SPEAKER_03: Do you think that the crime increase during 2020 to 2022 was largely a function of the protests?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: I do not believe that.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Matthew Iglesias.
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jerusalem Dempsis.
SPEAKER_00: You're watching or listening to the argument.
SPEAKER_00: This week, uh Jerusalem's got a take.
SPEAKER_03: I think that as you and many other people have pointed out for like many, many years, it's clear that increasing the number of police, there are like many actions like that that mayors, et cetera, can do to reduce crime.
SPEAKER_03: But then when I look at the like the past few years under COVID, and you see like the decline in murders and like property crime and everything else, it just like does not seem plausibly that related to like any action anyone took.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I guess to like clarify this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like a a lot of the time when we're doing like empirical research and policy, right, we're looking at sort of micro-research.
SPEAKER_00: And there's all these studies and they look at like deployments of police officers and they look at funding levels and things like this, and they try to show that like within any given neighborhood, if there's more police there, you'll get less crime, that it doesn't just push the crime around.
SPEAKER_00: Also that if a city has more policing, you tend to get less crime.
SPEAKER_00: But but you're talking about sort of macro national crime threat.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just so it's so that people know, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because when when crime goes up, it gets a lot of coverage.
SPEAKER_00: When it goes down, it it doesn't as much.
SPEAKER_00: So like what's what's been happening?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: So um the Council on Crime Justice put out their annual report.
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, the bottom line is that it seems like 2025 is gonna be the lowest homicide year on record, and that means like going back to 1900.
SPEAKER_03: Um, for numbers on that, that's about like four per 100,000 residents um homicides.
SPEAKER_03: Uh beyond that, it marks the largest single-year percentage drop in homicide rate on record.
SPEAKER_03: And there's this great Substack by this guy, John Roman, who's a criminologist.
SPEAKER_03: And one thing that he does in there that's interesting is that it's not just like a return to the mean.
SPEAKER_03: And we can put like the graph up that he creates like on, you know, on the screen, but you can see that like crime declined even more than you would expect if COVID hadn't happened and we've just been on the same trajectory.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: So you, you know, so there's been this like big macro scale fall in crime.
SPEAKER_00: And I do think it is true that this is not as clearly studied as these kind of micro-scale things, because in part it's harder to know how like how you would do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like mechanically.
SPEAKER_00: I've been a little bit uh annoyed by this discourse.
SPEAKER_02: Um is this a discourse that's happening a lot?
SPEAKER_02: You're seeing this.
SPEAKER_00: I have seen this discourse.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I have seen it from uh I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's there's people out there who've been talking about this saying, like, ah, crime's gone down so much, basically to say, like, what are you guys even like talking about?
SPEAKER_00: You know, people who got really amped up about crime and policing.
SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I do think an important piece of context for the crime decline in 2024 and 2025 is that we had an enormous uh increase in crime in 2020 and 2021.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's true that we are not just seeing reversion to where it was in in 2019, um, but that if if you step back further, right, looking at the at the really big picture of crime, crime starts falling nationally in the 1990s, um, and it's falling quite steeply.
SPEAKER_00: Then, and and people at the time were not like 100% sure why these bangro-scale crime trends are controversial.
SPEAKER_00: And then uh there was a recession in the early 21st century.
SPEAKER_00: And so something that a lot of people speculated at that time was that the crime decline was driven by the very strong economy of the 1990s, and we were likely to see like a reversion.
SPEAKER_00: And that didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: Crime continued falling, albeit at a slower rate.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then there was a really big recession in 2007, 2008, 2009.
SPEAKER_00: And the the rate at which crime was declining like was slower in that period than in the 1990s, but it but it kept going down, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so then at that point, I I don't think that like solved anything data-wise, but people sort of stopped talking about the economy and employment, and I think got kind of complacent about crime as an issue.
SPEAKER_00: It really faded out of the national political dialogue.
SPEAKER_03: Because as you said, people really only pay attention politically when it's going up.
SPEAKER_03: Right.
SPEAKER_00: And then it well, it like I mean, it's complicated, but but it's like we had had decline for so long, right, that people stopped paying attention.
SPEAKER_00: There was a kind of a bipartisan movement toward criminal justice reform started.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, in part because like it seems like a good idea, in part because conservatives, certain conservatives and certainly the the Koch family got interested in like, can we cut state spending on prisons?
SPEAKER_00: Uh became a big thing.
SPEAKER_00: And then after Michael Brown died, um criminal justice reform sort of exploded, right?
SPEAKER_00: As just like a like a big first tier kind of topic.
SPEAKER_03: Which I think and notably like I think I underestimated at the time how much people's willingness to engage in criminal justice reform or police reform conversations was predicated on the fact that like crime was pretty low, particularly in res in relation to like recent memory for a lot of these like politicians.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And well, so okay, now we're just like getting into the part where, you know, I feel bitter and angry about people.
SPEAKER_00: But there was a significant increase in crime in the St.
SPEAKER_00: Louis area um following those protests.
SPEAKER_00: And James Comey said that he believed there was a Ferguson effect uh driving crime up.
SPEAKER_00: He got a lot of criticism uh from the left.
SPEAKER_00: Um, the late Richard Rosenfeld, who I know, he published some work indicating that the Ferguson effect uh was not real, and that got a lot of attention in the media.
SPEAKER_00: Then about a year later, he published a follow-up um indicating that he thought he was wrong and the Ferguson effect was quite real.
SPEAKER_00: Um that got a lot less attention um in the press.
SPEAKER_00: We got a similar situation in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray, where again, you know, very significant increase in crime localized uh to Baltimore.
SPEAKER_03: I think it's worth it being like being specific about like the mechanism here a bit, though, because I'm gonna let you do-I'm gonna let you be cranky, but I just think that like when we talk about the Ferguson effect, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like the real what we see repeatedly is that after a police protest, you see in those areas that saw the protest an increase in the crime rate.
SPEAKER_03: And people say, okay, like what's going on here?
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, I think the most plausible read of the data is that police retreat from engaging in policing activities either because they feel chastened by the failure of one of their own, they feel frustrated that the public is blaming them for these like systemic problems, they feel like it's not safe for them because, oh, people are so angry, maybe they're gonna be turned normal interactions at a traffic stop into hostile ones.
