother.
All of this is tragic. But to pretend that the damage can be undone or that most of these kids can ever be rehabilitated is insane. That incarcerating people who will NEVER STOP being criminals reduces the crime rate is obvious.
And we are unique in the world in the peculiarly codependent way in which we have failed the black community. Democrats have been claiming to be their saviors for many decades now, but the problem is that if the problems ever get fixed, then they won't need Democrats any more. So on the one hand they publicly claim to be friends, and on the other they sabotage everything. They incent single parenthood, oppose effective improvements in schooling, and do their best to prevent anyone from ever saying "this is my responsibility" by pushing it off on white people, Republicans, and anyone else who sounds at the given moment plausible.
All of these problems have solutions, but they require SPEAKING THE TRUTH. The single worst crime Democrats commit is making honest discussion impossible by personalizing everything, deflecting, denying, and lying. This is my honest opinion. I cannot see how embracing the Democrats has been anything but an unmitigated catastrophe for the black community.
Barry, yes, yes, yes!! Thank you putting in excellent words what I have been saying for years. The criminal isn’t born that way. Their crappy upbringing, if one can even call it that, is where it begins. How do we go back to marriage before children? How do we encourage dads to stay around? People eschew “conservative” values but it seems the dismantling of those values is what got us into this mess.
This is why I dislike the Obama so much. He had a great opportunity to not only heal race relations (which were actually nit bad at the time) but to speak truth to the black community . Instead he fomented hate.
Why was it Obama's unique responsibility to "heal race relations"? No other president before or since has been tasked with such a gargantuan, not to mention impossible, responsibility. Obama isn't even descended from enslaved Africans and, by his own admission, grew up outside of the traditional African American cultural paradigm.
Also, how precisely did he "foment hate"? By stating that if he had a son, he'd look like Trayvon? How exactly does such a statement cause anyone to hate anyone else?
I'm pretty sure you know what you're getting at when you mention "speak[ing] truth to the black community," and he (as well as Michelle) literally did that ALL THE TIME. I guess you never got the memo because he wasn't doing it for the consumption of predominantly White conservative audiences: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-critics-obamas-scolding-tone-with-black-audiences-is-getting-old/2013/05/20/4b267352-c191-11e2-bfdb-3886a561c1ff_story.html
https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/4941/dawsey_president_obama_needs_to_stop_lecturing_blacks
The Obama BROKE race relations.
Not him personally but his occupancy of the Oval Office for 8 years did, at least on one side of the equation (see Dylann Roof).
Yes and thank you.
So true! We all rebelled against those values when we were young, but it’s more and more apparent that those values are necessary for a civilized, safe, and prosperous society.
As a mental health professional, I could not agree more. The INDIVIDUAL is lost in these debates. Disordered attachments, family chaos, generational trauma, violence, neglect, etc. These conditions have a real and often permanent effect on human development. Once we zoom out to a group-level identity politics driven view, we lose all of it.
I still shake my head that most of my (super liberal) colleagues at work cannot make this connection but resort to fuzzy sloganeering.
That mental health professionals who understand intimately the mental health benefits of responsibility, emotional maturity, and resilience reliably gravitate to the people who more or less make all of those anathema has long puzzled me too.
Everything they are trying to communicate to their clients during the day they forget when it comes to politics. I don't get it.
I read a book some years ago that really influenced me. It was called "The Myth of Neurosis", by Grant or Garth Wood, and basically argued that most people who are having trouble just need to grow up and recognize LIFE IS HARD. Ironically, if you accept that life is hard, it gets easier.
I make notes to myself all the time, and one the other day was "you cannot place a heavier burden on a child than by teaching them that life is supposed to be easy."
Great. I may have to "steal" that saying.
We know that 70+% of black children are born to single mothers. Having been a single mother for over 10 years, I can tell you that it is not easy, even with a supportive spouse and living in a nice, safe suburb. I can’t imagine why anyone would think they are “helping” black mothers and children by continually releasing predators back into their neighborhoods.
If liberals want to improve the lives of black children and stop producing the next generation of predators, the first thing to do is give these mothers a chance by keeping the criminals locked up.
This is a fascinating and well made argument, thanks for writing it. Setting aside the politics, what solutions would you offer to these problems? America has failed its black community since we dragged the first slave off the first ship. How do we un-fail this community, and how do we reduce the tribal warfare among all our cultural subgroups, the tribalism that generates the hate that brings the crime? Thoughts?
The absolute first step has to be committing to honesty. This has been missing for many decades. If something is a fact, it is not racist. And if it is a fact, it is relevant and should belong in the discussion.
The second would be decoupling the black community from Democrats. The problems persist because the people who would lose from solving them ensure that they persist. In my personal view, Malcom X was right in calling black people who voted reflexively for Democrats, despite having nothing, ever, to show for it, Chumps.
Third, we need to provide incentives for two parent families, and we need to figure out what educational forms enable kids from poor and violent neighborhoods to thrive. My reading says that is Charter Schools, where kids progress at their own pace under the tutelage of floating teachers, and using computer modules.
Fourth we need to stop with the victimization rhetoric. Blacks are not helpless children. They are not inferior. They don't need the help of patronizing white people. Frederick Douglass said long ago "Just leave us alone." And he was a slave. Not the descendant of a slave, but an actual slave.
