April 29, 2026 • 46 mins
What happens when the people shaping national crime policy don’t actually have the data they need?
In this episode, I sit down with Rachel Harmon, law professor at the University of Virginia who previously served as a senior policy adviser for criminal justice for the White House Domestic Policy Council.
Rachel provides a rare inside look at how crime policy really gets made, breaking down what it’s like working inside the White House -- where decisions move fast, data moves slow, and the pressure to respond to public fear doesn’t wait for evidence to catch up. She explains why even basic questions, like how big a problem carjacking actually is, can be nearly impossible to answer in real time, and how that gap shapes policy decisions.
The conversation dives into the messy reality behind “data-driven policy,” including:
- Why crime data often arrives too late to guide decisions
- How political pressure competes with long-term strategy
- What it takes to actually implement policy after it’s announced
- And why the U.S. still lacks basic data on policing, charges, and outcomes
Tune in for a fun, informative conversation on the messy business of making Federal criminal justice policy.
Rachel Harmon is the Harrison Robertson Professor of Law and directs the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of Virginia School of Law. She is one of the nation’s leading scholars on policing and the law.
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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.
(00:04):
Crime policy doesn't alwaysfollow the same timeline as the
data.
The problems are happening inreal time, but how can
institutions respond when thedata that help explain those
problems often shows up monthsor even years later, if at all?
My guest today is Rachel Harmon,a law professor at the
University of Virginia and aformer federal prosecutor who
spent years studying policing,accountability, and the role of
(00:25):
law in shaping how agenciesoperate.
She also served as a seniorpolicy advisor for the Biden
White House, working directly onthose issues at the national
level.
In this episode, we talk aboutwhat that experience actually
looks like.
We get into how policy gets madeby the White House when
information is incomplete, whatit takes to move priorities
across federal agencies, and whyimplementation is often the
(00:46):
hardest part of policy making.
Let's get started.
My guest today is Rachel Harmonat the University of Virginia
now.
Rachel, how are you?
SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
Very good.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (00:57):
Good.
Thanks for coming along.
So, first question for allguests: what is your background?
What brings you here today?
SPEAKER_01 (01:05):
Well, you can tell me that better than I can in
terms of what brings me heretoday, but I can tell you that I
am a law professor at theUniversity of Virginia Law
School, where I also direct theCrim Center for Criminal
Justice.
And I have worked on and off oncrime and criminal justice
policy for a long time.
I started my career.
(01:26):
I went to Yale Law School.
I clerked for a federal court ofappeals judge and for Justice
Breyer at the Supreme Court, andthen became a federal prosecutor
in the Department of Justice.
I spent most of my time there inthe civil rights division,
prosecuting civil rights crimes,which included crimes by public
officials and especially lawenforcement.
And then I decided that I wantedto understand more how law could
(01:51):
be used to prevent problems inlaw enforcement rather than
dealing with them afterwards.
And I became a professor.
And since then I've studiedpolicing, its effectiveness and
accountability and the way itresponds to communities and how
law influences the police.
But I think you invited me heretoday because I got to know you
(02:13):
when I spent a year helping outat the White House as a senior
policy advisor on criminaljustice.
And there I worked on crimepolicy and criminal justice
policy.
SPEAKER_00 (02:25):
Not the only reason.
I certainly am very interestedin delving into sort of the
answer of how can the law helppolice do their job better and
more effectively and moreconstitutionally.
But I do want to talk about theWhite House because that's how
we got acquainted.
And I I really just I want tohave a thousand questions about
that.
Like, how does one get picked todo that sort of role within the
(02:49):
federal, the federal government?
SPEAKER_01 (02:52):
Well, you know, that that's a little bit puzzling
even to me.
I think I'm uh an expert onpolicing and the law.
That was obviously a big concernwhen the Biden administration
came in in 2020.
And people in the White Househad reached out to me early on,
and as they were formulating theexecutive order on policing and
(03:15):
criminal justice policy.
And that conversation continued.
Some of the uh policy advisorsthere used me as a resource.
And then when someone wasleaving, they asked me to step
in.
And initially I couldn't do itfor personal reasons.
Then they came back around to meanother time.
(03:35):
And by then I could.
And so my youngest had gone offto college, and I thought, okay,
you can't cart from thesidelines forever at some point
to say, ask you to participatein the policy that you've been
talking about for years, thenyou've got to go do it.
So I had just written an articleon the federal influence and
local law enforcement.
(03:56):
It felt like it couldn't say no.
And so I went and uh served asuh on the domestic policy
council.
SPEAKER_00 (04:04):
So, first overarching big question is is
just like, what is it likeworking at the White House?
SPEAKER_01 (04:10):
It's actually an incredible institution in many
ways.
It's very, very different frommy experience working at the
Department of Justice or andother even policy work.
I before I went to law school, Iworked for the Manhattanboro
President in New York.
I had done policy work there.
But it it's just such adifferent institution.
(04:31):
First of all, the place getsbuilt every four years from the
ground up.
And so it's it it's a um uh umreally challenging thing to do.
It has a vast uh responsibilityand and and this, you know, if
you think about the portfolio ofthe White House, it's just
(04:52):
completely vast.