SPEAKER_03: Like, whether you want to read this as very like reasonable from the police to like, these are just police officers just not doing their jobs even as they are paid to do their jobs, like I think that is clearly what's going on here.
SPEAKER_03: Um, but I think that's important to say.
SPEAKER_03: Like it's not just I think sometimes people talk about this thing without having read, not not you, but like I hear this all the time where they're like, people look at the Ferguson effect, and like they seem to have some idea that like just protests are creating disorderliness and it's creating crime.
SPEAKER_03: Like, that's not what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I mean, I think I I I guess I would say, you know, sometimes we have research findings that are clear, even when exact causal pathways are not that clear.
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
SPEAKER_00: And I do think that over the course of the the 20 teens, right?
SPEAKER_00: We were in an interesting place, discourse-wise, because it's like crime had not like gone up in a way that derailed criminal justice reform, but the decline in crime basically stopped during this period because different things were happening in different places and empirical evidence was mounting up.
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's uh there's a Roland Fryer paper that looks like pretty systematically at this.
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, in in in many ways, good news for criminal justice reform, like this paper indicates that when the Department of Justice like proactively does pattern or practice civil rights investigations into local police departments, it on average is beneficial, that like it makes the department work better, but that when there is like a a some specific thing that happens that goes viral and there are big protests, that crime goes up in the city, and that the intensity of police activity declines.
SPEAKER_00: So as somebody who followed those topics a little bit, you know, by the time that George Floyd died, I was just like aware that this was a an issue.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: That like for whatever reason, right, you just would know from the basis of these papers that if we had large-scale nationwide anti-police protests in response to these events, the likely impact would be a large nationwide increase in crime.
SPEAKER_03: In the short run.
SPEAKER_03: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: And it seemed to me at the time that a lot of people were proceeding without this piece of information, and that the climate of the moment was not uh well suited to discussing it and to helping people understand the dilemmas that were involved in this, particularly because, as you say, most of the progress that had been made on reform was like downstream of low crime, right?
SPEAKER_03: Well, we've gotten a little far afield of our original topic, but I do want to like spend a little bit of time here because I think it's important like uh context setting.
SPEAKER_03: I think to be fair to people who were choosing to protest, whether they were aware of this information or not, I'm not in the heads of you know, all the activists or whatever pushing this, but like whether they were aware of like the likely and short-term impact or not, the protest movement in 2020, I think, is still like underrated as one of the most large-scale cross-ideological like public protest movements of like all time.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you saw there's a study that was done on Hopkins, and we'll put it in the show notes, but essentially what it showed is that the demographics of the people who protested in 2020 were more representative of the public than the voting public in the presidential election in 2020.
SPEAKER_03: And like they were more representative on lots of things like income and uh race, and I don't remember all the details of it, but um like that moment, like Mitt Romney was protesting.
SPEAKER_03: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_03: Like there was like this was like a movement where like there was a real national feeling of like we can actually get something done here, and like that things are difficult, politics is hard, policy is even harder, and it did not r result in all of the policy changes we would want to see.
SPEAKER_03: But I think people actually underwrite the fact that like lots of things changed as a result of that.
SPEAKER_03: Not only did public opinion pretty durably change about the like reasonability of like certain kinds of police actions like chokeholds, but many states passed, I think more than half of states passed legislation showing like like either banning chokehold or doing some sort of like police retalic.
SPEAKER_03: So, like, you know, I don't want to be too like negative about like the decision to have like large-scale non-violent protests.
SPEAKER_00: I think it's an important point to put it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'm just I'm just like I'm trying to like be chill.
SPEAKER_00: Set the stage for my reactions to all of this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Which is like, I just think it was clear on the basis of the pre-existing empirical evidence that was not being like discussed in a clear and fair-minded way in liberal leaning and mainstream media circles, that like if you had large-scale protests, there would be a significant increase in crime.
SPEAKER_00: We did have large-scale protests, there was a significant increase in crime.
SPEAKER_00: But literally thousands of people, um, primarily African-American, died as a result of that.
SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, like crime has come down since then.
SPEAKER_00: It's gone down to below the prior baseline level.
SPEAKER_00: But when I see, when I hear, like, oh, it's hard to say what happened, or the kind of continued euphemization that the crime increase happened during COVID, quote unquote.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, which is true, that is when it happened.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the few things we like really can do, like international event studies on, right, is like COVID happened everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And you did not see like a systematic increase in murder rates across Western countries.
SPEAKER_00: Um, murder did go up.
SPEAKER_00: The US is not the only country with an increase in murder, although the amplitude was much, much smaller.
SPEAKER_00: But it also went down in a bunch of other countries.
SPEAKER_03: Okay, well, actually, I think here I'm not sure Ivan Yes, you were obviously correct that like uh things were more deadly in the United States.
SPEAKER_03: Things are often more deadly in the United States, often because of like guns um and other factors of of of uh culture and policy.
SPEAKER_03: Um but I do not think do you believe I want to make sure I'm getting it correctly.
SPEAKER_03: Do you think that the crime increase during 2020 to 2022 was largely a function of the protests?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: I do not believe that.
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
SPEAKER_03: But this is You don't think the staying at home disruption to local services, the fact that police officers weren't it were like worried about being there was there was concerns about transmission, so they were given instructions not to do traffic stops like they were normally doing.
SPEAKER_03: There were all these things that shifted.
SPEAKER_03: People weren't at like you were there's all these uh uh really interesting pieces about how um many of the people who are likely to engage in shootouts often tend to actually be co-located in similar neighborhoods.
SPEAKER_03: But like for the course of their day, they're often not in the same neighborhood because they're at work or they're at school or whatever.
SPEAKER_03: But like COVID happens and a shutdown happens, and now all day, every day, all the people who are likely to shoot each other um are like in the same place physically.
SPEAKER_03: And so I just want to be clear, you don't think all those things had like a large part to play?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm sure that you know different things matter in different kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_00: But again, we we see, you know, during COVID a 17% decline in homicides in Denmark, right?