I personally have faith that if they are not being taken out at the knees continually with bad ideas designed to weaken them, black folks in this country have everything it takes to do exceptionally well.
The story to me is not why black folks in this country have not thrived more, but how much work it has taken to impede and prevent their success, all by the very people who claimed to be their friends.
They are also exploited by gangs from a very early age.
Truer words may never been spoken
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Should have had you on the podcast!
Run for local office, Lekisha. Chicago needs you!
Oh yeah, that's why I keep saying it's a cultural problem. I actually think that a lot of people who live in those neighborhoods would actually support a strong police presence and the breaking up of the gangs, if they had confidence that it would actually happen. But as it is, they don't dare speak out, because the gangs will come looking for them.
If an academic figures out that personal responsibility is the cause, then their job of designing a solution is unessential.
Dan Rather in "National Disgrace" about the Detroit Schools shows the harsh realities facing these kids, it is disgusting. However, it also reveals that even the kids that can overcome the obstacles and get a free ride to college are simply not up to the task.
Another example: Try finding data on the success rates of Baltimore City Schools kids that get the free ride to Johns Hopkins for having a HS GPA of like 3.2 or something. I can't find any for whatever reason. You can crunch the available numbers and find that, for instance, a 6th grader in a BCPS in the early 2000s, had a 4% (iirc) likelihood of graduating from any college, even a 2-year community college within 6-years of HS graduation.
My point is that we are, imo, mis-allocating tens of billions of dollars a year in the urban schools' and running it simply as a public works project instead of preparing kids (and future parents) for adulthood. Kids in those districts don't stand a chance.
Awareness is a necessary and beautiful first step, so you are already helping.
If we wait for the person black, white or purple to be incarcerated, we have lost the battle- intervention needs to start in grade school and then we may make a difference in crime rates. Our public education system needs to be challenged. It is our only hope as a society!
The authors talk across instead to each other.
Both seem to oppose lengthy overly punitive punishment for minor first offenses, or even second. Neither support railroading minorities. The issue is at what point have you exhausted your chances given either increasing severity of criminal activity or how many felonies are too many?
The DA’s should not over charge, plea agreements cant be so one sided in that the risk of trial to a defendant is so onerous so as to cause the Govt never to have to prove its case.
But clearly incorrigible anti social criminals should live in a different society from the norm.
Its where to draw the line and how to hold the police/ prosecution accountable when charging first or second offenders?
Its not lock em all up vs let them all go.
The injustice system is much simpler than we pretend when we go round and round debating straw man arguments. It goes like this - if we have equal application of the law - we have a justice system and it works. If we have unequal application of the law we have an injustice system and we get exactly what we’re seeing today. Through the 80’s we had an injustice system intended to punish the weak. From the 90’s going forward we have an injustice system meant to protect the powerful and endanger the weak. The issue is always the same - the mechanism the only difference. We used to throw poor people in jail for petty crimes, to “protect” the wealthy, now we allow Chicago a higher murder rate than Baghdad with little to no punishment but if you trespass on public property with the assistance of the police you’ll rot in solitary confinement indefinitely. Until we fix the injustice part of the system how we apply “justice” to criminals is and will always be just a distraction from the actual distinction on the system.
Unequal treatment under the law is a travesty to our “justice” system.
The problem isn't unequal treatment. A major bug in the adversarial system is unequal LAWYERS. Us bottom-feeders can't afford an O.J.-Class mouthpiece.
The most important goal of incarceration is not punishment - it is public safety. This is the emphasis properly offered by the first essay and virtually ignored in the second.
Let's be realistic. You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth. Their views are always colored by visions of rainbows and unicorns. A "Why can't all just get along." philosophy.
Ms. Bazelon says long prison terms do not deter crime. I read an article several years back that long prison sentences do deter crime by keeping the bad guys off the streets. I think that makes more sense than her left wing propaganda.
Another leftist wail is that there is racial misjustice because there are more blacks than other races in prisons yet blacks make up only 13% of the population. Well blacks commit 51% of the murders and the vast majority of these murderers are males so 6.5% of the population are committing these murders so why are leftists so surprised that blacks make up so much of the prison population? The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 35% of prison population are white and 38% are black. The rest are of other races.
The left always looks at every problem this nation has through the prism of race. In every argument with a Dem, their first irrational retort is to call you a racist. You just can't trust them to make rational policy decisions. I think they are mentally unbalanced. If you don't believe me just look at comprof's postings. Don't reply to them. Just look at them and shake your head and think Polecat is right. This guy is nutz.
They are the people who want to abolish the police, empty prisons and force our children to believe in the racist CRT that teaches all whites are evil. Why would any rational person except a left wing nut case vote Democrat/Communist?
The results of these policies were stunning. By 1992, as more violent offenders were incarcerated, the trajectory of violent crime started falling for the first time in decades. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush continued these policies, and from 1991 to 2013, the total prison population in the U.S. doubled—from roughly 800,000 to 1.6 million. At the same time, violent crime plummeted, dropping for 23 years. By 2014 it had been cut in half—to a level not seen since 1970—and homicides of black victims were down by about 5,000 a year.
