Thanks for your comment. This recent news report suggests that the Maryland General Assembly won't pass the legislation Ivan Bates proposed that would increase gun crime penalties:
Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who was elected as the city’s top prosecutor last fall, came to Annapolis with a request to stiffen a penalty for gun possession. His bill, however, has not advanced in the process.
The bill from Bates would have increased the maximum sentence for people who are 21 and older for wearing, carrying or transporting a handgun without a permit from three years in prison to five years. The change would have made the penalty match the punishment for those younger than 21 with the same violation.
I'm not aware of anything that suggests Ivan Bates wouldn't prosecute white conservatives who violated gun laws.
The left are no longer liberal. The Dems claim to be woke but they are progressive and thus intolerant, smug and authoritarian in their thinking. That's why so many have a problem with the false piety of being woke. Being woke means to be pedantic in your social framing and didacticlly mean in your tone. Wokeness is neo-puritanism and always validates middle class privileged college educated partisan progressive bias. The solutions offered by the woke are authoritarian solutions that rely on some combination of marxist dialectical rationalization and good ole fashioned vengeance. There is nothing very much awake about being woke just like there is not much critical thinking in critical theory.
If you doubt what “woke” governing has caused simply look at what has happened to Portland, San Francisco or even relatively conservative, midwest Chicago in the last ten years. The governance of the Democratic Party (my lifelong party) has failed to deal with rising crime as criminals took the obvious hint that liberal prosecutors were not going to prosecute shoplifters who stole less than a thousand dollars worth of goods. The gangs descended. The spillover to skyrocketing carjackings and even murder rates is obvious. Walmart has abandoned Portland and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue has become a boarded up shadow of its former self. The homeless are in charge of what the downtowns of these cities have become because the adults supposedly in control refuse to enforce any of the necessary standards of urban life. Their schools are afraid to discipline students who disrupt the education of tens of thousands resulting in plummeting achievement levels while worthless DEI bureaucrats flourish. The Biden administration appears totally blind to what is happening opening the door to the return of equally insane Trump or Trump lite leadership. Democrats like JFK, LBJ or Scoop Jackson would be appalled.
Always a pleasure to read your analysis, Clifton. I fear though that there's too much focus on policy & policing, and not on what's driving people to commit crimes in the first place. The latest wave appears to mainly be driven by a small but significant enough percentage of young people within the black community. (If data shows otherwise, please let me know. If correct, a major factor between cities could simply be demographics rather than crime prevention strategies.) It has come at a time of historically low poverty and unemployment rates. Some may blame this on systemic racism, others on factors such as family structure & culture. Both can be true, but wouldn't necessarily explain a dramatic increase.
Since 2014 or so, these kids have been bombarded with a specific narrative from all levels of society: selective police confrontation videos, selective history, a simplistic wealth gap analysis, etc. Most intelligent adults have not even been processing this information with any level of complexity, let alone disadvantaged kids. In the words of Thomas Sowell in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice", long before this most recent movement, "those promoting visions of cosmic injustices as the cause of all the problems of black Americans have failed to understand the consequences of this vision for young blacks who do not have either the personal experience or the maturity to weigh those words against reality. The net result has been the development of an attitude of hostility to learning or to conforming to ordinary standards of behavior in society".
We certainly need to look at policy & policing for optimum crime prevention, but until a larger portion of society is willing to have a more honest discussion on race & inequality, there may not be much improvement.
Thanks for your comments and the kind words. I would be remiss is I didn't acknowledge Mark Sussman's work as an editor.
There's an ongoing debate about how well violence interruption programs work and their costs. Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks it would cost about $2 billion to reduce crime in Chicago to the levels found in big cities like Los Angeles or New York. Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago estimates it would cost even more. Here's an excerpt from a Chicago Sun-Times article from last April:
What would it cost to bring violent crime in Chicago under control? A lot, experts say, although just how much is up for debate.
A report by the privately funded anti-violence program Chicago CRED estimates the city would have to spend $405 million per year for five years — in addition to what it currently spends — to reduce crime to the levels of big city peers New York or Los Angeles.
In a speech to the City Club of Chicago last month, University of Chicago Crime Lab Director Jens Ludwig suggested an even higher number: $1 billion per year for violence prevention spending and increased policing, to reduce crime in Chicago by 50%.
Those estimates may get a test in 2022, when record levels of funding will flow into anti-violence efforts, thanks in large part to COVID-19 relief funds that will expire over the next two years.
“This year is critical. The city cannot have a third straight year of rising violence,” said Arne Duncan, CEO of Chicago CRED.
I don't have figures at my fingertips, but I'm confident that Chicago didn't spend anything close to those amounts on violence interruption initiatives last year.
Candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have very different ideas for reducing crime in Chicago. Here's a Chicago Tribune article (via Yahoo), that highlights their approaches:
The outcome of the runoff will tell us a lot about the future direction of policing and crime reduction policies in Chicago. The results of the election may have national implications as well.
Much appreciated response, Clifton. I'm a Chicagoan, born & raised on the south side, now on the north side. We have some organizations doing great work here, including CRED, Project HOOD, Cara Collective, and Off the Street Club.
However, they're up against more powerful and mass consumed messaging. More money needs to be spent, but a lot of this is simply about information. Accentuate the positive, and for the ugly, drop the singular narrative. George Floyd AND Tony Timpa. Tulsa AND the Greektown Omaha riot, Chinatown San Jose, Louisville Bloody Monday, etc. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Otherwise, disadvantaged youths will continue to decide they're nothing but victims, always have been and always will be, so there's "less to lose" by committing crime.
It's hardly a Chicago thing. There are a couple dozen cities more violent per capita than Chicago, but when Cook County Commissioner and possibly the next mayor of Chicago makes excuses for rioting & looting, that's a recipe for disaster:
Southern Antebellum cracker culture that emanated from the old backward cracker culture in certain parts of the British isles (Northern England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland) left a major negative imprint on African Americans that still exist today in the inner cities. Whites have been able to shake most of it off. These old Celtics had very dysfunctional pathogies that they brought with them to the Antebellum South - high illiteracy, sexual promiscuity, violence to settle minor conflicts (i.e., Hatfields vs the McCoys, mayhem including castrations, etc. These people usually threw raw sewage from their windows into the streets. Their homes were built similar to African huts. Professor McWhinney who wrote the book, " Cracker Cracker - Celtuc Ways in the Old South" does a fantastic job with his empirical research. Dr. Thomas aSowell, a Black conservative economist and writer, relates, whites have their n*gg*rs and Blacks have their rednecks. I'm a recent retired transplant from California to to Georgia. The Whites here told me to be patient, in that the people here in Georgia are very slow. They weren't kidding. Its been quite an adjustment. 🤣
There should be no ideological tug of war at all. That there is highlights how poorly served citizens are by their own govts. Ironically, it's the most vulnerable who are most affected as the numbers in city after city show. While DAs posture and preen, real people are being killed, robbed, carjacked, assaulted, and raped. Tell the minority victims what a great service is being done by prosecutors who refuse to prosecute. It's easy to stand on an ideological hill where there is zero chance of you dying on it.
While criminologists are apparently struggling to find a consensus for explaining the spike in crime, regular people have figured it out. Because it's not that hard of a question to answer. You will always, always, always get more of what you allow, encourage, subsidize, or tolerate. When repeat offenders are released almost immediately, odds are better than good that they will commit another crime, and that sorry scenario has played out time and again in one city after another. And when you demonize cops and sanctify criminals, you will start to lose officers and struggle mightily to find new ones. This played in out Memphis, where the black cops killed the black civilian in a scene that looked more like gang warfare than law enforcement.
Just how many people have to die to appease the gods of wokeness? We've gone from locking people up for non-violent petty crimes - Kamala Harris' reign as AG in California comes to mind - to violent criminals being set loose before the ink on their booking is dry. People do realize that, at some point, citizens will act where cops won't, right? There have been a few isolated incidents within the Chicago transit system. We just have not yet had the modern-day Bernard Goetz moment, but all roads lead to one. Then what? We gonna blame metal objects again? We gonna whine about vigilante justice?