SPEAKER_00: A 12% decline in homicides in the United Kingdom, 10% in Spain, uh, 9% in Italy.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the US, it goes up.
SPEAKER_00: It also goes up in Germany uh by almost the same amount.
SPEAKER_00: It goes up in Portugal uh by a by a modest amount, but like the COVID kind of conditions existed everywhere, right?
SPEAKER_00: What's unique to the United States is that we had this big debate around policing and that we had, you know.
SPEAKER_03: Did they have that in Germany?
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, did they have that in Germany?
SPEAKER_03: I mean, not really.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have anti-police protests.
SPEAKER_00: But that's my point.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I I I'm not I'm not trying to say that like the only thing that drives crime statistics is um But you think it was like the major cause in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and that then that as a result of the spike in crime, you know, we had I this is like it's frustrating because there was no like law that was called the like bring our cops back act of 2022, in which like all the like mainstream libs kind of were like, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I still hate the police, but what I'm mad about police about now is that I kind of see them like on their phones and squad cars, and like I want them to come out and work hard and do their jobs.
SPEAKER_00: And once everyone agreed that what they want is for the police to come out and work hard and do their jobs, like they went and did it, and crime went down a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it seems to me that like that is the predominant factor on the way up and on the way down is the intensity of police effort driven by the signals that were sent to them by political leaders and influencers in society and their kind of implicit understanding of how they would be judged if they acted proactively in a difficult job.
SPEAKER_03: I actually do agree with you that police have shifted their view about whether they are like disliked largely by society.
SPEAKER_03: And like that vibe has shifted a lot of behavior.
SPEAKER_03: Like if you look at like San Francisco, like there was like a nadir where there was like they weren't even doing traffic stops like at fucking all like they just like weren't doing it anymore.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know what the fuck they were doing all day, but they weren't doing like the one of the biggest parts of their job.
SPEAKER_03: And now they are doing more parts of their job.
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I like I think that that's true, but it actually like cuts against a lot of the intuitions I previously had in different ways.
SPEAKER_03: Like one is that the individual actions of any given mayor, governor, whatever are almost like irrelevant, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like it wasn't like because like, you know, like Dan Lurie in San Francisco seems like a guy who is very pragmatic, very reasonable in many ways, uh, was obviously elected in in in large part as a result of the disorder of the, you know, 2020 COVID period to say euphemistically.
SPEAKER_03: Um and uh, you know, he, I don't know, like he says he's done a bunch of stuff, but like when you look at other cities that did not do anything like what Lurie did, like Detroit, Philadelphia, St.
SPEAKER_03: Louis, like in cities run by progressives, by conservatives, like you saw very similar crime declines going on.
SPEAKER_03: And I mean, some of the bigger ones, it feels like San Francisco was just at like a worse baseline to begin with.
SPEAKER_03: Um uh, but you know, he did actually take a bunch of steps, like hiring a bunch of new police officers, trying to uh reduce response times and encourage neighborhood patrols, et cetera.
SPEAKER_03: So like I think that one thing this does is that, like, okay, the police are not taking their cues from whether the local community really hates them or not.
SPEAKER_03: They're taking this like cues from other, like, what is like the national vibe around police?
SPEAKER_00: No, so I mean, w one thing that I think you see here that is uh annoying to empiricists is that there is like a like a type token kind of issue here, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where uh in certain cities, like things happen that were like read as signals of the changed mood.
SPEAKER_00: Right.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like not true that if you look like cross-sectionally, that every progressive prosecutor has like led to really high crime.
SPEAKER_00: It is true that in the specific case of San Francisco, that the recall of Chesa Putin and his replacement by like a pro-law enforcement broke back Jenkins seems like it was an inflection point.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, going back to before Lurie took office, um, and then Lurie did some things in addition, but in a lot of ways, I think just winning the election at all was like the biggest Lurie signal.
SPEAKER_00: It was like this wasn't just a fluke that Brooke Jenkins is it.
SPEAKER_00: Now we have a mayor who like backed that recall and blah blah blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_00: And like I don't I don't live in San Francisco, I have never met a San Francisco police officer.
SPEAKER_00: But like in Washington, DC, you know, I know that what became the the token, like was this secure DC act that Brooke Pinto introduced, that the mayor eventually ended up signing, and that you know, it has a lot of different uh moving parts, and um Councilmember Pinto doesn't like it when I characterize it as legalizing chokeholds.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but it it made some change to the restraint policy.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, uh what's interesting again is if you look at the DC crime trends, the inflection point isn't when the law is signed, it's when the mayor does her press conference to say that she wants this bill, right?
SPEAKER_00: So it's not like the police needed exactly the, you know, and I think you could probably find lots of studies showing that the particular restraint, you know, rules that had been put in by the reformers are like fine and that it's not important to controlling crime that they be allowed to do whatever in exactly this circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: But the understanding that developed, right, was that that law was like the anti-policing climate, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there was a case of a particular officer who um he was chasing a kid on a bicycle who he had reason to believe was part of this like violent drug crew, and he wanted to stop the kid.
SPEAKER_00: Cause I think he I think he felt pretty certain that he was gonna catch him with like drugs and a gun in his backpack, and then this was gonna be part of building a case.
SPEAKER_00: But the official policy was that you're not supposed to do a chase unless there's like an imminent risk to life.
SPEAKER_00: This kid ends up getting hit by a car uh while he's fleeing from the police officer, and the cops went to prison over that.
SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, was not well received uh by the city's.
SPEAKER_03: Did he have a gun?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I believe he did.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's not he it wasn't like uh but it was it was against policy.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like there's no way anyway, he wound up getting pardoned uh by President Trump, and you know, it's a whole it's a very complex sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: But in the climate of the era, right, the view was like there's nothing easier than to get a bunch of civil servants to like not work hard.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like in in general, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like if the political leadership of any entity says to any group of people, they don't have to be police, they could be librarians, they don't even have to be civic lead, it could just be like private sector workers.
SPEAKER_02: Sure, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like if you're saying human beings.
SPEAKER_02: It's right.