Nevertheless, progressives complained: Why were we imprisoning record numbers when crime was receding? They missed the point. Crime was dropping precisely because we were keeping violent criminals in prison. Progressives call this “mass incarceration,” but their rhetoric is deceptive. It implies people are being locked up indiscriminately. On the contrary, incapacitation is a precision strategy. It targets and uses prison space primarily for violent criminals who pose the greatest threat to public safety.
--William Barr in The Wall Street Journal, October 26, 2022
Rising Crime Rates Are a Policy Choice
Progressives can’t solve the problem because they won’t abandon the practices that cause it
Once again you have hit the nail on the head.
That's the thing that Ms. Bazelon does not seem to understand--the point of incarceration is not to deter people from *choosing* to become criminals. We have known for a very long time that criminals are not detered by the punishment of other criminals, because no criminal plans to get caught. The point of incarceration is to prevent crime by keeping criminals away from the rest of society. That is only effective to extent that we keep criminals locked up for as long as possible.
Exactly!
Yet more often now (since George Floyd & Biden/Harris) arrest has become a revolving door, IF arrested at all. Defunding police & cashless bail has not created the utopia the Left advocates.
You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth.
If this statement is true (can we trust it?), then there is no real opportunity for interaction or discussion. And one wonders how the ‘left winger’ would be encouraged to consider the ‘other side’ to be trustworthy…?
Well, let's see. When the Tea Party exercised their first amendment rights to peaceful assemblies, Nancy Pelosi called them NAZIs but she yet has to call BLM and ANTIFA communists thugs, when they have burned down dozens and dozens of businesses and looted them. They assaulted police and murdered people. Democrat, Jerrold Nadler, chairman of the House Justice Committe when Portland was on fire, when people asked him about Portland burning said, "That is just a myth, a rumor." AOC is a joke.
You tell me. How do you have a rational conversation with people like this?
The right has their share of nuts but none of them want to dissolve the police, empty prisons, have no bail policies or have CRT taught in the classrooms.
Please give me a civil point by point rebuttal and prove me wrong.
Leftism is an absolutist philosophy. It regards all disagreement as deviant. So yes, negotiating with it is impossible.
(Note that I draw a sharp distinction between leftism and liberalism. In many ways, leftism is illiberal.)
Hi Polecat,
I must dissent:
“You cannot trust a left winger to give you the truth”
That they have come to different conclusions on the world’s ills is not necessarily dishonest. Their life experiences are different. I have many friends, folks of goodwill and empathy, whose thinking I see as naive, incomplete or shallow. But they’re honestly held views.
I believe 80% or more of traditional US liberals would caucus with us on the big issues. Sure there would be weirdness at the fringes but overall we can get this done with an open hearted approach.
What I see as naive - people who believe and hold out hope we can come together and reach a solution to address the ills that plague this country. Sadly, bought & paid for politicians MUST keep us divided and therefore campaign on, then follow through on their rhetoric. “IF” our elected leaders would join forces to solve these problems
we might have a chance to right these wrongs. It’s naive to believe that will ever happen.
I know I painted all of them with the same brush but it seems to me, looking at the left wing press and the Dem politicians, they are all on board with the PC, woke and the CRT crazies. If they aren't on board, how come they haven't condemned these brutal nut cases for the tyrants they are and they are tyrants. They destroy people's lives. Paula Deen lost her TV show for something she said 20 or 30 years ago.
Bill Maher nails it in this video. Like him, all of us, the press and our politician show be laughing at the PC/Work crowd for the vicious tyrants they are. None of us should be taking these nuts seriously but the left does and I find this dangerous:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=schuzjknjYE
No doubt.
They assume that all poor people and black people support criminals.
There is no question in my mind that working with prisoners and helping educate them, help them with starting even relatively simple careers where they can work and earn a living is quite effective or could be. I don't know about the Massachusetts program mentioned in the article and its 99% success rate. That would require some time devoted to the nuts and bolts of the program and their outcome measurements. But it sounds very hopeful. I think another overlooked aspect to prison reform is prison pay. Prisoners so I have read, earn about $1 a day for their labor. Even when fighting fires in the liberal state of CA. To me, this just seems like exploitation/slavery of the worst kind. I hope the legislature passes a bill which requires prisoners to be earning at least federal minimum wage to start and then incremental increases as they show and develop skills and expereince. This would not, of course be tax free. But half their net earnings could be held in a trust account and so, when they are released it would not be straight on to the crowded homelesss streets of the city.
Of course they also get room and board. Prisoners probably should not be paid better than honest people working low-income jobs on the outside. Giving them money when they are released so they have some resources to get started on a better life is a good idea, though.
Those programs can be successful with first-time, non-violent offenders. But that's not the kind of criminal we're talking about here.
They used to pay prisoners more reasonably for their work but all of the big unions lobbied heavily to stop it. They view it as labor competition. But I agree with you.
This assertion requires a citation Jeff
This is something I think we would heard about
I believe I read this in one of the early chapters on the history of prisons in the U.S. in a book called "Prison & Slavery" by John Gleissner. But I can't find my copy of it at the moment, which means I probably loaned it out. As I recall, he makes a strong case for the beneficial reforming effects of teaching trades in prisons which earn income and a means for post-prison independence. He has a long litany (referenced) of all the various federal and state laws and reforms which have frustrated this kind of project for the most part. I never realized prior to reading this book, that the whole penitentiary system was a Quaker invention (the word itself comes from becoming a 'penitent'). They had this bizarre notion that putting people in solitary confinement to pray over their sins and reform themselves would actually work rather than drive them mad.