Govt has no more fundamental role than public safety. Everything else trails in the distance. When people have a sense that the criminal holds a higher status than the law-abiding, you don't have a civil society any more. The ideological capture of the people who happen to run most of the big cities is playing out in real time, with devastating consequences and, ironically, the marginalized communities being among the biggest victims.
We know the government lost the plot decades ago, the gov payroll crew don’t really care about much more than their paycheques, pensions and benefits for which they prefer to do as little as possible to almost deserve.
Liked it but you are too optimistic because in Philly not only are killers not prosecuted but they are rarely arrested as the cops don’t go out now until hours after the shootings. Why should they bother risking their life for people that vote for Defund the Police politicians. (That’s not a question).
Because it's their job. They didn't promise to protect and serve....but only if they feel appreciated.
Police pulling back may be predictable when a community has become this critical of policing, but it is not justified. Well over half the people in these communities, usually law abiding victims, don't want fewer police.
I think that is a good question, but a separate question. I would hope that police could follow through on their oath regardless of the political leanings of any given community. I am somewhat conservative, but live in California. I would hate for someone to write me off just because my city leans left. And even if I voted Democrat, I am still owed the services my taxes pay for or the services promised by my government, even if I don't make enough to pay taxes.
I think many people just don't have the capacity, time or interest to investigate these kinds of issues in detail, or to fully understand the solutions being proposed by politicians. The strategy of Politicians and business model of media companies is to take advantage this. So I think we should try to stay away from a "thats what you get" kind of response to big important issues like policing. Though I agree it is frustrating to see people vote in a way that seems to clearly be at odds with their own interests.
Clifton, you mostly carefully give names of victims and details of crimes but then airily throw out: “The guy who drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin and killed several people was sentenced to six life terms”. Oh yeah, that dude. And several generic anonymous people died. But there’s a clue in your sentence regarding the six life sentences. He killed six (uncelebrated) people and injured 62 others. This mass killing should have been given more coverage at the time. It’s of a different order than the other cases you more carefully cite.
Thanks for your comment and the feedback. It wasn't my intent to gloss over what happened in Waukesha. It was tragic. I was mindful of the length of the post and decided not to go into the details of each of the cases I highlighted. I provided links for those who wanted more context. I was also mindful of discussions Glenn Loury and John McWhorter had about what happened in Waukesha during previous episodes of The Glenn Show.
Clifton, I understand that the vast majority of people in prison did in fact commit serious crimes.
Often I hear "too many people locked up" admonition without mentioning what they may have done to get them in prison, or even in jail.
So, my question is this: When there are debates, Do you find that people who want to abolish prisons, or lock up far fewer prisons, Are they honest about why many of those people may be there in the first place?
Thanks for your comment. Somebody like Rafael Mangual is better equipped to answer your question, but the debates I've seen rarely address the issue you raise. Those who believe that "mass incarceration" is a moral issue and that our prison population needs to be reduced rarely mention that 62% of the inmates in state prisons committed violent crimes as of the end of 2020 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report I referenced (Prisoners in 2021 - Statistical Tables). Use this link, download the full report, and go to Table 16 if you want to do a deep dive:
This essay published at The Conversation partially acknowledges the point you raised, but their argument is that racial disparities in incarceration rates for violent crimes are too large and that "intervention" is a better approach
This has been covered at The Glenn Show before, but there's no compelling evidence that the kinds of interventions the authors support can reduce violent crime at scale. Another issue is that the people who support interventions instead of incarceration rarely mention the harms done to the victims of violent crime or what would constitute "justice" for them and their loved ones. They rarely mention the societal harms associated with violent crimes either.
Dems optimized the ruin of blacks via abortions, black on black crime, welfare for fatherless households only, affirmative action for incompetence, completely failed urban schools controlled by teachers union, and endless war. Blacks suffer the most and are the most to blame for voting for government nannies rather than freedom. Slaves by another name. Reminds me of the Scots not voting for freedom from England because they were addicted to the gov dole. Sad for a once proud race.
Thank you Glenn for this article. Living in Minneapolis Ground Zero for the defund the police movement, I can tell you that the police recruitment will be difficult for many years to come. Because there are so few police on patrol the carjackings are out of control. The mayors of Minneapolis Saint Paul and Keith Ellison the Attorney General i’m trying to attack the problem by suing Kia the manufacturer of vehicles that don’t have antitheft safety on them and can be easily stolen using the TikTok method taught by the Milwaukee Gang Bangers. It’s gonna be a number of years before a crime is under control and Minneapolis. Uptown Minneapolis the shopping center has lost numerous bars restaurants and boutiques because of the crime situation where nobody with money is willing to visit this location anymore.
Why does Glenn think we are at or past peak woke? A cartoonist was just canceled for asking questions about a national survey poll results two speakers were attacked at universities this last week and a large city in the US just gave council support to giving black people 5 million in lump sum reoperations despite being a city that had no history of black slavery. Meanwhile across the Federal agencies and many state and corporate institutions the DEI blob continues to push itself into every corner of our lives without any sign of stopping.
I think Glenn and John and those who regularly are on this blog are showing they're out of synch with the 6 foot view of life and are maybe too tied to their class and institutional viewpoints. From way up in the high atmosphere of the ivory tower it may look like we are headed to peak woke but down in the trenches it's another day of gas(lighting) attacks and rhetorical bombardments.
Sorry, we are not close to peak woke. Revolutionary tactic have a long history of pulsing, applying pressure when possible and backing off to gain credibility when pressure is no longer possible. We are not in to the backing off phase. Sorry, the neo-Maoist are still fully in control.
Yes, and Biden (or is it really Susan Rice and others?) just doubled down on insisting every agency grossly discriminate by race - their new “BIPOC” caste system of human worth and standing. I’m almost inevitably heading toward my first vote for a GOP candidate - and for President. And, regardless, it’s going to take many years ti get these ideologies out of all of these federal bureaucracies. Anyone who’s read Neustadt’s Presidential Power - or who simply has a better than childish imagination re: what electeds and their thin upper tier of appointees can accomplish by fiat vs. a recalcitrant, let alone hostile, permanent bureaucracy, can see how difficult this is going to be.
Thanks for your comment. There's no easy way to measure wokeness so all I've got is a collection of anecdotal evidence that suggests we're past peak woke. I included examples of what's happening with criminal justice and policing, but there are other examples that may give you a better feel for what's happening:
Mayors from several of Connecticut's biggest cities have proposed new initiatives for reducing gun violence by repeat offenders:
Marilyn Mosby's defeat was a stunning fall from grace compared to her previous elections. She beat easily defeated Ivan Bates and Thiru Vignarajah in 2018. Both garnered more votes than Mosby in 2022. To be fair, facing a federal prosecution hurt her chances, but anybody who's been following Baltimore media knew she was in trouble before the news of her federal prosecution broke. You'll also notice a shift in public sentiment if you listen to talk radio in Baltimore. This WBAL segment with Thiru Vignarajah shows the public has grown weary of talk about addressing the root causes of violent crime and wants something done now:
Jussie Smollett was poised to accept a lenient plea deal in Chicago until a retired judge led the effort to have a special prosecutor appointed to take over the case from the office of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx:
I could go on, but I hope you see the point when it comes to criminal justice reforms.
There are signs that Corporate America isn't pushing DEI initiatives as aggressively as before. This piece from Fortune shows that some companies are laying off their entire DEI teams:
People like Vivek Ramaswamy are aggressively pushing back against money managers who pressure companies to adopt ESG principles. Vanguard has "clarified" their position and isn't as aggressive about this as before according to the Wall Street Journal:
Governor Ron DeSantis is gaining national stature for his efforts to tamp down wokeness. Some say his counteroffensive against Disney was excessive, but it reinforced his message that Florida is where woke goes to die.
School boards around the country are being forced to back away from their most woke policies in response to parental concerns about what's being taught in classrooms and rising violence among students and against teachers. The shooting of teacher Abigail Zwerner in Newport News, VA was a watershed event, but there are other notable examples.
Last, but not least, jokes about "wokeness" are becoming more common. Bill Maher regularly lampoons excessive wokeness on his show. This CNN article from last year suggests that woke has gone from a social justice term to a pejorative for some:
None of this is to suggest that the tug of war is over or that I know how this will end, but I believe the new equilibrium point will be to the right of where it was at the end of 2020.
