November 17, 2022 • 40 mins
We look at a recent call by two Harvard academics, one of whom is on the editorial board of Jacobin, for 500,000 more cops to end mass incarceration
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
It's the podcast. It's it could happen here. It is
about something that could happen here very specifically. Um, yeah,
I'm I'm Christopher Wong. I'm here with James Stout and
Garrison Davis. Hello. Hello, do you both Hello? We all
joined the sim call that that did happen here, and
that did show everybody. All right, Okay, so that's the
(00:26):
thing that that did happen here, and now we're gonna
talk with something that could happen here. And that specific
thing is, uh a call by two Harvard academics to
hire five hundred thousand more cops. Nope, so okay there,
Like I don't I don't know when this is going
to go up. But sometime in the past that there
(00:46):
was a piece that went viral by civil rights lawyer
and anti prison activist turned media critic Alec Karaka Tanis
about a pair of Harvard academics who wrote this article
calling for five thousand more cops. And this is okay,
Like the fact that we have academics writing position papers
basically that are calling for five hundred thousand more cops
is terrifying in and of itself. But but but crime,
(01:07):
is that a record high. You're about to see ship.
You're about to see You're about to see and hear
ship that is going to make your fucking ears bleed
because it's not like, Okay, normally these are Harvard academics, right,
So you're assuming these are like right wing nats at Googles, right,
or like their equivalent in in in this sort of
like you know, these are not. This was written by
(01:31):
a socialist. And when I say a socialist right like,
I don't mean a sort of like one of the
sort of like terminally online desperate cranks trying to hold
together like a Maoist micro sect. I'm talking about people
who are incredibly well connected inside the mainstream socialist left.
So the authors of this call for five hundred thousand
more cops are Christopher Lewis, who is a Harvard law
(01:53):
professor who makes me embarrassed to have my own name,
and more interestingly, Harvard sociology for us are auditor Usumi.
So who is auditor Usumi Um. He is on the board.
He's on the editorial board of Catalyst, which is a
Marxist man. Okay, do you do you have you two
know what Catalyst is? Yeah, besides the sequel to the
(02:15):
mirror original game and now I doubt Yeah, Okay, so
they're they're a a Marxist magazine. There's supposed to be
a more sort of theoretical Marxist like magazine founded by
a guy named vie Vic Chibber, who's a pretty influential
sort of like soaked n Marxist who could be found
literally in any any of the last like five decades,
you can find him yelling about the cultural turn in
(02:36):
academia and calling for a return of political economy. Yes,
yelling about this for decades longer. I think he's been
yelling about this for longer than I've been alive. God, Like,
that's how long go on. People have definitely been like
(02:57):
fetching about the cultural turn for longer than any of
us have been a live. Yeah, And and they've been
wrong for that entire time. And she was like one
of the guys who trained us to me in the
first place. Now catalysts other major founder um is much
more famous, and that's someone you probably have heard of,
who is one Bosh car Sonkara, who is the current
(03:20):
President of the Nation and also the founder of Jocobin
where and this is where it gets fun us to me.
Also on the editorial board of Jocobin, this is the
guy caring for five hundred that was more cops. Right.
This isn't coming from the usable sort of like rabid reactionaries.
This is coming from people who have serious credentials in
the mainstream socialists left and Okay, so all right, I
(03:46):
want to talk about what's actually in the paper. And
the first thing I need I ever want to understand
about this from the get go is that this is
maybe the worst paper I've ever read. Like if I
had tried to turn this paper into my like freshman
like into like my an undergrad class, I would have failed.
Like when when when I was in my freshman year
(04:06):
in college, I had to read Biblical analysis written by
a freshman Ted Cruise supporter who was arguing that there
was a problem in the Bible where there was no
way for God to talk to people. This is worse
than that and the Koran. It's like, how is how
how is that worth? Chris? Okay, So let's let's let's
(04:26):
just start off right. I'm gonna I'm gonna start off
with a random part in the middle, so you understand
how just mind numbingly atrocious. This is okay, So I'm
gonna I'm gonna read this. This is an article called,
and I'm not kidding about the title of this quote,
the Injustice of under policing in America. Uh yeah, so
(04:49):
we're starting we're starting off so yeah, so so, so
before we get into the actual main argument, I'm just
gonna read this quote, which is right. Even if our
answers prove unsound, we hope that the combination of empirical
social science and analytic moral and political philosophy we can
(05:11):
we contribute can help eliminate what alternative answers to those
questions might have to look like to be sound. Which,
first off, terrible sis. This is why I would prefer
the immortal science of Arktis Latinism. This is awful, Like
said said this writing terrible said it back to an editor.
Give them a decade, they'll come back with it. Second off,
I literally cannot imagine two disciplines I would like rather
(05:37):
less apply to the problem of mass incarceration than those
like these authors have dared asked the question, what if
we combined the bone rattling stupidity of analytic philosophy with
the sociologist, complete inability to do statistics. And the answer
is this, and what I say, complete inability to do statistics? Right,
I need people to understand how bad this article is,
(06:00):
like I I like, I like viscerally needs you to understand.
So here, here is here, here is a quote. Here's
another section of this article. But while firearm availability, no
doubt has some impact on the level of violence, we
think the effect is likely to be small. A large
effect would be difficult to square with other patterns across place, persons,
(06:22):
and time. Consider, for example, that while the United States
has ten times as many guns as El Salvador, the
homicide rate there is roughly ten times higher than it
is here. Now stats nowhere is Think for a second
about what they just compared, Right, the United States has
ten times as many guns, the homicide rate in El
(06:44):
Salvador as ten times higher. Right pulation, Yeah, yeah, I think, Okay,
what what does the US have more of than El Salvador? No, no,
we have more guns, but we also have fifty times
the population. The million people of Salvador is six point
five million people, which means, again, if if you're looking
(07:06):
at this in terms of guns per capita, right, a
salpitarors guns per capita is actually five times higher than ours. Wow,
that's quite impressive. Yeah, and financial perspective because we have
a lot of guns. Yeah. Right, And you know, okay, again,
if you're if you're gonna do basic statistics, right, you
(07:26):
would think that these professors at Harvard University would know
the difference between a rate of gun ownership and the
pure owner of ship of guns. They do not. They
do not do they not? Have they decided that they're
going to pretend they don't. I don't. Okay, here's the
thing going into this, right, I assume this was just
sort of pure hackshit, and I think a lot of
(07:47):
it is. I think they also are genuinely this dumb
like genuine I I it's it's really incredible. Like I
mean again, like the thing like like the thing they've
actually demonstrated with their own number BRUS is precisely the
opposite of what they're arguing. The thing they've demonstrated with
the numbers they have given us is that there is
a correlation between gun ownership rates and the homicide rate. Right,
(08:09):
Like they're trying to there. This entire section is about
proving that there that they that the number of guns.
Doesn't like that. This isn't even like this isn't me
like like I don't like this is not like me
yelling about gun control or whatever. Like. This is just
to get you to understand the level of statistics these
people are on. And also I should point this Outum.
I tracked down their citation because I wanted to make
(08:30):
sure I didn't I wasn't misunderstanding their arguments, right. So
I tracked down their citation on these numbers, and I
went to the paper they cited, and the thing they
cited does not have a gun ownership numbers for El Salvador.
So I have no idea where they getting any of
these numbers. They apparently they quite possibly have pulled this
out of there as completely because apparently apparently nobody checked
if their citations actually contain the things that they're supposed
(08:53):
to get. This is what I wanted to talk about.
There is a thing that happens when you get Tanya
or you've become a professor at the various university, and
that thing is you just say shit and people trust you.
Like we've seen this time and again in the academy.