That is interesting, I wasn’t aware. Let me try to hunt down that book.
Thanks Jeff.
Agreed. This is not a debate at all. Not really helpful as a way of getting to the truth of the matter.
Would have been great for Mangual and Bazelon to exchange in debate by extending their essays into a correspondence.
Instead of having a “line”, we could just have the jail time increase with prior felony count. An extreme version: double with each prior conviction, or maybe with each prior 2 convictions etc.
One of the problems is how many felony crimes are plea-bargained down to misdemeanors. I think there should be a record of these bargains and the original charge considered during sentencing for subsequent cases.
That is true and I was going to raise the issue but my comment was too long. But it also works the other way. I see a lot of overcharging both in terms of the offense charged and the number of offenses charged. When I started practicing in the 80s there would be an offense or two, sometimes a misdemeanor and a felony. Even multiple laws were arguably committed the officer would arrest for only the strongest case or two (for the most part there were some exceptions). Now it seems to be a real throw the book at them and see what sticks. I think that is to impact crime ststistics which impacts funding and politicol support. And the prosecutors here frequently charge differently than what the arrest was for, either (according to them) insufficient proof so the case is downcharged, or the ADA believes a higher degree of offense is provable, in which case they upcharge. And the upcharge means a new, higher bond and a new arrest. I had clients charged with a litany of non-violent crimes. But in terms of the 3 strike laws the prior convictions have to have occurred at different times. And actually if a pre-sentence investigation is conducted and report prepared (and they usually are in felonies) a sentencing judge does know a defendant's entire criminal history including a arrests and dispositions thereof.
TY for book. May be interesting.
Some particular offenses are treated that way. DWI/DUI for example. Each subsequent offense is subject to a harsher penalty. That is one type of "enhancement". The 3 strike laws are a different type. The theory is if an offender has been to the penitentiary 3 times already and still commits offenses he/she should be punished more harshly. In theory that is true but it does produce some miscarriages of justice usually where the old convictions are not just.
I kept reading Ms. Bazelon's part of the article looking for answers. She cites other nations with low crime rates and low incarceration but never explains how they do it. I'd like to know. She targets the horrific crimes but, sadly, the increase in crime is mostly within minority communities. The abduction, rape, and murder of a woman off the streets is rare. The accidental shooting of kids through windows in minority communities, less so. When she suggests fixes, instead of woe is criminals, then she might sway me.
It always bothers me when the criminal justice reformers cite Scandinavian countries with low incarceration rates. None of these other countries are similar to the U.S. in any capacity. The U.S. is one of the youngest, most diverse nations in the world, and a one-size-fits-all approach will not work here. We need a unique solution for a unique country.
Scandinavia's storied small sentences used to work just fine before the waves of immigrants from Africa and Middle East came. They are now experiencing massive violent crime waves and the lenient sentences are not sufficient to reform their criminal populace. Take a good look at what just happened to Sweden. I assure you leftists will not be touting Sweden's incarceration policies in 10 years.
This is true in my view. I’m currently in Europe (5:17am!!) and what I’ve observed is that lower sentences are the norm in countries we’d consider non-diverse.
Just read a news article here -two convictions for accessory to murder (supplying the firearm & get away driver). A father and son.
The sentences were:
1 year for Dad
3 years for Junior
With the policies in this particular country neither will serve even half of their sentences.
I am not a fan of harsh sentencing and have thrown a few bucks at the Innocence Project in the past
But those penalties are absurd in any context
My cousin being falsely convicted on rape charges was the impetous for the creation of Innocence project. He was a white Jewish man in NY. Kerry Kotler. My father always believed Kerry was innocent and I have the letters he wrote from prison. Since then Innocence Project has been hijacked by race activists very confortable in their proclamations that all the injustices are systemic racism of whites against blacks, which I find insulting and more than a tad ironic.
Absolutely. Although covered already ad nauseum the corruption of really impressive institutions (ACLU, Innocence Project, Notre Dame, FBI etc) is the saddest phenomenon of the past years
Much of the problems with false convictions can be laid at the feet of corrupt cops and prosecutors. I've said before that, if every cop or prosecutor who falsified or lied about evidence was made to serve twice the sentence they sought, that practice would stop in a heartbeat.
I don't disagree but I question how common that is. I tend to lean on Hanlon's razor.
To be fair Bruce, although the cops frequently get the wrong guy I believe where they do so knowingly is still very rare. The risks seriously outweigh any benefit.
Incarceration for even a couple-three months could irreparably up-end a person's life. How about the miscreant lawman do the original sentence plus one year?
They'll be ignoring Sweden pretty soon.
She also starts off complaining about abuse of emotion (stoking fear) and the makes one emotional statement after another. It is very sophomoric.
A lot of it is down to homogenization of the population.
How do they do it? They do not intentionally undermine the family.
