May 13, 2026 • 45 mins
Answering the why of crime trends is frequently much harder than answering the what. The same data inevitably leads to very different explanations depending on how you interpret them and what you think is driving them, and there are rarely “right” answers.
The numbers are fairly clear, the reasons behind that are not. To get at some of the reasons why crime has trended as it as I’m turning to Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who focuses on crime, disorder, and what he describes as the public policy of antisocial behavior.
In this episode, we talk through the differences in how we can explain what’s happening now, the role of policing and social factors, and how concepts like disorder shape how people experience safety in ways that don’t always show up in traditional metrics.
Charles Fain Lehman is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and senior editor of City Journal. He focuses primarily on the public policy of antisocial behavior, including issues of crime, drugs, and public disorder. His work has appeared in outlets including the New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and National Review, and he has discussed policy issues before the Senate, House of Representatives, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
Answering the why of crimetrends is frequently much harder
than answering the what.
The same data inevitably leadsto very different explanations
depending on how you interpretthem and what you think is
driving them.
This trend shows up clearly inconversations about what's
happening over the last fewyears with crime.
Crime went up sharply, then itcame down.
(00:22):
The numbers are fairly clear.
The reasons behind that are not.
My guest today is Charles FainLehman, a fellow at the
Manhattan Institute who focuseson crime, disorder, and what he
describes as the public policyof antisocial behavior.
In this episode, we talk throughthe differences in how we can
explain what's happening now,the role of policing and social
factors, and how concepts likedisorder shape how people
(00:44):
experience safety in ways thatdon't always show up in
traditional metrics.
Let's dive in.
Charles, thank you so much forjoining me.
Absolutely happy to be here.
So let's start with yourbackground.
How did you get to be here?
SPEAKER_01 (00:58):
Gosh, that's a great question.
The answer is that I used to bea journalist.
I worked for a publicationcalled the Washington Free
Beacon for about five years.
And there I sort of developed adata-driven policy-focused beat.
A lot of my work focused oncrime and social policy,
although not exclusively, butpart of how I differentiated
(01:20):
myself, and I should say, youknow, I work for a right of
center think tank, the freebeacons are right of center
publication.
Part of how I differentiatedmyself, particularly among the
sort of right-of-center world,was trying to answer questions
with numbers, trying to not justsort of report what people told
me, but really dig into the dataand teaching myself the skills
to do that.
And then at some point thatevolved into my work at a think
(01:41):
tank, the Manhattan Institute,where I now am, where much of
my, you know, my focus verybroadly is on what I like to
talk about as the public policyof antisocial behavior.
What I mean by that is a lot ofpolicy questions are concerned
with coordination.
We have fixed resources, we haveinfinite wants.
How do we divide things up?
Healthcare policy is a greatexample.
(02:09):
Doing those things, how can youdo that in a responsible and
functional fashion?
Crime is a natural component ofthat.
Public disorder, which I thinkwe're going to talk about today,
drug use, any social issues is awide, wide swath of policy.
So, you know, I I and I try tocome at those from uh an
evidence-informed and uhdata-driven perspective to sort
of bring a little more nuance tothose conversations.
SPEAKER_00 (02:30):
All right.
So I like to start theseinterviews off and start with
sort of the easy softballquestions and get harder as we
go along.
So why is murder falling?
SPEAKER_01 (02:39):
Great question.
That's a very that's a verystraightforward one.
Uh you know, I look, theresponsible answer is we don't
know.
And I'm sure I'm not the firstguest on your show to say that.
And, you know, I go out of myway to offer that caveat because
I'll then I'll then offer mytheories, but they are just
theories.
And in some senses, you know,obviously we can't estimate the
counterfactual world in whichthe set of things I talk about
(03:02):
don't happen.
We don't, we don't know.
As a general rule, though, theway that I have tended to think
about the decline over the pastcouple of years is that, you
know, it is not like the bigincrease and decrease in murder
in the 1960s through the 1990s,that that's sort of the big cr
the great crime wave and thenit's retreat.
There, I tend to think that thedemographic structural factors
(03:24):
tell us a lot.
The the big part of the story Ilike to say, the big thing I
like to highlight is that's whenthe baby boom generation ages
into and out of crime.
Frank Zimring, thecriminologist, estimates that's
about half of the increase anddecrease is the baby is the age
structure of the population.
Here we don't see the that sortof same long-term demographic
trends.
(03:44):
It's just like up and then down.
And I think that, you know, at astructural level, we should
expect crime rates to be low.
The population is graying, we'reall more obese than we used to
be, although that's maybeturning around a little bit.
We're all way more surveilledthan we used to be.
Like all the all the factorsthat sort of determine the
equilibrium crime level pointtowards like lower crime.
(04:05):
And then we saw this sort ofsharp upwards deviation and then
a return almost as sharply overa brief period of time.
And so I tend to think it's likethat that that tells me there's
some kind of shock.
There's an exogenous shock tothat otherwise equilibrium
level.
And I tend to say, look, thereare two sides to that story.
One is the COVID-19 pandemicclearly has to be a part of that
(04:26):
story.
There's a sort of an immediateand durable change in the level
of social control provided byboth formal and informal
institutions.
We closed all the jail, weclosed many jails, we shut down
courts for a long time, schoolswere closed, places of work,
like the places that you go tobe socially surveilled, those
(04:48):
stopped operating for a while.
That clearly is a big part ofthe story.
That can't be the whole story.
A, because other nations did notexperience the same increase
that we did, even though theywere treated by code as well.
B, because there's basicallylike a negative correlation
between COVID compliance andbeing willing to commit crimes,
i.e., the sort of people whomurder each other mostly
probably were not followingsocial distancing rules.
(05:10):
They aren't the kind of peopleon average who are likely to do
that.
Which means I also think that abig part of the story is the
drawdown in police activity inthe immediate aftermath of the
murder of George Floyd and therise of the defund the police
movement.
You see this across a number ofdifferent sources.
In your own work, in particular,the decline in staffing in big
(05:30):
city departments, where we'veseen not a decline in the
overall police staffing level,but I think you see officers
flowing to departments wherethere is less crime, and so you
have less access to thoseresources.
There are some measures by whichyou see declines in police
activity or police proactivity.
Cops are doing fewer stops,fewer arrests.
And in many places, those haverebounded.
(05:51):
So, you know, I tend to thinklike basically that problem has
gotten better, at least to somedegree, although not absolutely.
The COVID problem has obviouslygotten a lot better.
And also just like there's anatural burnout where like the
people who are victims of murderare often also the people who
commit murder.
And you know, to be morbid, likethose people eventually are no
(06:11):
longer in the supply ofmurderers because they
themselves have been murdered.
And so you end up getting aburnout effect.
And so all those factors, Ithink basically, you saw this
big shock in 2020, murder goesup, but it wasn't a like
demographic structural change.
It wasn't a change to theequilibrium level of violence.
So I'm not surprised that weeventually came back down.
That was very long.
SPEAKER_00 (06:31):
I mean, that's that's as succinct as I've ever
put it.
So it's it's certainly a verydifficult question and one that
I I hate trying to answer, whichis why I guess I'm I'm trying to
get you to answer it assuccinctly as possible here.
Are there explanations that sortof for you know, more towards
the more recent decline in crimethat are sort of out there?
I know you mentioned the theweight gain, but not really,
(06:53):
we're actually losing weightthanks to GLP1s.
I've heard that bandit about arethere explanations like that
that you think they're like thisis a crazy explanation, but it
also maybe helps to explain alittle bit.
SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Um you mean and specifically since 2020.
SPEAKER_00 (07:08):
Yes, specifically since 2020.
I mean you could even thingsthat are sort of changing the
equ equilibrium.
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
You know, well Yeah, I mean I think like, you know,
there there clearly are somelonger run factors.
Like we we seem to keep we weincreasingly get more and more
surveilled every year in a waythat like clearly is gonna
matter, at least in the mediumterm.
Um, you know, I don't I uh Ihave my disagreements with has
John Roman been a guest on thispodcast?
(07:36):
No, he said he's alreadylistening to John.
He's a very natural guest, and Ithink he has leaped very heavily
into this model of likebasically there was all of this
uh recovery uh COVID recoverymoney that was flowing around to
state and local governments thatyielded increases in state and
local employment in the sort oflike caring sectors.
I think there's like not nothingto that argument, and I can kind
(07:58):
of tell a story that jives withmy priors there, but I'm like I
think he puts way too muchemphasis on that explanation and
very little emphasis on allother explanations.
So, you know, there there, Ithink that's a little bit off
the wall.
I wouldn't give it 90%.
I might give it five to tenpercent.
I have to think about otherexamples of like off-the-wall
explanations for the decline.
But I mean, I do tend to thinkit's just like a story about
(08:20):
violence went up and there wasno reason for violence to stay
up, and so what goes up musteventually come down in the
absence of some reason for itto, you know, remain up.
SPEAKER_00 (08:29):
Do you find an explanation between you know
we've got falling opioid deathsthat are falling like a rock,
traffic accident deaths that arefalling at a decent clip,
alcohol-related deaths that arefalling, and then murder, and
they all tell the same story insuch a way that it they have to
be connected.
SPEAKER_01 (08:46):
Well, I just I mean, like, maybe, but be wary of
that, right?
So, like, I think about this asthe the deaths of despair.
Um, or I think if this is myanalogy, the deaths of despair
concept, which is like basicallyyou can lump together drug RD
deaths and suicide deaths andalcohol-associate like cirrhosis
of liver deaths, and those allsort of occur among the same
(09:07):
populations, and they all sortof like you can conceptually
link them in your head.
And so it's like these areclearly together.
Except I did some work on thisseveral years ago.
Like they they actually don't,if you sort of look under the
hood, they really aren't relatedat all.
Like the trends are different,the subpopulations to whom
they're happening are different.
And I think the same thing istrue here.
Like, you could sort of describelike a like a uniform factor of
(09:29):
recklessness that explains abunch of these phenomena.
Like you could say car crashdeaths and opioid deaths and
drug deaths.
There is clearly some overlap inthe associated population, and
you know, some of it isassociated with like impulsive
behavior.
But like the people who domurders are different from the
people who are overdosing ondrugs.
I also think it's just like inseveral of those cases, we'll
(09:51):
talk about car crash deaths, butin the case of opioids, I tend
to think it's actually there'sclearly something totally
exogenous and hard to explainthat's happening there.
I do think it's possible thatyou see there part of that is a
similar burnout phenomenon wherelike you saw a very large
increase in overdose deaths in2020, and the people who died
from overdose in 2020 weren'tavailable to die in 2023, 2024.
(10:12):
There is some sort of dividendthat isn't really a dividend in
that regard, because we don'twant them to die at all
optimally.
That would be better if peopledidn't die.
I'm against that.
But so, you know, I think youcan see a simple analogy, but it
is like a different, it's adifferent population, right?
It's like the people who arecommitting the overwhelming
majority of gun homicides aredisproportionately young men in
(10:32):
close social circumstances withother young men and they have
guns and they have low systemsof social control.
The people who are addicted toopioids and who are overdosing
on them are sometimes thatpopulation, but like
overwhelmingly not thatpopulation, and or are often in
a different social context thanthe population.
So you could like imagine asocial force pressing down on
both of them, but I tend toprefer, like I am secretly very
(10:53):
materialist in my understandingof the world.
Like I'm always very wary ofsort of big social forces up
there.