Right that, like peer review is not serving its function
because like the status hierarchy of people in academia is
(09:14):
more important to both the peer reviewers and the people
doing the writing than the actual process of peer review. Yeah,
like their citations are this is an interesting Uh, this
is I don't know that they they they've made the
capital letters larger, they use small arms survey. I guess
(09:34):
for that. Obviously it doesn't it doesn't. It does show
it doesn't have those numbers. It's amazing. Okay, so you know,
we've we've we've established that these people are absolute hacks
who whose work would have gotten be failed out of
an undergrad course. So to be fair, maybe it's actually
it's it's technically possible. The University of Chicago just holds
its students to more rigorous standards than Harvard or M I. T.
(09:56):
Whose journal published this does their intellectuals. So you know,
I we we never know. This is also I never
used Jacobin as a source on the show because they
pay fifty bucks per article and that ship way. Yeah,
Jacobin not a cool publication, actually not mega based. Yeah,
(10:17):
your workers, if you're pertaining to be socialised, yeah, you're
trying to be like a labor but Bosh Garconara is
on the record talking about the quote, his quote petite
bourgeois hustle, talking about how we made Jacobin. So you know, okay,
we'll we'll we'll get back to the class aspect of
all of this next episode. But okay, let's let's go
(10:37):
back to this paper and let's take a second just
look at what they're actually arguing. And the first thing
I need you used to understand about their argument is
that their entire, the entire substantive argument of this paper
hinges on an absolutely enormous lie. Um he let me,
let let let me, let me we quote this lie.
(10:57):
Yet it also illustrates the much less well known fact
that America is not in all an outlier and it's
rate of policing. The United States has around two hundred
and twelve police officers for every hundred thousand total residents,
which ranks it in the forty one percentile of today's
developed world. Now, as Alec Carricatanas points out, they've deliberately
(11:18):
picked the lowest number of cops they can find any like,
the lowest reported number of cops in the US I
can find anywhere. Um, And so they picked six hundred
thousand from basically like it's they picked this number from
an FBI reporting thing. But the FBI also says that
they don't have all the cops there because it's it's
like it's basically like a voluntary reporting thing. So there's
a bunch of cops that aren't there. And then, um,
(11:40):
here's from Karakatatas, who's a piece about this quote the professors.
The professor then admitted privately over email that the US
census count is actually one million, two hundred twenty seven thousand,
seven eight police. That's seventies six percent higher for the
number they chose to article. What is this anificates of
(12:00):
this using this number they admitted to me, the United
States truthfully has one point one times the media rated
rich countries. So they've been over the email that they have.
This whole article is based on them lying how many
cops there are in the US, and it's actually way
worse than this because as as as he points out right,
(12:23):
this number than to the number that they're using only
tracks a public police, so they doesn't count private police.
And if you count private police, that number doubles. Again,
not like there's private police, there's there's no five cops. Right,
And and the other thing isn't this The other thing
is doesn't count? Is this counts zero federal agencies? I
(12:45):
just gonna say that it doesn't count. Federal agency does
doesn't count? Like state police even I think, I think,
actually I don't know. You can't shareff Is that not police?
Their deputies? They're different highway patrol. Who's who's to say
who's spent more time on this? And they have already yeah, right, right, okay,
(13:10):
like to to get it to to get it understanding
of this, even if you exclude the Feds entirely right
to exclud And again and this is actually a bad
idea because again we have like a fucking trillion federal agencies,
for example, ice in the border patrol, who again run
just another police state inside of the American police state, right,
we have that. And obviously, okay, so he's comparing our
(13:33):
our level of policing to policing in in uh in
like European countries, right, And okay, I I don't want
to minimize how many border cops European countries have, but
the US has way fucking more border cups. They do
not like they do horrible things I will yell at
the until the end of time about how every every
(13:55):
friend text member needs to be like redacted, etcetera, etcetera. Parody.
But like, no, great, great, even even even if you
cut that out right, the actual number of cops in
the US is three times higher than the number they've
given us. Actually it might be yeah, yeah, okay, I
feel like there's there's anything that we can agree on
(14:16):
as a nation. Is that America kind of has a
lot of police. That's like, that's like what everyone kind
of knows. That's like people like the place with like
the really like it's like really militarized and heavy policing. Yeah,
like like a person who moved to America, it is
shocking how many cops there are, how many different cops
(14:37):
there are, and how there are cops everywhere all the time.
It is the thing that it is very different about America.
Oh god, okay, so statistic to get that number quite possibly,
like ship yeah yeah, I would absolutely if one of
(14:59):
my students in community, God days, we'd have a tool. Okay, okay,
So do you know what else is based on the
myth I under policing these adverts for private cops, Yes,
Federal Protective Service gets them. All right, we're back. Uh okay,
(15:26):
So all right, we've established that this this, this is
this is This argument is built on a pile of lines. However,
the actual content of the argument is also really funny
and completely incomprehensible. So their argument is that somehow, if
the US had more cops, right, and and and if
(15:47):
if if if the ratio of cops to people like
that the U S had was like in line with
the European countries, that somehow and there they never have
a mechanism for how this would happen. This would somehow
lower the incarceration rate. I think the mechanism is lyne uh.
(16:07):
That's what everyone says, is that we have more police
that lowers incarceration rates. Yeah. Yeah. The entire argument here
is what if the US was like Sweden, then there
would be five thousand more cops, but somehow also less
one also one point nine million less uh prisoners. So well,
anything that's different between US and Sweden is cops. Oh god? Okay,
(16:31):
So so what why are socialists pushing for this? And
especially socialists and again as these are these are people
who in their article admit that they think the best
way to deal with with poverty and with crime is
welfare programs, not mass incarceration. So okay, so why why
why are they pushing for this? And the initial answer
is that they think they can reduce crime, specifically homicides
(16:54):
by increasing policing, and they think which should be fair
is an opinion that I would say, at this point,
probably the majority of Americans have maybe I don't know
if I buy that. I don't know if that I
think you may be a little bit further out of
(17:14):
the Overton window. I think the majority of Americans, I think,
do do believe that if there's a few more cobs,
maybe we'll have a few less murders. I don't know
what we'll we'll we'll see about that. But Okay. The
other thing, though, that's sort of like amazing about this, right,
is that they think, okay, so they think they can
(17:34):
cut the homicide rate by hiring more police. They also
think that hiring more police I will solve the problem
with policing because the problem with police is that the
police don't do enough, and so we need more of them.
And then and then and then also this will make
them less violent. I mean, this is something this is
even the this is even like the whole like Joe
(17:57):
Biden like, oh, we have to we can't. We can't
defund the police. We have to fund the police, have
to resources because Brenie Sanders also made this achievement. If
they have less resources, then that means they'll have to
use more violence. And it's that that style of arguments,
it's it's talking point. Yeah. But what's interesting about this
again is that these people nominally are socialists, and you know,
(18:20):
in order to justify this right, they argued that while
being in prison is bad, and then they list a
bunch of consequences of being in prison, being in a
neighborhood is with high crime is also as bad for
the same reason. They're literally arguing that being in a
place with crime is basically the same as being in prison,
(18:41):
big time prison understanding. Like I look, okay, there are
there are very few people I would ever say this. Look,
I hope these people got to do withthnography of this
one day, Like I I hope, I hope they get
to go do what the inside of prison is, like
I think participant observation. Yeah, I don't think it should
(19:05):
do this Like you like they're there there, there are
there are lines in this article like here here, here
is a random line I've pulled from this article, and
they say at one point quote, in fact, black people
seem to be underrepresented among those who report ever having
been arrested in their lifetimes. What alright, that is a
(19:25):
direct quote citation is what they They've done some absolutely
insane I'm not even I'm not I'm not actually going
to dignify them by laying out the stats bullshit that
they've they've they've attempt to justify this, like we have
already seen what their stats look like. Theirs are trying
to compare a rate to the Yeah, it's insane, it's
(19:48):
completely nuts. Like that's the one thing that that's the
one thing that even like racist like Republicans like no
is like they'll be like, yeah, there's more because because
you don't like people and that's not why. But whatever. Yeah,
I'm between this paragraph now and it is actually bad.