Thank you, Mr. Roscoe, for taking the time and energy to give this thorough response! I certainly want to believe there is a basis for hope, and appreciate the above documentation of your argument. In fairness I need to admit that I live in Portland, and my perspective is affected by the fact that extreme woke values dominate the culture of the city. As I look at your examples of movement away from woke positions, I see that you are focusing on evidence that supports hope, which is a wise thing to do. In that same spirit, I can add to your list that more than fifty per cent of Portlanders voted in the November election for a City Council candidate who campaigned on a (relatively) law and order platform. The incumbent, Joann Hardesty, was a social justice activist with an anti-police, defund agenda. During primary season she won more than forty per cent of the vote, while running against two other candidates, and had to run against one of them in November. I found it very discouraging that forty per cent of the voters in the city still supported Ms. Hardesty. In the November runoff, however, enough people who came together to elect Hardesty's single remaining opponent, Rene Gonzalez.
During the riots of 2020 and the subsequent terrorism by antifa and other such groups, one of the local media companies (I don't recall which one) polled Portland citizens about their positions on the riots. The results were split in approximately thirds, representing the citizens who supported the riots, the ones who didn't know or didn't care, and the ones who opposed the riots. While the riots were ongoing, the state of Oregon legislature passed a bill that imposed restrictions on crowd control methods police could use.
So, I would say that there has been some movement locally away from positions that support crime rather than law enforcement. On the other hand, the state legislature, which represents mostly the population of so-called liberal cities in Oregon, has continued to advance a woke agenda. In November Oregonians living in those cities elected a Progressive governor from Portland who is closely tied to teachers' unions.
K - 12 education in Oregon is pervaded with critical social justice programming. Extreme woke beliefs and activism have been encoded into law by the state legislature. A major bill passed late in fall of 2022 that mandates CASEL programming to be implemented across all school activities. CASEL guidelines include blatantly biased guidelines regarding POC's and indigenous children, for example, not being expected to "comply with the standards of the dominant culture."
Beyond these formal indications that woke activists are continuing to take over the state, the social environment in Portland has become so oppressive that freedom of speech is severely eroded. It is nearly impossible to engage neighbors, for example, in an open conversation about any of the woke's forbidden topics. When these topics are breached, the speaker is shut down by withdrawal and non-verbally expressed disapproval or sharp rebukes from other people. Portland was not like this until a few years ago, even though there have been for many years pockets of leftwing activists who imposed rigid political correctness on each other.
So I hope that your more optimistic perspective predicts the future more accurately than my relatively dismal one. Despite my more skeptical views, I am actively seeking ways to resist and reverse the woke takeover that has already reached such an advanced state.
Thank you for appearing on Glenn's show and sharing your experience and opinions, and again, for responding to commentator's comments.
With respect to the article itself, Glenn's intro mentioned that it was hard to get a grasp of what was going on due to variation "state by state". I disagree. Crime is concentrated in certain areas. Measuring at the state level doesn't tell you much, but measuring at the community level does. Most murders are concentrated in relatively few communities.
The graphs were very misleading. First they went back to 1980 but gave no credit to "broken windows" policing or enforcement before 1994. Let's be serious. There is copious evidence that James Wilson's approach was effective. Even if you dismiss this argument, going back that far in the face of a sharp recent reversal reminds me of arguments about global warming where both proponents and detractors cite different start dates that buttress their arguments. When there is a sharp reversal after decades of progress, it is a copout to go back decades to make your argument that things are better when people know better. Homicides grew 29% in 2020 and have only declined slightly since. Then you use 2019 as an end date in most of your graphs, just before George Floyd and the spike in crime. The last 3 years didn't happen? C'mon!
As you mention in the many citations, the public are pushing back, yet you say "the criminologists haven't reached a consensus". Of course not. They're academics with a vested interest in "further studies". But the people have. Chicago alone has, what, some 600-800 murders annually, a rate of 29/100,000. 80% of the victims are African Americans. Namibia, with a comparable (but much poorer) population has a murder ate of 12/100,000. Why don't those brilliant criminologists explore why that is? there's plenty of crime data by policing methods by country, yet I see little from U.S. criminologists about what we can learn from others.
In 2019, there were some 15,000 murders. Cops killed about 1,000 Americans, of which a whopping 8 were unarmed. I'm happy to see lower incarceration rates, and I'm a big believer in wraparound services and vocational training, as well as felons earning the right to vote when they've paid their debt to society.
But look, everyone wants an easy explanation: cops are bad, sentencing is too tough or too easy, our prison population is too high or too low. All irrelevant, and we all know it. The heavy lifting is in how each individual is raised. The values they are exposed to. The example of those around them. This is much tougher stuff. Academics need to stop shuffling statistics and embrace the blocking and tackling that community leaders do. This means a focus on the importance of families, of community, of excellence in education and, yes, of respect for authority.
Namibia, because retribution is a thing done quietly and in the court of public opinion, if a sh*tbag deserves comeuppance and gets it, no one argues too much. There’s alot of private security which sometimes fails (you can pay off guards), but it does provide some defense. Alot of black on black crime goes unreported.
What makes you think that this is the reason why the murder rate in Namibia is much lower than in the US? The homicide rates are currently very high in South Africa and Nigeria http://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country, though there is a lot of private security in these two countries and though I don't think that South Africans or Nigerians are outraged by the deaths of people you call "sh*tbags".
I don't suppose anyone is outraged by the death of "sh*tbags" by a vigilante, esp. given the horror of some of the things that happen that a vigilante feels the need to address. The issue is that people don't rush to the police to report the crime (or what the vigilante does). But a low crime rate does not necessarily mean low crime. Namibia can be, and is, a dangerous place and I don't recall a large police presence, or even having seen a police station, whereas Nigeria (and probably South Africa) is highly policed.
But only some homicides are killings committed by vigilantes... There must be other reasons why the homicide rate in Namibia continues to be relatively low.
I can't speak for Polly, but my initial point was that we can learn from other countries. In the UK police don't normally carry lethal weapons, and their crime rate is lower. In Singapore there is a zero tolerance for even minor infractions, and they have an extremely low crime rate. Sweden's was very low as well, though a wave of new migrants (20% of residents in Sweden today) and issues related to that have seen a surge in crime. What can we learn from these and other countries?
I agree with you, of course we can and should learn from other countries. I think that there are many complex reasons explaining the very high level of deadly violence in America, including easy access to guns, the weakening of social bonds, large social inequalities and the limited support for the poor compared to many other Western countries.
E.g. in the UK the poor can survive on various benefits and often live in council flats or houses - I guess that the situation of the poor is even better in Scandinavian countries. There is much less reason to get involved in crime if one has a stable life. I would also say that one of the differences between the US and Europe is that European urban spaces are much more adapted to the needs of pedestrians - this makes people less disconnected from each other.
You may be right - I can't access WaPo because I'm not a subscriber. But USA Today basically concurred with what you say. I focused on gun deaths because that is what's most talked about. Thanks for the correction. I will say that, given the amount of violence in this country, I do not find that level of police-caused fatalities to be alarming. Especially in today's environment, it's a miracle anyone would take the oath "to protect and serve".
You should be able to see the database even if you are not a WaPo subscriber - I can see it without a subscription. It is true that the number of police-caused fatalities does not seem very high when one compares it to the number of homicide fatalities. However, I don't think that it should lead us to dismiss the problem of police violence.
Matt Rosenberg, who has been a guest on The Glenn Show, and his colleagues at Wirepoints published an analysis in February that covered homicide rates in America's 75 largest cities by population as of 2022:
Chicago’s 697 criminal homicides in 2022 were the most in the nation for the 11th-straight year. Philadelphia suffered the 2nd-most with 516. New York City (438), Houston (435) and Los Angeles (382) rounded out the top 5. By contrast, cities with the fewest homicides out of the 75 surveyed were Plano, TX and Gilbert, AZ. They suffered 1 and 3 murders, respectively.
