Incarceration and overpolicing please welcome kelly stimson, senior legal fellow and Deputy Director in the heritage foundations meese center for legal and judicial studies. Well, welcome to the heritage foundation. For those of you online here in person, then those whove joined us on c, were delighted to have and im really delighted and honored to welcome to heritage two friends and really giant in the criminal Justice Policy world. Dr. Barry latzer on my far left and Rafael Mangual barry is professor Professor Emeritus at the John Jay College criminal justice and at the city college of new york. He has a law degree and a ph. D. And is the author of countless articles, papers and influential books the rise and fall of Violent Crime in america. And his latest book, published last year called the myth of our punishment a defense, the american Justice System and a proposal to reduce incarceration while protecting the public Rafael Mangual is the Nick Odonnell fellow head of research for the for the policing and Public Safety initiative at the manhattan institute, a contributing editor of city journal and a member of the council on justice, he holds b. A. From City University of new york, a jd from depaul university. He, too, has written extensively criminal Justice Matters and his first book published last year is called criminal injustice what the push push for, decarceration and de policing gets and who it hurts. The most. Now format for todays event, which last an hour is moderated discussion for about 45 minutes, followed by your questions questions we receive online. So with that lets get started. And barry, i want to start with you. Your latest book book has two parts. The first part is a short history of punishment in america and the age of leniency. I want to focus on the latter part because thats appropriate. Our topic today in a chapter, the build up, you write about, quote the titanic crime wave, unquote, that struck the United States, the force of a tsunami in the late 1960s. And that went for about 30 years. And you noted. Between 1970 and 1995, there were more people murdered in this country than soldiers killed in world war to the korean war, the vietnam war, and the conflicts in iraq, afghanistan combined, and you also noted that fewer than 1 million Service Personnel suffered injuries in that same time combined, yet 2. 2 million americans per year were by Violent Crime during that time frame. So as a result of that indisputable war crime wave, what did the states do and what the result . At first they did nothing. It they were overwhelmed. It was so many Crimes Police could apprehend enough people fast when they arrested them. The courts overwhelmed with cases they didnt know to handle it. The sentences, the time served actually went down. It took a for the system to rebuild over a decade. The seventies into the eighties for the system could restore its capacity to handle this crime tsunami. And believe me i lived through it so remember it. Im old enough to remember what it was really like and and just before we went on ralph and i were talking about how crime is now in the subway and whatever it is now a heck of a lot worse back then it was really really frightening and of course the big cities losing tourism people didnt want to come to the city. Right. And therefore the restaurants were losing money. The the venues for entertain ment were going down. They were in trouble. I mean the United States was under. And thats why its remarkable to me that you dont have bunches of books on the crime wave and you dont and you actually have people who deny that was a crime wave that is simply unbelievable to. Me thats the ostrich approach to social problems, right . If i put my head in the sand, maybe itll go away. Let me pick up on a word you used. You said the system and talk to us about how theres not really system. Theres 18,000 Police Departments around the country. Theres 2300 elected days. Theres 50 states, theres thousands of counties. Put more words around that because its not a system all walked in lockstep. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, thats why its so to turn it around right. Were not talking about even one big ship. Were talking about multiple multi the Police System and theyre largely locally controlled or state controlled. So the prisons are state, the cops are largely municipality run. And so you cant the whole thing around at once. Thats not going to happen in the United States but you can turn things around eventually. Thats why there was this lag, why it needed a decade or more before we our capacity to deal with this crime tsunami. Well, lets pick up on the lag, because you describe the lag between crime rising and imprisoning rates, imprisonment rates. And you explain that that lag has happened twice now since then. Yes. Put more words around what the lag means and, what we should think about it. Well, the critics of imprison and of course, love to point out that the imprisonment were real low in the late sixties, early seventies. True, right. And they soared going into the eighties through. But this was the response to the crime tsunami, of course. And it took that longer time to develop that kind of response this is nothing that you can do in the short run, but that necessitated by the big crime rise. Thats why you had to have this rise in imprisonment. So course theres a huge lag crime rising late sixties, early seventies, mid 70 years and the capaz city of the system to deal with it doesnt go like that takes a decade or more before it could deal with it. So eventually the imprisonment do rise. They rise high. Okay, but not. But thats because its responding to the crime wave. And i want to bring you into this, rafael, but you you go to great detail on your book about what many of the states did. They talked they had legislative proposals, some passed, some some didnt some that passed. It realized it didnt go far enough. Then they had to build out the capacity for, the prisons in the state system. So inevitably, because those folks over there on the hill, they take a long time to get things done. Sometimes these state legislatures were chewing through all of this. Is that part of the the problem . Well, yes, sure, sure. The federal government created incentive truth and sentencing law, for instance, mandatory minimum laws the federal government created. And incentives for the states to act. So that did help put things on the track. But again its sure its up to each state legislature do the job when it comes to imprisonment. New york bills, a slew of prisons. Back then there was a rise in the number of prisons the United States. Now, of course, the left generally deplores this. Now they say, oh, thats awful. You know, mass incarceration. But this didnt happen because of nothing. This happened of a huge something that terrified the american public. Dont jump in here. Yeah. I mean, i think whats really interesting about that is despite the fact that there was this lag between the build up of incarceration in the United States and the sort of rising crime you can go back to the mid 1970s and sort of follow the public debates. And what youll find is that even then, people were sort of left of Center Reform advocates, were criticizing what they essentially characterized as mass incarceration back then. I mean, you can go back and, read james q