SPEAKER_00: It's like if your boss is like my number one concern is that like I don't want you to like go the extra mile.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I might send you to prison for you like acting in good faith to like try to like do this, but like eh, you know, then like you get a reduction in effort, right?
SPEAKER_00: And like we it would be interesting for the cause of social science if like Mayor Mamdani had not backed off any of his like 2020 era statements.
SPEAKER_00: Because then maybe we would see like, can a high profile mayor?
SPEAKER_00: Like engineer a localized increase in crime amidst a national vibe shift.
SPEAKER_00: But like he went along with the vibe shift, right?
SPEAKER_00: And like retained Derek Adams' tough on crime.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'll say, I think two things.
SPEAKER_03: One is that like even the fact that I mean, like, I think that we then both agree that like this national vibe shift is like I mean there's like an endogeneity problem.
SPEAKER_03: Like, is it actually like the specific thing that's happening locally?
SPEAKER_03: Is it the fact that like there's this national trend?
SPEAKER_03: Who's driving it?
SPEAKER_03: Is it like just that the forces of reform have largely been spent and defeated by not being able to get their policies passed and also the election of Donald Trump?
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's so many things it's difficult to understand, like what's actually at the root cause of like shifting these attitudes.
SPEAKER_03: But I think the more important question here is is like we live in a democracy.
SPEAKER_03: And in a democracy, we elect people like mayors.
SPEAKER_03: And some cities don't have mayoral control of police, but like in some way, shape, or form, the police are meant to be democratically accountable to either the mayor, the city council, the people in some way.
SPEAKER_03: Instead, we have a situation where if the vibes are mean to police, they stop doing the job they were paid to do.
SPEAKER_03: And then us as citizens are expected to be like, we need to all be really nice to police.
SPEAKER_03: And like I want to be clear here, I'm not saying that like it's good if people, like, if someone's like actively threatening cops, if the people are like actively doing things that are like, you know, um, you know, especially beyond the pale of the individuals who are like unrelated police officers to like the, you know, the killings of various American residents, like that's not good behavior.
SPEAKER_03: Most of it is constitutionally protected behavior.
SPEAKER_03: Most of it is behavior that is within the realm of reasonableness if you're trying to get reforms done.
SPEAKER_03: And to me, like, the singular thing that all of this, like everything we've discussed in this conversation, everything that's happened since 2020 has led me to is just like police union reform is like the single most important issue if you are someone who cares about both the crime problem and also the problem of police brutality.
SPEAKER_03: Because a mayor, like, should be able to get into office.
SPEAKER_03: And whether or not they've been, you know, I think cops are bad or I think cops are good, it should be like you have a new CEO.
SPEAKER_03: And it should be like if that guy is mad at you, you will lose your job in some way.
SPEAKER_03: And instead, we have the situation where it's like not only can police unions bargain on wages and benefits or whatever, they're like bargaining on shit like we have this one guy who's like the guy who's killed like 12 people and keeps getting civilian complaints against him and like no one really wants him in this and no one can fire him.
SPEAKER_03: And also now the whole uh apparatus is like in defense of him both socially and morally, because they're just like, well, that's our guy, and like everyone stays here forever.
SPEAKER_03: So what are you supposed to do about it?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, I mean a few things on this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like one is I I mean, to an extent, like I agree, like a good something that happens in highly unionized industries, you know, is like sometimes there's a strike, right?
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes this is particularly happens in airline industry, is a labor union will hold what they call a work-to-rule strike, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so, like in a work-to-rule strike, because it's not an official strike because the strike can only be called under certain circumstances, but you tell everybody, like, read the text of the contract, read the text of the regulations, and like do the minimum.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, if instead of like showing up and being like, broadly speaking, my job is to get this airplane safely from point A to point B in a timely manner and like get people their sodas, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's like, what am I legally required to do without getting fired?
SPEAKER_00: And you can like really fuck up an enterprise by working to rule, you know, if people do it en masse.
SPEAKER_00: And it seems like that's more or less, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like what was occurring and to what extent that happened, like through a formal union mechanism or not, I think is uh interesting to look at.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's definitely research indicating that collective bargaining, particularly over work rules for police officers, has negative impacts um on cities.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and the same for other categories of public sector workers.
SPEAKER_00: I think an interesting and telling part of the dysfunctionality of modern American progressive politics, is that when, you know, there was a people didn't just want to protest after Floyd's death.
SPEAKER_00: They'd like wanted to do something, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so, like, reforms to collective bargaining seem to me like something that um would be politically challenging to enact, but like high benefit if you could enact it.
SPEAKER_00: Um, however, you can also see why like other state and local labor organizations would not be enthusiastic about that, including ones who the progressive movement is much more responsive to than police.
SPEAKER_00: So, what we've got instead was the idea of like funding cuts to police agencies, which again, you can see why if you're a non-police municipal labor union, you're like really excited about cutting police funding because that's like more funding for you.
SPEAKER_00: Whereas collective bargaining reform like obviously opens the door to questions about, you know, how we're dealing with with other kinds of services.
SPEAKER_00: Um normally it's like the other way around, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like when Scott Walker wanted to significantly curb collective bargaining uh in Wisconsin, like the whole state union movement was like, we gotta get like cops and firefighters out in front of this.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And then Walker was like, I'll just exempt the cops and firefighters.
SPEAKER_00: And then and then the unions were fucked.
SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, like that that would be a better approach.
SPEAKER_00: That being said, like I don't think the issue really of democratic control does come down to the hiring and firing rules.
SPEAKER_00: Because the big practical problem that every mayor who I have spoken to about this raises with me is that like they are all Democrats and they all are mayors of cities where like all the people in the city are Democrats, or the vast majority of them.
SPEAKER_00: Even the people in the like close by suburbs now tend to be Democrats.
SPEAKER_00: And like those people don't really want to be police officers.
SPEAKER_00: And the police officers who they have are like all Republicans, mostly living either in like distant exurbs, or if you have like local residency rules, these like weird cop neighborhoods form, you know, uh where the police officers all live.
SPEAKER_00: And they're like quite happy to just like quit and go become cops in Idaho, you know, or someplace else that's more congenial.