New Orleans’ 2022 homicide rate of 74.3 homicides per 100,000 residents was the nation’s highest of the 75 cities surveyed. Rounding out the top 5 were St. Louis (68.2), Baltimore (58.1), Detroit (48.9) and Memphis (45.9). By comparison the nationwide homicide rate was 6.5 per 100,000 in 2020 (the most recent reliable national rate).
The safest of the nation’s 75 largest cities by homicide rate was Plano, TX with just 0.3 per 100,000. Following were Gilbert, AZ at 1.1 per 100,000, Henderson, NV with 1.6, Chandler, AZ at 3.2 and San Jose, CA with 3.6.
The nation’s safe havens are increasingly concentrated in the West. All but one of the 10 cities with the nation’s highest homicide rates were located on or east of the Mississippi River in 2022. Of the 10 cities with the lowest homicide rates, all but one were located west of the Mississippi.
2022 homicide rates were typically much worse across the nation’s 20 “homicide hubs” compared to 2019. Half of those cities experienced a 50 percent or higher increase in their homicide rate versus 2019. Pittsburgh’s homicide rate grew 92 percent between 2019 and 2022. New Orleans’ rate grew 139 percent and Milwaukee’s 129 percent.
There may be macro-level patterns in the numbers, but they're not obvious. My guess is that unique things about each city impact their homicide rates.
Your point about the need to do community level analyses is a good one. Law enforcement often tries to do this using targeted policing techniques, but activists who claim to represent the interests of people who live in high crime areas often complain that their communities are over-policed. The Chicago mayoral runoff is a good example of how this tug of war can play out. Candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have very different ideas about policing. Next month's election and the selection of a new police superintendent will give us another indication of which way the pendulum is swinging.
Good comments, Clifton. I have seen most of this data, though I was not aware of Plano's rather stellar numbers. It would be interesting to visit places like that and examine how those communities operate and what they are doing. Yes, the Chicago election will be interesting. From a distance, it looks like "law and order" vs. the public teacher's unions. My heart is with the former for the sake of Chicagoans, but my money would probably be on the latter if I had to guess a winner.
I think those are all very fair points. Thank you for the response. I am only worried the term "peak wokeness" or "peak woke" may lead people to feel this is a neat and clean thing; a linear phenomenon that has a peak and will start and stop at some natural point that is maybe what people think of as being "pre-woke." I think this is a full on revolution and we are going to see it pulse with phases that are full on pushes and then maybe to retract a bit, say around a national election, and then push again but from gained ground. I fear we are in at most the bottom of the second inning or some early phase. I fear what you are seeing is maybe some natural gravity asserting itself on the less secure aspects of the revolution and not signs of some big shift. In fact what you are seeing may be movement pruning and will leave the movement stronger in the long run. I hope for America's sake and for each of us as individuals that I'm wrong. Revolutions are messy affairs and once underway have tendency of destroying all who are engaged and leaving something radically unforeseen as the outcome.
"the DEI blob continues to push itself into every corner of our lives without any sign of stopping"
LOL!! I love this!! The Blob was one of my favorite movies. Your imagery is a perfect fit!
I agree with everything you say in this post. The disgusting efforts by the Democrats to crucify Taibbi and Shellenberger on international TV was an example of how confident and entitled they feel about their power.
Exactly. You aint peak anything if you can expect one of the two major parties in a FPTP system to lay into your most potent critics in one of the most august settings that we have for discourse. I think that there is a lot to be discovered and written about the "movement" and how the left has pulled off what to me is a cultural putsch. They were planning this for ages and organized and increasingly open with their ideas and plans. It will come out but it's still potent and ongoing and they are still in-charge of most of the key institutions so the ability to silence or black-out or erase are still very strong. Taibbi and and Shellenberger are liberals...that should tell you we aint fighting the liberal left, we are fighting the illiberal left.
Shellenberger is a hack , and his and Taibbi and Bari Weiss's analyses of twitter bias were massively lopsided. The truth was more complex and less nefarious than their narrative.
Are Eric Adams declared efforts to combat crime mostly hype, or is it mostly that he’s running into the constraints of a progressive lock on the state legislature, and a bevy of recalcitrant local prosecutors and council members who are some combination of ideological true believers and acutely sensitive to the very narrow activist constituencies who determine who makes it through a very low-turnout NYC Dem primary? I was one of the relatively few lower income residents of the Park Slope area for several years. I know of two men who were part of a community group I belonged to who were mugged by teens while jogging in the park. And women in particular had to be extremely careful about going out in the mornings alone. But for a long time, common sense and basic situational awareness were about all one needed to stay safe. This attack and the response it has engendered locally (or lack thereof) exemplifies the kind of breakdown in social order and public safety people are living with. There is no plausible explanation for why the NYPD could not have found and arrested this menace to every park-goer. I’m guessing they knew that confronting him would be a major headache and he’d be right back out the same day, rinse and repeat. Even if they cared and I’m sure some officers did, arresting him would, in that ideological and policy climate, be all risk and no reward. Now, if someone had been there at the time and intervened in the least aggressive manner to try to protect this woman and her dog from the entirely unprovoked attack of a man who’d been seen in the park for months regularly menacing people, what would’ve happened to them? Without a swell of steady and sympathetic news coverage, they might well still be rotting in Rikers.
This was covered in the NYT, too. Non-subscribers are immediately blocked by the paywall. It was covered elsewhere, too. I also know plenty of people who live in the neighborhood. Do you doubt the veracity of the story as it’s reported in the linked articles? Do you, for that matter, think the NYT is at present a much more reliable let alone balanced paper when it comes to issues like violent crime? Frankly your comment comes across as trying to smugly wave away the substance and meaning of yet another real act of totally unprovoked violent cruelty, and an unaddressed violent threat to a community, and the failure of a great city’s institutions to respond - because the first source linked was not your tribe’s/house’s/party’s official organ. Please, stop committing ontological violence against us with your petty and disingenuous gatekeeping. Or, in Brooklynese: GTFOH
People lying about what they actually believe can flip back on a dime when it’s their family victimized. All of the sudden their preference falsification evaporates like fog in the sun.
Antifa is still getting political support for their violent quasi-military assault on the construction of a police training facility in the black run city of Atlanta. Probably have to take left wing political street violence more seriously to make progress…
"...it is notable that Ivan Bates, Baltimore's new state's attorney, wants longer sentences for gun crime offenders."
I hope this applies to *all* gun crime, and not just black gang members. Is he ready to jail white conservatives?
Thanks for your comment. This recent news report suggests that the Maryland General Assembly won't pass the legislation Ivan Bates proposed that would increase gun crime penalties:
https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/politics-power/state-government/crossover-deadline-tracker-FYOCJKMLZBB4VDGT2QVQLRUNRY/
Here's an excerpt:
Gun penalties
Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who was elected as the city’s top prosecutor last fall, came to Annapolis with a request to stiffen a penalty for gun possession. His bill, however, has not advanced in the process.
The bill from Bates would have increased the maximum sentence for people who are 21 and older for wearing, carrying or transporting a handgun without a permit from three years in prison to five years. The change would have made the penalty match the punishment for those younger than 21 with the same violation.
I'm not aware of anything that suggests Ivan Bates wouldn't prosecute white conservatives who violated gun laws.
Please define "woke". Denouncing police brutality and historical inequity have been part of being 'a liberal' since the civil rights era.
The left are no longer liberal. The Dems claim to be woke but they are progressive and thus intolerant, smug and authoritarian in their thinking. That's why so many have a problem with the false piety of being woke. Being woke means to be pedantic in your social framing and didacticlly mean in your tone. Wokeness is neo-puritanism and always validates middle class privileged college educated partisan progressive bias. The solutions offered by the woke are authoritarian solutions that rely on some combination of marxist dialectical rationalization and good ole fashioned vengeance. There is nothing very much awake about being woke just like there is not much critical thinking in critical theory.
The right (and some "centrists') have been accusing liberals of all that since at lest the time I was a teen in the 1970s. Try harder.