wilsons thinking about crime, which was First Published in 1975, where hes essentially to the same sorts of arguments that were hearing today about the need to cut down on the punitive response to crime, to invest in rehabilitation. He was one of the foremost advocates kind of pushing back on that, even in the mid 1970s. And so what that tells us about today that, you know, whatever level of weve been able to achieve in the last ten, 15 years, whatever level decarceration we achieve in the next ten, 15 years, which you can expect is, you know, critics of the system are never going to be fully satisfied. And that, i think, poses one of the most significant dangers to people who are stuck living in the enclaves where crime is highest. And thats why we wrote our books basically. I mean, it wasnt a conspiracy, by the way. We tried it independently, but thats why we wrote our books, because i kept reading about all this mass incarceration and mass incarceration. What are they talking about . I mean, you got to look at the numbers you have to deal with realities. The statistical read, how were these . How long do prisoners serve in the United States . Dont tell me about the 40 year sentence. I want to know long. Theyre actually behind bars. Answer two years or less to thirds were out in two years or less. That doesnt sound so awful to me. I once was in a debate with a professor and he said, two years. Thats a long prison sentence. So i didnt have the presence of mind. I should have said, yeah, for a guy like you, that would be a very long prison sentence. Youre just a week, professor, so you couldnt take it if you were a tough street guy, you could take it. In fact, you could take it on one leg. Yeah, theres theres just such an incongruity between the reality on the ground that illustrated by the data. As barry notes, what the narrative is that really drives reform agenda, right . I mean, you know, we hear terms like mass incarceration. We hear terms like Second Chances or we have Second Chance month in the United States. And the whole idea behind this is that, you know, our country systematically denies people the ability to have a second crack, a second bite at the apple, a Second Chance in this pretends as if someone, you know, gets caught smoking a joint. Then theyre doing a 30 year prison sentence. The reality is just the opposite. If you look at the typical person in state prison, what youre going to find is someone who has between ten and 12 prior arrests and between five and six prior convictions. These are not people who are being denied Second Chances. Were giving people multiple bite at the apple. And what i really wrote my book to help the public understand is that with bite of the apple that we give a repeat offender, were essentially rolling the dice, but were not rolling the dice with our own lives, rolling the dice with the lives of people who are living in places where the National Crime numbers i mean, dont even come close to representing how dangerous, you know, day to day life truly is. I mean, there was a mention of the fatalities and, casualties in the recent wars. I mean, there are parts of this country, you know, neighborhoods, ten, 15, block radius where the homicide is significantly higher than your chances of dying on battlefields in iraq and afghanistan or even in the ukraine. Yeah. So, you know, in imagine, you know, a mothers fear sending her child off to the marines in 2000 to, you know what that would be. And now try to imagine living in a place like West Garfield Park, chicago, which in 2019 had a homicide rate of 131 per 100,000, which makes it one of the most dangerous places, not just in the country, but in the world, where if you are a young male, your chances of being killed are about on with your chances of going to graduate. And so, you know, thats really what i wanted people to to understand from my book is that, you know, despite the fact that all of these reforms are pushed in the name of equity, are in the name of Racial Justice and social justice, the reality is, is that the most persistent and starkest disparities that we see in this country, in the criminal justice world, come in the form of victimization. So as you both, weve been writing about progressive and we did a bunch of book. We have a book coming out in march. We did two symposia. We did a short video about a career criminal austin davidson, the way comic county sheriff. Right here is mike lewis, one of his Deputy Sheriffs was killed by a career criminal who had 29 interactions with law enforcement. He murdered Deputy Sheriff hilliard and he was on probation for armed robbery. And had four open warrants in. Maryland, when they went to pick him up and he killed. So this is your typical yeah. Career criminal. Yeah but let me go back, barry, because i want to set the stage for a more granular discussion. Some of the things you both each write in your book, in prism. It lags the crime wave to the wave peaked around 92, 93, and then it started going down drastically. You dont really hear about it going down because people dont want to acknowledge that the imprisonment as much as its distasteful and necessary, worked yeah. And the alternatives to incarceration, especially courts and all the rest of it helped drive down Violent Crime and property crime. And you have a slide in your book. And if we could pull up the slide, i it would be helpful to see that this is a pew research slide that shows that how how that actually worked and its been going down since for about 30 years. Talk more about that. Well, thats the second layer you mentioned earlier. I didnt respond to you, but thats the second lag between. Imprisonment and crime the first one was crime was rising and high. And it took a long time the system was able to build itself up. The second leg. Is that crime is now receding and the punishment system is still pretty potent. Pretty powerful. So of course the left criticizes the second leg and ignores the first leg right. They only want to tell you about terribly high imprisoned rate and they ignore the first leg when the system respond to the crime rise. Well, of course, the second leg and the first leg are both reflective of the same. And that is its hard to steer the big ship around. And its its really the same kind of problem. But if we do decarceration and we do it in an irrational like just releasing people arbitrarily, not misdemeanors, as some these progressive prosecutors are not only proposing but doing if we do this kind of our arbitrary release of offenders. Well, what were inviting, of course is another crime wave. Its kind of obvious weakness in the criminal Justice System was not the only factor explaining the rise of crime in the late, but it was a key factor. So if we weaken the system, we run the risk of. Inspiring another crime. This was the late eric monk and this theory, you know, he said when we go all permissive, when we become too lenient, that encourages more crime, then we toughen up and crime goes down and the cycle continues that way. So his theory could well be borne out if we keep weakening the criminal Justice System and weve seen this weakening in the last decade at least. Right. And the second part of your subtitle and, who it hurts the most, you say in your book about the geographical and demographic concentration of crime. And you note in new york city, at least 2008, around 95 of the citys shooting victims have been either black or hispanic. And that, while black, constitute. 