I'm much more point of beinglike something changed in the
opioid supply, or we turned upthe social control variable some
and things got better, or youknow, like a bunch of people
died enough and then there wasno more dying available to do.
SPEAKER_00 (11:12):
So I guess I'm gonna sort of echo on their hone in on
this concept of like somethingchanged societally, which I
guess as an analyst is like it'seasier to say, yeah, something
changed.
I don't know what it was.
It's it's like magic thing.
As the analyst, I'm justdescribing the trend.
It's it's done.
But when we look at crimes thatare specifically where the
(11:34):
offenders are tend to putdisproportionately be youths.
I'm thinking about carjackings,vehicle burglaries, auto thefts.
I think the auto thefts trend isa lot easier to explain as like
all the kiosks and Hyundai'swere stolen and now it's
falling.
But we've seen this enormousdecline in carjackings, an
enormous decline in vehicleburglaries.
Could it plausibly be just likesome sort of societal the kids
(11:56):
are all right is kind ofconceptually in my head how I
think about it?
Or can you think of morespecific controls or things that
have changed even in the lasttwo years that have caused these
trends to shift?
SPEAKER_01 (12:07):
Yeah.
I mean, there I look atspecifically things like rates
of turncy, where like that can'tbe all of it because sorturancy
really did spike in 2020, 2021.
I mean, Malkus at AEI has donegood work on that.
And then it like was coming backdown pretty slowly and it's kind
of stalled out recently.
But you know, when when you talkabout teenagers, to me, the
(12:28):
story is just as much about likebasically A, the the transaction
cost, as you've written aboutthe sort of transaction cost
associated with carjacking wentdown because like there was
knowledge about how to do acarjacking, that knowledge
diffused, people got it throughTikTok, which was cool for them,
bad for every get everyone to gointo Kia or a Hyundai.
And then like there were somephysical patches, and so it
(12:49):
became harder to do that stuff.
But then it was also just like,you know, I I I'm able to say
this and you're able to agreebecause we were both presumably
once young men, and young menare like dumb and impulsive, and
you know, young, dumb, impulsivemen or it's sometimes it's
women, but it'sdisproportionately men, will
sort of go, This seems like agood idea, and then do it if
(13:10):
they are not subject to somearrangement of like we use this
phrase several times, socialcontrol, which just means like
somebody is looking out forthem.
Somebody's like, hey, you needto be in a place at a time, you
need to be following the rules.
And that somebody can be thegovernment, but it can also be
like a teacher or a parent orsomebody else in the community.
Uh, it can be an informal systemof social control.
(13:32):
And so when I look at like, youknow, when I look at the
carjacking thing, my response isbasically like, where were the
teens?
What are the what are the risksassociated with carjacking?
Because those went up because abunch of cities said, we're
gonna focus on this as a seriousissue.
What are the benefits, you know,how easy is it to carjack?
It got way easier for a while,and now it's probably harder
again.
Uh, and then just like, what arethe potential carjacking
(13:52):
offenders doing with their timeat the margins?
Many of them were not in schoolpreviously, and some of them are
now back in school, which likeis good in my opinion, both from
a crime prevention perspectiveand also because like kids
should go to school.
So even there, like, like I tendto look for what are the what
are the like big structuralfactors of, you know, or it's
(14:13):
not like like I'm I, you know,what are the not not so much the
vibe factors as like what arethe the routine activities view?
What is the like, what are whatare the opportunities?
Is there a capable guardian?
Is there a motivated offender?
Like how can, you know, do wehave the arrangement of
variables to make crime happenversus not?
SPEAKER_00 (14:31):
So if you were sort of the the czar of crime
reduction policy, nationally,locally, statewide, whatever
wherever you you want to imagineyourself, what would you do to
sort of sustain these declinesnow that we've seen them?
SPEAKER_01 (14:44):
Again, you you started with all the really easy
questions.
Um So I've you know, I've I'vedone a bunch of work on this
topic of what I talk about aslike like the I've talked
previously about criminaljustice modernization and the
capacity of the criminal justicesystem, where my argument is
essentially, you know, we wetend to think about like, is the
(15:04):
criminal justice system toopunitive?
Is it not punitive enough?
We should sort of move thatvariable up and down.
Whereas I tend to think aboutlike, does the criminal justice
system have the capacity tosolve the problems that are in
front of it?
Does it have enough swanofficers?
Does it have enough jail cells?
Does it have enough judges?
Does it have enough prosecutors?
Does it have enough defenseattorneys?
Like there's a, you know,there's there's for there's a
(15:28):
certain level of like demand forthe criminal justice system, and
you know, because it's not amarket-provided good, like we
determine what the supply ofcriminal justice is.
And my argument has been that onmany margins, we don't have an
adequate supply of criminaljustice.
The police to population ratio,the number of officers per
American or per thousandAmericans, has actually been
declining to the GreatRecession.
(15:51):
We we like stopped spendingmoney around then because there
was state and local austerity,and it's just sort of like
continuously declining.
Also, the 94 violent crime bill,that wave was just started
retiring, and so like that ratiowent down.
Courts moved, there's a great umreport on this from I think the
National Center for StateCourts.
Courts move way slower than theydid 30 years ago for like
(16:13):
extremely basic reasons of justlike they've gotten worse at
case processing.
The judges just don't know howto do it as quickly.
Um jail capacity has declined,our prison infrastructure is
aging.
We've gotten way worse at data,and or actually we've remained
about as bad at data as we were.
We've gotten like, no, like youknow, I'm doing Jeff Asher's
show, so I can say I say tojournalists sometimes, I'm like,
(16:34):
the best crime data in thecountry comes from this guy
named Jeff.
And we all like Jeff very much,but it's kind of ridiculous that
the good crime data comes fromJeff.
Like that's that's not a that'snot a reasonable situation.
SPEAKER_00 (16:46):
My wife would get mad at me when uh I would be
like explaining the situation tonational reporters.
I'd be like, it's weird thatthis random guy on Twitter is
like the source for all of this.
SPEAKER_01 (16:55):
But that is the situation, right?
Like the New York Times is like,we're gonna get our data from
Jeff.
And it's like, okay, or the CCJis now doing it, the Council of
Criminal Justice is now doingit, but that's crazy and that's
a capacity problem.
It's like like average citizenshould not be able to outperform
the government at the provisionof these basic services.
And my my last favoritestatistic on this is I did some
(17:16):
math for this report.
The National Institute ofJustice, which is the major
grant-making body of theDepartment of Justice, spends
less per year, or aboutequivalent per year in research
grants as the National Instituteof Eye Health, which I believe
crime is a greater socialproblem than eye health.
I mean, eye health is areasonable problem.
I don't want to minimize thesuffering of people, but like I
think crime is a bigger problemthan eye health.
(17:38):
And so that's crazy to me.
And so my consummate answer islike, you know, both from a
crime prevention perspective,from a quality of the criminal
justice system perspective, froma fairness perspective,
everything that everybody leftand right cares about, like
ultimately those are resourceconstraints, or to the extent
that they are not as good asthey could be, that is
ultimately a resourceconstraint.
And so my answer to the originalquestion is just like, look for
(18:01):
easy opportunities to turn upthe available resources and then
try to do that whereverpossible.
Because, like, that's how Ithink about the problem.
It's not about punitivity, it'snot about like, you know, the
sort of cultural baggage, it'sall just like, do we have the
supply to meet the demand?
SPEAKER_00 (18:17):
So moving along, I want to talk about uh disorder
because you mentioned that uhI'm guessing this is probably
the area that we maybe disagreethe most about in this
conversation, but I'm justcurious, can you sum up like the
role specifically that disordermight play?
First off, what is disorder?
And second, the role that youthink it plays in how people
(18:37):
perceive what's happening versuswhat's actually happening or
measuring happening.
SPEAKER_01 (18:42):
Yeah.
Well, and I think, you know, mymy interest in this as a topic
came in large part from the likemismatch between the constant
mismatch between what wasshowing up in major crime
figures and what people'sperceptions reported,
self-reported perceptions ofcrime aren't, where this is just
a phenomenon of like everybodythinks crime is getting worse
all the time, and we live in areally crime-bitten society.
(19:04):
And then I sort of go, well, thestatistics show that things are
actually getting much better,and people go, well, the
statistics are all fake.
And you have this real problemof, you know, a sense of
credibility when you show peoplethe major crime numbers and say,
you know, look, things reallyare improving.
Um I find myself now inarguments with people on the
right all the time where theyinsist that, you know, the
(19:24):
numbers are faked by source,prosecutors, or whatever.
And I'm like, I had thisargument with people on the left
five years ago.
It's not actually productive todo this on either side.
Like the numbers are almostcertainly not the exact level,
but they're probably decentlycorrelated with reality and
they're the least worstavailable resource to stop have,
you know, stop inventingconspiracy theories.
So my argument is and has beenthat part of specifically over
(19:46):
the past couple of years, partof what explains the mismatch
between the increase in thedecrease in crime and people's
perceptions of crime is thatthere's a separate increase in
sort of uh more petty antisocialbehavior, some of which is
criminal and some of which isnot, which I refer to as
disorder.
The definition of disorder thatI offered a while back when I
(20:09):
was sort of first talking aboutthis is that disorder is the
domination of public space forprivate purposes, which is like
that can refer to unshelteredhomelessness and public camping,
it can refer to public drug use,it can refer to graffiti, it can
refer to people playing theirmusic too loudly, it can refer
to the guy on a like publictransit, it can refer to the guy
who's like letting his dog runout of control in the public
(20:32):
park.
It's like, are people beingrespectful of the commons?
Um are they are theyacknowledging that this is a
thing that we need to share, orare they not?
And my argument was, and youknow, I have to think about uh I
think the numbers have changed alittle bit since I first started
writing about this, but youknow, my my argument is
basically like a lot of whatpeople are perceiving when they
(20:53):
say when they talk about crime,a lot of what people are
actually responding to is theirperception of public disorder
around them.
That like mostly most peoplewill not will go through their
entire lives never witnessing amurder or shooting.
And so like your personalperception is probably not
fundamentally about what thecurrent shooting rate is.
It's much more about like, isthe stuff that I see around me
that feels crime-like is thathow how prevalent is that?
(21:16):
And my argument is like, atleast in some places, people's
perceptions of crimes wereaccurately mapping to what the
limited available data said wasgoing on with public disorder.
So like that's that's the topline of what is disorder, and
then also like what you know,where how I think that explains
part of that mismatch, which iswhat originally motivated me.
SPEAKER_00 (21:39):
So I guess my uh I disagreement is probably too
strong of a word, but my qualmwith that is that we're really
bad at measuring pretty mucheverything but murder and maybe
auto theft.
We're especially bad atmeasuring disorder.
And so are you familiar withlike really solid ways of of
measuring?
(22:00):
These things like shoplifting isoften the one that gets bandied
about, and it's like, well, yes,shoplifting is up, but also
maybe Target just startedreporting it.
You know, yes, shoplifting isdown, but Target just closed
their store.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
No, I I I think this is completely reasonable.
Um, and it, you know, it it likethere are no national inde in
indices of this.
Part of what launched my work onthis was spending some time in
Chattanooga.
And I promise I'm coming back toanswer your question.
Where like what I, you know, I Iwent to Chattanooga because I I
knew some people were there whowere interested in crime in the
(22:33):
city.
And what became apparent to meis like all the people thought
that crime is a serious issue,and there just clearly it
clearly wasn't a serious issuein Chattanooga.