And yet the personnel, you know,there's really just uh not that
many people working there.
Uh if it's a thousand, I'd besurprised.
I don't know exactly the number.
And so it it has this incredibleresponsibility and intensity.
And the, you know, when I firstgot there, I didn't even know
what my job was, and nobody hadtime to slow down and tell me.
(05:14):
I mean, it's just the thingsare, you know, somebody compared
it when I for when I first gotthere, it's like you're it
you're it's a crew race, and alleight people in the boat are
rowing as hard as they can, andsomeone jumps out of the boat
and you jump in and you justhave to start rowing.
And so there is just it the thespeed at which the White House
(05:38):
works and the intensity of theresponsibility, it's and and the
things that could happen on anygiven day.
So you're pursuing bothlong-term policies and then
short-term responsiveness isreally quite incredible.
And especially from my stayedoffice at the University of
Virginia where things movedpretty slowly.
I mean, of course, I'd been aprosecutor for years and I had
(06:00):
done trials.
I I know what intensity feelslike, but this really felt like
a, you know, the the emailswould start to pick up at 6 a.m.
and they wouldn't finish upuntil 11 or 11:30.
And you couldn't be, I mean, I Imust I I did a lot of cycling
before I got to the White House,White House.
In fact, before I went there, Ijust finished a 700-mile ride
(06:21):
from Portland, Oregon toMissoula, Montana.
And then I got to the WhiteHouse and didn't get on my bike
again for a year because Icouldn't be away from my laptop
for an hour.
I mean, and and to be at a cellservice was just impossible.
SPEAKER_00 (06:36):
You have to learn to ride your bike with your laptop
sort of on the front barbalanced, I think is the is the
ethics.
SPEAKER_01 (06:41):
I watch movies, but I'm not that good at the at the
at the responding to emails onmy bike.
SPEAKER_00 (06:46):
All right, fair enough.
How how do you compare havingworked at the White House to
having clerked with the SupremeCourt?
Is there any comparison?
How do you how do youconceptualize those two
experiences?
SPEAKER_01 (06:58):
Yeah, so that they are extremely different.
Um the White House is responsivein a daily way, in an hourly,
minutely way.
I mean, it's just so in theworld.
And the work of the SupremeCourt is much more insulated
(07:19):
from both public view, but alsoit it's slower and more
thoughtful, and the justiceschoose their cases, and then it
takes months to brief them, andthen they get argued, and then
it takes months to write anddraft the opinions.
And so it's just sort of a timeframe on the two is very, very
(07:39):
different.
I also think that it's not tosay there are, I mean, there are
all sorts of things to say aboutpolitics and the Supreme Court,
and I am hardly an expert onthem, but it is not
fundamentally a politicalinstitution in the same way that
the White House is.
And you feel that every day.
(08:00):
So power within the building,you know, in the White House,
there the president and vicepresident are elected, and the
president, everything reallyfunnels down from that.
Everyone else in the White Househas a job because the person
above them has a job, and theperson above them to the
(08:20):
president.
And so there's just this lookingup sense of, you know,
responding to the leadershipthat it is so it's both power
within the building, I guess isanother way to say it, and the
responsiveness to the world,that it just feels very
different.
You know, that each SupremeCourt justice is um they
(08:43):
interact to be sure, but they'reeach an island.
They each have a constitutionalresponsibility that's separate.
They each have their own staff,in addition to the collective
library and other staff.
And they each make decisions,um, certainly in interaction,
but they're kind of you knowmore independent than anyone in
(09:03):
the White House is you allworking towards one die.
SPEAKER_00 (09:07):
Getting a little more granular, what what
specifically is the domesticpolicy council?
Because until we startedinteracting, uh you just kind of
assume there's this monolith andthere's a person at the top and
they have underlings arranged insome sort of random pattern and
they do the thing.
But there's a there's ahierarchy in organization to it,
which makes sense.
So I'm curious, like how howwould you summarize the domestic
(09:28):
policy council and morespecifically, what is the role
that that you played and thepolicy council plays in sort of
setting criminal justice policyat a national level?
SPEAKER_01 (09:38):
So the domestic policy council exists to help
the president form and implementhis domestic policy across a
whole range of issues.
And so that means it's a very uhdiverse internally.
You know, I shared an officewith somebody who was working on
disability policy, and I workedevery day with people who were
(10:01):
doing the national anti-Semitismpolicy.
And so there were people doingall sorts of things that had
very little to do with the stuffthat I do, which is crime and
criminal justice.
So the policy council as anoffice is diverse.
It is led by the domestic policyadvisor, and the domestic policy
(10:24):
advisor is one of several senioradvisors to the president who
help formulate and implementpolicy in different areas.
And each of the councils isorganized differently.
So the domestic policy councildoesn't look like the National
Security Council, which is or ithas obviously a different
portfolio, but it's alsoorganized differently.
(10:45):
We were helped the domesticpolicy advisor help the
president uh form and implementpolicy.
And that meant both, givenPresident Biden's priorities,
that meant both crime policy andit also meant criminal justice
policy.