13. 4 of the population and they make up more 53 of the nations homicide victims in 2020. Yeah. Yeah. Talk more about that, by the way. Thats a typical thats a typical. Thats just 2020. Thats i have data going back to the beginning of the 20th century reflecting that same thing. Yeah i mean the reason they to spend so much time on the concentration of crime as an issue is because, you know, theres an understandable colloquialism that prevails in this country, and that is to talk about crime in National Terms or in broad geographic terms. You hear about chicago crime in new york or, you know, us crime. And the reality is, is that the vast majority of the United States is the safest the safest in the world. You know what we have that lots of other donor these pockets of very highly crime places like West Garfield Park chicago. Right i in the book i do this where i pick out the ten most dangerous neighborhoods in the city of chicago and the ten safest neighborhoods in the city of chicago the ten safest neighborhoods had a collective rate of about 1. 6 or 1. 8 per 100,000, and they had 200,000 more residents than the ten most dangerous neighborhoods, which had a collective homicide rate in, excess of 61 per 100,000. And again, of those neighborhoods within that collection had homicide rates that were double that. And so, you know what have to understand is that crime concentrates at the very hyper local level. If you take new york city as an example, three and a half percent of our street segments in a given year, a street segment, if youre thinking a city block would be one side of the block, both sidewalks of to corner to sidewalk, they see 50 of all the Violent Crime. 1 of our streets. They can see 25 of all the violent. Now, why is it important to understand this . Why is it important to understand this in the context of the democrat concentration of crime . One major reason is that we know the reform debate is driven in large part by concerns about racial in the system, Racial Disparities in enforcement. But if the reality that crime concentrates geographically in a very, very small and certain demographic groups are in those places, well, if the system if it policing, for example, is responsive to that phenomenon, then that is by definition going to generate disparities enforcement. And you have to contextual wise those disparities in light of the reality of crime concentration in order to fully understand whats happening. It is not of racism that you quote unquote overrepresentation of certain groups in the enforcement. Its evidence of responsiveness on the part of the system to a dire problem. You know, im still relatively young guy but im old to remember that one of the harshest critiques leveled against policing in the early 1990s and late 1980s was that it wasnt responsive enough to black crime, and yet, you know, i know how many hip hop fans are in the audience. You know, youve got public enemy nine one. One is a joke with, you know, a big hit and the whole idea was, you know, policing as an institution didnt care about black on black crime. They didnt care about the carnage. They didnt care about the victimization. Well, the the use of data to inform the Deployment Police resources, which was a huge innovation. This country changed that and made system responsive. And when crime down, it didnt go down. Everyone equally, if you look at the homicide decline from 1992, 2014, it added a year of Life Expectancy to the average black mans life in this country, only added 0. 14 years of Life Expectancy to the average white man. And the reason i bring that up is to pose a rhetorical question to the people who would really lean into the enforcement disparities. And i would ask them, why on earth would a system allegedly designed and operated for the specific oppression of certain groups so disproportionately benefit those very groups when the system achieves stated ends as stated by whom . As by the people at the systems helm . Ask any police executive, any Traditional Law and order prosecutor in country. What is it that you want to achieve . How do you define success . They say reducing crime. Well, who does that help . Its not rich white people, i can tell you that. Right. And youre a road warrior. Youre always out there debating. Im sure you come up against thoughtful intelligent people who take the opposing view. And when you ask them that rhetorical question, what answer do they have . I mean, they they deflect you know, they deflect say, of course, there are both costs and benefits. Maybe were not weighing them. The way. And i think thats just, you know, its a cop out. And frankly, you know, at the end of the day for weighing these problems against one another, i think that the concentration, Serious Violence in this country wins out ten times out of ten as the problem that should deserve the most attention. Facts are stubborn things. They are in your book. I really like the section because you went to Law School Chicago and all of a sudden when youre in chicago and youre seen whats going around, youre like, huh . Mm. And you wrote about that. And you looked at very distinct micro areas in chicago. And then looked at the data to see where the murders were happening. The crime was happening. And i hope people, look, you get your book and look at that because you cant deny what the facts are there. Barry you want to jump in . I was just going to say that. Thats absolutely case just to talk about who the crime victims are and that really the conversation or it should but it doesnt theyll say the the critics around narrative will say well 38 of the prisoners are black and thats three times the black population, the United States. And why is that . Thats true. Why is that is true. Well. There are two answers and. One is clearly wrong. Its the first answer is that its a its racism. Thats clearly wrong. The second part of that is to say that its the war on drugs. That was Michelle Alexanders argument. Thats also clearly wrong. Well, i want to get into that because you do that it was Violent Crime in the black population that put those people the prison in the first place. Yeah. I want to i want to pick up on the Michelle Alexander or the new jim crow is her book. Yeah. Because you really go right at her in your book and in a respectful way. But you cite a lot of things. I want to get into that in a minute, but rape back. Rafael, back to you. You in your book, just 2 of u. S. Counties see about 50 of u. S. Murders in a given year and 54 of counties in the u. S. Dont see any murders in a given year. We wrote a paper because there as a rebuttal because there was, you know, this this red state crime, murder problem. Right. And we realized, well, thats odd because first of all, you dont look at state rates. You look at grand killer rates. And so we found out and looked at the data and realized its actually a blue city murder problem and whos running those cities . And you know of the top 30 cities. You know, almost half absorbs bought and paid for, wrote prosecutors. Theres all sorts of issues. And so you cant really overlay the politics on this. You have to see where the crime is actually happening. What you learn from writing this book about, it that you havent shared with us so far, the