The post industrial countries she is refering to are in Europe and they have 200 year trends of declining murder rates, yes even during the world wars homicide rates decreased in Europe. This is due to strong judicial systems and cultures that became accostumed to outsourcing conflict to the State. No frontier cultures have such long histories of Jurisprudence. The US was settled by honor cultures. We've always had higher homicide rates than Europe. Thomas Sowell attributes black criminality in the US to southern honor cultures. "Black Rednecks and white Liberals". Blacks commit over 50% of homicides in the US per year and it's been that way for a half century now.
I've read Sowell's book and there's a lot of truth to it. A lot of urban street culture had its antecedents in the antebellum South, and in Scotch-Irish culture before that.
And yeah, comparisons to European crime rates are irrelevant, due to the cultural differences. Although I note that rates in many European nations are going up as immigration increases. Most European nations are fairly culturally monolithic, and they don't do immigration well.
Well Europe has its own type of multicuturalism, which is now being questioned by populists like Macron. It was previously posited they could not even integrate the immigrant cultures. So multicultural meant every immigrant culture is an island distinct living in Europe. A very different model than the US melting pot. Macron is just one of many leaders now saying the immigrants must adopt French values. They cannot be an island. These details and the fact that violent crime is changing Europe are all too sensitive for leftist reformers to discuss honestly. It has been radioactive for decades and Sowell retreated from all TV appearances because every single liberal reporter just ignored all nuance and tried to character assasinate him. Same happened to Clarence Thomas, who was fundamentally changed after reading Sowell.
Hey David,
“This is due to strong judicial systems”
Yes/no. A far wider range of “offenses” are likely to entrap citizens in Europe in the justice system. A colleague is sporting a record for having shotgun shells in his locked trunk.
In the US it’s actually harder to end up caught in the legal system but the penalties are far harsher.
Cultural differences.
I think Europeans obsessed with speech policing are dystopian. ACLU used to be on the correct side of this. Ideological persecution and thought crime is very real and growing issue in Europe. I would say they became too obsessed with statism, judicial intervention and that too isn't a new thing. In many ways our frontier culture drives libertarianism.
I don't want to go too far into the weeds here but there is plenty of high resolution details to comb over. Not all European cultures are the same by any means. The Europeans that settled the US show regional differences in their adherence to Judicial systems. So the northern US was settled by Dutch and Scandinavians whereas the South was settled by Scotch and Irish farmers. Those settling cultures have measurably distinct attitudes when it comes to conflict resolution.
Ironically those with the highest tolerance for interpersonal violence have the least harsh sentencing. Honor cultures in the South are much more likely to forgive murderers than Northerners. A great study in Better Angels proves the massive differences. Researches created fake resumes/applications for employment of a convicted murderer released from jail to companies in the south and the north. Southerners, though equally unlikely to employ convict, would write back with sympathy and encouragement. Northerners wouldn't even respond.
And her argument really amounted to hand-waving.
I’ve yet to see a comparative study controlling for racial/ethnic demographics. I did review one years back for educational results. When broken out by race and ethnicity, some states demonstrated better results in individual categories than states typically lauded as being leaders in education
ask why such data is so entirely obfuscated from pubic consumption.
Cuz it’s raycess
Yeah, Lara lost me when she injected the “coded” racism line instead of just arguing on the merits. And then to see that she is employing her skills in the festering criminal hellscape of San Fransicko I had to snicker. I’m willing to bet that she was a Chesa Boudin cheerleader. I cleave to the simple mantra of “make crime illegal again”. Then enforce the laws fairly and consistently. Who among us doesn’t believe that Paul Pelosi’s assailant, had he assaulted a commoner like us, wouldn’t have walked free later that same night of the assault with a cash free bail?
And believe that Paul Pelosi's assailant has a history of violent crimes against other citizens without famous names that were dismissed or very lightly punished.
I found it instructive that Pelosi’s attacker was caught so quickly. Other people in SF report that the police take a long time to respond, and then they take notes and leave—to the point where most people have stopped reporting crimes.
Someone else up-thread made the point: The people who most support coddling criminals can afford private security, or better yet, have the government provide it for them. It's class warfare.
The house was being monitored by police. Police have prioritized high profile politicians even more since the Kavanaugh assasination attempt.
Paul Pelosi's assailant would have been held without bail regardless of whom he assaulted because he's a white extremist. Look at the Jan 6 rioters, still imprisoned for being misguided idiots.
I saw an interview with Lara Bazelon on Professor Glen Loury's YouTube show. She's a nice person. They had a touching exchange at the end, about Professor Loury writing his autobiography.
Sorry, but prior to that, M. Bazelon was the stereotypical bleeding-heart, delusional progressive regarding the issues discussed. She's guilty of wishful thinking, is the main problem. Yeah, she's got her statistics, but that's about it. Funny she should be here. "Common Sense?"
This is the frustrating thing: we need a functioning left that intelligently advocates for those poorly served by society. Instead, the left is dominated by these people with such simplistic takes that the policies they advocate for seem to almost always backfire. That is, not only are their policies repugnant to those of us who believe people should be judged by their individual worth, rather than identity group, but they also fail to help the people they advocate for in the first place. Normies can no longer afford to let these bleeding hearts cry and / or bully others into getting their way, we gotta stand up for rational solutions or they’ll destroy the world.
That's the same problem I have, M. Onos. Exactly.