So he, his executive order, forexample, on effective and
(11:08):
accountable policing andcriminal justice was intended to
pursue policing and criminaljustice policy that both worked
to make communities safer andalso that was responsive to the
law, to uh community concernsabout the ways that policing and
criminal justice is carried out.
SPEAKER_00 (11:29):
And are there there's subject matters?
I don't know the degree to whichyou could talk about it, but the
the things that you worked on.
Are there subject matters thatthat you helped push along the
line, specifically things thatyour academic research helped to
sort of inform the policy goingforward?
Is there anything that youworked on that you're
particularly proud of that likeyou were, this is a thing that I
did that suddenly was a a thingnationally?
SPEAKER_01 (11:52):
Well, so I I will give all credit to the president
for any policies that we helpedimplement.
But what I would say is that Iwas glad to be there in the
moment I was there because Ithink the the events around 2020
and the death of George Floydand the interest in reform and
(12:14):
accountability and policing thatgrew really from the ground up
and that involved police chiefsall over the country trying to
be responsive to communities andbuild trust.
And though this was not, youknow, this wasn't didn't start
in 2020.
You could think of the events of2015, around Ferguson and and
and beyond that drew attention.
(12:36):
But President Biden's EO, Ithink it is probably the most
important effort at national uhuh law enforcement reform ever
in this country.
And I came with a lot ofexpertise in policing and the
law.
So that was a really excitingthing for me to be a part of
(12:56):
implementing.
You know, from the outside, Ihad sort of contributed a little
bit.
And then from the inside, I gotto work on trying to make that
happen.
And, you know, one of the thingsthat's not at all obvious from
the outside is how hard it is toimplement policies so the
president can announce whateverhe wants, but that doesn't make
it so.
It's not self-executing.
So it means working intenselywith agencies like the
(13:17):
Department of Homeland Security,like the Department of Justice,
to get the actual things donethat are in an executive order.
And some of them are really,really challenging.
So one of the things I worked ona lot was try helping get the
national law enforcementaccountability database, which
we called NLEED, National LawEnforcement Accountability
(13:38):
Database, off the ground.
And that database is intended,was intended.
It was the executive order hadtold the agent to the Department
of Justice to create it andfederal agencies to contribute
to it and try to promote itbeyond the federal government to
state and local agencies.
And it was intended to collectinformation that is useful to
law enforcement agencies inhiring new personnel.
(14:01):
So things about previousterminations or decertifications
of law enforcement officers bystate agencies or civil suit
judgments against officers thatmight be relevant to hiring
decisions.
And it turns out to be far morecomplicated than anyone imagined
to create such a database andhave federal agencies contribute
(14:24):
to it in a way that law thatagencies could then use, or to
create a database for localstate and state actors, which
did not get off the ground bythe time the the end of the
administration came.
But it was that kind of thingwhere I had a lot of experience
on law enforcementaccountability issues that I
felt like I could contributesomething substantive.
(14:45):
And on the crime side, theadministration came in at a time
when crime had just experiencedthe you know murder rates in
2020.
I learned everything I ever knewabout crime data from you.
And murder in 2020 was at itshighest, you know, went up its
highest one-year increase ever.
(15:06):
And that's how theadministration started.
And we had to respond to that.
And so, even as we're trying tomake policing more accountable
and it effectiveness and supportfor crime prevention and control
in communities was absolutelyessential.
And so that I had done a coupleof years ago, participated in
(15:28):
the National Academies ofSciences work on proactive
policing.
And so I felt like I was kind ofup to speed on the research on
some of the strategies that areeffective in crime, control in
terms of law enforcementactivities.
But of course, there was alsoattention to lots of non-law
enforcement activities.
And this was the administrationinvested more, really the first
(15:52):
focused investments in communityviolence intervention ever, and
other ways, you know, mentalhealth services, other ways to
try to prevent and address crimebeyond law enforcement.
But of course, you know, I camein focused on crime and law
enforcement, mostly through alaw enforcement lot.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
And as you're making these sort of or trying to make
these policies, what are thebiggest hurdles that you face,
especially like coming in,murder's risen the fastest ever?
It sort of as as you it wasn'treally until towards the latter
half of your time in office thatit was really clear that it was
falling and falling fast.
How do you respond to these,these big national issues and
(16:31):
sort of what are the biggestchallenges to doing so
effectively from the federalgovernment?
SPEAKER_01 (16:36):
Yeah, so it's funny, I felt very much like as an
academic and as someone whosecareer did not depend on
anything that happened in theWhite House or on anyone liking
me or liking my opinions.
And you know, if they didn'twant to hear from me, they could
just say I could just go home.
I there was no sense that I hadto be there, I had to
contribute.
And I feel like that gave me alittle bit of privilege and and
(16:59):
perspective as an almostoutsider, now insider at the
White House.
And what I found was that it itcan be very hard for the White
House to sort of quickly respondto current events.
So you're you know the the speedat which things go and the vast
(17:21):
number of things that the WhiteHouse has to deal with means
that you don't always have lotsof time to stop and think, okay,
what are going to be the mosteffective long-term strategies
to address this problem?
And you don't have a long clock,right?
You're you're on a four-yearclock, which means whatever
you're gonna get done, if you'reyou're either you're gonna have
(17:45):
to make the case for it at thevery least, um in a midterm
election or in anotherpresidential election.