geographical and democrat concentration of crime. Yeah. I mean, i think in terms of what i havent shared already, its that it is probably the single biggest driver of. The disparities in enforcement. It is also, i think, you know, it tells us a bit about other policy debates as well. I mean, you know, there are lots of debates about, you know. For example, the role that socioeconomic factors plays as a root cause of crime for low socioeconomic are much more prevalent Broader Society than crime is a phenomenon. Right. And theres a disconnect, this argument, because if in fact, something poverty causes crime, then you would expect to see crime, not so concentrated where it is, because poverty is, a much broader phenomenon, you you know, gun ownership is another one. People. Well, we have so many guns in our society. Therefore, that informs why our rate is so much higher than the other western european democracies that were so often unfavorably compared to. But again, the vast majority of the United States is as safe as any part of, those western european democracies. Whats different is that we have places like north philadelphia and southwest baltimore and you know, the west side of chicago and, you know the parts of saint louis that are still struggling with incredibly high homicide. And, you know, thats a very unique that requires, you know, a approach, this idea that theres a one size fits all, you know, sort of answer to these questions is wrong because we dont have a sort of one size crime problem. These are very, very unique. Theyre very very hyper concentrated. And in order to understand them, we have to take a hyperlocal based approach. But that doesnt make for a really good and sexy narrative. Let me play devils advocate. Okay . And im doing this just draw something out of you. And thats the disconnect that you talk and write about in your book between a violent and socioeconomic indicators like poverty, unemployment. And you talked about it, but playing devils advocate, if we just invest more in these communities, if we just give public housing, give more to the communities, their crime will go down. Your research doesnt show that does it. No, no. I mean, well think about the trillions of dollars that weve spent antipoverty programs in this country over, the years. I mean, that doesnt seem to be helping the many places in this country where. Crime is literally at record levels. I mean, we have more than two dozen cities that have seen rates either reach record levels all time highs or come close to all time highs. Right. Even in places. Philadelphia, which set a homicide record years ago and came close to breaking it in dwell in 2010 right there, because ive got a slide for you. Go ahead and pull this up. These are chicago homicides by year. You can see long time ago. Barry, this is from your book of course that they were down then about to for 2015 2016. They start going up in chicago its not coincidentally the first year that kim fox, the rogue prosecutor, was elected. But go to philadelphia the next slide to your point. Shootings per year in philadelphia through the roof. Yeah, homicides. Go to the next slide. Yeah, there you go. So keep going. Yeah, well address the poverty issue for just one second. Fast study just came out a few months done by Columbia University and they were talking about the poverty of chinese, chineseamericans in new york city. And they found that the poverty rate this is kind of astonishing. Everyone thinks asian millionaires, right . The poverty rate among chinese new york city was higher than the black poverty was Something Like 23 in poverty. And about 19 for africanamerican. So i said, wow, thats pretty. What about the rest rate for homicides . So did a little digging. Found nypd data . And guess what . I found. The arrest rate for homicides among chinese new yorkers like 1. 2 per 100,000 among the black was over ten per 100,000. Whoa. So you have this group with very high poverty rate and pretty low violent rates. Isnt that inconsistent with the narrative . Its totally with the narrative that poverty is the big drive. So giving out more money in antipoverty program, i dont think is the solution here. Here we have a high poverty group, very low violence rates. And not only do we have that crime adversity mismatch which barry just so expertly documents in the rise and fall of violent which is you know a book i think everyone should read. But we also dont have a between these measures over time. Right. So take new york city, for example in 1989, which is the year before peaked at 2262. The poverty rate in new york city was slightly lower than it was in 2016, which is the year before homicides hit their value. 292. So the rate ranges at around 20 for that entire period. And yet we have 90 decline in homicide. We didnt see crime go up during the Great Recession in new york city. We didnt see it go up at the national level. Right. You had a doubling of unemployment yet the homicide rate declines by 15 between 2006 and 2010 during the great depression. Crime soared. It first in the worst years of the depression. But you know what . The depression kept after the thirties, right until almost the start of world war two. But crime sank Violent Crime went down in the second half of the great depression. How do you explain that . Right. Theres no consistent relationship between poverty either at the micro level or the macro and Violent Crime. So am i saying that more people will do as much Violent Crime, as less affluent . Absolutely not. I am not saying that at all. Affluent have a very compelling not to do violence crime. Theyre no good at it. Their lives would be ruined. They get pinched right away. They end up in prison. Their lives would be ruined. Their wives would leave them. Theyd lose their jobs. But a young guy on the street who doesnt have a job anyway or doesnt show up for it right. Who is devil may care leads him to crime. What he have to lose. What does he lose from engaging in Violent Crime. So my argument is its not so much that poverty drives Violent Crime, but rather that affluence drives down via crime. Can i can i add something here . I know youre. Yeah, i know. I think i know where headed. I we had in our road prosecutors symposia. We interviewed a City Council Member for pico rivera in, l. A. Names under lra. Hes a democrat. Very thoughtful guy. Went to usc. He grew up in South Central l. A. All friends that he hung out with were gang members. He fortunately given the opportunity to go across town to a different school, and he saw how the other side was brought up and he decided, know what . Im either going to go this road, the bad road, or im going to go this road. And he made it. He made it out. But he talks about culture. Yeah, the culture of violence. He calls it. You picked up on that in your book. Talk about that. Well, i mean, you know, i think and i that the key point to weigh in on here because you know, people on the other side, us in this debate will say, well, how do you explain if, in fact, poverty unrelated to criminal standing, how do you explain the fact that so many offenders are poor . And what i think theyre getting wrong is the direction in which the causation runs. Right. Like, yes, it is true that a large portion of offenders are, you know, people who either come from poverty or who come from relatively low socioeconomic