(20:09):
So okay, I think, okay, so we have established this
is bullshit, Right, I want to read a kind of
long section that I think gives the game away as
to why they're arguing this quote. We think in the
long run, a significant expansion of social policy, we reduce
crime by addressing its root causes, and in turn reduced
(20:31):
the need demand for both policing and imprisonments. Okay, other world,
this is true, I would say probably probably true. In
other work, we argue that any coherent conception of distributive
justice or economic efficiency entails that the United States should
expand its social policy. But a significant expansion of social
policy requires significant redistribution from rich to poor. Redistribution of
(20:54):
this magnitude will require the poorer to wield some kind
of leverage over the rich. Given the collapse of the
American labor movement and the electoral fracturing of the American
working class, we doubt we will see anything like this soon.
Our aim in this essay is to say something useful
about what should be done in the non ideal world
in which we live, not just in the ideal world
(21:15):
in which we would like to live. Say hold on, wait,
let me let me let me read this next sentence.
It gets worse. Okay, to say something about that question.
We limit ourselves two options that are revenue neutral. Ah,
these are socialists so bizarre. I think they may have
(21:37):
walked outside. They've just given up. Yeah, like like they've
they've you know, okay, there's okay, so there's actually more
of this that is also like like it keeps can
never have a better world. And you know what that means.
It's that we should have more police. Here here, here
is here is their defense ofness. But why consider only
(21:59):
prisons and police. Why couldn't the government redistribute the existing
pool of money from prisons and police to social program
as many reformers have demanded. We argue in and What's
Wrong with Mass Incarceration? Which is a book that they're
going to release that I hope nobody buys. I trust.
(22:21):
This is because social policy is bedeviled by what we
call the efficiency feasibility paradox. To address the root causes
of crime would be meaningfully to change the opportunity structure
for the most disadvantaged people in America. To do this
by expanding untargeted universal social programs will require significant resources,
since the vast majority of beneficiaries are not America's most
(22:43):
disadvantaged people. Because penal spending is hyper targeted in a
way that social spending is not. It costs about three
billion dollars a year to run the world's most extensive
penal state, but something like three trillion dollars to run
its most abnemic welfare state. We admit that our signific
this is on a slightly lated paragraph. We admit there
are significant obstacles to changing the balance that state and
(23:05):
local government strike between the arms of law enforcements. There are,
after all, reasons that the United States has involved at
the present day penal balance. But our view is at
the first world balance. So the first world balances is
the thing they're talking about that like supposedly Norway has,
or some ship where they have bore cops, but like
per capita but less people incarcerated, um. But our view
(23:26):
is that the first world balance is nonetheless substantially more
feasible than any of the than the kinds of things
that reformers tend to demand today. In the highly unequal
aligarhic America in which we live at present, calls to
calls to reallocate a fixed pool of revenue will meet
with less powerful opposition than calls to tacks the rich.
(23:48):
That is why we assume it is infeasible to expect
the United States to build a generous welfare state in
the mold of the Scandinavian social democracies. Proposals to use
hyper targeted social policy to adjust the root causes of
crime are similarly infeasible, as we have argued, to be efficient,
a social policy intervention must meaningfully transform the opportunity structures
(24:09):
of those most likely to commit crime. I mean, an
intervention that transformed the structures of opportunity only in only
those in this position will up end the effective in
central structure of unequal societies, thus coming up the economy
and eliciting political opposition. I mean, here's Here's the thing
is that in some ways I agree that the United
States won't get better by making social policies within my lifetime.
(24:33):
But my solution to this is a legalist lifestylist of
not hiring more cops. Well, don't worry, there is there
is a significant section of this weather shipped on anarchism. Okay, okay,
this is what fucking happens when all your friends are
also Harvard professors. I mean it's also real fucking people,
(24:55):
because you don't fucking talk to them and they're like, oh,
we the liver. It's it's obviously written by somebody who's
currently like well off, like it's they're currently doing well,
which is why because they because they don't think the
world's gonna turn into socialist utopia, but they're personally doing okay.
The way to make the world feel better for them
(25:17):
is maybe more police will make me feel safer. That's
that's what that's what they're doing is because they're already
well off and they're like, well, social isn't coming. I
want to live a happier life. Maybe police will keep
the bad people away from me. Yeah, because they see
poverty of an issue of poverty is upstream of crime.
A crime is a fucking annoyance to them because someone
(25:38):
might steal their fucking BMW again crime living in a
place where crime is the same as being in prison
because you cannot conceive because it's socialism without sucking empathy
or experience of fucking poverty. Right, So you can make
these ludicrous statements and all your friends in the smoking
(25:58):
room a Harvard will agree with you. Go ham yes,
and I mean, I mean this is the thing like
they they they fundamentally like when Bernie lost the election,
these people gave up on politics, Like that's what's happening there.
They're arguing that like not even is not even just
like the class rouges is unwinnable. They're arguing that basic
(26:19):
liberal politics is impossible, right, like taxing the rich like
is a thing that that that's not like a radical thing,
that's like like the basic that's like a basic democratic
party thing. And they're they're arguing that it's so impossible
that anyone who has a plan to change anything has
to pre means test it to be compliant with a
(26:41):
non existent balanced budget amendment to get the right to
support it, Like Liz trust here, shit like this is
this was written by what if the people on the
editorial board of Jocobin. Yeah, well that doesn't chock me.
But it's very funny to look at their citations, which
are people being like this article is horse shit and
(27:04):
then like like cops publications. Yeah okay, yeah, let's go
so okay, so so have having actually well okay, so
before we do, we should we should do another add thing.
Do you know what? Who else has completely abandoned the
idea that there's any possibility of social change in the world.
(27:24):
The Conservative Party and Union Party of Great Britain in
Northern Ireland. Yeah, do they I guess now we're thank
you Richie Suonac and okay, we're back. So so, having
(27:48):
abandoned politics in favor of complete capitulation to the forces
of reaction, they turned towards a cost benefit analysis of
having more cops. The benefit, they argue, is less cry
And this is bullshit. There is no statistical evidence to
having more cops produces crime. I have done, Like, there
are other reasons why this is bullshit I have done.
(28:10):
I have done the entire series about there is a
lot of writing on this topic and how this correlations,
how this correlation is not actually effective. Um, but yeah,
and and and it's also like a very important thing
here is this is this is a this is the
thing that's about what kind of crime you care about? Right,
(28:30):
Like I have written an entire series about why my
about you know, the times of my police department was
literally being run by multiple drug gartels at the same
time when they strapped us to fucking radiators and attacking
the balls the car batteries. They shot children to the street,
They disappeared people to be tortured in the fucking black sites,
and then they went to fucking a rock and teach
the CIA how to do it, Like, like these people
(28:51):
that the cops are they are rapist, they are kidnappers,
they are extortionists, they are thieves, they are torturers, they
are murders. A lot of them are in literal neo
Nazi gangs who run their own serial killer competitions. Um,
none of this apply, like appears in any of the
analysis that these dipshits have compiled. And it's the old
cultural turn to get involved. Look at the material conditions here, yeah, yeah,
(29:13):
then the material conditions apparently are cop go up, crime
go down, Which it's also important, Like I think it's
important to note there's a really good article I think
it was my ampost one called raise the Crime Rate
from this is from like two thousand six. But they
have that they have this point, which is that like
the reductions in the crime way that we like see,
(29:36):
insofar as they happen, are not actually reductions into the
amount of crime going on. Like what's happening is that
like we put people in prison and then the crime
happens to them there, right, Like, even even if you
reduce the homicide rate outside of prison, there's still the
(29:57):
homicide rate inside of prison, which nobody fucking it was
a shit about. And you know, because because again that
this crime doesn't go away, all that happens is that
it gets it, It gets you know, intensified and flicked
on a group of people the American public doesn't give
a shit about. So, you know, all of the violence,
all of the of the rape, all the fucking murder,
all of the theft, all of the ship we normally
throw people in prison for, in theory, is just happening
(30:19):
to people inside of prisons. It's just that academics can
stop pretaining to give a shit about it when they
don't have to see it. Yeah, I like where I live. Right,
we just re elected a sheriff who was overseen like
nineteen deaths in jail this year in San Diego. Right,
that that is not seen as an issue of evidently
to the people who voted for it, to the Democratic
Party who endorsed her, and instead like they would much
(30:41):
rather have that because there presumably worried that they person
who ran against her in the primaries would be too
soft own crime and therefore know their teslas might get keyed. Yeah,
so okay, let's let's look at the supposed benefits. I
guess those are the benefits. Let's look at let'sok at
(31:02):
the costs. Finally, finally, consider the cost of policing. On
the one hand, a world of more policing would perhaps
unsurprisingly be a world of more arrests. Based on recent
work by Chaplin, our best guest is at the first
world balanced would be a world of almost seven point
eight million arrests. On the other hand, for some for okay,
(31:26):
this is a direct quote. By the way, I need
everyone to understand I am directly quoting them when I
say this. On the other hand, for the somewhat speculative
reasons we gave earlier, we guess that a world of
more policing would be one of less police violence, about
nine fewer people killed by the police. Based on what America.