And so there's this very,there's a little bit of a
conflict between the long termand the short term.
And then there's the collectingenough information and having
enough time and space to makegood policy and then sell that
(18:06):
policy both internally andexternally.
So, in terms of formulatingpolicy, and and we could talk
about crime data and the rolecrime data plays in that, but
formulating policy is not soeasy.
And then once you have thepolicy in place, the president
decides what he wants to do, heissues an executive order.
You have to get agencies onboard and and not just agencies,
(18:30):
but outside actors who cancontribute to the policy agenda
and to implementing policy.
And that turned out to beextremely challenging.
And it's not because people areobstructionist or because, but
because they have jobs too, andthey have incentives and they
have, you know, the JusticeDepartment has to do a lot
beyond implement crime policy ofthe White House as it's
(18:55):
responsible for law enforcementin a way that at least should be
and was in the Bidenadministration, independent of
the White House's politicalinterests.
It it it you know, it operates avast bureaucracy.
Um and you have to get you haveto align the gears to make a
priority in the agencies thethings that are priority in the
(19:18):
White House.
And I I I found, I mean, I haveutter respect for the actors in
the Department of Justice.
Um, but that sometimes waschallenging.
I mean, for the White House andthe Department of Justice to get
aligned.
And in under the Bidenadministration, the Justice
Department was treated with arespect and a distance and to in
(19:39):
order to preserve itsindependence.
And that was very important onthe crime enforcement side, but
that distance, which was createdto insulate that decisions and
assure the American public thatthey were neutral and fair,
could sometimes bleed over tothings like the policy agenda on
funding priorities, which isn't,doesn't require the same level
(20:00):
of independence or insulation.
So I don't know, maybe that'snot a real really great answer,
but I would say there arepolitical obstacles, there are
climbing obstacles, there areagency obstacles, there are
personnel obstacles, there werelots of obstacles.
SPEAKER_00 (20:18):
And since you brought this up, what role does
data and and specifically, youknow, the I mean the whole
podcast is about this lack ofperception of what's actually
happening with this issue?
How can data sort of overcomethat in the policy-making
process?
And and in your experience, wasit mostly a crime is out of
(20:40):
control, we need to do somethingabout it, or was it at a hey,
things are, you know, here'swhere things are sort of leveled
off and now it's starting tofall.
These are the policies thatmight be working.
How did data play a role in anyof these decision making?
SPEAKER_01 (20:51):
So, for one thing, the the the you know, one of the
biggest challenges for the WhiteHouse is if you think about the
White House as a short-termenterprise that has to be
responsive on a daily basis tothe American concerns.
Crime data operates in a verydifferent time frame.
And the so your crime dataaside, and that's pretty new,
(21:13):
that's that is post to theadministration or at the very
end of the administration.
But the, you know, one of thethings we struggled with is the
American public's concernedabout carjacking.
It seems like there's a rash ofcarjacking in DC, and carjacking
numbers look like they're goingup.
But we don't have national primecarjacking data.
(21:33):
And even if we did have reallygood national carjacking data,
we wouldn't have it for 18months.
And that's not that's very, verychallenging if you're trying
what you're trying to do is say,how big a problem is this?
And what are the and what kindsof strategies might we use to
intervene to stop it?
(21:54):
And yet you can't ignorecarjackings because you don't
have the data.
Um, it I think of carjacking.
Checking is actually in what oneof the crimes that most affects
Americans' perceptions ofsafety.
It's a pretty rare crime.
It doesn't happen in vastnumbers, but but it's also one
of the most violent randomcrimes, right?
(22:16):
It mostly doesn't happen betweenpeople who know each other.
It's very unlike assaults andgun violence.
It and it's sudden, it's scary,it can be violent, it often
involves a gun.
And it so people feel it showsthem that things are out of
(22:36):
control in a way that few othercrimes do.
And yet we have very little gooddata about it.
And that so responding to thatconcern, you know, the
Washington Post reports about arise in carjacking, and everyone
in the White House reads thatreport from my boss, the
domestic policy advisor, thepresident, everybody.
(22:57):
Um, and so it's impossible notto respond to those concerns.
And yet it it we're oftenhamstrung in our ability to do
so um by the absence of data.
SPEAKER_00 (23:08):
It's really funny you mentioned specifically
carjackings, because one of theprojects I'm working on now is
with NIBER's data, we can theythe carjacking is defined as a
robbery where a car was stolen.
SPEAKER_01 (23:21):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (23:21):
Yeah.
And we can actually pull thatdata.
And because the FBI is runningthese things monthly, they're
publishing new data.
We actually suddenly arestarting to have decent
carjacking data.
And so what I'm doing now is I'msort of building an AI that's
scraping all of the data,getting the master files from
the FBI.
And if you want to know how manycarjackings were there in Los
(23:44):
Angeles, it'll pull that datafrom the FBI and have it
through, you know, Los Angelesthrough January 2026 right now,
which is the most recent likesort of updated data.
I guess how, because this all ofthese structures are improving
so fast, how do we get people,and I don't know if you have any
insights from your work, likehow do how do we get people to
(24:05):
understand that like theinfrastructure, our awareness,
our ability to understand crimetrends is changing.