status backgrounds. But that doesnt tell us that low socioeconomic status leads to crime. Why because we dont know which is causing which it could very well be the case. And i think that it is that the sort of attitudes lead someone to think crime is a good idea, are also just not very conducive to economic success, which is why you see that relationship. But the thing remember is that the vast majority of people, even in high crime, low communities, are law abiding. So what that points to what i think you know, barrys work really helped elucidate for a lot of people is that the obvious answer here is that there is a cultural element to this and its something that i wanted to explore in my book. I mean, you can see references to it in popular culture, you can see references to it in, you know, hip hop music, which im a big fan of. By the way, this is not something that i write, but i you know, we have to accept the reality that there is. And theres a long literature on this that there is a prevailing unquote code of the street, to quote elijah anderson, who wrote, you know, the of seminal ethnographic work on this and that that quoted the street is associated with higher levels criminal offending and until you address those cultural issues which by the way im not sure that the government is well positioned to do. We you know, we have to understand that theres a limit to what social spending can achieve if, in fact, these are cultural phenomena. So in preparing for our time together today, i wanted to see what criticisms there were of your books, whether they took on your arguments head on and said, well, they got this wrong, they got this wrong, they got this wrong. And there were articles out there i, didnt find anything. Honestly, i found a couple little things. And you sort of did a rebuttal and one, one newspaper article, etc. , but it was a minor point. These facts are out there. These crime rates, its happening. If you go to any big city or even smaller jurisdictions, you know where the is happening. Why . Why isnt there a for tat based on facts and direct refutation or attempt to refute what youre saying . Theyd rather ignore us. Its the best argument they have. They cant deal with numbers. They cant refute the numbers. So they just ignores. Were just marginalized. Thats how this is handled. Thats how that thats how the left handles handles books like ours. I think also, though, been rewarded for sticking to the narrative narratives have proven to be incredibly effective at driving policy and driving the public debate. Know there really is no incentive to walk back from that, step back from whats working and, you know, dig in to the dead. And thats a thats a thats not a very sexy approach. It doesnt in the seats. It doesnt, you know, drive the tone of congressional hearings. It doesnt lead to good press. And so as long they continue to get rewarded for selling a powerful narrative that is powerful, right . I mean, if you are, you know, someone whos not familiar with this data, if youre just a wellmeaning person in a High School Classroom being fed, you want to help. You want to do something about that. Its natural to be upset and see injustice. The problem is, is that there is a very lopsided effort to frame this debate and, you know, pushing back against that is a pretty gargantuan task as were finding. But, you know, were doing the best that we can. Well, lets get back to mr. Push back, because you push back hard in book and you took on Michelle Alexander, who has a really popular book called the new jim crow to national bestseller. And you call her out for her, quote, inflated and essentially definition mass incarceration, unquote. You write that she, quote, equate mass incarceration with correctional control, even though the overwhelming majority of people under such control are large in the community. And thats on page nine and 90 of your book. I mean, i cant. Right. I got you. Youre stuck. Youre stuck. But tell us why youre right. And shes wrong. How can it be mass incarceration . Callie if the guy is out on the street . Hes not incarcerated. Hes free. Okay. Hes under correctional control. What does that mean . Hes got a officer or a parole officer, and maybe he might even meet with once in a while. Right. But largely an honor system, isnt it . Were hoping that even though hes not an honorable man, hell obey the law, which he usually wont. Okay. Thats reality of it. So she says Michelle Alexander. She says, but Violent Crime didnt. Mass incarceration. Drug war caused. Mass incarceration. Really . So i took the number of who were in prison for drug crimes and i took number of whites who were in prison for drug and the number of hispanics who in prison for drug crimes. And i said, take out. Lets go from. That all of the inmates who are in for drug charges. And after you do that what happens the percentage of blacks in prison remains the same. Its still 38 . How can that be . If you pulled out all drug offenders who are africanamerican. You still have 38 black in prison. You do. You do do the numbers yourself and youll see what i mean, right. So it cant be that drug crimes are driving the incarceration. So when you define incarceration lets talk about imprisonment, or at least being in jail. Lets not talk about being on the street, on probation or parole. They may be under control, but theyre not incarcerated. Yeah. And you know, and Michelle Alexanders book a lot of games with the drug war and its position is there are a lot of things that i think, you know, the public is misled on. I mean, one example is that, you know, the drug war and the ramping up of it, the 1980s and nineties is presented as this new racist conspiracy. You know, things like the abuse act of 1986 are sort of pointed to as prima facie evidence there was racism built into the law because that law establishes the 100 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder. And so the argument goes that, well, crack was more prominent in black communities. Therefore, you know, the over punishment of crack cocaine relative to powder cocaine is clear evidence of bias. But if you go back and look into the legislative history, which youll find that 16 of the 19 members of the Congressional Black Caucus cosponsored, the antidrug abuse act of 1986. You can go a meg reagan to pass that law. They begged them to pass. You can read editorials in black newspapers in harlem at the time and read the way that they talked about the local drug pushers. There was, you know, there was anger. The reason that crack cocaine was treated so much more harshly was that there was more Violence Associated with the crack trade than the powder cocaine trade. And, you know, the reality of it is whether you think its the right way to go about it or not, that the drug war is largely viewed by law enforcement, a pretextual attack or more serious crime, because they recognize that theres an overlap between people who engage in the drug trade and people who engage in more serious violent offenses. And when you look the 14 of the state prison serving time primarily for drugs and you went into their criminal histories, what youre going to find are a lot of other violent and property felonies. And if look at the recidivism data, what youll find is that more than a third of people who are released from prison after serving time primarily for drugs will be rearrested for at least one violent offense. 