If you doubt what “woke” governing has caused simply look at what has happened to Portland, San Francisco or even relatively conservative, midwest Chicago in the last ten years. The governance of the Democratic Party (my lifelong party) has failed to deal with rising crime as criminals took the obvious hint that liberal prosecutors were not going to prosecute shoplifters who stole less than a thousand dollars worth of goods. The gangs descended. The spillover to skyrocketing carjackings and even murder rates is obvious. Walmart has abandoned Portland and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue has become a boarded up shadow of its former self. The homeless are in charge of what the downtowns of these cities have become because the adults supposedly in control refuse to enforce any of the necessary standards of urban life. Their schools are afraid to discipline students who disrupt the education of tens of thousands resulting in plummeting achievement levels while worthless DEI bureaucrats flourish. The Biden administration appears totally blind to what is happening opening the door to the return of equally insane Trump or Trump lite leadership. Democrats like JFK, LBJ or Scoop Jackson would be appalled.
Always a pleasure to read your analysis, Clifton. I fear though that there's too much focus on policy & policing, and not on what's driving people to commit crimes in the first place. The latest wave appears to mainly be driven by a small but significant enough percentage of young people within the black community. (If data shows otherwise, please let me know. If correct, a major factor between cities could simply be demographics rather than crime prevention strategies.) It has come at a time of historically low poverty and unemployment rates. Some may blame this on systemic racism, others on factors such as family structure & culture. Both can be true, but wouldn't necessarily explain a dramatic increase.
Since 2014 or so, these kids have been bombarded with a specific narrative from all levels of society: selective police confrontation videos, selective history, a simplistic wealth gap analysis, etc. Most intelligent adults have not even been processing this information with any level of complexity, let alone disadvantaged kids. In the words of Thomas Sowell in "The Quest for Cosmic Justice", long before this most recent movement, "those promoting visions of cosmic injustices as the cause of all the problems of black Americans have failed to understand the consequences of this vision for young blacks who do not have either the personal experience or the maturity to weigh those words against reality. The net result has been the development of an attitude of hostility to learning or to conforming to ordinary standards of behavior in society".
We certainly need to look at policy & policing for optimum crime prevention, but until a larger portion of society is willing to have a more honest discussion on race & inequality, there may not be much improvement.
Thanks for your comments and the kind words. I would be remiss is I didn't acknowledge Mark Sussman's work as an editor.
There's an ongoing debate about how well violence interruption programs work and their costs. Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks it would cost about $2 billion to reduce crime in Chicago to the levels found in big cities like Los Angeles or New York. Jens Ludwig at the University of Chicago estimates it would cost even more. Here's an excerpt from a Chicago Sun-Times article from last April:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/4/21/23026049/what-cost-cut-crime-non-violence-police-cpd-alternative-cred
What would it cost to bring violent crime in Chicago under control? A lot, experts say, although just how much is up for debate.
A report by the privately funded anti-violence program Chicago CRED estimates the city would have to spend $405 million per year for five years — in addition to what it currently spends — to reduce crime to the levels of big city peers New York or Los Angeles.
In a speech to the City Club of Chicago last month, University of Chicago Crime Lab Director Jens Ludwig suggested an even higher number: $1 billion per year for violence prevention spending and increased policing, to reduce crime in Chicago by 50%.
Those estimates may get a test in 2022, when record levels of funding will flow into anti-violence efforts, thanks in large part to COVID-19 relief funds that will expire over the next two years.
“This year is critical. The city cannot have a third straight year of rising violence,” said Arne Duncan, CEO of Chicago CRED.
I don't have figures at my fingertips, but I'm confident that Chicago didn't spend anything close to those amounts on violence interruption initiatives last year.
Candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have very different ideas for reducing crime in Chicago. Here's a Chicago Tribune article (via Yahoo), that highlights their approaches:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-vallas-brandon-johnson-100-010800495.html
The outcome of the runoff will tell us a lot about the future direction of policing and crime reduction policies in Chicago. The results of the election may have national implications as well.
Much appreciated response, Clifton. I'm a Chicagoan, born & raised on the south side, now on the north side. We have some organizations doing great work here, including CRED, Project HOOD, Cara Collective, and Off the Street Club.
However, they're up against more powerful and mass consumed messaging. More money needs to be spent, but a lot of this is simply about information. Accentuate the positive, and for the ugly, drop the singular narrative. George Floyd AND Tony Timpa. Tulsa AND the Greektown Omaha riot, Chinatown San Jose, Louisville Bloody Monday, etc. I could go on and on, but you get the point. Otherwise, disadvantaged youths will continue to decide they're nothing but victims, always have been and always will be, so there's "less to lose" by committing crime.
It's hardly a Chicago thing. There are a couple dozen cities more violent per capita than Chicago, but when Cook County Commissioner and possibly the next mayor of Chicago makes excuses for rioting & looting, that's a recipe for disaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VadFYX0xSo4
Southern Antebellum cracker culture that emanated from the old backward cracker culture in certain parts of the British isles (Northern England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland) left a major negative imprint on African Americans that still exist today in the inner cities. Whites have been able to shake most of it off. These old Celtics had very dysfunctional pathogies that they brought with them to the Antebellum South - high illiteracy, sexual promiscuity, violence to settle minor conflicts (i.e., Hatfields vs the McCoys, mayhem including castrations, etc. These people usually threw raw sewage from their windows into the streets. Their homes were built similar to African huts. Professor McWhinney who wrote the book, " Cracker Cracker - Celtuc Ways in the Old South" does a fantastic job with his empirical research. Dr. Thomas aSowell, a Black conservative economist and writer, relates, whites have their n*gg*rs and Blacks have their rednecks. I'm a recent retired transplant from California to to Georgia. The Whites here told me to be patient, in that the people here in Georgia are very slow. They weren't kidding. Its been quite an adjustment. 🤣
https://youtu.be/FT4NQ9D0M6w
My only concern about the wraparound programs is that we need to make certain “first dibs” need to go to impoverished people who do nor commit crime.
There should be no ideological tug of war at all. That there is highlights how poorly served citizens are by their own govts. Ironically, it's the most vulnerable who are most affected as the numbers in city after city show. While DAs posture and preen, real people are being killed, robbed, carjacked, assaulted, and raped. Tell the minority victims what a great service is being done by prosecutors who refuse to prosecute. It's easy to stand on an ideological hill where there is zero chance of you dying on it.
While criminologists are apparently struggling to find a consensus for explaining the spike in crime, regular people have figured it out. Because it's not that hard of a question to answer. You will always, always, always get more of what you allow, encourage, subsidize, or tolerate. When repeat offenders are released almost immediately, odds are better than good that they will commit another crime, and that sorry scenario has played out time and again in one city after another. And when you demonize cops and sanctify criminals, you will start to lose officers and struggle mightily to find new ones. This played in out Memphis, where the black cops killed the black civilian in a scene that looked more like gang warfare than law enforcement.
Just how many people have to die to appease the gods of wokeness? We've gone from locking people up for non-violent petty crimes - Kamala Harris' reign as AG in California comes to mind - to violent criminals being set loose before the ink on their booking is dry. People do realize that, at some point, citizens will act where cops won't, right? There have been a few isolated incidents within the Chicago transit system. We just have not yet had the modern-day Bernard Goetz moment, but all roads lead to one. Then what? We gonna blame metal objects again? We gonna whine about vigilante justice?
Govt has no more fundamental role than public safety. Everything else trails in the distance. When people have a sense that the criminal holds a higher status than the law-abiding, you don't have a civil society any more. The ideological capture of the people who happen to run most of the big cities is playing out in real time, with devastating consequences and, ironically, the marginalized communities being among the biggest victims.
We know the government lost the plot decades ago, the gov payroll crew don’t really care about much more than their paycheques, pensions and benefits for which they prefer to do as little as possible to almost deserve.
Liked it but you are too optimistic because in Philly not only are killers not prosecuted but they are rarely arrested as the cops don’t go out now until hours after the shootings. Why should they bother risking their life for people that vote for Defund the Police politicians. (That’s not a question).
Because it's their job. They didn't promise to protect and serve....but only if they feel appreciated.
Police pulling back may be predictable when a community has become this critical of policing, but it is not justified. Well over half the people in these communities, usually law abiding victims, don't want fewer police.
Steve, fair points. If well over half the people want less crime then why do they keep voting for the same party across generations?