This is this is much less of alike, how do you do it from the
White House?
But like, do you have advicefrom your experience of someone
sitting in my seat that's like,we can actually answer a lot of
these questions fast, but nobodyknows about it?
SPEAKER_01 (24:21):
It's a very long-winded question for No, I
so I think the work you've donehere is critical.
As you know, I'm a big fan ofyour work.
I I follow your Substack.
I I I used you as a resourcewhen I was out the White House.
I needed to understand data.
I I I think you're doingcritical work.
And I think one of the thingsyou're doing, which I hate to
(24:42):
do, but you do very, very well,is translate that into things
like op-eds and responding tomedia calls and the Substack and
to try to help people see bothwhat the data says, but also
where the data comes from andhow to understand what it means,
the difference between, youknow, the uniform crime reports
(25:03):
and NIBERS and the victim surveyand the like.
I agree with you.
One of the things that isamazing is, you know, I was in
the White House, I don't know,what was it two years ago?
It wasn't that long ago.
And what we know about crime isvery different than it was then.
So in the two years since, wehave much more current data than
(25:27):
was available to the White Houseat the beginning or middle of
the Biden administration.
And so what do we do with that,or how do we convey that we have
that?
I think one is in making youknow resources available to
political actors at all levels.
And that is partly a publicityissue and partly it's a it's an
(25:50):
experience.
Um I think politicians learn inpart from politicians and from
law enforcement and making, youknow, they'll use the data that
they that builds trust and thatis reliable and that's
consistent over time and that isproduced on a regular calendar
and that gets press attention.
And then and then they start tosay, oh, I get it.
(26:13):
I can rely on that data, andthat helps them in their policy
making.
I think also, you know, weshouldn't, it's so crime data is
obviously extremely critical,but crime data in some ways is
our best case scenario.
There's lots of other data thatwe don't have that would help us
(26:33):
in making communities safer.
So we have very little dataabout what law enforcement is
doing, you know, what strategiesthey're using.
We know a little bit aboutarrests from the arrest data.
We don't know anything aboutcriminal charges.
There's no national data onthat.
And then we don't know how manypeople are convicted or how many
charges are dropped or whythey're dropped, or, you know,
(26:55):
there's just a lot we don't knowabout the criminal justice
system and the criminal process.
Though, you know, so crime datais getting better in some of
those areas.
Data is no better than it was 20years ago.
SPEAKER_00 (27:09):
Is there a way to improve those data sets in your
experience?
SPEAKER_01 (27:13):
Yeah, I I mean, I I think so.
Like one of the efforts that theBiden administration did was to
start a use of force databaseand the National Law Enforcement
Accountability Database.
Both of those are resources thatagencies in theory could use to
check their own performance andalso to give us some handle on
(27:36):
some of the costs and benefitsof policing and how to make
policing better.
That's, you know, we neednational data.
We don't even have nationalstandards for data collection,
for example, on the use offorests.
Something that's of vitalimportance to understanding how
police are interacting with thecommunity and also that affect
(27:59):
community trust in policing,which in turn affects, we think,
the effectiveness of lawenforcement and getting
cooperation and the like.
And so that seems important, butcommunities can't even check
themselves.
If you're a police chief and yousay, hey, I really want to know
in LA how I'm doing compared toother cities, you would need
(28:20):
national data standards on theuse of force and some national
way of collecting anddistributing that information,
ideally.
And we have that in some otherareas.
We have that in the NationalCrime Information Center or the
DNA database or fingerprints,but we haven't done that as much
in criminal charges.
We haven't done it insentencing, we haven't done it
(28:41):
in um uses of force and otherpolicing data.
And as a result, I think we'rewe're a little bit, you know,
we're operating half in thedocument.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Yeah.
Response times is the one thatalways comes to mind is we have
no idea what's good and whatshould be standard and how fast
should a police department getto an emergency.
And and yet each department sortof collects it.
And if it's good, they say aboutwhat it is, and if it's not,
they don't.
SPEAKER_01 (29:05):
So yes, but you know, one of the the most
important things about policingin America is how local and
diverse it is.
So by constitution and historyand tradition, policing is
mostly a local phenomenon.
And local conditions, at leastaround response times, are
really different.
(29:25):
If you're talking about anagency that operates over a
vacuum, I mean, if you if youlook at agencies in Alaska, it
could be hundreds of squaremiles.
And New York City is the very,very few square miles.
Obviously, response times indifferent places might look
different.
And so it's not that we'realways going to say, oh, well,
(29:48):
you have a worse response timethan this agency, therefore
you're doing a bad job.
And the same thing's true ofcrime, and the same thing's true
of use of force, and the samething's true of lots of other
aspects of um safety anddisorder.
You know, homelessness looksdifferent in different cities.
Um, car crime looks different indifferent cities.
Well, you know, I grew up in NewYork.
(30:09):
When I first went out to LA, Ihad no idea that cars could play
such a role in American society.
I mean, I who knew?
It looks very, very different.
So there's a lot of diversity,and that I think is challenging
to policy.