Like basically the policedepartment had done everything
it was supposed to be doing todeal with violent crime.
It had like followed all theevidence-based guidelines and
they had mostly worked.
Like they saw what everyoneelse, you know, they saw an
increase and then crime wentdown.
But, you know, from talking topeople, they cited the same
(22:56):
sources of concerns, public druguse, unchildren's homelessness,
and they said, okay, I can'tthere there is no one index.
Uh let me go look at a bunch ofdifferent measures that are like
plausibly our proxies.
Um, what are the what does thehomeless census say?
What do 311 calls say?
What do arrests for pettyoffenses say?
I like 311 calls as a resource.
(23:17):
The data source is gonna varyacross cities, and like, you
know, usually you sort of haveto like, does the Department of
Public Works publish anything?
So, you know, it is it is prettyimprecise.
I think that's a totallyreasonable criticism.
And I think the least twistavailable tool is just like you
have to look at a bunch ofdifferent data sources and say,
what's the, you know, what's theimpulse here?
What's the like like if you dothe dimension reduction on this,
(23:38):
what does it appear to looklike?
And then at least some placesand at some times, it seems to
match, you know, measures likesanitation reports, measures
like 301 complaints, measureslike, you know, the the the
measures that correspond tothese, not necessarily the
criminal behaviors, seem topoint in one direction.
I agree that it's like it is, itis, it is hard to measure the
(24:00):
thing.
Uh, shoplifting is a greatexample.
Some uh a lot of the time it'smeasurement error.
We did a report, we had theManhattan Institute did a report
from John Hall about exactlythis problem in New York City.
But like you can sometimes getsome signal out of the noise.
And I think the best thing youcan do is basically say, like,
what is the, you know, what isthe underlying factor here.
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
So I guess summing all of this up, I mean, both of
us, both of us have kind of thissimilar mission of the
perceptions don't match reality.
We want to tell people what thereality is.
How do we, how do you and I, aslike essentially data
communicators, researchcommunicators, how do we do a
better job of communicatingthis, even if it's not a better
like how are we more, how can webe more effective in this?
SPEAKER_01 (24:42):
Yeah, I I mean, I think it's a great question.
It's a really hard question.
Part of what motivates me intalking about disorder is an
issue is that it's really hardto tell people that their
perceptions are wrong.
And I'm sure you've had thisexperience.
And like sometimes you have tosay your perceptions of reality
are wrong, like the thing youthink is going up is going down.
(25:04):
But I try to believe wherepossible, that people are often
perceiving real phenomena, evenif they don't give the right
names to it.
The the argument that majorcrime is up when it is measured
to be down usually doesn't holda lot of water with me.
But I tend to believe thatpeople are responding to
(25:25):
something real when they say itfeels less safe than it
previously did.
There's something going on therethat it is like incumbent on us
as data communicators, as peopletalk about crime, to say, what
is that something?
Like what is the what is thething that you are actually
talking about there that you areassociating with serious violent
crime?
Um is is it is it that you'reseeing more people who make you
(25:48):
feel uncomfortable?
Is it that you're seeing moreacts?
Uh, is it that you feel youtalked about, you know, murder
motor vehicle crashes?
And we have decent data on that.
That was the other data source Iwas thinking about, right?
Like, like we know, we know whatpeople are doing.
You know, we love what we knowwhat deaths on the highway, we
know about uh crashes, we haveindependent data sources for
that.
Are you do you feel like theworld is less safe because
(26:08):
people are driving moreirresponsibly?
That's like a thing that we canmeasure.
And so, you know, I think my myimmediate response is you have
to give some explanation.
You you have to be able to offersome explanation for why
people's perception what wherepeople's perceptions of reality
are coming from.
And I second point or you know,sub-point is like that
explanation can't be basicallylike you've been propagandized,
(26:31):
right?
There is there is rigorousresearch that shows media
portrayals of of crime has animpact on people's perceptions
of crime.
That's real, but it does notexplain the like overwhelming
majority of perception.
It explains some variants, itdoesn't explain all the
variants.
And it also just like it doesn'twork to be like, well, you just
need to turn off the TV, thelocal news, and then you'll stop
(26:52):
worrying about crime.
Like that that does not persuadepeople.
So yeah, I mean, it's like likemy argument is basically like
you have to, you know, youyou're not gonna be successful
if you tell people you thinkyou're unsafe, but you're wrong.
But you can be successful ifyou're like the thing that you
think is causing this is notactually the thing that's
causing it.
But it could be this otherthing, and let's try to
understand what this other thingis so we can have a more
(27:14):
informed conversation.
Because, like, it's actuallypretty reasonable for people to
want to feel safe in theircommunities.
You know, it's it's notreasonable for them to like take
just feelings of safety andcreate bad policy, but like we
we we should prioritize thatdesire in our communication with
them and like recognize that asa reasonable desire.
SPEAKER_00 (27:31):
You mentioned the media.
I I really struggle with thisbecause the the statement that I
always think to come to is uhthat the media doesn't cover the
planes that land.
And you it's I think irrationalto expect the local news to
cover the fact that that therewere no robberies last week.
Like they they do a story whenstuff happens.
Is there a way on this issue,maybe writ large, to get the
(27:55):
media to be better than everysix months they're gonna cover
CCJ's reports or a media, youknow, you or I might get an
interview after a monthly reportcomes out.
Like it it how do how do we dobetter at getting the people
that are actually able to reachthe large audiences to do better
at this?
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Yeah, I mean the unfortunate answer is it's like
it's really hard because in somesenses the explanation for crime
can neither be, you know,everything is better than it was
in the 90s, therefore there's noproblem.
And it also can't be there was acrime last week, therefore you
need to like hide and you know,shelter your children and flee
to wherever.
(28:32):
It has to be like nuanced,right?
It has to be like, well, this isup and this is down, and it's
things are better compared to A,but worse compared to B.
And here is the national trend,but here's the local trend.
And that's like seven datapoints, which is way more.
You know, I totally reasonablepractice, and I don't, I'm not
I'm not criticizing this person,but I had a, you know, I was I
was interviewed by a fairlyprominent publication about
(28:56):
crime trends, and I had like a20-minute conversation, and you
know, one snippet of one thing Isaid ended up in the piece.
That is a completely standardjournalistic practice, and
there's nothing wrong with doingthat.
Uh, I have no objection to this,but it is like very challenging,
you know, the the the snippet ofme that ended up in the piece,
which is like a very small partof everything that I thought was
(29:16):
going on.
Uh that's just like a feature ofthe medium.
So, you know, I think I I Ithink in some senses, here's
that's my like pessimistic take.
My optimistic take is that likethere is more demand for
information than ever, and moreways of delivering information
than ever.
Like, I do actually think peoplewant nuance.
(29:38):
People watch like four-hourpodcasts for some reason.
I don't understand it.
Like they will watch joinanother three and a half hours.
Yeah.
I know, it's crazy.
Yo, this is it, you know.
We're gonna get right.
The answer is we gotta get JeffAsher on Joe Rogan.
Uh, they'll be I I I would watchthat.
I think that would go well.
Like, like, you know, I think Ithink that you have to sort of
(29:59):
say you have to demand nuance,and then you have to be clear
that your nuance is like, likenuance actually can't be an
additional, you know, to justlike a different simplistic
take.
You have to be like, really,there is nuance here.
And then often, you know, whenpeople claim to be offering
nuance, what they are actuallydoing is just sort of saying,
well, if you put this in anotherperspective, then it's
(30:20):
advantageous to my politicalteam.
Like, no, you have to actuallydemand nuance, which is really
hard.
And I don't have a good solutionfor getting people to care about
it.
But I like, you know, as a as aslike a good American patriot,
believe that actually peoplesometimes want it and you can
just sort of like keep blastingout that maybe they'll get it,
hopefully.
SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
I I mean up I'm the same, and like that's that's
where this podcast came from.
It's where the subset comesfrom.
It's just if we talk about it,maybe somebody will hear it and
that will help.
And it's, I don't know, shoutingat the ocean or something.
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
But Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, I like like onthe other hand, I think there's,
you know, the fact that, as welooked through earlier, major
publications are going and beinglike, we need this data, there's
clearly a lacuna, right?
There's clearly, there's clearlya lack there that is being
filled.
So I try to be an optimist aboutthese things.
I try to say, like, people want,don't don't just want the
(31:10):
headline.
People really don't just want tobe told, like, you know, the the
the the simple story is correct,the dumb explanation is correct.
People, you know, people can'tsustain 10 data points, like
they just can't cognitively doit on average if this isn't what
they think about all day.
But they can take three, theycan do four, and that's better
than one, which is nice.
SPEAKER_00 (31:31):
So, and then probably the easiest question I
have for you, which is how do wedetangle politics from
perceptions of crime?
And Gallup has their poll thatshows uh it's not just a
republic, it's become more of aRepublican thing than a Democrat
thing in the last eight years,but it's always been that the
party in power, a higherpercentage or lower percentage,
(31:51):
thinks crime is rising than theparty out of power.
Is there a way to do this?
To sort of disengage the two?
SPEAKER_01 (32:02):
No, probably not.
I think it wouldn't agree if wecould, but like the reality is
that crime prevention is afundamental government service,
right?
It's it's something, it'ssomething it is the thing that
ev almost everyone agrees thegovernment should do.
People don't agree aboutbasically everything else, but
they agree that like thegovernment should keep us safe
and there should probably be anarmy.
There are exceptions to thisrule, but like mostly that's the
thing people agree on.
(32:23):
And so I think it isextraordinarily hard to
depoliticize that or to getpeople, you know, to to shift on
that.
My, you know, my my standardadvice, and look, this is
ultimately advice to Democrats,because like Republicans own the
issue, is that just likeDemocrats can be weaker or
stronger on this.
They can like make this more orless of a more or less of a
(32:45):
like, you know, of a of a timebomb for themselves or an issue
for themselves, right?
They can they can disarm the GOPmore or less on this, which
doesn't mean you have to likecapitulate to crazy talking
points.
You don't have to be like, yes,Donald Trump did bring down the
homicide rate somehow, usingthat, like that, you know, Cash
Patel did it with his with hismagic FBI sneakers.
So you don't have to do that.
Uh, but you can be like, youknow, like a number of exec big
(33:08):
city execs have been like theykind of tried to do at the tail
end of the Biden administration,but I think not that
persuasively.
Like, say, we don't consider lawenforcement, like we consider
law enforcement a legitimateissue for the Democratic Party.
I made this argument um on MattIglesias's substack slow boring.
I wrote a piece for him aboutthis in which I said, look,
(33:29):
every until the Bidenadministration, every 30 years,
a Democratic administration anda Democratic Congress would pass
a major federal overhaul to thecriminal justice system.
It happened under FDR, ithappened under LBJ, it happened
under Clinton.
This is like, and this wastotally normal for Democrats.
It was just like, we are theparty of good government.
We believe that governmentshould provide services.
(33:50):
Criminal justice is a service,therefore we should provide it
better.
Totally reasonable.
So, like, I mean, that that youknow, that that that's very
that's advice that's targeted atthe Democratic Party.
But I think it's like the bestanswer I have for depoliticizing
it is just like it if if youdon't allow Republicans to own
the issue, if you're likeDemocrats can be good on this
too in a credible way, then Ithink it becomes plausibly
(34:13):
depoliticized at least a littlebit because it's not like so
obviously partisan valenced.
Is it still gonna be that way?
Yeah, totally.