I think that is a good question, but a separate question. I would hope that police could follow through on their oath regardless of the political leanings of any given community. I am somewhat conservative, but live in California. I would hate for someone to write me off just because my city leans left. And even if I voted Democrat, I am still owed the services my taxes pay for or the services promised by my government, even if I don't make enough to pay taxes.
I think many people just don't have the capacity, time or interest to investigate these kinds of issues in detail, or to fully understand the solutions being proposed by politicians. The strategy of Politicians and business model of media companies is to take advantage this. So I think we should try to stay away from a "thats what you get" kind of response to big important issues like policing. Though I agree it is frustrating to see people vote in a way that seems to clearly be at odds with their own interests.
Clifton, you mostly carefully give names of victims and details of crimes but then airily throw out: “The guy who drove through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin and killed several people was sentenced to six life terms”. Oh yeah, that dude. And several generic anonymous people died. But there’s a clue in your sentence regarding the six life sentences. He killed six (uncelebrated) people and injured 62 others. This mass killing should have been given more coverage at the time. It’s of a different order than the other cases you more carefully cite.
Thanks for your comment and the feedback. It wasn't my intent to gloss over what happened in Waukesha. It was tragic. I was mindful of the length of the post and decided not to go into the details of each of the cases I highlighted. I provided links for those who wanted more context. I was also mindful of discussions Glenn Loury and John McWhorter had about what happened in Waukesha during previous episodes of The Glenn Show.
Clifton, I understand that the vast majority of people in prison did in fact commit serious crimes.
Often I hear "too many people locked up" admonition without mentioning what they may have done to get them in prison, or even in jail.
So, my question is this: When there are debates, Do you find that people who want to abolish prisons, or lock up far fewer prisons, Are they honest about why many of those people may be there in the first place?
Thanks for your comment. Somebody like Rafael Mangual is better equipped to answer your question, but the debates I've seen rarely address the issue you raise. Those who believe that "mass incarceration" is a moral issue and that our prison population needs to be reduced rarely mention that 62% of the inmates in state prisons committed violent crimes as of the end of 2020 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics report I referenced (Prisoners in 2021 - Statistical Tables). Use this link, download the full report, and go to Table 16 if you want to do a deep dive:
https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/prisoners-2021-statistical-tables
This essay published at The Conversation partially acknowledges the point you raised, but their argument is that racial disparities in incarceration rates for violent crimes are too large and that "intervention" is a better approach
https://theconversation.com/biggest-racial-gap-in-prison-is-among-violent-offenders-focusing-on-intervention-instead-of-incarceration-could-change-the-numbers-194618
This has been covered at The Glenn Show before, but there's no compelling evidence that the kinds of interventions the authors support can reduce violent crime at scale. Another issue is that the people who support interventions instead of incarceration rarely mention the harms done to the victims of violent crime or what would constitute "justice" for them and their loved ones. They rarely mention the societal harms associated with violent crimes either.
Thank you....I suspected as much, but wanted a confirmation. It's not just this issue, it's a host of issues where mentioning cause is verbotem.
Dems optimized the ruin of blacks via abortions, black on black crime, welfare for fatherless households only, affirmative action for incompetence, completely failed urban schools controlled by teachers union, and endless war. Blacks suffer the most and are the most to blame for voting for government nannies rather than freedom. Slaves by another name. Reminds me of the Scots not voting for freedom from England because they were addicted to the gov dole. Sad for a once proud race.
A free ride is a powerful enticement.
Yes: Very sad and absurd. Crime way up.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/chris-rock
Thank you Glenn for this article. Living in Minneapolis Ground Zero for the defund the police movement, I can tell you that the police recruitment will be difficult for many years to come. Because there are so few police on patrol the carjackings are out of control. The mayors of Minneapolis Saint Paul and Keith Ellison the Attorney General i’m trying to attack the problem by suing Kia the manufacturer of vehicles that don’t have antitheft safety on them and can be easily stolen using the TikTok method taught by the Milwaukee Gang Bangers. It’s gonna be a number of years before a crime is under control and Minneapolis. Uptown Minneapolis the shopping center has lost numerous bars restaurants and boutiques because of the crime situation where nobody with money is willing to visit this location anymore.
Similar situation in Seattle.
Why does Glenn think we are at or past peak woke? A cartoonist was just canceled for asking questions about a national survey poll results two speakers were attacked at universities this last week and a large city in the US just gave council support to giving black people 5 million in lump sum reoperations despite being a city that had no history of black slavery. Meanwhile across the Federal agencies and many state and corporate institutions the DEI blob continues to push itself into every corner of our lives without any sign of stopping.
I think Glenn and John and those who regularly are on this blog are showing they're out of synch with the 6 foot view of life and are maybe too tied to their class and institutional viewpoints. From way up in the high atmosphere of the ivory tower it may look like we are headed to peak woke but down in the trenches it's another day of gas(lighting) attacks and rhetorical bombardments.
Sorry, we are not close to peak woke. Revolutionary tactic have a long history of pulsing, applying pressure when possible and backing off to gain credibility when pressure is no longer possible. We are not in to the backing off phase. Sorry, the neo-Maoist are still fully in control.
Yes, and Biden (or is it really Susan Rice and others?) just doubled down on insisting every agency grossly discriminate by race - their new “BIPOC” caste system of human worth and standing. I’m almost inevitably heading toward my first vote for a GOP candidate - and for President. And, regardless, it’s going to take many years ti get these ideologies out of all of these federal bureaucracies. Anyone who’s read Neustadt’s Presidential Power - or who simply has a better than childish imagination re: what electeds and their thin upper tier of appointees can accomplish by fiat vs. a recalcitrant, let alone hostile, permanent bureaucracy, can see how difficult this is going to be.
Thanks for your comment. There's no easy way to measure wokeness so all I've got is a collection of anecdotal evidence that suggests we're past peak woke. I included examples of what's happening with criminal justice and policing, but there are other examples that may give you a better feel for what's happening:
Mayors from several of Connecticut's biggest cities have proposed new initiatives for reducing gun violence by repeat offenders:
https://www.hartfordct.gov/Government/Departments/Mayors-Office/Mayor-News/Gun-Violence-2142023
Their recommendations include more restrictive bail policies and tougher sanctions for offenders
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is facing a serious recall effort. Crime is a key driver:
https://www.fox8live.com/2023/03/14/mayor-cantrell-files-two-lawsuits-challenging-recall-petition/
Marilyn Mosby's defeat was a stunning fall from grace compared to her previous elections. She beat easily defeated Ivan Bates and Thiru Vignarajah in 2018. Both garnered more votes than Mosby in 2022. To be fair, facing a federal prosecution hurt her chances, but anybody who's been following Baltimore media knew she was in trouble before the news of her federal prosecution broke. You'll also notice a shift in public sentiment if you listen to talk radio in Baltimore. This WBAL segment with Thiru Vignarajah shows the public has grown weary of talk about addressing the root causes of violent crime and wants something done now:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI1tyB3Z_6I
Jussie Smollett was poised to accept a lenient plea deal in Chicago until a retired judge led the effort to have a special prosecutor appointed to take over the case from the office of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/20/us/smollett-special-prosecutor-report/index.html
I could go on, but I hope you see the point when it comes to criminal justice reforms.
There are signs that Corporate America isn't pushing DEI initiatives as aggressively as before. This piece from Fortune shows that some companies are laying off their entire DEI teams:
https://fortune.com/2023/02/10/companies-cutting-diversity-jobs-regret-layoffs/
A New York Times guest essay from last August questioned whether workplace diversity initiatives were doing more harm than good:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/opinion/workplace-diversity-dei-initiative.html
I could be wrong, but I don't recall seeing anything like this on the NY Times site a few years ago.
Support for Black Lives Matter has waned. Use this link to see the results of an ongoing poll by Civiqs:
https://civiqs.com/results/black_lives_matter?uncertainty=true&annotations=true&zoomIn=true
People like Vivek Ramaswamy are aggressively pushing back against money managers who pressure companies to adopt ESG principles. Vanguard has "clarified" their position and isn't as aggressive about this as before according to the Wall Street Journal:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanguards-ceo-bucks-the-esg-orthodoxy-tim-buckley-net-zero-emissions-united-nations-initiative-nzam-f6ae910d
Governor Ron DeSantis is gaining national stature for his efforts to tamp down wokeness. Some say his counteroffensive against Disney was excessive, but it reinforced his message that Florida is where woke goes to die.