I think one of the hard thingsabout the White House, this is
back on the White House issue,which is that people really
(30:29):
don't realize is of coursepeople hold the president
responsible for national policyand national and national
conditions.
And it's not that I think weshouldn't, but we should also
recognize that in some areas, insome areas, the federal
government really is in charge,and they are the primary
(30:51):
determinants and implementers ofpolicy, and they should be held
accountable.
Immigration is one of those.
But crime looks very, verydifferent because the federal
government isn't the primaryactor here.
There are, I don't know what itis now, but it might be 17,000
law enforcement agencies in theUnited States, most of which are
(31:15):
local agencies and sheriff'soffices.
And what the federal governmentdoes is offer them funding and
collects and distributesinformation to them and
partnerships like joint taskforces and crime gun
intelligence centers andtechnical assistance and
enforcing federal law, whichincludes both criminal law and
civil rights law, and acting asa role model, you know, by
(31:38):
getting its own house in order.
And that's very different from,you know, if you talk to a
police chief and a mayor,they're in charge of the policy.
Now they're constrained by stateaction and federal action, but
but they they have a much moredaily effect on the quality of
lives in that community.
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
So, like if you go back and had a time machine and
you went back like seven to tenyears, you'd see criminal
justice policy and criminaljustice reform as one of those
things that there's maybe a pathforward in a bipartisan sense
where the parties can cometogether and actually make
policy change.
It feels like that hasevaporated in the last three or
(32:20):
four years.
Is that something that you thinkis possible, or do you just do
you disagree with thatassessment that I've sort of
assertion that I've made?
SPEAKER_01 (32:28):
Well, so I think bipartisan work is more
challenging today in manyissues, not just crime and
criminal justice policy.
So, you know, do I think this isso it might not be uniquely
challenging, but yeah, I dothink that there, you know, we
(32:48):
had the the President Bidensigned the bipartisan Safer
Communities Act that expandedbackground checks and funded
state red flag laws and expandedmental health services and
community violence intervention.
And you know, the it the hesigned the American Rescue Plan
that led to the biggest federalinvestment ever in public safety
(33:10):
by states and localities.
And that included hiring policeofficers and but also supporting
community violence interventionand mental health professional
responses to mental healthcrises and things like that.
And so I think we did have aperiod in which there was a
sense that we could worktogether, and that has faded
(33:32):
some.
But I don't have no hope.
I I'm not confident under thecurrent administration that
bipartisan efforts on crime andcriminal justice policy will
thrive.
But I also think that droppingcrime rates gives us some
runway, which is not only havecrime rates, I mean crime rates
(33:53):
dropped during the Bidenadministration and biggest, I
don't know, or biggest and50-year drop in 2023 and then a
bigger drop in 2024, if Iremember correctly.
That started, you know, a trend,which is, as you point out in
your work, continued in dramaticfashion.
And so now we have this, we dolive in a safer America.
(34:18):
I don't know that everyoneexperiences that way because
they still, because actually theconflict and disorder and
conflicts over things likeimmigration policy create a
sense of fear that probablypervades people's experience of
crime and as well.
But I do think that that crimedrop, especially if it's
(34:39):
sustained, could help us gettogether on criminal justice
policies and crime controlpolicies and re-entry policies
that are both supported by theevidence and that are likely to
actually make things better.
And so I don't have any hope.
In fact, I think lower crimegives us room to start
(35:03):
identifying policies that wecould implement over the long
run.
And they'll face less oppositionwhen people don't feel like they
have to respond to the rise incar thefts by cracking down on
kids or shoplifting, you know,videos of shoplifters.
We could talk about, I mean, Ibecame obsessed at the White
(35:23):
House with car crimes, includingcar thefts, carjacking, and
thefts from cars, especially ofguns, and then also shoplifting
and organized retail crime,which was a a huge political
issue at the time and now hasfaded in significant part
because people are payingattention to other things.
And of course, we have no ideawhether it went up or went down
(35:43):
then or now or anytime, uh,because we have no data on that.
But we do know that it was ofsignificant public concern and
now maybe less so, which mightgive us a way to say, okay, so
what are good policies at thestate and local level?
And how can we look atexperiences that have worked
(36:03):
well and share them?
And, you know, so I don't know.
That's a long-winded way ofsaying, I mean, I'm an academic,
so of course I'm long-winded,but the the it's a way of
saying, you know, I don't haveno hope because I think people
do get together on smart oncrime, smart and criminal
justice policies when they arenot under the gun.
SPEAKER_00 (36:24):
I'm going to give a quick plug to the FBI again.
They have a really cool dataset.
They did a report a couple ofmonths ago on this on was it
flash mob shopliftings.
You take NIBER's data, you findshoplifting offenses where there
were six or more offenders inonly one business.
And they're calling the, sothose that's what they're
calling the flash mobshopliftings.
Obviously, you have thereporting issue, so we can't
(36:46):
really tell whether it's goingup or down because that
shoplifting is sometimesreported and sometimes not.
But it's really cool that likeconceptually we can start to
think about measuring thosethings.
So again, uh you know, giving aplug again to the NIBERS
discussion.
SPEAKER_01 (37:00):
I love it.
And it shows you want to move toNIBERS, which was like a
technocratic policy issue.