It's I mean it's just like youcan't, you can't change people's
I can't fix polarization.
Maybe you can, I can't do it.
Um, but I think like if you sortof find a reasonable middle
ground, then you don't at leastallow one party to so obviously
(34:33):
run away with it in publicperception.
SPEAKER_00 (34:35):
So speaking to the I guess we're we're gonna have
theme music play here that'sgonna say guest does job of host
for him or something like that.
I I really I I really do want toattack this issue from all
sides.
This is why I I wanted to haveyou on the show.
Are there other voices?
It it felt very lonely in 2023and 2024, not from the left, but
(34:56):
definitely from the right, to besaying this is what the data
looks like, which as youmentioned was the exact opposite
of what happened in 2020.
Um, and I, you know, you you maynot have felt it, you may not be
as exposed to the left, but Ilike I I certainly remember
getting yelled at by the leftwhen talking about the fact that
it was rising.
So are there ways, are therepeople that you think on the
(35:17):
right on the sort ofconservative end that would be
good to talk to about this thataren't gonna bring the like the
crazy, just the the crazytalking points, but uh
legitimately move thisconversation forward.
And and if so, who would yousuggest?
SPEAKER_01 (35:32):
Yeah, I mean, in some senses, you're covering
your bases.
You know, my my colleague RafaMangal would be a little weird
to have two MI guys on, althoughI think they have complimentary
functions.
Uh Ralph and, you know, RalRalph wrote a great book on
crime and criminal justicepolicy that I highly recommend
to your audience.
But is is, I think, uh triesvery hard to be a sober voice in
this space who's not justinterested in, you know,
(35:53):
throwing, throwing partisanbombs and talking about source
prosecutors and whatever.
I mean, you know, very bluntly,I think that there are any of a
number of uh folks in thebroadering world who don't do
this very well.
So I I'm not gonna I'm not gonnapick those fights, but you know
the the other place that I lookwhere these guys aren't
necessarily on the right, butthey aren't like definitively on
(36:14):
the left, are sort of the wholeuniverse of copademics.
Um you had Ian Adams on the showvery recently, and Ian's great.
Well, and I won't ascribe sortof right-wingness to Ian.
He can do that and not himself,but like Ian used to be a cop,
and that puts him at odds withmany of his act, you know, it's
not even necessarily that he'son the right, so much as like
many of his very leftcriminologist colleagues think
(36:34):
that like he's a fascist.
I don't think Ian is fascist.
But there are other folks, ScottMorcos, who's a colleague of his
from Utah.
They often work with a guy withJustin Nix, who's at Omaha.
Barry Latzer, who's emeritus atCUNY, um, and Barry, Barry is
very much a friend.
I think we call himself on theright, is a friend of City
Journal of the ManhattanInstitute, uh, who's also, I
think, generally pretty soberand has written a bunch of stuff
(36:55):
on long-run trends in crime thatI recommend.
I have to think of otherright-of-centered names, but
those are the things.
SPEAKER_00 (37:02):
We can take that offline.
Yeah, that's great.
I appreciate that.
Good list.
So again, get getting morebroadly, uh, two quick topics.
I know we don't have a ton oftime, but um, two quick topics I
want to talk about that are onlytangentially related to crime.
You've written about this.
Um I think we're probably on thesame page, but is there a way to
get uh talking about sportsgambling?
Is there a way to get that genieback in the bottle?
(37:24):
And again, I I'm just askingbecause I'm interested in about
this.
I think I went to a Pelicansgame recently and like these two
20-somethings sat next to me andthey only cheered for I'm saying
with my kids, they only cheeredfor like, you know, Trey Murphy
to hit a three.
And like otherwise they weren'twatching the game.
And it drove me in the bones.
SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
McKay Coppins just had a great piece in The
Atlantic uh about his likemulti-month experiment with with
sports gambling, which I thoughtwas quite good.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know,the most important thing is just
not to have political pessimismabout this stuff.
Like your unease is, I think,the modal position in America
currently, and there's lots ofpolling.
Americans still don't want tobanned.
(38:02):
I have made the public argumentsthat actually we should just ban
it, but that's like a prudentialargument because I'm skeptical
of our ability to just sort ofregulate away the problems, but
there are lots of regulationsyou can implement that would
make it much saner.
You could just, I mean, youcould ban the advert depository
buzzer advertising bans, youcould ban some of the more
absurd forms of bets like uhparlays or in-game prop bets,
(38:23):
you can uh have deposit limits,you can force corporate force
the sports books to moreaggressively police problem
users.
There's lots of stuff you cando.
That's like all very practical.
The trick is just like at thispoint, it's just having the
political will to actually trysome of this stuff.
I think everybody does use thisanalogy of like, you know, the
genie's out of the bottle, youcan't put the toothpaste pack on
(38:44):
the tube.
And I'm like, you can totally dothat.
Like, we banned sports gamblingnationwide in 1992.
Like, that's that's not thatlong ago.
Like, uh I was born in 1994, soit's my entire lifetime ago, but
it's like it's objectivelyspeaking, you know, sports
gambling was illegal in 2017 ineverywhere but Nevada,
essentially.
That's just not that long ago.
(39:06):
It was totally possible for usto sustain that.
By the way, it was a totallyfunctional arrangement in
American life for that to be thestatus quo.
You know, I think, I think thetrick is like at this point is
looking at places where you canturn that popular, you can
coalesce that popular sentimentinto real action.
I've been saying, you know,privately, not say it's
publicly, if you happen to have$15 million to run an outlet
(39:28):
initiative, I I don't, but Iassume you do.
If you have$50 million for aballot initiative, the thing I
would do is I would get a ban onprop bets on the ballot in Ohio.
Because I think it would win.
I think the governor wouldendorse it.
I think the state legislaturewould endorse it.
I think they would ban prop betsin Ohio in 2026 if you gave them
the opportunity to do so.
You just got to spend the moneyto do the signatures.
(39:49):
But there were lots ofopportunities like that.
You can spend money inMassachusetts, you could do it
at the federal level.
There are lots of, you know,there are ideas floating around.
I just think that like there arevery simple regulatory solutions
that we could conceivablyimplement.
I think that there are problemswith that at like uh, you know,
a public policy math level.
But like I would be very happyif we got closer to that
arrangement.
But like doing that requires atthis point just political will
(40:12):
and everybody knowing thateverybody else is uncomfortable
with what's going on, and thenjust like, you know, putting
putting some political pedal tothe metal.
Like that's totally doable.
We can do it.
We've done it historically.
It's been done.
Like we can do it again.
SPEAKER_00 (40:24):
So as soon as we're done, I'll go downstairs and
look in the couch cushions andsee if I could get at least a
couple of million, get me closerto the goal of 15 million.
So my my last question, and wewere talking about this before
we started recording, but how doyou think AI changes our jobs,
our approaches in the future?
And then sort of an add-on, itseems like half the battle is
like just changing perceptionson AI adoption and how it can be
(40:47):
used and in ways that's not it'sgonna hallucinate answers about
your medical condition.
So, you know, any thoughts onsort of changing how people
think of what these tools cando?
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
Yeah.
I mean, and you know, I am, Iam, I am a I let's say I'm like
uh fiscally bearish, sociallybullish on AI, which is, you
know, and and I'll get into thesocially bullish thing, which is
just like I I won't get intothat very much to just to say
like I think it is gonna behugely socially disruptive in
certain harmful ways.
Uh, but like from my from myjust like doing my doing my job
(41:20):
perspective, AI is great.
And doing your job, like AI isgreat.
You and I were talking aboutthis beforehand.
Like, like for somebody who'sreally in our sweet spot of like
wants to use data to tellstories, the amount of friction
that it reduces is great.
I think getting people likeeveryone is super, everyone is
super pessimistic about it aboutAI right now.
Everyone is very negative aboutit.
You look at the polling, and toa first approximation, I have
(41:41):
argued that this is because thepeople who are selling it are
doing a really terrible job ofselling it.
Like people are like, AI isgoing to take all of your jobs,
and oh, by the way, it mightkill everybody, and you should
let us do it.
I'm like, what?
So I I mean, I've argued that atthe very least, the first thing
is probably not going to happenthat like the sort of you know,
(42:04):
the the the economics reallydoes militate towards an
increase in human productivity,making us all richer and more
employed and like you know, moreproductive and not like mass
disemployment.
Um, I don't think that's goingto happen.
But I actually just think likeyou have to change the messaging
around this stuff.
And in particular, you have tounderstand, like AI is going to
be for many people, noteverybody, but for many people,
(42:25):
AI is much more likely to be acompliment than it is a
substitute, right?
And like AI is a compliment forme, AI is a compliment for you.
It's making us more efficient atwhat we do.
We can do more than we used to.
Humans have, you know,economics, humans have infinite
wants and finite means toachieve those wants.
If we increase our productivity,we will come up with new things
to do with it.
Uh, I will do things with theseveral hours that I get back by
(42:47):
using AI that will be great.
Like we're not just gonna, youknow, we're not just gonna
stagnate.
There isn't a lump of labor.
But I think people have to, youknow, people really have to be
like concretely, here's how AIis gonna make your life better.
I can say that.
The people who are trying tosell AI really need to say that.
I think it's like mostly true,bracketing some social concerns
that I have, but like certainlyfrom an economic perspective, I
(43:09):
think it is gonna make our livesbetter.
I think it'll make us richer andmore productive and like give us
more leisure time.
That's great.
I'm in favor of those things.
SPEAKER_00 (43:15):
But you have to actually sell it that way, as
opposed to telling me it's onlyit's it's been weird that like,
you know, thanks to AI, thethousand people that we need to
do this job, we only need 200people now.
So we can either use the other800 people we already have hired
to do more for the company andlike build, or we could fire
everybody and do the exact samejob and be, you know, similarly
(43:36):
productive.
And it's weird to think thatlike the former is how they're
selling it.
SPEAKER_01 (43:40):
Right.
Well, you know, I think I mean,I think there's been like there
have been these layoffs, and I'mlike, I think that's pretextual.
I think it's like they hired allthese people when interest rates
were low and those peopleweren't doing anything, and now
they're yeah, they're using AIas a pretext.
No, I'm but like, yeah, that'slike fundamentally most
technological technologicalinnovations.
Has not yet led to massunemployment.
(44:01):
There is an interesting argumentthat this could lead to mass
unemployment, but I don'tactually think that that's like
the standard case.
And I think the standard case isthat like if you are freed from
doing drudgery by AI, you get touse your otherwise limited time
for higher uses, and that'sgood.
I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (44:19):
That's great.
Well, this has been wide-rangingand I really appreciate it.
Charles, what is next for youand where can people find you?
SPEAKER_01 (44:25):
Oh gosh, what is next for me?
I'm working on a handful ofprojects.
I'm actually, I need to, I needto do some more work and maybe
we can talk about this, but I'mI'm reporting a piece on why
crime went down in Baltimore.
That we'll we'll see, we'll seewhere that ends up.
Bunch of other things.
Uh I encourage people to checkme out.
I'm on Substack.
I get lots of referrals fromJeff Asher and Substack, but I'm
it's it's the causal fallacy,C-A-U-S-A-L, not casual, causal.
(44:48):
It's it's a really nerdyreference to James Q.
Wilson.
I kind of regret it becausepeople can never spell it.
And I'm also I'm on Twitterslash X.
I'm at Charles F.
Lehman, if you want to find methere.
That's great.
SPEAKER_00 (44:59):
And by the time this is out, we will have just had uh
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott onthe podcast.