School boards around the country are being forced to back away from their most woke policies in response to parental concerns about what's being taught in classrooms and rising violence among students and against teachers. The shooting of teacher Abigail Zwerner in Newport News, VA was a watershed event, but there are other notable examples.
Last, but not least, jokes about "wokeness" are becoming more common. Bill Maher regularly lampoons excessive wokeness on his show. This CNN article from last year suggests that woke has gone from a social justice term to a pejorative for some:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/10/us/woke-race-deconstructed-newsletter-reaj/index.html
None of this is to suggest that the tug of war is over or that I know how this will end, but I believe the new equilibrium point will be to the right of where it was at the end of 2020.
That was an almost unprecedented move.
Thank you, Mr. Roscoe, for taking the time and energy to give this thorough response! I certainly want to believe there is a basis for hope, and appreciate the above documentation of your argument. In fairness I need to admit that I live in Portland, and my perspective is affected by the fact that extreme woke values dominate the culture of the city. As I look at your examples of movement away from woke positions, I see that you are focusing on evidence that supports hope, which is a wise thing to do. In that same spirit, I can add to your list that more than fifty per cent of Portlanders voted in the November election for a City Council candidate who campaigned on a (relatively) law and order platform. The incumbent, Joann Hardesty, was a social justice activist with an anti-police, defund agenda. During primary season she won more than forty per cent of the vote, while running against two other candidates, and had to run against one of them in November. I found it very discouraging that forty per cent of the voters in the city still supported Ms. Hardesty. In the November runoff, however, enough people who came together to elect Hardesty's single remaining opponent, Rene Gonzalez.
During the riots of 2020 and the subsequent terrorism by antifa and other such groups, one of the local media companies (I don't recall which one) polled Portland citizens about their positions on the riots. The results were split in approximately thirds, representing the citizens who supported the riots, the ones who didn't know or didn't care, and the ones who opposed the riots. While the riots were ongoing, the state of Oregon legislature passed a bill that imposed restrictions on crowd control methods police could use.
So, I would say that there has been some movement locally away from positions that support crime rather than law enforcement. On the other hand, the state legislature, which represents mostly the population of so-called liberal cities in Oregon, has continued to advance a woke agenda. In November Oregonians living in those cities elected a Progressive governor from Portland who is closely tied to teachers' unions.
K - 12 education in Oregon is pervaded with critical social justice programming. Extreme woke beliefs and activism have been encoded into law by the state legislature. A major bill passed late in fall of 2022 that mandates CASEL programming to be implemented across all school activities. CASEL guidelines include blatantly biased guidelines regarding POC's and indigenous children, for example, not being expected to "comply with the standards of the dominant culture."
Beyond these formal indications that woke activists are continuing to take over the state, the social environment in Portland has become so oppressive that freedom of speech is severely eroded. It is nearly impossible to engage neighbors, for example, in an open conversation about any of the woke's forbidden topics. When these topics are breached, the speaker is shut down by withdrawal and non-verbally expressed disapproval or sharp rebukes from other people. Portland was not like this until a few years ago, even though there have been for many years pockets of leftwing activists who imposed rigid political correctness on each other.
So I hope that your more optimistic perspective predicts the future more accurately than my relatively dismal one. Despite my more skeptical views, I am actively seeking ways to resist and reverse the woke takeover that has already reached such an advanced state.
Thank you for appearing on Glenn's show and sharing your experience and opinions, and again, for responding to commentator's comments.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply and the update on Portland!
With respect to the article itself, Glenn's intro mentioned that it was hard to get a grasp of what was going on due to variation "state by state". I disagree. Crime is concentrated in certain areas. Measuring at the state level doesn't tell you much, but measuring at the community level does. Most murders are concentrated in relatively few communities.
The graphs were very misleading. First they went back to 1980 but gave no credit to "broken windows" policing or enforcement before 1994. Let's be serious. There is copious evidence that James Wilson's approach was effective. Even if you dismiss this argument, going back that far in the face of a sharp recent reversal reminds me of arguments about global warming where both proponents and detractors cite different start dates that buttress their arguments. When there is a sharp reversal after decades of progress, it is a copout to go back decades to make your argument that things are better when people know better. Homicides grew 29% in 2020 and have only declined slightly since. Then you use 2019 as an end date in most of your graphs, just before George Floyd and the spike in crime. The last 3 years didn't happen? C'mon!
As you mention in the many citations, the public are pushing back, yet you say "the criminologists haven't reached a consensus". Of course not. They're academics with a vested interest in "further studies". But the people have. Chicago alone has, what, some 600-800 murders annually, a rate of 29/100,000. 80% of the victims are African Americans. Namibia, with a comparable (but much poorer) population has a murder ate of 12/100,000. Why don't those brilliant criminologists explore why that is? there's plenty of crime data by policing methods by country, yet I see little from U.S. criminologists about what we can learn from others.
In 2019, there were some 15,000 murders. Cops killed about 1,000 Americans, of which a whopping 8 were unarmed. I'm happy to see lower incarceration rates, and I'm a big believer in wraparound services and vocational training, as well as felons earning the right to vote when they've paid their debt to society.
But look, everyone wants an easy explanation: cops are bad, sentencing is too tough or too easy, our prison population is too high or too low. All irrelevant, and we all know it. The heavy lifting is in how each individual is raised. The values they are exposed to. The example of those around them. This is much tougher stuff. Academics need to stop shuffling statistics and embrace the blocking and tackling that community leaders do. This means a focus on the importance of families, of community, of excellence in education and, yes, of respect for authority.
Namibia, because retribution is a thing done quietly and in the court of public opinion, if a sh*tbag deserves comeuppance and gets it, no one argues too much. There’s alot of private security which sometimes fails (you can pay off guards), but it does provide some defense. Alot of black on black crime goes unreported.
What makes you think that this is the reason why the murder rate in Namibia is much lower than in the US? The homicide rates are currently very high in South Africa and Nigeria http://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country, though there is a lot of private security in these two countries and though I don't think that South Africans or Nigerians are outraged by the deaths of people you call "sh*tbags".
I don't suppose anyone is outraged by the death of "sh*tbags" by a vigilante, esp. given the horror of some of the things that happen that a vigilante feels the need to address. The issue is that people don't rush to the police to report the crime (or what the vigilante does). But a low crime rate does not necessarily mean low crime. Namibia can be, and is, a dangerous place and I don't recall a large police presence, or even having seen a police station, whereas Nigeria (and probably South Africa) is highly policed.
But only some homicides are killings committed by vigilantes... There must be other reasons why the homicide rate in Namibia continues to be relatively low.
And it doesn't look like Namibia's crime rate is that low anymore.
I can't speak for Polly, but my initial point was that we can learn from other countries. In the UK police don't normally carry lethal weapons, and their crime rate is lower. In Singapore there is a zero tolerance for even minor infractions, and they have an extremely low crime rate. Sweden's was very low as well, though a wave of new migrants (20% of residents in Sweden today) and issues related to that have seen a surge in crime. What can we learn from these and other countries?
I agree with you, of course we can and should learn from other countries. I think that there are many complex reasons explaining the very high level of deadly violence in America, including easy access to guns, the weakening of social bonds, large social inequalities and the limited support for the poor compared to many other Western countries.
E.g. in the UK the poor can survive on various benefits and often live in council flats or houses - I guess that the situation of the poor is even better in Scandinavian countries. There is much less reason to get involved in crime if one has a stable life. I would also say that one of the differences between the US and Europe is that European urban spaces are much more adapted to the needs of pedestrians - this makes people less disconnected from each other.
Great perspective. Thanks for adding to the discussion.
edited for a typo
I appreciate your very interesting comment, but let me add an important correction: in 2019 54 Americans shot and killed by police were unarmed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police-shootings-2019/
You may be right - I can't access WaPo because I'm not a subscriber. But USA Today basically concurred with what you say. I focused on gun deaths because that is what's most talked about. Thanks for the correction. I will say that, given the amount of violence in this country, I do not find that level of police-caused fatalities to be alarming. Especially in today's environment, it's a miracle anyone would take the oath "to protect and serve".