(31:47):
That's what that's that's how James Americle occurs more cops
than do less violence. Ye yeah, this you know you
could if you were, for example, a social scientist, right
at all, you could look at all of the all
of the other times the US has gotten more cops
and tried to see if that like increased or decreased
(32:07):
the amount of violence the police do. And you know
the line, if drown the line. It's all good that
I just I do want your attention to figure one
where they have exactly one data point and then they've
just drawn a line to it. They dissected a data
point like blind line. Like this whole thing is just
(32:29):
sort of like like okay, So even if somehow right
by some miracle, this occurred, un less people were killed
by the police. We're killed by police vis because there
was more cops. Which this is the kind of thing
that for for for the purposes of this thought experiment, right,
we are allowing people to believe this, like for the
same reason that we allowed children to believe in the
Easter Bunny. So kids don't believe in the Easter Bundy.
(32:57):
I have I have met kids who believe to the
Easter Bunny. I understand believing in Santa, but do people
actually believe in the Easter Bunny? And not many? Not many?
But also also also most people don't believe the police
will be more violent if if you have if it
will be less violent if you have more of them. Yeah,
let's let's let's let's let them believe this. Right. This
(33:20):
entire argument hinges on the theory that incarceration and arrest
are distinct outcomes of policing. Right, they're arguing that there's
going to be more arrest but that's okay because there
will be less people in prison. Now, there is one
tidy problem here that you may have seen, which is
that when you arrest people, it leads to people going
(33:42):
to prison. Nowhere in this entire article have these two
Harvard professors at any point considered the fact that when
you arrest someone, they sometimes go to prison, and that
arresting more people will mean more people go to prison,
because that's what happens when you arrest someone. They've never
(34:04):
considered this, and in fact, in fact, not only have
they never considered this, they seem to believe that there
is an inverse correlation between the number of people getting
arrested and how many people go to prison. They think
that seven million, eight hundred thousand more arrests will somehow
lead to one point two million people less in prison.
(34:24):
It's yeah, itsn't the fuck what people in this country
die in between arrest and their hearing, right, Like, in
between arrested and having a fair trial, Like yeah, to
ignore that, it's it's not just like, it's not just wrong,
it's callously cruel. Also, like they appeared to have not
(34:47):
looked at any point at the opportunity cost of having
all these cops. Right, we pay tops a metric ship
ton of money because they're the only unions that apparently
the state cares about, and like we could do something
useful with that money, right, Like, well, the thing, the
thing they claim they're doing is that they're going to
fund less prisons and fund more cops, and this will
leads to less people being in prison. Now, if this
(35:09):
doesn't make any sense to you, that's because it doesn't
make any sense at all. And and and again we
have to come back to the question what do you
think happens to people who get arrested? Like do these
people think they can send notification to Tahiti? Like I
know none of these people, none of people writing this,
have been arrested. But like you can't be the stupid,
Like there's no way it's God. So okay, Like we're
(35:35):
I'm gonna close on some stuff here, which I'm gonna
close on the sort of anarchist stuff that they they're
ranting about. Um, I'm gonna gonna read another quote from this.
Some civil libertarians might prefer radical decarceration without any increase
or perhaps even some reduction in police force size, on
the grounds that stayed imposed violence or harm is morally
different from and worse than, interpersonal violence committed by private individuals.
(35:58):
An extreme version of this position would hold that no
amount of interpersonal violence could ever justify the use of
coercive force by the state, But any state completely lacking
and coercive power would be unable to enforce tax law
and policy, and thus unable to collect revenue. Without revenue,
the governor could not provide public goods to a social
safety net. Which also, by the way, I want to
stop here in like point out that, like they like
(36:22):
in any other context, none of these people believe this
because like these these people are all deo chart lists,
like that, they're all unempty people, and so they don't
actually believe that money that they they in any other
context except this one, they understand that money is something
created by the state, except here when they have to
justify police Without revenue, governments cannot provide public goods or
a social safety net. So this extreme version of libertarian
(36:44):
civil libertarianition is essentially a kind of political anarchism, and
we doubt many are in fact committed to this brand
of anarchism. So okay, well, let's unpack the second when
they say civil libertarianisms. Here, what they say is that
anyone who proposes to defund the lease or reduce a
number of people in prison. Right in the next paragraph,
they argue that anyone who wants to do those things
(37:07):
is actually in favor of increasing the homicide rate because
when there's less when there's less cops than quote, serious
crime runs unchecked in poor neighborhoods, which leaves you with
two choices. Right, you can be an anarch quote unquote
anarchist and let the crime happen because you supported decreasing
the number of cops, or you can support having more cops. Yeah,
(37:27):
it's yeah, it's just an absurd extrapolation of a position. Well,
but it's it's not just that they've they've given. What
they're doing here is they're giving their entire gameaway. Right.
What they've admitted is that their ideal society requires and
this is what they are saying about the state's need
for corrocive power, right with their own arguments, they the
course of power they need is the police. And so
(37:49):
what they're saying is that their politics requires an entire
class of rapist, neo Nazi murderers to you know, like
to enforce their vision of the welfare state. Like, in
order for there to be a of for state, who
have to be a bunch of people who can fucking
walk into your door and shoot you, Right, there have
to be a group of people who can fucking stand there,
grab your child, smash your head into a wall fifteen times,
and then fucking grab you and throw you through a window. Right.
(38:12):
This is what they are arguing, and and this pays
the question. Okay, so why does people want more cops?
And you know, the caricature they offer up is that
without cops everyone would just murder each other, and so
we need neo Nazi desk outs to stop us often
murdering each other. But okay, that's stupid, right, like self
evidently police police are only like police are not that old.
(38:33):
They've only been around for like two hundred years, so
we know that's not true. So why do they actually
want more cops? And you know, something something that's very interesting,
given that this is an article about the police that
is written by people who are on the editorial board
of socialist magazines, nowhere in this article doesn't mention the
fact that the cops exist to protect private property. Right.
(38:56):
This is this is a huge part of what their existence.