Now, my understanding is that there's an inordinate number of people (mostly Blacks) who have long sentences for relatively minor (mostly drug) charges. M. Bazelon points out one case. She says 60 years for next to nothing. That could even be true. To me, anyway, there should be a way to review sentences vs. crimes.
But as a general rule? Letting out the kind-a people who are just gonna commit more crime? What's the sense of it? Letting people out instead-a having bail? Again. These are the things that make normies think the system is being used against them, right?
In general, in the U.S., receiving a ridiculous sentence for simple drug possession is pretty much a myth now. You see stories like "man gets 5,000,000-year sentence for possessing 50 grams of meth". And then you dig deeper, and you find out that the "drug user" actually was sentenced for knocking over a convenience store and shooting the proprietor. In general, police don't have time to mess with small-time drug users.
By the time the vast, vast, vast majority of criminals visit the big house they have violated conditions of probation many, many, many times. There are exceptions but not many.
I believe Ya, Bamma.
It’s a particular versus general argument. Tough cases make bad law.
We as a society used to be beyond this facile reasoning. Carlos is a wonderful person and talented gardener. Therefore we must throw the border open.
Valuing Carlos and advocating for reasonable immigration policies are not mutually contradictory. The second writer fails to grasp this notion is my read jt.
Very well said.
Yeah, You've nailed it.
"we need a functioning left that intelligently advocates for those poorly served by society."
We have that, it is called the right. But until you decouple 'advocating' from 'blaming others' and 'poorly served' from 'not pandered to,' you will not see it.
The left has built a monstrously huge failure called the inner city public education system that for generations has destroyed cities, families, businesses, and people while consuming hundreds of billions of dollars.
Kids (future parents) don't stand much of a chance with that kind of infrastructure. The entire concept that it is desirable and beneficial for all kids to have a pre-K through 12th grade 'education' in an urban school is sadly one of the most laughable concepts foisted on society.
I cannot even imagine what people in 200 years are gonna think when they look back at this. It's mind-blowing.
I agree. They cannot see the flaws in their own arguments.
I think having her here served the purpose of demonstrating that people with her views are lacking common sense. I didn’t see much concern about public safety or practical suggestions which will make American cities run by liberals any safer than they are now. Her focus is on “over-incarceration”.
And purely emotion driven. We cannot make practical decisions based on emotion.
Her stats are from Europe.
Uhhh criminal justice reform has been a disaster. It’s not a debate.
Blacks make up 12.8% of the population but commit the majority of violent crime in the country — mostly against other blacks, mostly in inner cities and mostly with illegal guns.
I was surprised in this discussion that one highly effective means of reducing this violence was not discussed: stop and frisk — a small inconvenience to a community versus innocent people being shot and killed.
In the 1990s, NYC was overwhelmed by gang killings and stop-and-frisk got guns and their carriers off the streets. New York became the nation’s safest large city. But in 2013, after a campaign claiming it was biased against black people (even though it was aimed at protecting black people in dangerous black neighborhoods), a federal judge declared stop-and-frisk “unconstitutional”.
Then came BLM villianizing police and police becoming less proactive in inner cities, and shootings and killings have surged. The people most hurt: innocent black people.
So with all the talk about changing gun laws (which I support), the reality is that these laws will do little to stop the majority of shootings with illegal guns. But one thing will work: stop and frisk.
It’s become a nonstarter to even suggest it. Good god, even something as common sense as “broken windows” can trigger palpitations on the left.
They do discuss it in the debate. Just not the article. Lara is against it and Rafael is for it.
Being against stop and frisk is tantamount to supporting shootings. I look forward to hearing her argument.
Ms. Bazelon’s script is not a debate, It’s a sermon. Its also one day too early for me to be preached to about it somehow being the fault of decent law-abiding people that some folks are hell-bent on being miserable fuck-ups. I mean, what kind of sheltered privileged scum don’t want people freely burglarizing, robbing, slinging dope, raping, and murdering people in their neighborhoods? The audacity! When someone like Ms. Bazelon tries to tell you that you have no empathy or foresight when you want bad people incarcerated, you need to look them right in the eye and tell them they are full of shit, because they are.
Just enforce the damn law. Second chances? Perhaps if there is some significant remorse and willingness on the part of the guilty to change, then sure. That is common sense. Third, fourth, fifteenth chance? No. Full stop. You know what people in prison aren’t doing. They’re not taking advantage of good natured folks who are trying to do the right thing and live their lives honestly and peacefully. That’s the point.
Also, since the author included her own little sob story, here’s one of mine (chosen from a fairly long canon).
There was a domestic violence case I was involved in where the offender had been arrested multiple times for (wait for it), domestic violence against his wife. His penultimate arrest was for aggravated assault, specifically strangulation. He plead guilty to that charge and was on probation (yes, you read that correctly) when he entered his wife’s apartment and shot her point blank in the chest with a .410 shotgun in front of their three young children. He then fled.
I was the first officer to arrive. One of those lady’s little girls came flying up as my patrol car squealed to a stop. She screamed “please help, my mom’s been shot!” I’ll never forget it. Her mom was also one of the bravest people I’ve ever met. While I was trying to apply a chest seal to her wound, she calmly told me who shot her, what he was probably driving, and where he was probably going. Then she asked me if she was going to die. I told her she wasn’t. At thee time, I figured that was a lie. We said the Lord’s Prayer.