So highly recommend that as aI'm I'm ready.
I'm reading off you that, yeah.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
Appreciate it.
Glad to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
(45:21):
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast.
Answering the why of crimetrends is frequently much harder
than answering the what.
The same data inevitably leadsto very different explanations
depending on how you interpretthem and what you think is
driving them.
This trend shows up clearly inconversations about what's
happening over the last fewyears with crime.
Crime went up sharply, then itcame down.
(00:22):
The numbers are fairly clear.
The reasons behind that are not.
My guest today is Charles FainLehman, a fellow at the
Manhattan Institute who focuseson crime, disorder, and what he
describes as the public policyof antisocial behavior.
In this episode, we talk throughthe differences in how we can
explain what's happening now,the role of policing and social
factors, and how concepts likedisorder shape how people
(00:44):
experience safety in ways thatdon't always show up in
traditional metrics.
Let's dive in.
Charles, thank you so much forjoining me.
Absolutely happy to be here.
So let's start with yourbackground.
How did you get to be here?
SPEAKER_01 (00:58):
Gosh, that's a great question.
The answer is that I used to bea journalist.
I worked for a publicationcalled the Washington Free
Beacon for about five years.
And there I sort of developed adata-driven policy-focused beat.
A lot of my work focused oncrime and social policy,
although not exclusively, butpart of how I differentiated
(01:20):
myself, and I should say, youknow, I work for a right of
center think tank, the freebeacons are right of center
publication.
Part of how I differentiatedmyself, particularly among the
sort of right-of-center world,was trying to answer questions
with numbers, trying to not justsort of report what people told
me, but really dig into the dataand teaching myself the skills
to do that.
And then at some point thatevolved into my work at a think
(01:41):
tank, the Manhattan Institute,where I now am, where much of
my, you know, my focus verybroadly is on what I like to
talk about as the public policyof antisocial behavior.
What I mean by that is a lot ofpolicy questions are concerned
with coordination.
We have fixed resources, we haveinfinite wants.
How do we divide things up?
Healthcare policy is a greatexample.
(02:09):
Doing those things, how can youdo that in a responsible and
functional fashion?
Crime is a natural component ofthat.
Public disorder, which I thinkwe're going to talk about today,
drug use, any social issues is awide, wide swath of policy.
So, you know, I I and I try tocome at those from uh an
evidence-informed and uhdata-driven perspective to sort
of bring a little more nuance tothose conversations.
SPEAKER_00 (02:30):
All right.
So I like to start theseinterviews off and start with
sort of the easy softballquestions and get harder as we
go along.
So why is murder falling?
SPEAKER_01 (02:39):
Great question.
That's a very that's a verystraightforward one.
Uh you know, I look, theresponsible answer is we don't
know.
And I'm sure I'm not the firstguest on your show to say that.
And, you know, I go out of myway to offer that caveat because
I'll then I'll then offer mytheories, but they are just
theories.
And in some senses, you know,obviously we can't estimate the
counterfactual world in whichthe set of things I talk about
(03:02):
don't happen.
We don't, we don't know.
As a general rule, though, theway that I have tended to think
about the decline over the pastcouple of years is that, you
know, it is not like the bigincrease and decrease in murder
in the 1960s through the 1990s,that that's sort of the big cr
the great crime wave and thenit's retreat.
There, I tend to think that thedemographic structural factors
(03:24):
tell us a lot.
The the big part of the story Ilike to say, the big thing I
like to highlight is that's whenthe baby boom generation ages
into and out of crime.
Frank Zimring, thecriminologist, estimates that's
about half of the increase anddecrease is the baby is the age
structure of the population.
Here we don't see the that sortof same long-term demographic
trends.
(03:44):
It's just like up and then down.
And I think that, you know, at astructural level, we should
expect crime rates to be low.
The population is graying, we'reall more obese than we used to
be, although that's maybeturning around a little bit.
We're all way more surveilledthan we used to be.
Like all the all the factorsthat sort of determine the
equilibrium crime level pointtowards like lower crime.
(04:05):
And then we saw this sort ofsharp upwards deviation and then
a return almost as sharply overa brief period of time.
And so I tend to think it's likethat that that tells me there's
some kind of shock.
There's an exogenous shock tothat otherwise equilibrium
level.
And I tend to say, look, thereare two sides to that story.
One is the COVID-19 pandemicclearly has to be a part of that
(04:26):
story.
There's a sort of an immediateand durable change in the level
of social control provided byboth formal and informal
institutions.
We closed all the jail, weclosed many jails, we shut down
courts for a long time, schoolswere closed, places of work,
like the places that you go tobe socially surveilled, those
(04:48):
stopped operating for a while.
That clearly is a big part ofthe story.
That can't be the whole story.
A, because other nations did notexperience the same increase
that we did, even though theywere treated by code as well.
B, because there's basicallylike a negative correlation
between COVID compliance andbeing willing to commit crimes,
i.e., the sort of people whomurder each other mostly
probably were not followingsocial distancing rules.
(05:10):
They aren't the kind of peopleon average who are likely to do
that.
Which means I also think that abig part of the story is the
drawdown in police activity inthe immediate aftermath of the
murder of George Floyd and therise of the defund the police
movement.
You see this across a number ofdifferent sources.
In your own work, in particular,the decline in staffing in big
(05:30):
city departments, where we'veseen not a decline in the
overall police staffing level,but I think you see officers
flowing to departments wherethere is less crime, and so you
have less access to thoseresources.
There are some measures by whichyou see declines in police
activity or police proactivity.
Cops are doing fewer stops,fewer arrests.
And in many places, those haverebounded.
(05:51):
So, you know, I tend to thinklike basically that problem has
gotten better, at least to somedegree, although not absolutely.
The COVID problem has obviouslygotten a lot better.
And also just like there's anatural burnout where like the
people who are victims of murderare often also the people who
commit murder.
And you know, to be morbid, likethose people eventually are no
(06:11):
longer in the supply ofmurderers because they
themselves have been murdered.
And so you end up getting aburnout effect.
And so all those factors, Ithink basically, you saw this
big shock in 2020, murder goesup, but it wasn't a like
demographic structural change.
It wasn't a change to theequilibrium level of violence.
So I'm not surprised that weeventually came back down.
That was very long.
SPEAKER_00 (06:31):
I mean, that's that's as succinct as I've ever
put it.
So it's it's certainly a verydifficult question and one that
I I hate trying to answer, whichis why I guess I'm I'm trying to
get you to answer it assuccinctly as possible here.
Are there explanations that sortof for you know, more towards
the more recent decline in crimethat are sort of out there?
I know you mentioned the theweight gain, but not really,
(06:53):
we're actually losing weightthanks to GLP1s.
I've heard that bandit about arethere explanations like that
that you think they're like thisis a crazy explanation, but it
also maybe helps to explain alittle bit.
SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Um you mean and specifically since 2020.
SPEAKER_00 (07:08):
Yes, specifically since 2020.
I mean you could even thingsthat are sort of changing the
equ equilibrium.
SPEAKER_01 (07:14):
You know, well Yeah, I mean I think like, you know,
there there clearly are somelonger run factors.
Like we we seem to keep we weincreasingly get more and more
surveilled every year in a waythat like clearly is gonna
matter, at least in the mediumterm.
Um, you know, I don't I uh Ihave my disagreements with has
John Roman been a guest on thispodcast?
(07:36):
No, he said he's alreadylistening to John.
He's a very natural guest, and Ithink he has leaped very heavily
into this model of likebasically there was all of this
uh recovery uh COVID recoverymoney that was flowing around to
state and local governments thatyielded increases in state and
local employment in the sort oflike caring sectors.
I think there's like not nothingto that argument, and I can kind
(07:58):
of tell a story that jives withmy priors there, but I'm like I
think he puts way too muchemphasis on that explanation and
very little emphasis on allother explanations.
So, you know, there there, Ithink that's a little bit off
the wall.
I wouldn't give it 90%.
I might give it five to tenpercent.
I have to think about otherexamples of like off-the-wall
explanations for the decline.
But I mean, I do tend to thinkit's just like a story about
(08:20):
violence went up and there wasno reason for violence to stay
up, and so what goes up musteventually come down in the
absence of some reason for itto, you know, remain up.
SPEAKER_00 (08:29):
Do you find an explanation between you know
we've got falling opioid deathsthat are falling like a rock,
traffic accident deaths that arefalling at a decent clip,
alcohol-related deaths that arefalling, and then murder, and
they all tell the same story insuch a way that it they have to
be connected.
SPEAKER_01 (08:46):
Well, I just I mean, like, maybe, but be wary of
that, right?
So, like, I think about this asthe the deaths of despair.
Um, or I think if this is myanalogy, the deaths of despair
concept, which is like basicallyyou can lump together drug RD
deaths and suicide deaths andalcohol-associate like cirrhosis
of liver deaths, and those allsort of occur among the same
(09:07):
populations, and they all sortof like you can conceptually
link them in your head.
And so it's like these areclearly together.
Except I did some work on thisseveral years ago.
Like they they actually don't,if you sort of look under the
hood, they really aren't relatedat all.
Like the trends are different,the subpopulations to whom
they're happening are different.
And I think the same thing istrue here.
Like, you could sort of describelike a like a uniform factor of
(09:29):
recklessness that explains abunch of these phenomena.
Like you could say car crashdeaths and opioid deaths and
drug deaths.
There is clearly some overlap inthe associated population, and
you know, some of it isassociated with like impulsive
behavior.
But like the people who domurders are different from the
people who are overdosing ondrugs.
I also think it's just like inseveral of those cases, we'll
(09:51):
talk about car crash deaths, butin the case of opioids, I tend
to think it's actually there'sclearly something totally
exogenous and hard to explainthat's happening there.
I do think it's possible thatyou see there part of that is a
similar burnout phenomenon wherelike you saw a very large
increase in overdose deaths in2020, and the people who died
from overdose in 2020 weren'tavailable to die in 2023, 2024.
(10:12):
There is some sort of dividendthat isn't really a dividend in
that regard, because we don'twant them to die at all
optimally.
That would be better if peopledidn't die.
I'm against that.
But so, you know, I think youcan see a simple analogy, but it
is like a different, it's adifferent population, right?
It's like the people who arecommitting the overwhelming
majority of gun homicides aredisproportionately young men in
(10:32):
close social circumstances withother young men and they have
guns and they have low systemsof social control.
The people who are addicted toopioids and who are overdosing
on them are sometimes thatpopulation, but like
overwhelmingly not thatpopulation, and or are often in
a different social context thanthe population.
So you could like imagine asocial force pressing down on
both of them, but I tend toprefer, like I am secretly very
(10:53):
materialist in my understandingof the world.
Like I'm always very wary ofsort of big social forces up
there.
I'm much more point of beinglike something changed in the
opioid supply, or we turned upthe social control variable some
and things got better, or youknow, like a bunch of people
died enough and then there wasno more dying available to do.
SPEAKER_00 (11:12):
So I guess I'm gonna sort of echo on their hone in on
this concept of like somethingchanged societally, which I
guess as an analyst is like it'seasier to say, yeah, something
changed.
I don't know what it was.
It's it's like magic thing.
As the analyst, I'm justdescribing the trend.
It's it's done.
But when we look at crimes thatare specifically where the
(11:34):
offenders are tend to putdisproportionately be youths.
I'm thinking about carjackings,vehicle burglaries, auto thefts.