Right Their job is to ensure if there is one
class of people who owns the factories in the field
and the grocery stores and the fast food chains and
the fucking card dealerships, and that there is another class
who was forced to work for them and have their
labor stolen every day of their lives. And of course
these sort of like faux pro cop, this pro cop,
like fo social democrats will never mention it, right, But
(39:17):
these people's version of quote unquote socialism is one in
which all that ship, all the stuff that makes things, like,
all of the businesses, all of the corporations, all of
the all that ship is owned by capitalists and not
the working class. They need those cops specifically to protect
the property of the ruling class from you, right like
that that that is ultimately what this is about, the
(39:37):
specter of crime. And and this is true whether it's
coming from socialists or whether it's coming from the most
like unbelievably deranged Blue Lives Matter cop freak. It is
about stopping you from taking what is yours? And that
that's the end of part one. In part two, we're
gonna look at the whole sort of background ideology that's
(39:58):
running all of this and it also sucks. So yeah,
come back tomorrow for more great news. Love it. It
could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
(40:20):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It's the podcast. It's it could happen here. It is
about something that could happen here very specifically. Um, yeah,
I'm I'm Christopher Wong. I'm here with James Stout and
Garrison Davis. Hello. Hello, do you both Hello? We all
joined the sim call that that did happen here, and
that did show everybody. All right, Okay, so that's the
(00:26):
thing that that did happen here, and now we're gonna
talk with something that could happen here. And that specific
thing is, uh a call by two Harvard academics to
hire five hundred thousand more cops. Nope, so okay there,
Like I don't I don't know when this is going
to go up. But sometime in the past that there
(00:46):
was a piece that went viral by civil rights lawyer
and anti prison activist turned media critic Alec Karaka Tanis
about a pair of Harvard academics who wrote this article
calling for five thousand more cops. And this is okay,
Like the fact that we have academics writing position papers
basically that are calling for five hundred thousand more cops
is terrifying in and of itself. But but but crime,
(01:07):
is that a record high. You're about to see ship.
You're about to see You're about to see and hear
ship that is going to make your fucking ears bleed
because it's not like, Okay, normally these are Harvard academics, right,
So you're assuming these are like right wing nats at Googles, right,
or like their equivalent in in in this sort of
like you know, these are not. This was written by
(01:31):
a socialist. And when I say a socialist right like,
I don't mean a sort of like one of the
sort of like terminally online desperate cranks trying to hold
together like a Maoist micro sect. I'm talking about people
who are incredibly well connected inside the mainstream socialist left.
So the authors of this call for five hundred thousand
more cops are Christopher Lewis, who is a Harvard law
(01:53):
professor who makes me embarrassed to have my own name,
and more interestingly, Harvard sociology for us are auditor Usumi.
So who is auditor Usumi Um. He is on the board.
He's on the editorial board of Catalyst, which is a
Marxist man. Okay, do you do you have you two
know what Catalyst is? Yeah, besides the sequel to the
(02:15):
mirror original game and now I doubt Yeah, Okay, so
they're they're a a Marxist magazine. There's supposed to be
a more sort of theoretical Marxist like magazine founded by
a guy named vie Vic Chibber, who's a pretty influential
sort of like soaked n Marxist who could be found
literally in any any of the last like five decades,
you can find him yelling about the cultural turn in
(02:36):
academia and calling for a return of political economy. Yes,
yelling about this for decades longer. I think he's been
yelling about this for longer than I've been alive. God, Like,
that's how long go on. People have definitely been like
(02:57):
fetching about the cultural turn for longer than any of
us have been a live. Yeah, And and they've been
wrong for that entire time. And she was like one
of the guys who trained us to me in the
first place. Now catalysts other major founder um is much
more famous, and that's someone you probably have heard of,
who is one Bosh car Sonkara, who is the current
(03:20):
President of the Nation and also the founder of Jocobin
where and this is where it gets fun us to me.
Also on the editorial board of Jocobin, this is the
guy caring for five hundred that was more cops. Right.
This isn't coming from the usable sort of like rabid reactionaries.
This is coming from people who have serious credentials in
the mainstream socialists left and Okay, so all right, I
(03:46):
want to talk about what's actually in the paper. And
the first thing I need I ever want to understand
about this from the get go is that this is
maybe the worst paper I've ever read. Like if I
had tried to turn this paper into my like freshman
like into like my an undergrad class, I would have failed.
Like when when when I was in my freshman year
(04:06):
in college, I had to read Biblical analysis written by
a freshman Ted Cruise supporter who was arguing that there
was a problem in the Bible where there was no
way for God to talk to people. This is worse
than that and the Koran. It's like, how is how
how is that worth? Chris? Okay, So let's let's let's
(04:26):
just start off right. I'm gonna I'm gonna start off
with a random part in the middle, so you understand
how just mind numbingly atrocious. This is okay, So I'm
gonna I'm gonna read this. This is an article called,
and I'm not kidding about the title of this quote,
the Injustice of under policing in America. Uh yeah, so
(04:49):
we're starting we're starting off so yeah, so so, so
before we get into the actual main argument, I'm just
gonna read this quote, which is right. Even if our
answers prove unsound, we hope that the combination of empirical
social science and analytic moral and political philosophy we can
(05:11):
we contribute can help eliminate what alternative answers to those
questions might have to look like to be sound. Which,
first off, terrible sis. This is why I would prefer
the immortal science of Arktis Latinism. This is awful, Like
said said this writing terrible said it back to an editor.
Give them a decade, they'll come back with it. Second off,
I literally cannot imagine two disciplines I would like rather
(05:37):
less apply to the problem of mass incarceration than those
like these authors have dared asked the question, what if
we combined the bone rattling stupidity of analytic philosophy with
the sociologist, complete inability to do statistics. And the answer
is this, and what I say, complete inability to do statistics? Right,
I need people to understand how bad this article is,
(06:00):
like I I like, I like viscerally needs you to understand.
So here, here is here, here is a quote. Here's
another section of this article. But while firearm availability, no
doubt has some impact on the level of violence, we
think the effect is likely to be small. A large
effect would be difficult to square with other patterns across place, persons,
(06:22):
and time. Consider, for example, that while the United States
has ten times as many guns as El Salvador, the
homicide rate there is roughly ten times higher than it
is here. Now stats nowhere is Think for a second
about what they just compared, Right, the United States has
ten times as many guns, the homicide rate in El
(06:44):
Salvador as ten times higher. Right pulation, Yeah, yeah, I think, Okay,
what what does the US have more of than El Salvador? No, no,
we have more guns, but we also have fifty times
the population. The million people of Salvador is six point
five million people, which means, again, if if you're looking
(07:06):
at this in terms of guns per capita, right, a
salpitarors guns per capita is actually five times higher than ours. Wow,
that's quite impressive. Yeah, and financial perspective because we have
a lot of guns. Yeah. Right, And you know, okay, again,
if you're if you're gonna do basic statistics, right, you
(07:26):
would think that these professors at Harvard University would know
the difference between a rate of gun ownership and the
pure owner of ship of guns. They do not. They
do not do they not? Have they decided that they're
going to pretend they don't. I don't. Okay, here's the
thing going into this, right, I assume this was just
sort of pure hackshit, and I think a lot of
(07:47):
it is. I think they also are genuinely this dumb
like genuine I I it's it's really incredible. Like I
mean again, like the thing like like the thing they've
actually demonstrated with their own number BRUS is precisely the
opposite of what they're arguing. The thing they've demonstrated with
the numbers they have given us is that there is
a correlation between gun ownership rates and the homicide rate. Right,
(08:09):
Like they're trying to there. This entire section is about
proving that there that they that the number of guns.
Doesn't like that. This isn't even like this isn't me
like like I don't like this is not like me
yelling about gun control or whatever. Like. This is just
to get you to understand the level of statistics these
people are on. And also I should point this Outum.
I tracked down their citation because I wanted to make
(08:30):
sure I didn't I wasn't misunderstanding their arguments, right. So
I tracked down their citation on these numbers, and I
went to the paper they cited, and the thing they
cited does not have a gun ownership numbers for El Salvador.
So I have no idea where they getting any of
these numbers. They apparently they quite possibly have pulled this
out of there as completely because apparently apparently nobody checked
if their citations actually contain the things that they're supposed
(08:53):
to get. This is what I wanted to talk about.
There is a thing that happens when you get Tanya
or you've become a professor at the various university, and
that thing is you just say shit and people trust you.
Like we've seen this time and again in the academy.
Right that, like peer review is not serving its function
because like the status hierarchy of people in academia is
(09:14):
more important to both the peer reviewers and the people
doing the writing than the actual process of peer review. Yeah,
like their citations are this is an interesting Uh, this
is I don't know that they they they've made the
capital letters larger, they use small arms survey. I guess
(09:34):
for that. Obviously it doesn't it doesn't. It does show
it doesn't have those numbers. It's amazing. Okay, so you know,
we've we've we've established that these people are absolute hacks
who whose work would have gotten be failed out of
an undergrad course. So to be fair, maybe it's actually
it's it's technically possible. The University of Chicago just holds
its students to more rigorous standards than Harvard or M I. T.