As it turns out, by the grace of God, she did not. The human pile of dog shit who tried to end her life is now doing 50 years, a small consolation to be sure for that little family. No laws were named after the victim or her children. The existing laws were just finally enforced. Had justice been done the first time(s), he would have been locked up long before he pulled the trigger that night. He was quite simply a bad person who was given more than one chance to do the right thing. He chose otherwise, and while in this case he did not kill anyone, he surely scarred his own family forever.
There are definitely more good people out there than bad, and there a lot of very intelligent people on this forum. Trust in your own ability to know right from wrong, and expect others (especially those in positions of power and influence) to do the same. This concludes my own sermon.
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
You have supported my statement that nobody goes straight to the big house from the get go. They always ride the probation carousel first. So by the time they are sentenced they have already had at least one chance and often far more. God bless you. I cannot imagine what you have witnessed first hand and what the cost thereof is.
The probation “carousel” (love that descriptor) can be an overused easy button for sure.
Thank you for the kind word as well. I’m doing something else now. I’ll note here though what a great police officer (and all-around exceptional human) told me about policing on more than one occasion: “Remember that this is something we have the privilege to do, not something we have to do.” It was always a poignant reminder (and is also true of most things in life).
I’m very thankful policing was something I got to do; but, I’m equally glad to be elsewhere. God bless those with the fortitude to stay the course.
Lovely sentiment. I always felt it was my privilege to defend the citizen accused. I think if more of us felt privileged to do our work the world would be a better place. I think that belief is why I find the thought of "elites" and "elitism" so vile.
TY. *Great* comment. You had me 100%, all the way up to the very end...
"Trust in your own ability to know right from wrong, and expect others (especially those in positions of power and influence) to do the same."
As I see it, IMO, we can trust and expect other people to have the ability "to know right from wrong." From what I've seen over the decades, we can have that expectation but we would be sorely disappointed on too many occasions to count. Especially lately. That's just me.
But when it comes to people in positions of power and influence, my gut feel is that it'd be better to have the opposite this kind-a trust and expectation. Mebbe I'm just cynical in my old age, so there is that.
But, from what I can tell, the very notion of right and wrong would require some people to get uncomfortable at times, people not being perfect. And it's the WORST SIN in the world these days, especially for the younger folks, for someone to be made to feel uncomfortable about *anything,* right? *Can't* have that happen, right?
That's the end of my sermon. Sorry. But TY again for the story.
You are right; I did not articulate that last part all that well. What I really wanted to get across was that quite a number of decent people have been cowed into believing that an apathetic and/or racist society at large is the only reason people break the law (or that laws exist). People like Ms. Bazelon, wittingly or not, use race, poverty, and other useless statistics to bully people into ignoring or excusing criminal behavior by individuals. Statistics for or against the accused or the victim do not belong in the courtroom. Period. That’s not Justice. Facts and circumstances regarding the people and the crime in question are all that should and do matter. My last remarks above were simply a plea for folks of good nature and common sense to have the courage to call a spade a spade when they see one, statistics and hand wringing be damned.
Thanks for pointing out my possible wishful thinking. That people can be disappointing is true beyond a doubt. I still believe though that there a lot of quiet people with upstanding character and resolve, who given a chance will usually do the right thing. Perhaps our biggest collective shortcoming is having come to expect less of our leaders than ourselves.
Ah. Agree with *all*-a that. All-a it. And I think, or at least would like to think, that the majority of people will do the right thing, when push comes to shove.
But it's just hard to stand out from the crowd and make a stand some times, when the bullies have the megaphone to shout down anyone who disagrees with them.
TY for reply, Sir.
Despite what the sociology professors will have you believe, it is not a mystery how to solve this problem . NYC did it in the 1990’s , you strictly enforce the law. Now we’re witnessing a crime wave as a result of the undoing of all those policies. Remember when they released like half the prison population during Covid and told us it would have no effect on crime?
Bazaleons essay is filled with logical errors. she states other industrialized countries have lower rates of incarceration and yet have lower rates of crime without considering maybe that’s true BECAUSE they have lower rates of violent crime. The proportion of the population that is incarcerated is irrelevant without considering the proportion that commits crimes. She laments the cost of keeping people locked up but does not consider the costs of having a society ravaged by crime. Most of all she has very little empathy or compassion for the real people victimized as a result of her policies and instead treats them as a statistical anomaly.
Another factor: I believe other countries have less access to guns, both legal and illegal.
My state is loaded for bear, has no concealed carry licensing (lady that cuts my hair carries), is 5x bigger than Baltimore City, and we had 300 fewer (90% fewer) homicides.
Baltimore City has more homicides in a year than my state has in 11. If you wiggle the stats for population (5x) and gun ownership (2x (by state)) that number become 110 years.
If you discount 'urban areas' from your statistics, you find that our numbers align pretty similarly to other western nations...shocker, right?
But we’re not allowed to talk about urban areas and what a problem they are because that’s just “code” for racist. Or so I’ve been told. 🙄
Yes, she seems rather cold-blooded and heartless. I'm not sure why we have long called "bleeding heart liberals" those people who support policies that lead to misery and bloodshed. It feeds into their narcissism, and is dishonest.