I think the auto thefts trend isa lot easier to explain as like
all the kiosks and Hyundai'swere stolen and now it's
falling.
But we've seen this enormousdecline in carjackings, an
enormous decline in vehicleburglaries.
Could it plausibly be just likesome sort of societal the kids
(11:56):
are all right is kind ofconceptually in my head how I
think about it?
Or can you think of morespecific controls or things that
have changed even in the lasttwo years that have caused these
trends to shift?
SPEAKER_01 (12:07):
Yeah.
I mean, there I look atspecifically things like rates
of turncy, where like that can'tbe all of it because sorturancy
really did spike in 2020, 2021.
I mean, Malkus at AEI has donegood work on that.
And then it like was coming backdown pretty slowly and it's kind
of stalled out recently.
But you know, when when you talkabout teenagers, to me, the
(12:28):
story is just as much about likebasically A, the the transaction
cost, as you've written aboutthe sort of transaction cost
associated with carjacking wentdown because like there was
knowledge about how to do acarjacking, that knowledge
diffused, people got it throughTikTok, which was cool for them,
bad for every get everyone to gointo Kia or a Hyundai.
And then like there were somephysical patches, and so it
(12:49):
became harder to do that stuff.
But then it was also just like,you know, I I I'm able to say
this and you're able to agreebecause we were both presumably
once young men, and young menare like dumb and impulsive, and
you know, young, dumb, impulsivemen or it's sometimes it's
women, but it'sdisproportionately men, will
sort of go, This seems like agood idea, and then do it if
(13:10):
they are not subject to somearrangement of like we use this
phrase several times, socialcontrol, which just means like
somebody is looking out forthem.
Somebody's like, hey, you needto be in a place at a time, you
need to be following the rules.
And that somebody can be thegovernment, but it can also be
like a teacher or a parent orsomebody else in the community.
Uh, it can be an informal systemof social control.
(13:32):
And so when I look at like, youknow, when I look at the
carjacking thing, my response isbasically like, where were the
teens?
What are the what are the risksassociated with carjacking?
Because those went up because abunch of cities said, we're
gonna focus on this as a seriousissue.
What are the benefits, you know,how easy is it to carjack?
It got way easier for a while,and now it's probably harder
again.
Uh, and then just like, what arethe potential carjacking
(13:52):
offenders doing with their timeat the margins?
Many of them were not in schoolpreviously, and some of them are
now back in school, which likeis good in my opinion, both from
a crime prevention perspectiveand also because like kids
should go to school.
So even there, like, like I tendto look for what are the what
are the like big structuralfactors of, you know, or it's
(14:13):
not like like I'm I, you know,what are the not not so much the
vibe factors as like what arethe the routine activities view?
What is the like, what are whatare the opportunities?
Is there a capable guardian?
Is there a motivated offender?
Like how can, you know, do wehave the arrangement of
variables to make crime happenversus not?
SPEAKER_00 (14:31):
So if you were sort of the the czar of crime
reduction policy, nationally,locally, statewide, whatever
wherever you you want to imagineyourself, what would you do to
sort of sustain these declinesnow that we've seen them?
SPEAKER_01 (14:44):
Again, you you started with all the really easy
questions.
Um So I've you know, I've I'vedone a bunch of work on this
topic of what I talk about aslike like the I've talked
previously about criminaljustice modernization and the
capacity of the criminal justicesystem, where my argument is
essentially, you know, we wetend to think about like, is the
(15:04):
criminal justice system toopunitive?
Is it not punitive enough?
We should sort of move thatvariable up and down.
Whereas I tend to think aboutlike, does the criminal justice
system have the capacity tosolve the problems that are in
front of it?
Does it have enough swanofficers?
Does it have enough jail cells?
Does it have enough judges?
Does it have enough prosecutors?
Does it have enough defenseattorneys?
Like there's a, you know,there's there's for there's a
(15:28):
certain level of like demand forthe criminal justice system, and
you know, because it's not amarket-provided good, like we
determine what the supply ofcriminal justice is.
And my argument has been that onmany margins, we don't have an
adequate supply of criminaljustice.
The police to population ratio,the number of officers per
American or per thousandAmericans, has actually been
declining to the GreatRecession.
(15:51):
We we like stopped spendingmoney around then because there
was state and local austerity,and it's just sort of like
continuously declining.
Also, the 94 violent crime bill,that wave was just started
retiring, and so like that ratiowent down.
Courts moved, there's a great umreport on this from I think the
National Center for StateCourts.
Courts move way slower than theydid 30 years ago for like
(16:13):
extremely basic reasons of justlike they've gotten worse at
case processing.
The judges just don't know howto do it as quickly.
Um jail capacity has declined,our prison infrastructure is
aging.
We've gotten way worse at data,and or actually we've remained
about as bad at data as we were.
We've gotten like, no, like youknow, I'm doing Jeff Asher's
show, so I can say I say tojournalists sometimes, I'm like,
(16:34):
the best crime data in thecountry comes from this guy
named Jeff.
And we all like Jeff very much,but it's kind of ridiculous that
the good crime data comes fromJeff.
Like that's that's not a that'snot a reasonable situation.
SPEAKER_00 (16:46):
My wife would get mad at me when uh I would be
like explaining the situation tonational reporters.
I'd be like, it's weird thatthis random guy on Twitter is
like the source for all of this.
SPEAKER_01 (16:55):
But that is the situation, right?
Like the New York Times is like,we're gonna get our data from
Jeff.
And it's like, okay, or the CCJis now doing it, the Council of
Criminal Justice is now doingit, but that's crazy and that's
a capacity problem.
It's like like average citizenshould not be able to outperform
the government at the provisionof these basic services.
And my my last favoritestatistic on this is I did some
(17:16):
math for this report.
The National Institute ofJustice, which is the major
grant-making body of theDepartment of Justice, spends
less per year, or aboutequivalent per year in research
grants as the National Instituteof Eye Health, which I believe
crime is a greater socialproblem than eye health.
I mean, eye health is areasonable problem.
I don't want to minimize thesuffering of people, but like I
think crime is a bigger problemthan eye health.
(17:38):
And so that's crazy to me.
And so my consummate answer islike, you know, both from a
crime prevention perspective,from a quality of the criminal
justice system perspective, froma fairness perspective,
everything that everybody leftand right cares about, like
ultimately those are resourceconstraints, or to the extent
that they are not as good asthey could be, that is
ultimately a resourceconstraint.
And so my answer to the originalquestion is just like, look for
(18:01):
easy opportunities to turn upthe available resources and then
try to do that whereverpossible.
Because, like, that's how Ithink about the problem.
It's not about punitivity, it'snot about like, you know, the
sort of cultural baggage, it'sall just like, do we have the
supply to meet the demand?
SPEAKER_00 (18:17):
So moving along, I want to talk about uh disorder
because you mentioned that uhI'm guessing this is probably
the area that we maybe disagreethe most about in this
conversation, but I'm justcurious, can you sum up like the
role specifically that disordermight play?
First off, what is disorder?
And second, the role that youthink it plays in how people
(18:37):
perceive what's happening versuswhat's actually happening or
measuring happening.
SPEAKER_01 (18:42):
Yeah.
Well, and I think, you know, mymy interest in this as a topic
came in large part from the likemismatch between the constant
mismatch between what wasshowing up in major crime
figures and what people'sperceptions reported,
self-reported perceptions ofcrime aren't, where this is just
a phenomenon of like everybodythinks crime is getting worse
all the time, and we live in areally crime-bitten society.
(19:04):
And then I sort of go, well, thestatistics show that things are
actually getting much better,and people go, well, the
statistics are all fake.
And you have this real problemof, you know, a sense of
credibility when you show peoplethe major crime numbers and say,
you know, look, things reallyare improving.
Um I find myself now inarguments with people on the
right all the time where theyinsist that, you know, the
(19:24):
numbers are faked by source,prosecutors, or whatever.
And I'm like, I had thisargument with people on the left
five years ago.
It's not actually productive todo this on either side.
Like the numbers are almostcertainly not the exact level,
but they're probably decentlycorrelated with reality and
they're the least worstavailable resource to stop have,
you know, stop inventingconspiracy theories.
So my argument is and has beenthat part of specifically over
(19:46):
the past couple of years, partof what explains the mismatch
between the increase in thedecrease in crime and people's
perceptions of crime is thatthere's a separate increase in
sort of uh more petty antisocialbehavior, some of which is
criminal and some of which isnot, which I refer to as
disorder.
The definition of disorder thatI offered a while back when I
(20:09):
was sort of first talking aboutthis is that disorder is the
domination of public space forprivate purposes, which is like
that can refer to unshelteredhomelessness and public camping,
it can refer to public drug use,it can refer to graffiti, it can
refer to people playing theirmusic too loudly, it can refer
to the guy on a like publictransit, it can refer to the guy
who's like letting his dog runout of control in the public
(20:32):
park.
It's like, are people beingrespectful of the commons?
Um are they are theyacknowledging that this is a
thing that we need to share, orare they not?
And my argument was, and youknow, I have to think about uh I
think the numbers have changed alittle bit since I first started
writing about this, but youknow, my my argument is
basically like a lot of whatpeople are perceiving when they
(20:53):
say when they talk about crime,a lot of what people are
actually responding to is theirperception of public disorder
around them.
That like mostly most peoplewill not will go through their
entire lives never witnessing amurder or shooting.
And so like your personalperception is probably not
fundamentally about what thecurrent shooting rate is.
It's much more about like, isthe stuff that I see around me
that feels crime-like is thathow how prevalent is that?
(21:16):
And my argument is like, atleast in some places, people's
perceptions of crimes wereaccurately mapping to what the
limited available data said wasgoing on with public disorder.
So like that's that's the topline of what is disorder, and
then also like what you know,where how I think that explains
part of that mismatch, which iswhat originally motivated me.
SPEAKER_00 (21:39):
So I guess my uh I disagreement is probably too
strong of a word, but my qualmwith that is that we're really
bad at measuring pretty mucheverything but murder and maybe
auto theft.
We're especially bad atmeasuring disorder.
And so are you familiar withlike really solid ways of of
measuring?
(22:00):
These things like shoplifting isoften the one that gets bandied
about, and it's like, well, yes,shoplifting is up, but also
maybe Target just startedreporting it.
You know, yes, shoplifting isdown, but Target just closed
their store.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (22:13):
No, I I I think this is completely reasonable.
Um, and it, you know, it it likethere are no national inde in
indices of this.
Part of what launched my work onthis was spending some time in
Chattanooga.
And I promise I'm coming back toanswer your question.
Where like what I, you know, I Iwent to Chattanooga because I I
knew some people were there whowere interested in crime in the
(22:33):
city.
And what became apparent to meis like all the people thought
that crime is a serious issue,and there just clearly it
clearly wasn't a serious issuein Chattanooga.
Like basically the policedepartment had done everything
it was supposed to be doing todeal with violent crime.
It had like followed all theevidence-based guidelines and
they had mostly worked.
Like they saw what everyoneelse, you know, they saw an
increase and then crime wentdown.
But, you know, from talking topeople, they cited the same
(22:56):
sources of concerns, public druguse, unchildren's homelessness,
and they said, okay, I can'tthere there is no one index.
Uh let me go look at a bunch ofdifferent measures that are like
plausibly our proxies.
Um, what are the what does thehomeless census say?
What do 311 calls say?
What do arrests for pettyoffenses say?
I like 311 calls as a resource.