(09:56):
Whose journal published this does their intellectuals. So you know,
I we we never know. This is also I never
used Jacobin as a source on the show because they
pay fifty bucks per article and that ship way. Yeah,
Jacobin not a cool publication, actually not mega based. Yeah,
(10:17):
your workers, if you're pertaining to be socialised, yeah, you're
trying to be like a labor but Bosh Garconara is
on the record talking about the quote, his quote petite
bourgeois hustle, talking about how we made Jacobin. So you know, okay,
we'll we'll we'll get back to the class aspect of
all of this next episode. But okay, let's let's go
(10:37):
back to this paper and let's take a second just
look at what they're actually arguing. And the first thing
I need you used to understand about their argument is
that their entire, the entire substantive argument of this paper
hinges on an absolutely enormous lie. Um he let me,
let let let me, let me we quote this lie.
(10:57):
Yet it also illustrates the much less well known fact
that America is not in all an outlier and it's
rate of policing. The United States has around two hundred
and twelve police officers for every hundred thousand total residents,
which ranks it in the forty one percentile of today's
developed world. Now, as Alec Carricatanas points out, they've deliberately
(11:18):
picked the lowest number of cops they can find any like,
the lowest reported number of cops in the US I
can find anywhere. Um, And so they picked six hundred
thousand from basically like it's they picked this number from
an FBI reporting thing. But the FBI also says that
they don't have all the cops there because it's it's
like it's basically like a voluntary reporting thing. So there's
a bunch of cops that aren't there. And then, um,
(11:40):
here's from Karakatatas, who's a piece about this quote the professors.
The professor then admitted privately over email that the US
census count is actually one million, two hundred twenty seven thousand,
seven eight police. That's seventies six percent higher for the
number they chose to article. What is this anificates of
(12:00):
this using this number they admitted to me, the United
States truthfully has one point one times the media rated
rich countries. So they've been over the email that they have.
This whole article is based on them lying how many
cops there are in the US, and it's actually way
worse than this because as as as he points out right,
(12:23):
this number than to the number that they're using only
tracks a public police, so they doesn't count private police.
And if you count private police, that number doubles. Again,
not like there's private police, there's there's no five cops. Right,
And and the other thing isn't this The other thing
is doesn't count? Is this counts zero federal agencies? I
(12:45):
just gonna say that it doesn't count. Federal agency does
doesn't count? Like state police even I think, I think,
actually I don't know. You can't shareff Is that not police?
Their deputies? They're different highway patrol. Who's who's to say
who's spent more time on this? And they have already yeah, right, right, okay,
(13:10):
like to to get it to to get it understanding
of this, even if you exclude the Feds entirely right
to exclud And again and this is actually a bad
idea because again we have like a fucking trillion federal agencies,
for example, ice in the border patrol, who again run
just another police state inside of the American police state, right,
we have that. And obviously, okay, so he's comparing our
(13:33):
our level of policing to policing in in uh in
like European countries, right, And okay, I I don't want
to minimize how many border cops European countries have, but
the US has way fucking more border cups. They do
not like they do horrible things I will yell at
the until the end of time about how every every
(13:55):
friend text member needs to be like redacted, etcetera, etcetera. Parody.
But like, no, great, great, even even even if you
cut that out right, the actual number of cops in
the US is three times higher than the number they've
given us. Actually it might be yeah, yeah, okay, I
feel like there's there's anything that we can agree on
(14:16):
as a nation. Is that America kind of has a
lot of police. That's like, that's like what everyone kind
of knows. That's like people like the place with like
the really like it's like really militarized and heavy policing. Yeah,
like like a person who moved to America, it is
shocking how many cops there are, how many different cops
(14:37):
there are, and how there are cops everywhere all the time.
It is the thing that it is very different about America.
Oh god, okay, so statistic to get that number quite possibly,
like ship yeah yeah, I would absolutely if one of
(14:59):
my students in community, God days, we'd have a tool. Okay, okay,
So do you know what else is based on the
myth I under policing these adverts for private cops, Yes,
Federal Protective Service gets them. All right, we're back. Uh okay,
(15:26):
So all right, we've established that this this, this is
this is This argument is built on a pile of lines. However,
the actual content of the argument is also really funny
and completely incomprehensible. So their argument is that somehow, if
the US had more cops, right, and and and if
(15:47):
if if if the ratio of cops to people like
that the U S had was like in line with
the European countries, that somehow and there they never have
a mechanism for how this would happen. This would somehow
lower the incarceration rate. I think the mechanism is lyne uh.
(16:07):
That's what everyone says, is that we have more police
that lowers incarceration rates. Yeah. Yeah. The entire argument here
is what if the US was like Sweden, then there
would be five thousand more cops, but somehow also less
one also one point nine million less uh prisoners. So well,
anything that's different between US and Sweden is cops. Oh god? Okay,
(16:31):
So so what why are socialists pushing for this? And
especially socialists and again as these are these are people
who in their article admit that they think the best
way to deal with with poverty and with crime is
welfare programs, not mass incarceration. So okay, so why why
why are they pushing for this? And the initial answer
is that they think they can reduce crime, specifically homicides
(16:54):
by increasing policing, and they think which should be fair
is an opinion that I would say, at this point,
probably the majority of Americans have maybe I don't know
if I buy that. I don't know if that I
think you may be a little bit further out of
(17:14):
the Overton window. I think the majority of Americans, I think,
do do believe that if there's a few more cobs,
maybe we'll have a few less murders. I don't know
what we'll we'll we'll see about that. But Okay. The
other thing, though, that's sort of like amazing about this, right,
is that they think, okay, so they think they can
(17:34):
cut the homicide rate by hiring more police. They also
think that hiring more police I will solve the problem
with policing because the problem with police is that the
police don't do enough, and so we need more of them.
And then and then and then also this will make
them less violent. I mean, this is something this is
even the this is even like the whole like Joe
(17:57):
Biden like, oh, we have to we can't. We can't
defund the police. We have to fund the police, have
to resources because Brenie Sanders also made this achievement. If
they have less resources, then that means they'll have to
use more violence. And it's that that style of arguments,
it's it's talking point. Yeah. But what's interesting about this
again is that these people nominally are socialists, and you know,
(18:20):
in order to justify this right, they argued that while
being in prison is bad, and then they list a
bunch of consequences of being in prison, being in a
neighborhood is with high crime is also as bad for
the same reason. They're literally arguing that being in a
place with crime is basically the same as being in prison,
(18:41):
big time prison understanding. Like I look, okay, there are
there are very few people I would ever say this. Look,
I hope these people got to do withthnography of this
one day, Like I I hope, I hope they get
to go do what the inside of prison is, like
I think participant observation. Yeah, I don't think it should
(19:05):
do this Like you like they're there there, there are
there are lines in this article like here here, here
is a random line I've pulled from this article, and
they say at one point quote, in fact, black people
seem to be underrepresented among those who report ever having
been arrested in their lifetimes. What alright, that is a
(19:25):
direct quote citation is what they They've done some absolutely
insane I'm not even I'm not I'm not actually going
to dignify them by laying out the stats bullshit that
they've they've they've attempt to justify this, like we have
already seen what their stats look like. Theirs are trying
to compare a rate to the Yeah, it's insane, it's
(19:48):
completely nuts. Like that's the one thing that that's the
one thing that even like racist like Republicans like no
is like they'll be like, yeah, there's more because because
you don't like people and that's not why. But whatever. Yeah,
I'm between this paragraph now and it is actually bad.