Right.
So it was it was terrible to do.
It was really hard for theagencies.
It's still hard.
You're getting local, you thinkabout the lift that it took to
get NIBERS underway.
And obviously, it was not asmooth.
(37:20):
I mean, you could talk moreabout this, but it was not a
smooth path.
And yet think about what it hasempowered us to know now.
I mean, you're describing thingsthat we could not see in the uh,
you know, from crime report datathat we now can see in NIBER's
data.
And hopefully that will getbetter with time as we refine
that.
So I that I I I definitely givecredit to the FBI.
(37:44):
I mean, I think the lift, youknow, nobody was celebrating
their efforts in this regard.
Nobody was, you know, saying tothe director, you know, what
you've done a great job at, isdo doing this massive lift,
which is yeah, yeah.
So I I think that, you know,data isn't sexy.
(38:05):
Information collection isn'tsexy, evaluation isn't sexy
either.
SPEAKER_00 (38:09):
You know we're gonna have to agree to disagree on all
of those points.
SPEAKER_01 (38:12):
Well, it is to me, of course.
And it is to you, I know.
And yeah, I think you've made itsexier, actually.
I think you've done a good jobat that.
Uh yeah, you've definitely madedate cron data hotter than it
used to be.
SPEAKER_00 (38:25):
That is that is a that is the plug for my
newsletter now.
You can call it making cron datahotter since 2022.
SPEAKER_01 (38:34):
I I think that's absolutely right.
Um, but yeah, I that's a reallyinteresting area.
I mean, the so i i if we thoughit's true, I I would the one
thing I would say to you is thatwhen you're thinking about the
flash mob issue, and that ofcourse it's true mo that
(38:55):
shoplifting is an under-reportedcrime, and it's partly
under-reported because the inincentives to report are very
limited.
But I bet flash mobs, which isto say shoplifting events
involving six or more people,are more consistently reported
than individual shoplifters.
And so uh you might get slightlybetter data there, especially
(39:19):
once it's publicized that thereis a data set, because then
there might be an incentive.
And one of the things I got todo is talk with the some of the
retail organizations that wereconcerned about retail crime and
what they were doing and howtrying to coordinate with local
agencies and helping facilitatethat.
(39:40):
And that was just fascinating tosee people responding to
something that was both ofconcern to businesses, concern
to local law enforcement, anddefinitely it with the rise of
social media, concern about it,concern to the public.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
So have you given any thought, because I guess the
craze hadn't really hit quite asmuch as it has now from AI when
you were at the White House.
Have you given any thought tohow that would change your job
if you were starting a new stintthere, or even how is changing
your job sort of as an academicworking in this world?
SPEAKER_01 (40:14):
Yeah, it's already influencing certainly the work I
see and how people are thinkingabout research and data and
information and conveyinginformation.
I worry a lot about AI.
There was certainly concernabout it when I was at the White
House, but it was not, you know,we weren't where we are today on
(40:38):
AI.
And I've seen a dramatic changein when I use, for example,
ChatGPT.
It was really bad at law sixmonths ago.
If you asked it any legalquestion, it could not come up
with a plausible answer.
And it's gotten significantlybetter.
I run all my exams through AI tosee through ChatGPT to see
(40:59):
whether, you know, what I'mlikely to get from a student who
used AI in an exam just to tryto figure out like what's going
on in the world and also to seehow good it is at doing the
things that lawyers do.
And it's still got a ways to go.
So I'm not totally persuaded.
I am, in terms of the work oncrime and criminal justice, one
(41:24):
problem is that it has alwaysbeen true that social media,
both you know, if you look atbody camera footage from
officers, or if you look at cellcamera footage from the members
of the public, that has beenvery critical in helping people
understand policing in a waythey didn't.
(41:45):
So this starts with, you know,in 1992, with Rodney King, the
video of Rodney King's beating.
And that's really the first timethat Americans had their views
about law enforcement challengedby video evidence.
That it took a while before camcameras were common, but even
(42:07):
when they were, you know,YouTube didn't yet exist yet,
phones didn't exist yet, and theAmerican public had relatively
little and relatively mediatedinformation about what law
enforcement looked like.
That all changed not only withthe invention of the iPhone in
2006, but with the invention ofYouTube, which meant that it
wasn't media companies that weredistributing information about
(42:30):
what people were seeing, but itwas people themselves could
share it.
And of course, that's gottenmuch, much more expansive.
I am actually not on socialmedia.
I'm probably one of the lastpeople in America.
Not on social media.
So I but I but of course thatbecause I work on policing
issues, I do get that uh thatpeople share those videos with
(42:52):
me.
And the big change, this hasbeen a radical transformation in
our understanding of policingand really an opportunity
actually now with national withnatural language processing in
AI to start turning body camerafootage into data about
policing.
You know, we had this newopportunity, but AI actually
(43:14):
threatens that as well becausepeople can't trust the video
they see anymore.
And so, of course, it's alwaystrue that it could be edited, it
could be altered, but now we'rein a different world around
video.
And I think as the distrust forvideo goes up, we we it feels
like we had this heyday wheresuddenly we could see a lot
(43:37):
about crime, both what crimelooked like and what criminal uh
criminal enforcement lookedlike.