SPEAKER_00: And there's no obvious way to replace officers who you lose, right?
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, like I think this is a question of it really depends who you are, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like places like San Francisco, like DC, like well, I don't I speak specifically, I think big cities largely can pay more for obvious reasons in these like rural places and so can attract police officers.
SPEAKER_03: Um and that doesn't solve like the national shortage problem, but that can like solve like often the very cities that drive most of this conversation and um on a numbers level drive a lot of the a lot of the crime.
SPEAKER_03: Um uh but then I will also say too, it's it's not I agree, it's not just like the hiring and firing.
SPEAKER_03: And like, you know, if a new reformer progressive mayor got into a city and like had complete control over hiring and firing, like maybe you get a lot of quits in Baltimore and they all move to Baltimore County where they actually want to work or whatever.
SPEAKER_03: Um uh but I think that like the question is also just like the head of an organization being conceived of as the mayor, like changes a lot about how that thing is run, not just like hiring and firing.
SPEAKER_03: Like what's important?
SPEAKER_03: Like, what are you getting rewarded for?
SPEAKER_03: Like, what are the KPIs that this mayor cares about?
SPEAKER_03: You know?
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm just saying, like, I think this is downstream fundamentally, though, of recruiting dynamics.
SPEAKER_00: It's just like you never you there could be a world in which, right, you have a big city mayor, and her viewpoint is, you know, each year I have such and such budget for my new academy class, and I'm getting 2x the number of applications that like I am funded to even fill.
SPEAKER_00: And some of those applications are bad, but like plenty of them are good.
SPEAKER_00: And so if it was easier for me to fire my worst performing police officers, I would expand the size of the academy class because rookies are cheaper than veterans, you know, and like da-da-da-da-da.
SPEAKER_00: But I can't because of the union rules, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that would be like a struct very structurally similar to a lot of like education reform conversations that we were having 15 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: But nobody is like actually in that situation, right?
SPEAKER_00: Instead, like almost all of these big cities are suffering attrition just because of this.
SPEAKER_00: Is like, I don't even want to say boomer.
SPEAKER_00: They're probably Gen X at this point, but like cops are aging out.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they don't um people don't really want like senior citizens working as police officers.
SPEAKER_00: So the retirement age tends to be pretty low uh for these kinds of things.
SPEAKER_00: People age out and they are struggling.
SPEAKER_00: Like in DC, you know, they have put money into new police officer hiring.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the academy classes aren't full, right?
SPEAKER_00: So there's less interest in like but I think this also gets to back to the question of like it's it's a very circular problem.
SPEAKER_03: Like people don't want to work in police, uh want to work as policemen.
SPEAKER_03: Um, policing gets worse, the people who are there can't be fired, the police departments are worse, nobody wants to work in police departments.
SPEAKER_03: And it's like sort of like, where in there do we want someone to intervene?
SPEAKER_03: Like, obviously, you'd want like multiple points of entry theoretically.
SPEAKER_03: But like I but I just think like really, like if you if the uh goal is we think that people who are Democrats, they don't even be progressives, but even just like center, left-of-center individuals to think of policing as a potential job for them.
SPEAKER_03: Right.
SPEAKER_03: When they are in their cities, they need to feel like being part of the police isn't being part of like this institution that protects horrible people that like murder fellow residents of my city.
SPEAKER_03: And like that seems to be like the logical place to like really put in a lot of work.
SPEAKER_03: Uh sure.
SPEAKER_03: Also, of course, you could just raise you have me raising salaries is something that I'd like to do.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, people do that, but I mean it's like the the the the salary sort of like um ratchet, right?
SPEAKER_03: And also AI will make this possible, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not so good.
SPEAKER_03: Well, maybe I mean All the white collar rook will be gone, people will be cops instead of the bigger.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was thinking Robocop.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, is is the solution.
SPEAKER_00: No, I mean I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I feel like there's a lot of sort of frustrating.
SPEAKER_00: You know, the you know the thing where like it it could be a duck or it could be a rabbit, you know, depending on how you look at it.
SPEAKER_00: And I I just I feel like there's a lot of that around here.
SPEAKER_00: Um and I guess me, like the the rabbit that I see is that like effective with an A negativity toward police and policing from the left is something that um went from being like quite marginal in in the 1990s, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I mean, I I remember like I went to an agnostic front show and you know, we did New York police station, but like that was not like a vibe for like mainstream left of center politicians at that time.
SPEAKER_03: We should play the song.
SPEAKER_03: I feel like Rodney King caused a lot of people to like say a lot of stuff about how it was bad that someone was murdered.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but still, like the fraternal order of police, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like endorses Bill Clinton 1996, endorses Al Gore, 2000, endorses John Kerry, 2004, endorses Barack Obama, 2008, right?
SPEAKER_00: So like Rennie King, like that was bad, but like uh the the the shift toward like police mainstream democrats or anti-police, yes.
SPEAKER_00: Right, and that police would see democrats, you know, uh is is pretty new.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And I think it has not been, I don't know what to say, like uh it hasn't been like uh useful in generating the outcomes that the people behind that vibe shift want.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I think that progressives would genuinely be better off if they tried to, whatever they think on some level, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just like exert a little bit more emotional self-discipline and self-control about this and project police positivity, both because short-term high levels of police effort are good and they save a lot of lives.
SPEAKER_00: Crime being low is actually a better environment for structural reform of the criminal justice system.
SPEAKER_00: But also, like what you really need to do is create a situation in which, like, there is more people who want to be big city cops, you know, and like we can talk about like how to make that happen, but I do think that like the simplest way to make that happen is for like left of center people to just like directly say to America's youth that like a good thing to do with your life that will be um valorized, you know, like in the way, right?
SPEAKER_00: I I think like most soldiers are probably Republicans, yeah, as far as I understand it.
SPEAKER_00: But there's like a broad consensus, right?
SPEAKER_00: That like sign up, sign up for the army, sign up for the navy, whatever, like good for you.
SPEAKER_00: And like that's why like Democrats are always super eager to like recruit veterans to run for office and so on and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we're like we all agree, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's like we support the troops.