(20:09):
So okay, I think, okay, so we have established this
is bullshit, Right, I want to read a kind of
long section that I think gives the game away as
to why they're arguing this quote. We think in the
long run, a significant expansion of social policy, we reduce
crime by addressing its root causes, and in turn reduced
(20:31):
the need demand for both policing and imprisonments. Okay, other world,
this is true, I would say probably probably true. In
other work, we argue that any coherent conception of distributive
justice or economic efficiency entails that the United States should
expand its social policy. But a significant expansion of social
policy requires significant redistribution from rich to poor. Redistribution of
(20:54):
this magnitude will require the poorer to wield some kind
of leverage over the rich. Given the collapse of the
American labor movement and the electoral fracturing of the American
working class, we doubt we will see anything like this soon.
Our aim in this essay is to say something useful
about what should be done in the non ideal world
in which we live, not just in the ideal world
(21:15):
in which we would like to live. Say hold on, wait,
let me let me let me read this next sentence.
It gets worse. Okay, to say something about that question.
We limit ourselves two options that are revenue neutral. Ah,
these are socialists so bizarre. I think they may have
(21:37):
walked outside. They've just given up. Yeah, like like they've
they've you know, okay, there's okay, so there's actually more
of this that is also like like it keeps can
never have a better world. And you know what that means.
It's that we should have more police. Here here, here
is here is their defense ofness. But why consider only
(21:59):
prisons and police. Why couldn't the government redistribute the existing
pool of money from prisons and police to social program
as many reformers have demanded. We argue in and What's
Wrong with Mass Incarceration? Which is a book that they're
going to release that I hope nobody buys. I trust.
(22:21):
This is because social policy is bedeviled by what we
call the efficiency feasibility paradox. To address the root causes
of crime would be meaningfully to change the opportunity structure
for the most disadvantaged people in America. To do this
by expanding untargeted universal social programs will require significant resources,
since the vast majority of beneficiaries are not America's most
(22:43):
disadvantaged people. Because penal spending is hyper targeted in a
way that social spending is not. It costs about three
billion dollars a year to run the world's most extensive
penal state, but something like three trillion dollars to run
its most abnemic welfare state. We admit that our signific
this is on a slightly lated paragraph. We admit there
are significant obstacles to changing the balance that state and
(23:05):
local government strike between the arms of law enforcements. There are,
after all, reasons that the United States has involved at
the present day penal balance. But our view is at
the first world balance. So the first world balances is
the thing they're talking about that like supposedly Norway has,
or some ship where they have bore cops, but like
per capita but less people incarcerated, um. But our view
(23:26):
is that the first world balance is nonetheless substantially more
feasible than any of the than the kinds of things
that reformers tend to demand today. In the highly unequal
aligarhic America in which we live at present, calls to
calls to reallocate a fixed pool of revenue will meet
with less powerful opposition than calls to tacks the rich.
(23:48):
That is why we assume it is infeasible to expect
the United States to build a generous welfare state in
the mold of the Scandinavian social democracies. Proposals to use
hyper targeted social policy to adjust the root causes of
crime are similarly infeasible, as we have argued, to be efficient,
a social policy intervention must meaningfully transform the opportunity structures
(24:09):
of those most likely to commit crime. I mean, an
intervention that transformed the structures of opportunity only in only
those in this position will up end the effective in
central structure of unequal societies, thus coming up the economy
and eliciting political opposition. I mean, here's Here's the thing
is that in some ways I agree that the United
States won't get better by making social policies within my lifetime.
(24:33):
But my solution to this is a legalist lifestylist of
not hiring more cops. Well, don't worry, there is there
is a significant section of this weather shipped on anarchism. Okay, okay,
this is what fucking happens when all your friends are
also Harvard professors. I mean it's also real fucking people,
(24:55):
because you don't fucking talk to them and they're like, oh,
we the liver. It's it's obviously written by somebody who's
currently like well off, like it's they're currently doing well,
which is why because they because they don't think the
world's gonna turn into socialist utopia, but they're personally doing okay.
The way to make the world feel better for them
(25:17):
is maybe more police will make me feel safer. That's
that's what that's what they're doing is because they're already
well off and they're like, well, social isn't coming. I
want to live a happier life. Maybe police will keep
the bad people away from me. Yeah, because they see
poverty of an issue of poverty is upstream of crime.
A crime is a fucking annoyance to them because someone
(25:38):
might steal their fucking BMW again crime living in a
place where crime is the same as being in prison
because you cannot conceive because it's socialism without sucking empathy
or experience of fucking poverty. Right, So you can make
these ludicrous statements and all your friends in the smoking
(25:58):
room a Harvard will agree with you. Go ham yes,
and I mean, I mean this is the thing like
they they they fundamentally like when Bernie lost the election,
these people gave up on politics, Like that's what's happening there.
They're arguing that like not even is not even just
like the class rouges is unwinnable. They're arguing that basic
(26:19):
liberal politics is impossible, right, like taxing the rich like
is a thing that that that's not like a radical thing,
that's like like the basic that's like a basic democratic
party thing. And they're they're arguing that it's so impossible
that anyone who has a plan to change anything has
to pre means test it to be compliant with a
(26:41):
non existent balanced budget amendment to get the right to
support it, Like Liz trust here, shit like this is
this was written by what if the people on the
editorial board of Jocobin. Yeah, well that doesn't chock me.
But it's very funny to look at their citations, which
are people being like this article is horse shit and
(27:04):
then like like cops publications. Yeah okay, yeah, let's go
so okay, so so have having actually well okay, so
before we do, we should we should do another add thing.
Do you know what? Who else has completely abandoned the
idea that there's any possibility of social change in the world.
(27:24):
The Conservative Party and Union Party of Great Britain in
Northern Ireland. Yeah, do they I guess now we're thank
you Richie Suonac and okay, we're back. So so, having
(27:48):
abandoned politics in favor of complete capitulation to the forces
of reaction, they turned towards a cost benefit analysis of
having more cops. The benefit, they argue, is less cry
And this is bullshit. There is no statistical evidence to
having more cops produces crime. I have done, Like, there
are other reasons why this is bullshit I have done.
(28:10):
I have done the entire series about there is a
lot of writing on this topic and how this correlations,
how this correlation is not actually effective. Um, but yeah,
and and and it's also like a very important thing
here is this is this is a this is the
thing that's about what kind of crime you care about? Right,
(28:30):
Like I have written an entire series about why my
about you know, the times of my police department was
literally being run by multiple drug gartels at the same
time when they strapped us to fucking radiators and attacking
the balls the car batteries. They shot children to the street,
They disappeared people to be tortured in the fucking black sites,
and then they went to fucking a rock and teach
the CIA how to do it, Like, like these people
(28:51):
that the cops are they are rapist, they are kidnappers,
they are extortionists, they are thieves, they are torturers, they
are murders. A lot of them are in literal neo
Nazi gangs who run their own serial killer competitions. Um,
none of this apply, like appears in any of the
analysis that these dipshits have compiled. And it's the old
cultural turn to get involved. Look at the material conditions here, yeah, yeah,
(29:13):
then the material conditions apparently are cop go up, crime
go down, Which it's also important, Like I think it's
important to note there's a really good article I think
it was my ampost one called raise the Crime Rate
from this is from like two thousand six. But they
have that they have this point, which is that like
the reductions in the crime way that we like see,
(29:36):
insofar as they happen, are not actually reductions into the
amount of crime going on. Like what's happening is that
like we put people in prison and then the crime
happens to them there, right, Like, even even if you
reduce the homicide rate outside of prison, there's still the
(29:57):
homicide rate inside of prison, which nobody fucking it was
a shit about. And you know, because because again that
this crime doesn't go away, all that happens is that
it gets it, It gets you know, intensified and flicked
on a group of people the American public doesn't give
a shit about. So, you know, all of the violence,
all of the of the rape, all the fucking murder,
all of the theft, all of the ship we normally
throw people in prison for, in theory, is just happening
(30:19):
to people inside of prisons. It's just that academics can
stop pretaining to give a shit about it when they
don't have to see it. Yeah, I like where I live. Right,
we just re elected a sheriff who was overseen like
nineteen deaths in jail this year in San Diego. Right,
that that is not seen as an issue of evidently
to the people who voted for it, to the Democratic
Party who endorsed her, and instead like they would much
(30:41):
rather have that because there presumably worried that they person
who ran against her in the primaries would be too
soft own crime and therefore know their teslas might get keyed. Yeah,
so okay, let's let's look at the supposed benefits. I
guess those are the benefits. Let's look at let'sok at
(31:02):
the costs. Finally, finally, consider the cost of policing. On
the one hand, a world of more policing would perhaps
unsurprisingly be a world of more arrests. Based on recent
work by Chaplin, our best guest is at the first
world balanced would be a world of almost seven point
eight million arrests. On the other hand, for some for okay,
(31:26):
this is a direct quote. By the way, I need
everyone to understand I am directly quoting them when I
say this. On the other hand, for the somewhat speculative
reasons we gave earlier, we guess that a world of
more policing would be one of less police violence, about
nine fewer people killed by the police. Based on what America.
