The abrupt explosion of violent crime in many large U.S. cities, after dropping consistently for two decades, has rocked the world of liberal academia at the very moment it was poised to celebrate the long overdue rollout of national sentencing reform. For at least the last twenty years, renowned scholars at our finest universities have insisted that proactive Broken Windows style policing, and progressive sentencing, which increases confinement for habitual criminals, were ineffective, unnecessary, unfair and racist. About seven years ago for several reasons, the dismantling of these policies began to spread across the country, particularly in large cities with high urban minority populations. By August of 2014, when Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, the news media, most politicians and civil rights organizations were pushing the narrative that American law enforcement was thoroughly racist and our prisons were full of young black and Hispanic men serving long sentences because they were caught with some drugs in their pockets.
Then riots, justified by a feeding frenzy of media reports of police
gunning down unarmed black men, spread through many of our large urban areas. Groups
were formed to promote these riots and to target police for assassination,
and crime shot up, particularly in those large urban areas. Manhattan
Institute scholar Heather MacDonald called this the Ferguson Effect and,
in several well-documented articles, she broke down how and why this
was occurring.
Liberal academia is not taking this sitting down. In their recent article entitled "What does science tell us about the so-called Ferguson effect", Professors Scott Wolfe, Scott Decker and David Pyrooz explain how their rigorous study of the recent crime spike in large cities proves that it actually means nothing. "Our results are good news for cities and the police: on the whole crime is not up." Whew! What a relief. Now, let's get back to the business of emptying out those racist prisons.
Well, Ms. MacDonald is not buying. Her response in today's Quillette speaks for those of us living in reality.
Liberal academia is not taking this sitting down. In their recent article entitled "What does science tell us about the so-called Ferguson effect", Professors Scott Wolfe, Scott Decker and David Pyrooz explain how their rigorous study of the recent crime spike in large cities proves that it actually means nothing. "Our results are good news for cities and the police: on the whole crime is not up." Whew! What a relief. Now, let's get back to the business of emptying out those racist prisons.
Well, Ms. MacDonald is not buying. Her response in today's Quillette speaks for those of us living in reality.
This is exactly why those opposing sentencing "reform" distrust Doug's and his colleagues' "best available data."
There were 770 more murders last year than the year before, and the murder rate was up in 72% of the nation's 50 largest cities, but not to worry.
None of this has a cause, and even if it does, the cause is not the Hate Parade against the police launched by BLM, nor is it that the prison population has been declining for six straight years.
No, those have nothing to do with the fact that murder is up 17% (a figure even the Left now agrees to after dishonestly giving lower figures to start with).
The increase in murder is due to......ummmmmm......sunspots. Or randomness. Or whatever.
The nationwide movement to portray bloodlusting criminals as Mr. Nicey simply is not going to tolerate any explanation that links how we treat criminals to the incidence of crime.
Instead, what academia tirelessly tells us is that we're just a bunch of simpleton Nazis, and that if we'd pay more attention to "data" and "nuance" and their other names for deceit, we could all wear a Smiley Face.
And in a sense, you can't blame them. If I knew that the raft of new crime victims was going to be filled only with People with Big Hair (and with minorities, who are only worth pretending to care about), I'd have a Smiley Face, too.
Who should we trust, Tarls? Government officials?
For the record, I see huge biases in lots of research done in the academy. But I see even more in government research because the govt gets to decide what research to fund. Just look how govt resistance to MJ research for pain relief pushed big Pharma to go much to hard pushing more dangerous opioids.
Data is data. Unless it is fudged, it is trustworthy and an empirical truth. What is dishonest is the interpretation. That is true whether it be academics or the government. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to separate the two because of their incestuous nature. The government gives the universities (like Ohio State) money, and you give them back what they want in the form of faux science.
The problem is that academia is supposed to be doing the "science." They are not. They are instead seeking "social justice."
So how can we fix this Tarls other that by getting the govt out of the way? That is exactly what I want to see in the marijuana space and many others. And notably, I have brought money into OSU law only from private sources to fund my marijuana research.
I would have addressed your other points of concern about OSU research directly in the other thread, but Bill or Kent shut down that thread.
Doug --
I temporarily shut it down, but re-opened it a few hours ago.