SPEAKER_03: But I think I want to say two things here.
SPEAKER_00: One closures.
SPEAKER_03: One of the things is that, like, exactly implicit in the army example.
SPEAKER_03: I think actually a lot of what's going on here is education and polarization, that like a lot of police are becoming anti-democrat as a function of like broader trends around people who are non-college educated becoming Republicans.
SPEAKER_02: That's fine.
SPEAKER_03: Um, and that I think that likely most of that would have happened with or without the anti-police affect that exists nationally.
SPEAKER_03: But I think more importantly, there's a lot of um power that your story puts in the hands of progressive activists specifically.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: Which I mean, I don't know how broadly.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the only people, unlike progressives, I believe that what progressive activists do is really consequential.
SPEAKER_03: I tabling what you just said.
SPEAKER_03: Um I think that like, unless you're like so capacious in your definition of progressive activists as to mean quite literally anyone who engages in progressive politics, like on social media.
SPEAKER_03: Um I think that like anti-police sentiment driven by the shootings of people like uh the killings of people like uh George Floyd were very authentically a reaction to the video spreading all over the internet.
SPEAKER_03: Like you saw this vibe shift happen, I mean among Republicans.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you saw anti-police attitudes have like shifting, like or positive affect declining significantly amongst Republicans, amongst independents.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I talked about this earlier about how cross-sectional the protest movement was.
SPEAKER_03: But I just think that like, as a piece of advice, I find it actually not that useful to say that, like, oh, progressive activists should like generate more positive police activities.
SPEAKER_03: Like, when something like that happens, the question is how both A, can you like understand the democratic will of the people at that moment, which wasn't defund the police?
SPEAKER_03: The democratic will of the moment was not that.
SPEAKER_03: Like, people wanted police reform, they wanted that kind of brutality not to exist anymore, they wanted that kind of dehumanization of people not to be like so evident in the death of a person.
SPEAKER_03: But like, so that was number one.
SPEAKER_03: But like, secondly, I do think that there was an anti-police, an authentic anti-police attitude that was spreading throughout the country with or without, I don't know, like the NAACP.
SPEAKER_03: I don't know who you're talking about, like on these activists that are doing this.
SPEAKER_00: So I guess here's an interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think there haven't been any like noteworthy, you know, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray style like protests in the past three, four years?
SPEAKER_03: There have been no murders the whole time.
SPEAKER_00: I mean No.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I No, no, no, because I mean I I I think that this is in some ways like one of the under-discussed adjacent questions to like what explains the macrocrime.
SPEAKER_00: Like, did we solve police brutality?
SPEAKER_00: That would be great, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, if it because like if that's the answer, it seems like s we should be talking about that more.
SPEAKER_03: I or did people I mean I have not looked into this, so I'm not gonna have like the most like cogent answer here.
SPEAKER_03: I think that there's like a couple things.
SPEAKER_03: Like, one is like like what predict- I mean, like, even amongst the time uh period where like George Floyd was murdered, obviously that was like an extremely visceral video.
SPEAKER_03: Like the idea that we would have a close-up video of someone just dying and like over the course of minutes while like saying I can't like that's not like a normal thing.
SPEAKER_03: Like that specific fact pattern was Yeah, it was very unusual.
SPEAKER_03: No, it was it was extreme and it was like such a like I mean, that was so horrible that I think that of course it was going to spread.
SPEAKER_03: I think many of the times that someone's shot, there's like not civilian footage of that happening.
SPEAKER_03: There's not like it happens in kind of like a confusingly contested way.
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's like in the dark, or someone's shot in the back, and there's all these questions about like, or someone's shot in the front, or like there's all these questions, like did they have a reasonable fear of their life?
SPEAKER_03: Like, there's just so many things that are like different.
SPEAKER_03: I would have to look into it.
SPEAKER_03: Like maybe there are some like George Floyd-esque like murders that have happened in the last year.
SPEAKER_00: Well, but Floyd, Floyd is maybe extreme, but like part of there was there was an era, right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the the Floyd video.
SPEAKER_03: But even during that era, it's not like every single killing sparked that kind of reaction.
SPEAKER_00: No, but there were more, I mean, what whatever was happening.
SPEAKER_03: Like Freddie Gray, it's also a very specific fact pattern.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's like this young person who's like in a van.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, uh it's just like But the But I think the the Kenosha Wisconsin one, where I forget the name, right?
SPEAKER_00: Was an example of like how the bar for this kind of thing goes up and down, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you got pretty significant protests at one point in time for something that in that case I think was like pretty clearly like a justified um police action.
SPEAKER_03: Jacob Blake?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_03: I don't remember the fact pattern there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, but you know, it it's just like the these things they're both, right, like extraordinary events where it's like the actual facts like drive a change in activity.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And then there are also these kind of like trends and fads and what it is people pay attention to and what it is they are concerned about.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I think that people I mean, I think like, I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_03: This sort of thing happens with a lot of progressive activity where people are like, well, like you stopped talking about it as much now, so clearly, like, what was actually going on at the time.
SPEAKER_03: I'm like, I think it's like not crazy that like under Trump people have now shifted their focus to like higher order political concerns.
SPEAKER_03: But Trump was president of the frame.
SPEAKER_03: I I just like I mean, I think Trump too is worse.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But like maybe the answer is that like police conduct became like dramatically better, and like now we all love police now, and they should be congratulated for their great.
SPEAKER_00: I I just like I I I think it is interesting what does and does not get paid attention to in this discourse.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to make my final pitch for a policy idea here that I keep waiting for an elected official to pick up.
SPEAKER_00: But like, you know what Teach for America was?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: We need that, like police for America.
SPEAKER_00: Like, we need like a little thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's like we're gonna get like the best and the brightest, and they're gonna go, they're gonna go go be cops in Chicago or Baltimore or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, some of them will be law enforcement careers.
SPEAKER_00: But as with like TFA wound up being a huge like breeding ground for people who became like bigger picture education policy people, like state-level school administrators, things like that.
SPEAKER_00: Both like get people into education, but also gave them credibility.
SPEAKER_00: Not just exposure, but credibility.