You should be able to see the database even if you are not a WaPo subscriber - I can see it without a subscription. It is true that the number of police-caused fatalities does not seem very high when one compares it to the number of homicide fatalities. However, I don't think that it should lead us to dismiss the problem of police violence.
I totally agree. Public servants need to be held to the highest standards. If only that applied to our elected officials as well!
Thanks for your comment.
Matt Rosenberg, who has been a guest on The Glenn Show, and his colleagues at Wirepoints published an analysis in February that covered homicide rates in America's 75 largest cities by population as of 2022:
https://wirepoints.org/chicago-new-orleans-were-the-nations-murder-capitals-in-2022-a-wirepoints-survey-of-americas-75-largest-cities/
Here are the key findings:
This report’s key findings include:
Chicago’s 697 criminal homicides in 2022 were the most in the nation for the 11th-straight year. Philadelphia suffered the 2nd-most with 516. New York City (438), Houston (435) and Los Angeles (382) rounded out the top 5. By contrast, cities with the fewest homicides out of the 75 surveyed were Plano, TX and Gilbert, AZ. They suffered 1 and 3 murders, respectively.
New Orleans’ 2022 homicide rate of 74.3 homicides per 100,000 residents was the nation’s highest of the 75 cities surveyed. Rounding out the top 5 were St. Louis (68.2), Baltimore (58.1), Detroit (48.9) and Memphis (45.9). By comparison the nationwide homicide rate was 6.5 per 100,000 in 2020 (the most recent reliable national rate).
The safest of the nation’s 75 largest cities by homicide rate was Plano, TX with just 0.3 per 100,000. Following were Gilbert, AZ at 1.1 per 100,000, Henderson, NV with 1.6, Chandler, AZ at 3.2 and San Jose, CA with 3.6.
The nation’s safe havens are increasingly concentrated in the West. All but one of the 10 cities with the nation’s highest homicide rates were located on or east of the Mississippi River in 2022. Of the 10 cities with the lowest homicide rates, all but one were located west of the Mississippi.
2022 homicide rates were typically much worse across the nation’s 20 “homicide hubs” compared to 2019. Half of those cities experienced a 50 percent or higher increase in their homicide rate versus 2019. Pittsburgh’s homicide rate grew 92 percent between 2019 and 2022. New Orleans’ rate grew 139 percent and Milwaukee’s 129 percent.
There may be macro-level patterns in the numbers, but they're not obvious. My guess is that unique things about each city impact their homicide rates.
Your point about the need to do community level analyses is a good one. Law enforcement often tries to do this using targeted policing techniques, but activists who claim to represent the interests of people who live in high crime areas often complain that their communities are over-policed. The Chicago mayoral runoff is a good example of how this tug of war can play out. Candidates Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson have very different ideas about policing. Next month's election and the selection of a new police superintendent will give us another indication of which way the pendulum is swinging.
A problem across many areas is activist tyranny, bulk of them owning more vitriole than capability to analyze data or situations.
Good comments, Clifton. I have seen most of this data, though I was not aware of Plano's rather stellar numbers. It would be interesting to visit places like that and examine how those communities operate and what they are doing. Yes, the Chicago election will be interesting. From a distance, it looks like "law and order" vs. the public teacher's unions. My heart is with the former for the sake of Chicagoans, but my money would probably be on the latter if I had to guess a winner.
I think those are all very fair points. Thank you for the response. I am only worried the term "peak wokeness" or "peak woke" may lead people to feel this is a neat and clean thing; a linear phenomenon that has a peak and will start and stop at some natural point that is maybe what people think of as being "pre-woke." I think this is a full on revolution and we are going to see it pulse with phases that are full on pushes and then maybe to retract a bit, say around a national election, and then push again but from gained ground. I fear we are in at most the bottom of the second inning or some early phase. I fear what you are seeing is maybe some natural gravity asserting itself on the less secure aspects of the revolution and not signs of some big shift. In fact what you are seeing may be movement pruning and will leave the movement stronger in the long run. I hope for America's sake and for each of us as individuals that I'm wrong. Revolutions are messy affairs and once underway have tendency of destroying all who are engaged and leaving something radically unforeseen as the outcome.
At best, John and Glenn may be ahead of the Woke trend flattening and turning. I would agree, it is far too early to celebrate it’s demise.
"the DEI blob continues to push itself into every corner of our lives without any sign of stopping"
LOL!! I love this!! The Blob was one of my favorite movies. Your imagery is a perfect fit!
I agree with everything you say in this post. The disgusting efforts by the Democrats to crucify Taibbi and Shellenberger on international TV was an example of how confident and entitled they feel about their power.
Exactly. You aint peak anything if you can expect one of the two major parties in a FPTP system to lay into your most potent critics in one of the most august settings that we have for discourse. I think that there is a lot to be discovered and written about the "movement" and how the left has pulled off what to me is a cultural putsch. They were planning this for ages and organized and increasingly open with their ideas and plans. It will come out but it's still potent and ongoing and they are still in-charge of most of the key institutions so the ability to silence or black-out or erase are still very strong. Taibbi and and Shellenberger are liberals...that should tell you we aint fighting the liberal left, we are fighting the illiberal left.
Shellenberger is a hack , and his and Taibbi and Bari Weiss's analyses of twitter bias were massively lopsided. The truth was more complex and less nefarious than their narrative.
You wrote my comments for me, Hansenius - thanks. I found the article a bit shallow, factually manipulative and out of touch.
Good article Glenn.
Someone who has been improved a bit by your courage and depth of commitment to greater truth.
Jack Davis
Meanwhile, in Brooklyn:
https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/park-slope-dog-killer-on-the-loose-after-multiple-sightings/
https://nypost.com/2022/10/15/police-close-case-into-prospect-park-dog-killer-owner/
Are Eric Adams declared efforts to combat crime mostly hype, or is it mostly that he’s running into the constraints of a progressive lock on the state legislature, and a bevy of recalcitrant local prosecutors and council members who are some combination of ideological true believers and acutely sensitive to the very narrow activist constituencies who determine who makes it through a very low-turnout NYC Dem primary? I was one of the relatively few lower income residents of the Park Slope area for several years. I know of two men who were part of a community group I belonged to who were mugged by teens while jogging in the park. And women in particular had to be extremely careful about going out in the mornings alone. But for a long time, common sense and basic situational awareness were about all one needed to stay safe. This attack and the response it has engendered locally (or lack thereof) exemplifies the kind of breakdown in social order and public safety people are living with. There is no plausible explanation for why the NYPD could not have found and arrested this menace to every park-goer. I’m guessing they knew that confronting him would be a major headache and he’d be right back out the same day, rinse and repeat. Even if they cared and I’m sure some officers did, arresting him would, in that ideological and policy climate, be all risk and no reward. Now, if someone had been there at the time and intervened in the least aggressive manner to try to protect this woman and her dog from the entirely unprovoked attack of a man who’d been seen in the park for months regularly menacing people, what would’ve happened to them? Without a swell of steady and sympathetic news coverage, they might well still be rotting in Rikers.
The NY Post? Seriously?
This was covered in the NYT, too. Non-subscribers are immediately blocked by the paywall. It was covered elsewhere, too. I also know plenty of people who live in the neighborhood. Do you doubt the veracity of the story as it’s reported in the linked articles? Do you, for that matter, think the NYT is at present a much more reliable let alone balanced paper when it comes to issues like violent crime? Frankly your comment comes across as trying to smugly wave away the substance and meaning of yet another real act of totally unprovoked violent cruelty, and an unaddressed violent threat to a community, and the failure of a great city’s institutions to respond - because the first source linked was not your tribe’s/house’s/party’s official organ. Please, stop committing ontological violence against us with your petty and disingenuous gatekeeping. Or, in Brooklynese: GTFOH
People lying about what they actually believe can flip back on a dime when it’s their family victimized. All of the sudden their preference falsification evaporates like fog in the sun.
Antifa is still getting political support for their violent quasi-military assault on the construction of a police training facility in the black run city of Atlanta. Probably have to take left wing political street violence more seriously to make progress…