75 will be rearrested for a nondrug crime. That overlap is what really drove this conversation in the last example ill give here is you know if youre sort of thinking about the sort of paradigmatic representative of the black community in you know, in congress in the 1980s and nineties. Think Charles Rangel right the congressman from harlem. Well in 1990 he debated White National founder William F Buckley on the question of whether drugs should be legalized. And during that debate, Charles Rangel, black representative harlem actually proposes life in prison for certain crack dealers. And so, you know, the idea that this was this, you know, racist, conspiracy driven, you know, white lawmakers just wrong. The idea that it constitutes the majority of our prison population is just wrong, the idea that these people be adequately characterized as nonviolent is just wrong. You write very in your book on page 90 that alexander writes in her book, quote, Violent Crime is not responsible for mass incarceration. But you point out that drug crimes explain 13 of blacks stayed in prison, whereas Violent Crime accounts for 62 . But then add if we combine all black drug, state and federal drug centers account for only 5. 5 of the African Americans in prison. In words contrary to alexander than 94 out of 100 African American prisoners, state and federal are serving time for non drug offenses. Yeah. And so i guess they have to ignore what youre writing. I guess i didnt make the numbers up. Those are numbers generated by the bureau of justice. Im the department. Thats my source. You you both note in your books and theres not a lot of overlap in your books, which i think makes them really good reads. You got to read both these books because theyre very, very good. Hoping you would say that that i bet you were that that most crimes dont result in arrests. Right. And of those that do, very few go to prison. And barry you write in your book, rafael, that if the is to improve, quote, the quality of life in dangerous neighborhoods, the reality is that our criminal Justice System sometimes often fails to be enough, unquote. And you included a chart that i want to show here and i think this is from barrys book this is crimes resulting in imprisonment in 2019. Tell us about this chart, barry, and then i want you to weigh in, rafael. Its kind of amazing, huh . Look at the number of people admitted to prison. Only murders where you have about half of the murderers admitted are really punished for what theyve done. Seriously punished what theyve done. Now, let me explain these numbers. The number on the on the amount of crime is is based on a survey of crime victims. And then the survey pretty massive. I think its 249,000 people or Something Like that. Right. And then they project onto the whole country. So its a pretty accurate account of the actual Crime Victimization in the United States. So thats the first column on the left. And then we know most crime is not reported to the police. Murder is the most reported because, of course, it involves a dead body stealing car cars is also highly reported because the owner of the car has to report to collect from his insurance. But the other crimes are really not very well reported. So thats known to the police column. The second one from the left. The third one shows the arrests. Okay. The number of people arrested. The final column shows, the number of people who are actually in prison. So thats pretty disturbing because once you go down the the the rows and see that almost half of murders are in prison, you find like 5 , 6 , 4 . And thats kind of the reality. And this comes from the 2019 National Crime victimization survey, which surveyed. 249,000 people. Its done by the Department Justice down on page hundred seven, the the census folks also involved in that . Yeah. Yeah i mean, look, i think, you know, again, you sort of the theme of my book is that there a there an incongruity between dominant narrative and the reality. Right. The dominant is that criminal offenses regularly met with harsh sentences of incarceration. The reality is, is that only 40 of state felony convictions result a postconviction sentence, meaning that 60 of state convictions are met with either sentences of probation, sentences of time served in pretrial detention, or some form of diversion. This is what the reality. Its incongruous with what were all is happening on american streets and in american courtrooms and what that tells us again, is that if you look at the official conviction statistics, we know sort of understate the severity of the criminal conduct engaged in because the vast majority of cases are resolved by a plea bargain, the vast majority a plea bargain to involve some form the following, which is either the downgrading of certain charges or the dropping of certain charges altogether. You look at the state in which you have to conclude, is that actually the vast majority of crime goes unpunished. Again, the vast majority of offenses are not reported to police. The vast majority of offenses reported to police are not cleared by the fbi up until very recently would consistently report year on clearance data, meaning how many of the reported resulted in an arrest. If you look at the eight index felonies that they and just break them apart from violent and nonviolent the four violent index felonies typically have a clearance rate on an annual basis of about 48 , meaning that more than half go unanswered. For if you look at the Property Index felonies, the clearance rate is 18 , meaning the vast majority go unanswered for. And so when you look at the mass number of people in prison which you have to understand is that that number has to be viewed in and the context is the context of the people who are out on the street who should be in prison. That number, i fear, is much, much larger than the number of people in prison. And youre even talking about these socalled progressive whove waived their regal and declared entire categories of crime like theft and shoplifting, that not going to prosecute. Youre talking about the garden variety. Thats right. Criminal Justice System. Yeah. Thats all of the progressive prosecutor stuff is new. Thats, you know, cherry on top, which is, again, just sort of mind boggling how we got to point in which such large swaths of the public and policymakers have been convinced that, in fact, we have this mass punishment. When, you know, the reality is, is that we and yet, you know, again, despite all of the reforms that have happened in recent years and the New York Times reported last year that in year after George Floyds murder. 