(23:17):
The data source is gonna varyacross cities, and like, you
know, usually you sort of haveto like, does the Department of
Public Works publish anything?
So, you know, it is it is prettyimprecise.
I think that's a totallyreasonable criticism.
And I think the least twistavailable tool is just like you
have to look at a bunch ofdifferent data sources and say,
what's the, you know, what's theimpulse here?
What's the like like if you dothe dimension reduction on this,
(23:38):
what does it appear to looklike?
And then at least some placesand at some times, it seems to
match, you know, measures likesanitation reports, measures
like 301 complaints, measureslike, you know, the the the
measures that correspond tothese, not necessarily the
criminal behaviors, seem topoint in one direction.
I agree that it's like it is, itis, it is hard to measure the
(24:00):
thing.
Uh, shoplifting is a greatexample.
Some uh a lot of the time it'smeasurement error.
We did a report, we had theManhattan Institute did a report
from John Hall about exactlythis problem in New York City.
But like you can sometimes getsome signal out of the noise.
And I think the best thing youcan do is basically say, like,
what is the, you know, what isthe underlying factor here.
SPEAKER_00 (24:19):
So I guess summing all of this up, I mean, both of
us, both of us have kind of thissimilar mission of the
perceptions don't match reality.
We want to tell people what thereality is.
How do we, how do you and I, aslike essentially data
communicators, researchcommunicators, how do we do a
better job of communicatingthis, even if it's not a better
like how are we more, how can webe more effective in this?
SPEAKER_01 (24:42):
Yeah, I I mean, I think it's a great question.
It's a really hard question.
Part of what motivates me intalking about disorder is an
issue is that it's really hardto tell people that their
perceptions are wrong.
And I'm sure you've had thisexperience.
And like sometimes you have tosay your perceptions of reality
are wrong, like the thing youthink is going up is going down.
(25:04):
But I try to believe wherepossible, that people are often
perceiving real phenomena, evenif they don't give the right
names to it.
The the argument that majorcrime is up when it is measured
to be down usually doesn't holda lot of water with me.
But I tend to believe thatpeople are responding to
(25:25):
something real when they say itfeels less safe than it
previously did.
There's something going on therethat it is like incumbent on us
as data communicators, as peopletalk about crime, to say, what
is that something?
Like what is the what is thething that you are actually
talking about there that you areassociating with serious violent
crime?
Um is is it is it that you'reseeing more people who make you
(25:48):
feel uncomfortable?
Is it that you're seeing moreacts?
Uh, is it that you feel youtalked about, you know, murder
motor vehicle crashes?
And we have decent data on that.
That was the other data source Iwas thinking about, right?
Like, like we know, we know whatpeople are doing.
You know, we love what we knowwhat deaths on the highway, we
know about uh crashes, we haveindependent data sources for
that.
Are you do you feel like theworld is less safe because
(26:08):
people are driving moreirresponsibly?
That's like a thing that we canmeasure.
And so, you know, I think my myimmediate response is you have
to give some explanation.
You you have to be able to offersome explanation for why
people's perception what wherepeople's perceptions of reality
are coming from.
And I second point or you know,sub-point is like that
explanation can't be basicallylike you've been propagandized,
(26:31):
right?
There is there is rigorousresearch that shows media
portrayals of of crime has animpact on people's perceptions
of crime.
That's real, but it does notexplain the like overwhelming
majority of perception.
It explains some variants, itdoesn't explain all the
variants.
And it also just like it doesn'twork to be like, well, you just
need to turn off the TV, thelocal news, and then you'll stop
(26:52):
worrying about crime.
Like that that does not persuadepeople.
So yeah, I mean, it's like likemy argument is basically like
you have to, you know, youyou're not gonna be successful
if you tell people you thinkyou're unsafe, but you're wrong.
But you can be successful ifyou're like the thing that you
think is causing this is notactually the thing that's
causing it.
But it could be this otherthing, and let's try to
understand what this other thingis so we can have a more
(27:14):
informed conversation.
Because, like, it's actuallypretty reasonable for people to
want to feel safe in theircommunities.
You know, it's it's notreasonable for them to like take
just feelings of safety andcreate bad policy, but like we
we we should prioritize thatdesire in our communication with
them and like recognize that asa reasonable desire.
SPEAKER_00 (27:31):
You mentioned the media.
I I really struggle with thisbecause the the statement that I
always think to come to is uhthat the media doesn't cover the
planes that land.
And you it's I think irrationalto expect the local news to
cover the fact that that therewere no robberies last week.
Like they they do a story whenstuff happens.
Is there a way on this issue,maybe writ large, to get the
(27:55):
media to be better than everysix months they're gonna cover
CCJ's reports or a media, youknow, you or I might get an
interview after a monthly reportcomes out.
Like it it how do how do we dobetter at getting the people
that are actually able to reachthe large audiences to do better
at this?
SPEAKER_01 (28:12):
Yeah, I mean the unfortunate answer is it's like
it's really hard because in somesenses the explanation for crime
can neither be, you know,everything is better than it was
in the 90s, therefore there's noproblem.
And it also can't be there was acrime last week, therefore you
need to like hide and you know,shelter your children and flee
to wherever.
(28:32):
It has to be like nuanced,right?
It has to be like, well, this isup and this is down, and it's
things are better compared to A,but worse compared to B.
And here is the national trend,but here's the local trend.
And that's like seven datapoints, which is way more.
You know, I totally reasonablepractice, and I don't, I'm not
I'm not criticizing this person,but I had a, you know, I was I
was interviewed by a fairlyprominent publication about
(28:56):
crime trends, and I had like a20-minute conversation, and you
know, one snippet of one thing Isaid ended up in the piece.
That is a completely standardjournalistic practice, and
there's nothing wrong with doingthat.
Uh, I have no objection to this,but it is like very challenging,
you know, the the the snippet ofme that ended up in the piece,
which is like a very small partof everything that I thought was
(29:16):
going on.
Uh that's just like a feature ofthe medium.
So, you know, I think I I Ithink in some senses, here's
that's my like pessimistic take.
My optimistic take is that likethere is more demand for
information than ever, and moreways of delivering information
than ever.
Like, I do actually think peoplewant nuance.
(29:38):
People watch like four-hourpodcasts for some reason.
I don't understand it.
Like they will watch joinanother three and a half hours.
Yeah.
I know, it's crazy.
Yo, this is it, you know.
We're gonna get right.
The answer is we gotta get JeffAsher on Joe Rogan.
Uh, they'll be I I I would watchthat.
I think that would go well.
Like, like, you know, I think Ithink that you have to sort of
(29:59):
say you have to demand nuance,and then you have to be clear
that your nuance is like, likenuance actually can't be an
additional, you know, to justlike a different simplistic
take.
You have to be like, really,there is nuance here.
And then often, you know, whenpeople claim to be offering
nuance, what they are actuallydoing is just sort of saying,
well, if you put this in anotherperspective, then it's
(30:20):
advantageous to my politicalteam.
Like, no, you have to actuallydemand nuance, which is really
hard.
And I don't have a good solutionfor getting people to care about
it.
But I like, you know, as a as aslike a good American patriot,
believe that actually peoplesometimes want it and you can
just sort of like keep blastingout that maybe they'll get it,
hopefully.
SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
I I mean up I'm the same, and like that's that's
where this podcast came from.
It's where the subset comesfrom.
It's just if we talk about it,maybe somebody will hear it and
that will help.
And it's, I don't know, shoutingat the ocean or something.
SPEAKER_01 (30:50):
But Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, I like like onthe other hand, I think there's,
you know, the fact that, as welooked through earlier, major
publications are going and beinglike, we need this data, there's
clearly a lacuna, right?
There's clearly, there's clearlya lack there that is being
filled.
So I try to be an optimist aboutthese things.
I try to say, like, people want,don't don't just want the
(31:10):
headline.
People really don't just want tobe told, like, you know, the the
the the simple story is correct,the dumb explanation is correct.
People, you know, people can'tsustain 10 data points, like
they just can't cognitively doit on average if this isn't what
they think about all day.
But they can take three, theycan do four, and that's better
than one, which is nice.
SPEAKER_00 (31:31):
So, and then probably the easiest question I
have for you, which is how do wedetangle politics from
perceptions of crime?
And Gallup has their poll thatshows uh it's not just a
republic, it's become more of aRepublican thing than a Democrat
thing in the last eight years,but it's always been that the
party in power, a higherpercentage or lower percentage,
(31:51):
thinks crime is rising than theparty out of power.
Is there a way to do this?
To sort of disengage the two?
SPEAKER_01 (32:02):
No, probably not.
I think it wouldn't agree if wecould, but like the reality is
that crime prevention is afundamental government service,
right?
It's it's something, it'ssomething it is the thing that
ev almost everyone agrees thegovernment should do.
People don't agree aboutbasically everything else, but
they agree that like thegovernment should keep us safe
and there should probably be anarmy.
There are exceptions to thisrule, but like mostly that's the
thing people agree on.
(32:23):
And so I think it isextraordinarily hard to
depoliticize that or to getpeople, you know, to to shift on
that.
My, you know, my my standardadvice, and look, this is
ultimately advice to Democrats,because like Republicans own the
issue, is that just likeDemocrats can be weaker or
stronger on this.
They can like make this more orless of a more or less of a
(32:45):
like, you know, of a of a timebomb for themselves or an issue
for themselves, right?
They can they can disarm the GOPmore or less on this, which
doesn't mean you have to likecapitulate to crazy talking
points.
You don't have to be like, yes,Donald Trump did bring down the
homicide rate somehow, usingthat, like that, you know, Cash
Patel did it with his with hismagic FBI sneakers.
So you don't have to do that.
Uh, but you can be like, youknow, like a number of exec big
(33:08):
city execs have been like theykind of tried to do at the tail
end of the Biden administration,but I think not that
persuasively.
Like, say, we don't consider lawenforcement, like we consider
law enforcement a legitimateissue for the Democratic Party.
I made this argument um on MattIglesias's substack slow boring.
I wrote a piece for him aboutthis in which I said, look,
(33:29):
every until the Bidenadministration, every 30 years,
a Democratic administration anda Democratic Congress would pass
a major federal overhaul to thecriminal justice system.
It happened under FDR, ithappened under LBJ, it happened
under Clinton.
This is like, and this wastotally normal for Democrats.
It was just like, we are theparty of good government.
We believe that governmentshould provide services.
(33:50):
Criminal justice is a service,therefore we should provide it
better.
Totally reasonable.
So, like, I mean, that that youknow, that that that's very
that's advice that's targeted atthe Democratic Party.
But I think it's like the bestanswer I have for depoliticizing
it is just like it if if youdon't allow Republicans to own
the issue, if you're likeDemocrats can be good on this
too in a credible way, then Ithink it becomes plausibly
(34:13):
depoliticized at least a littlebit because it's not like so
obviously partisan valenced.
Is it still gonna be that way?
Yeah, totally.
It's I mean it's just like youcan't, you can't change people's
I can't fix polarization.
Maybe you can, I can't do it.
Um, but I think like if you sortof find a reasonable middle
ground, then you don't at leastallow one party to so obviously
(34:33):
run away with it in publicperception.
SPEAKER_00 (34:35):
So speaking to the I guess we're we're gonna have
theme music play here that'sgonna say guest does job of host
for him or something like that.
I I really I I really do want toattack this issue from all
sides.
This is why I I wanted to haveyou on the show.
Are there other voices?