SPEAKER_00: Because, like, you know, I think in all of these things, it's kind of like easy for me to sit here and be like, but these public sector unions don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: But then, you know, other people are like, you've never taught in a classroom, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about, right?
SPEAKER_00: And like we don't have a core of people who like do criminal justice policy who have like credibility with police officers to say, like, like, I have walked a beat, like I have slapped cups on a guy, like I have had to try to maintain my cool as somebody yells at me.
SPEAKER_03: And if you just Yeah, like I think Detect for America is a good idea.
SPEAKER_03: I just think that like if you're gonna get actual, like college-educated people to sign up for that, it's gonna require first making it not seem like a massive betrayal of every value of the city.
SPEAKER_00: No, but the white-collar jobs are going away, so they're gonna need it.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, we'll do this another time.
SPEAKER_03: Uh we have different takes on AI job loss, but I think it's time for peer review.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's do it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Since we're since we're talking crime today, uh, I wanted to pull out a classic, an oldie but a goodie.
SPEAKER_02: A banger.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of my favorites from uh 2008.
SPEAKER_00: This is uh Gordon Dahl and Stefano Della Vigna.
SPEAKER_00: Does movie violence increase violent crime?
SPEAKER_00: Um so I don't know if you know this because I love this paper, man.
SPEAKER_00: No, but this this happened when you when you were younger, but like there used to be all this discourse.
SPEAKER_00: No, I know this.
SPEAKER_00: Violence in the entertainment industry, and it was like causing crime.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I had a little brother.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is like a big like Bob Dole issue, um, and like Bill Clinton triangulated on it and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so this paper explores essentially the opposite hypothesis and finds that when violent movies come out, uh, young men who love violence um are in the movie theater.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know.
SPEAKER_03: So they're not committing crimes.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, and they're not committing crimes.
SPEAKER_00: They say that uh a one million increase in the audience for violent movies reduces violent crime by 1.1 to 1.3%.
SPEAKER_00: Um and they like look at this like a few different ways.
SPEAKER_02: This is 52,000 weekend assaults prevented.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: 52,000.
SPEAKER_02: That's an insane number.
SPEAKER_02: Sure.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like I was thinking about this more recently because we've been having these um controversies in DC about these like, these like teen takeover things that are happening.
SPEAKER_00: And like, you know, the the like tough on crime view, it's like we gotta like, you know, have like curfews and like punish these people more.
SPEAKER_00: And then what you're supposed to say is like the high-minded lib alternative is that like the government needs to be creating these like alternative community centers, you know, and other things for people to do.
SPEAKER_00: But it's like nobody wants to go to like they do go.
SPEAKER_03: Those are like packed, but not the violent kids.
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right, right, right.
SPEAKER_00: Versus like if John Wick 5 comes out, like people are gonna go to the fucking movies.
SPEAKER_03: Like you need the DC government play playing like hardcourse, like Screamo.
SPEAKER_03: I don't actually think what's interesting about this is that like I think though the violent movie thing is actually doing a little bit too much here.
SPEAKER_03: I think it's actually just like movies that young men like.
SPEAKER_03: Because when you go look in like the appendix at what movies we're talking about, like some of these are violent, I would say, consider them even violent now.
SPEAKER_03: Like, I find Passion the Christ, maybe this is because I'm Christian, I find that like a very like violent movie.
SPEAKER_03: Um, but like it's other ones that are counted here are like Jurassic Park 3, scary movie.
SPEAKER_03: I guess it's violent, but like it's like not like you know, we're not talking about like horrible thing to watch.
SPEAKER_03: We're talking about Harry Potter 3 is considered mildly violent, Spider-Man is considered mildly violent, Star Wars II is considered mildly violent, Rush Hour 2, Austin Powers 2, Titanic, Twister.
SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: So it's like at some level, and again, they do go into this in the paper a bit about like, you know, movies that were popular that young men didn't like, like Runaway Bribe, like obviously don't have this kind of effect.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that that's why I wanted to like actually like back up by like talking about the violent movies discourse, because like I think it's a funny headline that they've given the paper, but like what it's actually showing is that like movies that young men are into reduces crime because people sit.
SPEAKER_03: No, what it's actually showing is that young men, yet again, are the ones committing crime.
SPEAKER_00: Are committing crime, sure.
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, you know, if lots and lots of people were saying that like violent movies are increasing crime, then sort of pointing out that like, well, violent movies like appeal to a young male audience and you're basically like uh diverting crime by getting them into the movie theater is like a good take.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's a lot of people.
SPEAKER_00: But if we want if we want to like understand society, it's like the point is that like having stuff that young men like to do, um, particularly, but but it's like genuinely like, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because also, at least traditionally, movie theaters, you know, were kind of strictly like policed on their own terms, you know, and so you sort of like had to choose.
SPEAKER_00: It's like maybe your first choice idea would be like go see the Matrix and be rowdy, but like they wouldn't let you do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: You could like not see the movie and go be rowdy on the street somewhere, or you could like sit fairly politely in the movie theater and like shut up and and like watch a cool movie, and so like cool movies, you know, got people uh got people off the street.
SPEAKER_03: The real problem is that these uh these researchers don't consider the fact of all the crimes happening within theaters, like people watching their phones while it's going on or like talking to their neighbors really loudly.
SPEAKER_03: Like what about all those crimes?
SPEAKER_03: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's been a big decline in like in theater behavior.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, another thing you can tell this is an old paper because they like have a thing where they're looking at DVD and VHS rentals.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: They also mention offhandedly that like you can't buy booze in a movie theater.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so like people drink less uh when they go to the movies.
SPEAKER_00: That is not the case anymore.
SPEAKER_00: As you've been trying to do it.
SPEAKER_03: Is that normal?
SPEAKER_03: I think most theaters probably still don't sell alcohol.
SPEAKER_03: I think that's just like a still a rare thing, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like Alvo Draft House does it, but like is that normal?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in landmark, uh but all landmark yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Oh landmarks have booze.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's just it's become more widespread.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, as the industry has gotten like weaker, you know, like cities have become more permissive uh with those.