My local police department publishes a blotter every two weeks. Each time when they talk about an arrest made, they also note how many arrests the perpetrator has in his/her past. Nearly every one (especially those involved in non-violent robberies) has has 20+ arrests in the local area. But NYS had bail reform pass, so nearly all nonviolent offenders get appearance tickets. And so they repeatedly commit these sorts of crimes, because they have no consequences.
Something missed in those "non violent" offenses is how much it costs society over the long-term, especially offenses involving drugs. I live in a wooded, rural area with quite a few meth labs and other drug trade going on. The generational problems created grow geometrically, along with the cost to taxpayers. Some of us are working to clean it up but it's a struggle.
Very good point. I live in such an area as well and it is very said - 3 generations now of meth-heads.
I think it's ridiculous that things like purse snatching and strong-arm robbery are counted as "non-violent" crimes.
Same. Most of these people have had multiple arrests. We had one suspect famously arrested three times in a single day for auto theft.
I do not dispute what you are saying but you have illustrated a different problem. How in the double hockey sticks do you have a non-violent robbery? Robbery is by definition a face-to-face taking by force or threat of force. But my WORDS can be violence. I swear the toddlers are running that side of the debate.
Nah, toddlers are smarter.
Very good point. Most of these robberies are high scale shoplifting from stores. Where people walk in at take carts of stuff. No weapons, no intimidation.
That is shoplifting. Plus I think those clerk's would disagree about being intimidated.
The #1 job of government is security, both domestically and internationally. We have failed in the former and are failing in the latter. Clearly. Yes, there are plenty of examples where the innocent have been convicted or the guilty over-incarcerated (but she ignores those many many cases where the guilty are never brought to justice at all), and we can do our best to minimize and hopefully eliminate those, but Ms. Bazelon has zero solutions for that and the fact that she falls back on "racism" is evidence that she has no solutions other than opening the jails.
So true. The only “opening the jails” I’d like would be literally Open More Jails.
The social contract of liberty should be easy to accomplish. Let me and the vast majority of citizens be free to live our lives without the interference of crime. I’ve advocated many times on this forum to build more prisons. Let sentences run their course. Concurrently we also should be able to truly determine the innocent from the guilty, and act accordingly.
I used to think the Singapore justice system was too harsh. I long ago dissuaded myself of that delusion.
And I think most of over-incarcerated and wrongfully convicted are in the area of white-collar crime, where prosecutors often over-charge, withhold exculpatory evidence, and just generally make it difficult for the accused to defend themselves. There's a disturbing number of people who are pleading guilty to crimes they didn't commit, because they cannot afford the cost of mounting a defense. And there's a lot of bullcrap charges like "making a false statement" and "obstruction of justice". This is why Glenn Reynolds keeps saying "don't talk to cops".
The decision to accept or reject a plea offer is always done by the accused not the lawyer. I have had several accept deals I thought they should take to trial. I always hand them a legsl.pad and have them write in their hand that they want to accept the offer and that I advised against it. This is because I know they are going to regret it. So plea bargains and prosecutorial abuse of it is where I would like to see reform. There is nothing in thd criminal justice system that I despise more than a "creative" prosecutor with political ambitions.
Lara Bazelon has a screw loose. It’s clear as day that repeat violent offenders must be given lengthy prison terms. This new crime wave in America is due to the early release of thousands of criminals due to COVID-19. Progressive prosecutors are playing Russian roulette with innocent people's safety and lives. One can only hope it’s these sick Soros Funded progressives who are the ones that become victims first so they can learn firsthand how reckless and dangerous their bad ideas are.
Shellenberger wrote about the drugged out criminals roaming free in SF downtown, while the cops look on and DAs hand out no cash bail.
So now apparently one has found his way to a mansion in Pacific Heights, smashed in a glass door and done something, the facts of which are still very much in question and so far don’t add up.
But the story is already about MAGA republicans and their far right violence. And gee, just before a disastrous election for democrats.
All a bit too “on the nose”?
Why did Paul go to the bathroom and call 911, and then come out of the bathroom? Why not hide there until the cops arrived?
Are we to believe the Pelosis don’t have an elaborate security system that would alert the cops to an intruder? Why did Paul even have to dial 911?
Why would an 82 yr old guy struggle with a 42 yr old guy, just as the cops arrive to see it?
How did someone traveling with Nancy in DC know the assailant was trying to tie Paul up? Was a rope recovered from the scene?
And the claims the assailant asked, Where’s Nancy. Just heresay? How convenient.
The story ought to be about the hellish condition of SF enabled by dems for decades.
But when it happens to SF’s royal family, they are the victims of Trump’s MAGA radicals.
This all feels so staged.
Yes it is weird. But we will never know the truth, only the pelosi’s truth.
Most Americans can see past the dumb subterfuge put up by Biden and MSM at this point. We've been asked to disbelieve what we are seeing for years now.
Ms. Bazelton's argument is weak and contains almost no data to back up her claims. More needs to be done to rehab offenders and help prevent people from choosing crime. However, this should not come at the expense of law abiding citizens.
her data comes from European models but Europe never had homicidal cultures like the US so it's apples and oranges.