It it felt very lonely in 2023and 2024, not from the left, but
(34:56):
definitely from the right, to besaying this is what the data
looks like, which as youmentioned was the exact opposite
of what happened in 2020.
Um, and I, you know, you you maynot have felt it, you may not be
as exposed to the left, but Ilike I I certainly remember
getting yelled at by the leftwhen talking about the fact that
it was rising.
So are there ways, are therepeople that you think on the
(35:17):
right on the sort ofconservative end that would be
good to talk to about this thataren't gonna bring the like the
crazy, just the the crazytalking points, but uh
legitimately move thisconversation forward.
And and if so, who would yousuggest?
SPEAKER_01 (35:32):
Yeah, I mean, in some senses, you're covering
your bases.
You know, my my colleague RafaMangal would be a little weird
to have two MI guys on, althoughI think they have complimentary
functions.
Uh Ralph and, you know, RalRalph wrote a great book on
crime and criminal justicepolicy that I highly recommend
to your audience.
But is is, I think, uh triesvery hard to be a sober voice in
this space who's not justinterested in, you know,
(35:53):
throwing, throwing partisanbombs and talking about source
prosecutors and whatever.
I mean, you know, very bluntly,I think that there are any of a
number of uh folks in thebroadering world who don't do
this very well.
So I I'm not gonna I'm not gonnapick those fights, but you know
the the other place that I lookwhere these guys aren't
necessarily on the right, butthey aren't like definitively on
(36:14):
the left, are sort of the wholeuniverse of copademics.
Um you had Ian Adams on the showvery recently, and Ian's great.
Well, and I won't ascribe sortof right-wingness to Ian.
He can do that and not himself,but like Ian used to be a cop,
and that puts him at odds withmany of his act, you know, it's
not even necessarily that he'son the right, so much as like
many of his very leftcriminologist colleagues think
(36:34):
that like he's a fascist.
I don't think Ian is fascist.
But there are other folks, ScottMorcos, who's a colleague of his
from Utah.
They often work with a guy withJustin Nix, who's at Omaha.
Barry Latzer, who's emeritus atCUNY, um, and Barry, Barry is
very much a friend.
I think we call himself on theright, is a friend of City
Journal of the ManhattanInstitute, uh, who's also, I
think, generally pretty soberand has written a bunch of stuff
(36:55):
on long-run trends in crime thatI recommend.
I have to think of otherright-of-centered names, but
those are the things.
SPEAKER_00 (37:02):
We can take that offline.
Yeah, that's great.
I appreciate that.
Good list.
So again, get getting morebroadly, uh, two quick topics.
I know we don't have a ton oftime, but um, two quick topics I
want to talk about that are onlytangentially related to crime.
You've written about this.
Um I think we're probably on thesame page, but is there a way to
get uh talking about sportsgambling?
Is there a way to get that genieback in the bottle?
(37:24):
And again, I I'm just askingbecause I'm interested in about
this.
I think I went to a Pelicansgame recently and like these two
20-somethings sat next to me andthey only cheered for I'm saying
with my kids, they only cheeredfor like, you know, Trey Murphy
to hit a three.
And like otherwise they weren'twatching the game.
And it drove me in the bones.
SPEAKER_01 (37:41):
McKay Coppins just had a great piece in The
Atlantic uh about his likemulti-month experiment with with
sports gambling, which I thoughtwas quite good.
Yeah, I mean, look, you know,the most important thing is just
not to have political pessimismabout this stuff.
Like your unease is, I think,the modal position in America
currently, and there's lots ofpolling.
Americans still don't want tobanned.
(38:02):
I have made the public argumentsthat actually we should just ban
it, but that's like a prudentialargument because I'm skeptical
of our ability to just sort ofregulate away the problems, but
there are lots of regulationsyou can implement that would
make it much saner.
You could just, I mean, youcould ban the advert depository
buzzer advertising bans, youcould ban some of the more
absurd forms of bets like uhparlays or in-game prop bets,
(38:23):
you can uh have deposit limits,you can force corporate force
the sports books to moreaggressively police problem
users.
There's lots of stuff you cando.
That's like all very practical.
The trick is just like at thispoint, it's just having the
political will to actually trysome of this stuff.
I think everybody does use thisanalogy of like, you know, the
genie's out of the bottle, youcan't put the toothpaste pack on
(38:44):
the tube.
And I'm like, you can totally dothat.
Like, we banned sports gamblingnationwide in 1992.
Like, that's that's not thatlong ago.
Like, uh I was born in 1994, soit's my entire lifetime ago, but
it's like it's objectivelyspeaking, you know, sports
gambling was illegal in 2017 ineverywhere but Nevada,
essentially.
That's just not that long ago.
(39:06):
It was totally possible for usto sustain that.
By the way, it was a totallyfunctional arrangement in
American life for that to be thestatus quo.
You know, I think, I think thetrick is like at this point is
looking at places where you canturn that popular, you can
coalesce that popular sentimentinto real action.
I've been saying, you know,privately, not say it's
publicly, if you happen to have$15 million to run an outlet
(39:28):
initiative, I I don't, but Iassume you do.
If you have$50 million for aballot initiative, the thing I
would do is I would get a ban onprop bets on the ballot in Ohio.
Because I think it would win.
I think the governor wouldendorse it.
I think the state legislaturewould endorse it.
I think they would ban prop betsin Ohio in 2026 if you gave them
the opportunity to do so.
You just got to spend the moneyto do the signatures.
(39:49):
But there were lots ofopportunities like that.
You can spend money inMassachusetts, you could do it
at the federal level.
There are lots of, you know,there are ideas floating around.
I just think that like there arevery simple regulatory solutions
that we could conceivablyimplement.
I think that there are problemswith that at like uh, you know,
a public policy math level.
But like I would be very happyif we got closer to that
arrangement.
But like doing that requires atthis point just political will
(40:12):
and everybody knowing thateverybody else is uncomfortable
with what's going on, and thenjust like, you know, putting
putting some political pedal tothe metal.
Like that's totally doable.
We can do it.
We've done it historically.
It's been done.
Like we can do it again.
SPEAKER_00 (40:24):
So as soon as we're done, I'll go downstairs and
look in the couch cushions andsee if I could get at least a
couple of million, get me closerto the goal of 15 million.
So my my last question, and wewere talking about this before
we started recording, but how doyou think AI changes our jobs,
our approaches in the future?
And then sort of an add-on, itseems like half the battle is
like just changing perceptionson AI adoption and how it can be
(40:47):
used and in ways that's not it'sgonna hallucinate answers about
your medical condition.
So, you know, any thoughts onsort of changing how people
think of what these tools cando?
SPEAKER_01 (40:57):
Yeah.
I mean, and you know, I am, Iam, I am a I let's say I'm like
uh fiscally bearish, sociallybullish on AI, which is, you
know, and and I'll get into thesocially bullish thing, which is
just like I I won't get intothat very much to just to say
like I think it is gonna behugely socially disruptive in
certain harmful ways.
Uh, but like from my from myjust like doing my doing my job
(41:20):
perspective, AI is great.
And doing your job, like AI isgreat.
You and I were talking aboutthis beforehand.
Like, like for somebody who'sreally in our sweet spot of like
wants to use data to tellstories, the amount of friction
that it reduces is great.
I think getting people likeeveryone is super, everyone is
super pessimistic about it aboutAI right now.
Everyone is very negative aboutit.
You look at the polling, and toa first approximation, I have
(41:41):
argued that this is because thepeople who are selling it are
doing a really terrible job ofselling it.
Like people are like, AI isgoing to take all of your jobs,
and oh, by the way, it mightkill everybody, and you should
let us do it.
I'm like, what?
So I I mean, I've argued that atthe very least, the first thing
is probably not going to happenthat like the sort of you know,
(42:04):
the the the economics reallydoes militate towards an
increase in human productivity,making us all richer and more
employed and like you know, moreproductive and not like mass
disemployment.
Um, I don't think that's goingto happen.
But I actually just think likeyou have to change the messaging
around this stuff.
And in particular, you have tounderstand, like AI is going to
be for many people, noteverybody, but for many people,
(42:25):
AI is much more likely to be acompliment than it is a
substitute, right?
And like AI is a compliment forme, AI is a compliment for you.
It's making us more efficient atwhat we do.
We can do more than we used to.
Humans have, you know,economics, humans have infinite
wants and finite means toachieve those wants.
If we increase our productivity,we will come up with new things
to do with it.
Uh, I will do things with theseveral hours that I get back by
(42:47):
using AI that will be great.
Like we're not just gonna, youknow, we're not just gonna
stagnate.
There isn't a lump of labor.
But I think people have to, youknow, people really have to be
like concretely, here's how AIis gonna make your life better.
I can say that.
The people who are trying tosell AI really need to say that.
I think it's like mostly true,bracketing some social concerns
that I have, but like certainlyfrom an economic perspective, I
(43:09):
think it is gonna make our livesbetter.
I think it'll make us richer andmore productive and like give us
more leisure time.
That's great.
I'm in favor of those things.
SPEAKER_00 (43:15):
But you have to actually sell it that way, as
opposed to telling me it's onlyit's it's been weird that like,
you know, thanks to AI, thethousand people that we need to
do this job, we only need 200people now.
So we can either use the other800 people we already have hired
to do more for the company andlike build, or we could fire
everybody and do the exact samejob and be, you know, similarly
(43:36):
productive.
And it's weird to think thatlike the former is how they're
selling it.
SPEAKER_01 (43:40):
Right.
Well, you know, I think I mean,I think there's been like there
have been these layoffs, and I'mlike, I think that's pretextual.
I think it's like they hired allthese people when interest rates
were low and those peopleweren't doing anything, and now
they're yeah, they're using AIas a pretext.
No, I'm but like, yeah, that'slike fundamentally most
technological technologicalinnovations.
Has not yet led to massunemployment.
(44:01):
There is an interesting argumentthat this could lead to mass
unemployment, but I don'tactually think that that's like
the standard case.
And I think the standard case isthat like if you are freed from
doing drudgery by AI, you get touse your otherwise limited time
for higher uses, and that'sgood.
I like that.
SPEAKER_00 (44:19):
That's great.
Well, this has been wide-rangingand I really appreciate it.
Charles, what is next for youand where can people find you?
SPEAKER_01 (44:25):
Oh gosh, what is next for me?
I'm working on a handful ofprojects.
I'm actually, I need to, I needto do some more work and maybe
we can talk about this, but I'mI'm reporting a piece on why
crime went down in Baltimore.
That we'll we'll see, we'll seewhere that ends up.
Bunch of other things.
Uh I encourage people to checkme out.
I'm on Substack.
I get lots of referrals fromJeff Asher and Substack, but I'm
it's it's the causal fallacy,C-A-U-S-A-L, not casual, causal.
(44:48):
It's it's a really nerdyreference to James Q.
Wilson.
I kind of regret it becausepeople can never spell it.
And I'm also I'm on Twitterslash X.
I'm at Charles F.
Lehman, if you want to find methere.
That's great.
SPEAKER_00 (44:59):
And by the time this is out, we will have just had uh
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott onthe podcast.
So highly recommend that as aI'm I'm ready.
I'm reading off you that, yeah.
Thank you so much for joiningme.
Appreciate it.
Glad to be here.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
(45:21):
episodes.
If you like what you heard,please leave a glowing review,
which will help others todiscover the show.
Until next time, I'm Jeff Asher.
Popular Podcasts
Betrayal Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com