(31:47):
That's what that's that's how James Americle occurs more cops
than do less violence. Ye yeah, this you know you
could if you were, for example, a social scientist, right
at all, you could look at all of the all
of the other times the US has gotten more cops
and tried to see if that like increased or decreased
(32:07):
the amount of violence the police do. And you know
the line, if drown the line. It's all good that
I just I do want your attention to figure one
where they have exactly one data point and then they've
just drawn a line to it. They dissected a data
point like blind line. Like this whole thing is just
(32:29):
sort of like like okay, So even if somehow right
by some miracle, this occurred, un less people were killed
by the police. We're killed by police vis because there
was more cops. Which this is the kind of thing
that for for for the purposes of this thought experiment, right,
we are allowing people to believe this, like for the
same reason that we allowed children to believe in the
Easter Bunny. So kids don't believe in the Easter Bundy.
(32:57):
I have I have met kids who believe to the
Easter Bunny. I understand believing in Santa, but do people
actually believe in the Easter Bunny? And not many? Not many?
But also also also most people don't believe the police
will be more violent if if you have if it
will be less violent if you have more of them. Yeah,
let's let's let's let's let them believe this. Right. This
(33:20):
entire argument hinges on the theory that incarceration and arrest
are distinct outcomes of policing. Right, they're arguing that there's
going to be more arrest but that's okay because there
will be less people in prison. Now, there is one
tidy problem here that you may have seen, which is
that when you arrest people, it leads to people going
(33:42):
to prison. Nowhere in this entire article have these two
Harvard professors at any point considered the fact that when
you arrest someone, they sometimes go to prison, and that
arresting more people will mean more people go to prison,
because that's what happens when you arrest someone. They've never
(34:04):
considered this, and in fact, in fact, not only have
they never considered this, they seem to believe that there
is an inverse correlation between the number of people getting
arrested and how many people go to prison. They think
that seven million, eight hundred thousand more arrests will somehow
lead to one point two million people less in prison.
(34:24):
It's yeah, itsn't the fuck what people in this country
die in between arrest and their hearing, right, Like, in
between arrested and having a fair trial, Like yeah, to
ignore that, it's it's not just like, it's not just wrong,
it's callously cruel. Also, like they appeared to have not
(34:47):
looked at any point at the opportunity cost of having
all these cops. Right, we pay tops a metric ship
ton of money because they're the only unions that apparently
the state cares about, and like we could do something
useful with that money, right, Like, well, the thing, the
thing they claim they're doing is that they're going to
fund less prisons and fund more cops, and this will
leads to less people being in prison. Now, if this
(35:09):
doesn't make any sense to you, that's because it doesn't
make any sense at all. And and and again we
have to come back to the question what do you
think happens to people who get arrested? Like do these
people think they can send notification to Tahiti? Like I
know none of these people, none of people writing this,
have been arrested. But like you can't be the stupid,
Like there's no way it's God. So okay, Like we're
(35:35):
I'm gonna close on some stuff here, which I'm gonna
close on the sort of anarchist stuff that they they're
ranting about. Um, I'm gonna gonna read another quote from this.
Some civil libertarians might prefer radical decarceration without any increase
or perhaps even some reduction in police force size, on
the grounds that stayed imposed violence or harm is morally
different from and worse than, interpersonal violence committed by private individuals.
(35:58):
An extreme version of this position would hold that no
amount of interpersonal violence could ever justify the use of
coercive force by the state, But any state completely lacking
and coercive power would be unable to enforce tax law
and policy, and thus unable to collect revenue. Without revenue,
the governor could not provide public goods to a social
safety net. Which also, by the way, I want to
stop here in like point out that, like they like
(36:22):
in any other context, none of these people believe this
because like these these people are all deo chart lists,
like that, they're all unempty people, and so they don't
actually believe that money that they they in any other
context except this one, they understand that money is something
created by the state, except here when they have to
justify police Without revenue, governments cannot provide public goods or
a social safety net. So this extreme version of libertarian
(36:44):
civil libertarianition is essentially a kind of political anarchism, and
we doubt many are in fact committed to this brand
of anarchism. So okay, well, let's unpack the second when
they say civil libertarianisms. Here, what they say is that
anyone who proposes to defund the lease or reduce a
number of people in prison. Right in the next paragraph,
they argue that anyone who wants to do those things
(37:07):
is actually in favor of increasing the homicide rate because
when there's less when there's less cops than quote, serious
crime runs unchecked in poor neighborhoods, which leaves you with
two choices. Right, you can be an anarch quote unquote
anarchist and let the crime happen because you supported decreasing
the number of cops, or you can support having more cops. Yeah,
(37:27):
it's yeah, it's just an absurd extrapolation of a position. Well,
but it's it's not just that they've they've given. What
they're doing here is they're giving their entire gameaway. Right.
What they've admitted is that their ideal society requires and
this is what they are saying about the state's need
for corrocive power, right with their own arguments, they the
course of power they need is the police. And so
(37:49):
what they're saying is that their politics requires an entire
class of rapist, neo Nazi murderers to you know, like
to enforce their vision of the welfare state. Like, in
order for there to be a of for state, who
have to be a bunch of people who can fucking
walk into your door and shoot you, Right, there have
to be a group of people who can fucking stand there,
grab your child, smash your head into a wall fifteen times,
and then fucking grab you and throw you through a window. Right.
(38:12):
This is what they are arguing, and and this pays
the question. Okay, so why does people want more cops?
And you know, the caricature they offer up is that
without cops everyone would just murder each other, and so
we need neo Nazi desk outs to stop us often
murdering each other. But okay, that's stupid, right, like self
evidently police police are only like police are not that old.
(38:33):
They've only been around for like two hundred years, so
we know that's not true. So why do they actually
want more cops? And you know, something something that's very interesting,
given that this is an article about the police that
is written by people who are on the editorial board
of socialist magazines, nowhere in this article doesn't mention the
fact that the cops exist to protect private property. Right.
(38:56):
This is this is a huge part of what their existence.
Right Their job is to ensure if there is one
class of people who owns the factories in the field
and the grocery stores and the fast food chains and
the fucking card dealerships, and that there is another class
who was forced to work for them and have their
labor stolen every day of their lives. And of course
these sort of like faux pro cop, this pro cop,
like fo social democrats will never mention it, right, But
(39:17):
these people's version of quote unquote socialism is one in
which all that ship, all the stuff that makes things, like,
all of the businesses, all of the corporations, all of
the all that ship is owned by capitalists and not
the working class. They need those cops specifically to protect
the property of the ruling class from you, right like
that that that is ultimately what this is about, the
(39:37):
specter of crime. And and this is true whether it's
coming from socialists or whether it's coming from the most
like unbelievably deranged Blue Lives Matter cop freak. It is
about stopping you from taking what is yours? And that
that's the end of part one. In part two, we're
gonna look at the whole sort of background ideology that's
(39:58):
running all of this and it also sucks. So yeah,
come back tomorrow for more great news. Love it. It
could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Well more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
(40:20):
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
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James Stout
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