130 Police Reforms were passed across, 40 states just in one year. And again, you know, take the temperature of the Reform Movement today. Are they satisfied . Absolutely. And so, you know, again i think we have to start grappling with the potential that, you know a lot of what is presented as wellmeaning is really just a slow march toward. Abolition and decarceration for its own sake. And then that begs following question, which is who is that going to be good for . Yeah. And when you mean you use the word abolition, i want to understand what youre talking about. Angela davis wrote a book, our prisons. There is a prison abolitionist movement. Its small, its radical, but its out there and it infuses throughout a lot of these socalled reforms. Patrice, shes another one out there who is a devotee of davis. You know, you talk in your book on pages 94 through 96, in particular. But throughout the chapter about, use of force and Police Reforms, what are the chances of a police of force occurring in the United States and of those Police Involved incidents . How many peace officers actually use lethal . The numbers are far smaller than what you would be led to believe. Again, if you were just a casual of the debate. You know, the argument is that use force is a very likely outcome of the Police Citizen interaction. Right. We see these terrible videos like floyd and other encounters that dont look very good on film. And those are presented to us as know as if they are, you know, sort of typical and representative of Police Citizen interactions. The reality is, is that if you look at deadly force, for example, i take from 2018 and estimate that Police Officers in the United States fired their weapons an estimated 3000 times or so. Sounds like a lot about eight shootings a day. It includes both fatal and nonfatal. But when you contextualize that number in the context of the overall volume of Police Activity in a given year, things to look very different. What do i mean by that . Well, we had 686,000 Police Officers in 2018. They made 10. 3 million arrests, which means that if every shooting happened within the context of a separate arrest, youre talking about 0. 03 of arrests involving the use of deadly force. Now, what about non deadly force . Right. That matters, too. Theres a study i point to in the book that looks at over a million calls for service over. A two year period in three Police Departments, midsize Police Departments. One was in louisiana, one was in north carolina, the other one was in arizona. Those million for service led to 114,000 criminal arrests. Police officers use force and less than 1 , one out of every 128 of those arrests involve the use of any force whatsoever. And in 98 of the cases in which Police Officers use force in that study, there was no or mild injury to the suspect. Less than 2 of the time. Was there a serious injury in that entire dataset . There is . Just one Fatal Police Shooting captured. This, again, is completely incongruous. The narrative that were all spoon fed by the reform crowd. You know, and i think its done an incredible amount of damage as it has led to the demonizing of the institution of policing. And that has led to people leaving the job, not taking the job and the people stay on the job becoming much less proactive than they otherwise would be. And also contributes to the crime rise that i think were all seeing today. And when the local prosecutor announces to the public that theyre not going to prosecute arrest, which lot of these progressive prosecutors dont prosecute, that gives a green light to people to resist, arrest and more. Thats exactly right. And the other thing to understand, the Progressive Prosecutor Movement is that it really off not necessarily as a means of getting people out of prison, reforming the criminal Justice System. But the sort of first big domino to fall, which was unseating of Robert Mccullough in saint louis, was the function the the Michael Brown shooting. Right. The idea was if you put me in office as a progressive prosecutor, wesley bell says, im going to reopen the investigation into the shooting of michael and hold police accountable. This one of the primary messages that first got the progressive prosecutor off the ground in modern times. That also sends the message to police, which is that, hey, were to put you in legal jeopardy every chance we get. And, you know, again, thats not good mix. Yeah, i want i want to get to open. Sure. Open it up to questions, because im sure there are a lot them. But barry, im to be very blunt. Okay. Because this is really grab a moment of your book that we dont have a socalled mass problem. And you hear from other side the has roughly 4 of the worlds population, but holds 25 of the worlds total prison population. Isnt that mass incarceration . Well, you have to look at crime dont you have to look at crime if youre going to judge whether were incarcerating too many. If you dont look at crime, how can you answer that question . They dont look at crime and want to know about crime rates. If you look at crime rates and you look at incarceration, if you look at that graph we had up there, that table that we had up there a bit earlier, how would you answer the question then we dont over incarcerate we under incarcerate in fact. So i think without looking at crime and with only looking at crime at imprisonment rates, you give a false answer you give a misleading answer. Its a ridiculous answer really, isnt it . How can you talk about imprisonment rates and not talk about crime rates and assess whether those imprisonment rates are too high or not . I what and what i like about your two books and our upcoming book and march on on rogue prosecutor is is that were all proreform. Yeah, right. And and we dont think youre going to be able to prosecute prosecute, incarcerate your way out of these problems, because these are large societal problems as well. Youre about to say something. Yeah. I mean, i was just going to say i mean, if you look at the crime numbers, it really does contextualize that reality that you pointed out. You know, again, context is everything, right . So if you want to look at the crime numbers in my book i actually do an analysis where i look at four cities and look at saint louis, chicago, detroit, baltimore, just pick out a couple of neighborhoods in each of those cities. And i come out with a geographical that houses about 475,000 people and then i compare that area to, all of england, all of wales, all of germany, which have about 142 million people. And that the area in the United States, again, just 475,000 people, 0. 3 of the population, and all of england, all of wales and all of germany saw 10 of the homicides seen in all three of those countries combined. Right. Which just for american cities, not even the entire city is just a couple of handfuls of neighborhoods. Right. So when you look at the incarcerate and disparity in national level, you have take account of that reality. And you also have to take of the fact that the United States is a rich part of the reason why were an outlier incarceration is that we have the resources to dedicate to an effective criminal apparatus that can suss out crime, that can prosecute it, and then has capacity to house people in prison. I mean, look at, brazils homicide rate compared to the united not that they dont want to put people in prison they just dont have the same resources we do and that matters too. And so, again, just, you know, the sort of the two themes is the incongruity. And the lack of context. And you have a great chart in your book comparing us imprisonment rates for this specific crimes with European Countries and australia, which i encourage folks to look at when they get your book. So i want to open it up for questions. The only rules we have are state that your name of your affiliation and actually ask a question and no speechifying. So let me start here in the front, i hold on, wait for the microphone because want to make sure we hear you loud and clear. Hi. Deborah weiss. And i used to be appellate attorney for the prosecution on juvenile criminal. Regarding your comment that its not really mass incarceration because theyre out on the streets and not incarcerate, i was wondering if you could talk about how it its not really math either, because to me and conjures up the image of your on math crowd and its really individuals. And the second thing i just wanted to ask quickly was since you were saying that its racist, if you look at the numbers. I agree with that. But ive had so many people say, well, the actual of the crimes probably arent any different. Its just that the people keep getting arrested more. If you could address those to come. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the idea that that black were somehow disproportionate to the crime rate, just theres no basis in data for that. I mean, again, look at homicide victimization, which often mirrors homicide commission, black americans, black men who constitute about 7 of the nations population and close to 50 of all homicide victims. Theres you know that that is mirrored by the homicide data in new york city, 97 of shootings victims last year were either black or latino. Almost all of them were shot by other blacks and latinos so, you know, the reality is, is that theres not disproportionality. But the thing that frustrates the most about the sort of systemic racism argument is that they pretend as if the only output of the criminal Justice System is enforcement statistics. And theres a complete other side to the ledger, and that is crime declines. And again, if you look at the you know, i will be readily i will readily admit that blacks and latinos disproportion bear the costs associated with the operations criminal Justice System, which is to say that theyre more to be on the enforcement of the equation. However, they also disproportionately enjoy benefits associated with enforcement, and that comes in the form of crime declines. When you consider the concentration of crime the geographic concentration of the demographic. I dont think you can away with the conclusion that the system is. Youre probably right. Its not mass either. Yeah im going to use that. Ill give you a footnote. Were over here. Delano Research Fellow here at the heritage foundation. Prior to that, i spent last year in d. C. I was in d. C. Over a decade last year with officer gun violence prevention. Im curious, what do you whats two part question to related parts . What do you make of Gun Violence Prevention Programs and sort of the the trend of treating gun violence as a Public Health issue and then related what do you all make in the rise in firearm and concealed requests. Also oftentimes in the very neighborhoods that are experiencing the crime spikes. Yeah. I mean, so i would point you to the work of my colleague on the last part of your question, robert, for at the manhattan institute, whos done some really Good Research looking into the relationship between the build up in carry and the build up in gun ownership and its potential effects on crime. And you dont actually really see a relationship i mean, one of the things to remember is that we had this decline in Serious Violence, including gun violence over the course of the 1990 and early 2000. Thats also a period in which gun ownership explode in this country, in which gun rights were significantly in gun laws at the state level, were liberalized, really meaningful ways. The other thing thats complicated is that, you know, again, Violent Crime, gun crime in particular is very hyper concentrated geographically, which you dont see when you zoom in is a clear relationship where that gun ownership buildup is happening and where the gun crime is happening. Now, what i make of the Gun Violence Prevention Programs, you know, i think that exploration and research is important and. We should monitor at every opportunity. But i think what a lot of these efforts are characterized by is an unwillingness, admit the uncomfortable truth that any Gun Violence Prevention Program with a snowballs chance in miami of succeeding going to have to put enforcement as the tip of the spear. There is a just fundamental discomfort with the idea that policing and incarceration are going to play significant roles in the reduction of gun violence. When you look at a city, chicago, and you look at someone who is charged a homicide or a shooting, these are almost always people who are repeat offenders that the average number of arrests for someone charged with a homicide or shooting in chicago is 12. One in five have more than 20 prior arrests with tells you is that the major failure driving gun violence is this in country is a failure to draw line and enforce it with respect to repeated criminal conduct. Thats where i think the effort to start, in my opinion all of thats true for all the interventions unless intervention is backed by a threat of punishment, incarceration, its not going to be effective because people wont show up, they wont do the job, they wont do what theyre supposed to do unless theres the of going to prison back to prison. So the interventions might work, but they need to have backup. And the backup has to be a threat of punishment. And by the way, in general, the whole problem with these people are one about prisons is they dont have any alternative. Whats their idea of how to handle crime . Right. See, their answer is, really a kind of broad political argument that what we need to do is eliminate poverty or reduce poverty substantially. And then crime will go down. Okay. And then we wont need prisons. Thats really where where theyre going with this. Well fine. Im in favor of eliminating poverty, too. That would be great. And a society where more affluent you would reduce Violent Crime. I agree with that too. But of course, we dont agree on how to achieve those ends either. We have time for. One very quick last question. Okay, ill make it quick. Im pete newsham. I served as a Police Officer here in washington, d. C. , from 1989 to 2021. The last four, as the chief here, currently a chief of police in Prince William county, virginia. This is a curiosity question. Have you been viciously and personally attacked for sharing your thoughts and views on these issues . And i say that because i think that tactic thats being used to silence these ideas, i have try not to Pay Attention to it, although i did receive a rather disturbing death threat before a talk recently actually had to have a police escort, which is a bit embarrassing Walking Around with two big guys with guns behind me. But you know, look, i understand that, you know, if youre going to participate a public debate like this, theres going to be backlash. You know, at the end of the day, the risk that i face is nothing close. The risk that People Living in communities, crime concentrates are facing and thats really what motivates my work. You know, at the end of the day, i only go to heritage invitations and manhattan. Im sat at right now i cant go back to john jay anymore. Theyre in trouble now. Theyve gone horrible. Well, this has been a fantastic discussion. Appreciate you attending. And please join me in thanking our guests. Thank you. Thank you thank you so much for coming tonight. My name is corey. Im with book soup. And tonight are very excited to be hosting Craig Seligman in conversation with liz brown, discussing craigs new book