SPEAKER_03: What's also interesting about this piece study though is that like uh kind of abstracting away, right?
SPEAKER_03: Like obviously it's kind of like a hilarious troll to be like, you guys are saying that violent, violent movies are making all these people more violent, but actually, when we lock up all these violent people in the movie theater, they like don't commit crimes.
SPEAKER_03: Like that's like very, very funny and like good scholarship, like happy you did it.
SPEAKER_03: But it's also just like, I mean, one way it cut against my expectations is that I would imagine that co-locating all the violent people in like the movie theaters would probably like lead to maybe like more crimes.
SPEAKER_03: But like the second thing I thought about they're mostly not violent.
SPEAKER_03: I agree, you're right.
SPEAKER_03: But like the the other thing I thought about though is just like obviously there's still like this like broader question about like what is it that ideas in cinema, ideas in art, in video games, etc.
SPEAKER_03: like do to people, which I think this paper doesn't really like speak to.
SPEAKER_03: Like even if like that weekend, like right, like he doesn't like talk about like broad crime trends over the course of like a year or like two years or whatever.
SPEAKER_03: It's just like, you know, in the general period of time around this movie, like you see the decline in in violence, and like you don't see a commensurate increase like in the immediate short-term future, but like we don't know.
SPEAKER_03: Like, did all did Harry Potter three uh you know breaking Sirius Black out from his uh duly uh uh appointed prison sentence, or at least whatever was gonna happen to him?
SPEAKER_03: Maybe maybe that increased attitudes around breaking criminals out of out of jail.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe no, so there's actually a different paper by Jason Lindo, Isaac Swenson, and Glenn Waddall, um, which is looking at uh the ultimate fighter uh TV show.
SPEAKER_00: And they purport to show I don't know what that is.
SPEAKER_03: What is that show?
SPEAKER_00: It was like uh it was like an early like uh UFC like this martial arts thing.
SPEAKER_00: Um And so they they purport to show that um early exposure to this show, you know, for like like young, young boys um had like a persistent decrease in crime.
SPEAKER_02: Uh a persistent decrease in crime.
SPEAKER_00: Why decrease?
SPEAKER_02: What's happening?
SPEAKER_00: Um why?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: What's the mechanism?
SPEAKER_00: Uh either they just become lifelong fans of the show.
SPEAKER_03: No, I because they like they redirect their rage towards wanting to become U of C fighters?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they like learned about like a sport you could do.
SPEAKER_00: Like if you if you want to beat people up.
SPEAKER_00: No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Um I think there is a lesson here somewhere in this space.
SPEAKER_00: Is there?
SPEAKER_00: That it's no, but I mean it's like so like non-carceral approaches to crime, which are good and which I wanted to bring up because the the other thing about like the COVID up and down, right, is that we sometimes get this whole discourse about like root causes of crime and how like we should really be like addressing them, but that definitely didn't happen on like the timeline of those macro swings.
SPEAKER_00: Like we neither solved poverty nor made it dramatically worse sort of during this period of time.
SPEAKER_00: But the the like root causey things that seem more efficacious are the ones that kind of like kind of like roll downhill with like a certain propensity toward violence, if you know what I mean.
SPEAKER_03: I do.
SPEAKER_03: I honestly though, I wouldn't even call this a paper, a paper that is um is pushing us towards non-carceral solutions.
SPEAKER_03: I obviously I'm being a little bit tongue in cheek here, but like I usually think this like is broadly situated in the incapacitation literature, right?
SPEAKER_00: So yes, you are causing people to voluntarily opt into a high school.
SPEAKER_00: But not even just voluntarily.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, one of the big findings of, I mean, I think the COVID period in general is like the like incapacitating children in school has like a lot of benefits for society.
SPEAKER_03: Like there's this like actually really depressing paper about how um places with school, uh I covered this when I was in the Atlantic and I'm forgetting the exact thing here.
SPEAKER_03: So we'll put in the show notes if I if I fuck up this exact framing.
SPEAKER_03: But basically it was that um parents who did not have access to their kids going to school, like because school closures were longer, were like more likely to like drink more and like to get SSRI prescriptions because like school is like daycare, and having to be around your kids is like such a costly thing.
SPEAKER_03: That like people have to self-medicate with alcohol during the pandemic.
SPEAKER_03: And like obviously, like, you know, I'm sure these parents largely love their kids and like the stresses of like daycare are be and during COVID were like beyond the norm.
SPEAKER_03: But I found this finding to be one of the most depressing things I've ever seen in my life.
SPEAKER_03: The thing is Matt Matt is censoring himself.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just I'm I'm I'm I'm a parent, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Uh my son was uh five.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it's not that spending time with your child is so stressful, so much as that managing, trying to manage remote school while also doing other things.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know, that's a that's a more fair reading.
SPEAKER_00: There's some that there's also like other evidence indicating that like parents had better mental health outcomes during the pandemic because like it was stressful to deal with, but like also like constructive, like agency-oriented activity, right?
SPEAKER_00: Rather than just like sitting home alone being bored and being like, seems bad, there's a pandemic, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had like immediate things that you had to take care of and do.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it's like but I say all this in the low stress situation, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I guess is what I would say.
SPEAKER_00: Like nobody likes to be stressed out like constantly, but like, you know, I think like the one of the most plausible like COVID crime links, right, is like you had all these bored teenagers, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like there wasn't any violent movies to go see.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't in high school.
SPEAKER_00: There wasn't like a school football practice to attend, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, you know, when people have less stuff to do, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: This is I think one of the big theories of like what uh, you know, this is what I was pointing out, Matt, that it's not all the Ferguson effect, that a large part of it was exactly what you're saying right now.
SPEAKER_03: So I'm glad I'm glad we've come back to Jerusalem's position right here at the end of the podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in some, we agree about everything, I think.
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the argument.
SPEAKER_00: I feel like we disagreed about a lot.
SPEAKER_00: We did.
SPEAKER_00: I guess we ended agreeably.
SPEAKER_03: Fantastic.
SPEAKER_03: Well, if you guys enjoyed it, uh please like, subscribe, tell your friends about the show, and we'll be back next week.