And now we're gonna be in thisworld where we're we don't know
again.
So we we it gives us betterdata, but I think it also
threatens what we know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:53):
Of course, we had Ian Adams on, who talked about
AI and policing specifically afew weeks ago and talked about
that case in Utah where The bodyworn camera picked up the
Princess and the Frog movie andthen the draft one software
picked it up as oh, the officertransformed into a frog.
And that was and they and nobodychecked the report.
So that's a an outlier example,but certainly a a amusing
(44:17):
anecdote of what could actuallybe the worst case scenario.
So so Rachel, what's what's nextfor you?
SPEAKER_01 (44:23):
Well, I'm as I have been, I'm back in my office at
the University of Virginia.
I'm working on papers oncriminal justice and including
policing.
I have a paper coming out thisyear with a philosopher and uh
legal philosopher Kim Frizan atthe University of Pennsylvania
about how we should think aboutinnocent people in the criminal
(44:45):
process and how we treat themand also whether we should
consider compensating innocentpeople who are are stopped or
arrested or charged or releasedbecause of the they're really
doing a kind of public serviceof the same kind that jury
service is, or that being awitness to a crime is in court
because they did nothing wrongand yet are caught up in the
(45:06):
criminal process.
And so I have a little work inthat vein going on.
I have a bunch of projects onpolicing and police
accountability.
I continue to do some consultingor advice giving to nonprofits
and agencies, governmentagencies about policing issues.
And, you know, I'm trying tohave fun.
SPEAKER_00 (45:26):
That's good.
That that's the goal foreveryone, right?
Rachel, thank you so much forjoining.
Uh, this has been a wonderfulconversation.
You've given my newsletter a newtagline.
So you know, very, very useful,very interesting.
And uh, I really appreciate youcoming on.
SPEAKER_01 (45:40):
Jeff, I really want to thank you for the work you've
done in this area.
It was important to me as apolicymaker, and it's important
to me as an academic.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (45:49):
Thank you.
That's lovely to hear.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
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.
(00:04):
Crime policy doesn't alwaysfollow the same timeline as the
data.
The problems are happening inreal time, but how can
institutions respond when thedata that help explain those
problems often shows up monthsor even years later, if at all?
My guest today is Rachel Harmon,a law professor at the
University of Virginia and aformer federal prosecutor who
spent years studying policing,accountability, and the role of
(00:25):
law in shaping how agenciesoperate.
She also served as a seniorpolicy advisor for the Biden
White House, working directly onthose issues at the national
level.
In this episode, we talk aboutwhat that experience actually
looks like.
We get into how policy gets madeby the White House when
information is incomplete, whatit takes to move priorities
across federal agencies, and whyimplementation is often the
(00:46):
hardest part of policy making.
Let's get started.
My guest today is Rachel Harmonat the University of Virginia
now.
Rachel, how are you?
SPEAKER_01 (00:55):
Very good.
Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00 (00:57):
Good.
Thanks for coming along.
So, first question for allguests: what is your background?
What brings you here today?
SPEAKER_01 (01:05):
Well, you can tell me that better than I can in
terms of what brings me heretoday, but I can tell you that I
am a law professor at theUniversity of Virginia Law
School, where I also direct theCrim Center for Criminal
Justice.
And I have worked on and off oncrime and criminal justice
policy for a long time.
I started my career.
(01:26):
I went to Yale Law School.
I clerked for a federal court ofappeals judge and for Justice
Breyer at the Supreme Court, andthen became a federal prosecutor
in the Department of Justice.
I spent most of my time there inthe civil rights division,
prosecuting civil rights crimes,which included crimes by public
officials and especially lawenforcement.
And then I decided that I wantedto understand more how law could
(01:51):
be used to prevent problems inlaw enforcement rather than
dealing with them afterwards.
And I became a professor.
And since then I've studiedpolicing, its effectiveness and
accountability and the way itresponds to communities and how
law influences the police.
But I think you invited me heretoday because I got to know you
(02:13):
when I spent a year helping outat the White House as a senior
policy advisor on criminaljustice.
And there I worked on crimepolicy and criminal justice
policy.
SPEAKER_00 (02:25):
Not the only reason.
I certainly am very interestedin delving into sort of the
answer of how can the law helppolice do their job better and
more effectively and moreconstitutionally.
But I do want to talk about theWhite House because that's how
we got acquainted.
And I I really just I want tohave a thousand questions about
that.
Like, how does one get picked todo that sort of role within the
(02:49):
federal, the federal government?
SPEAKER_01 (02:52):
Well, you know, that that's a little bit puzzling
even to me.
I think I'm uh an expert onpolicing and the law.
That was obviously a big concernwhen the Biden administration
came in in 2020.
And people in the White Househad reached out to me early on,
and as they were formulating theexecutive order on policing and
(03:15):
criminal justice policy.
And that conversation continued.
Some of the uh policy advisorsthere used me as a resource.
And then when someone wasleaving, they asked me to step
in.
And initially I couldn't do itfor personal reasons.
Then they came back around to meanother time.
(03:35):
And by then I could.
And so my youngest had gone offto college, and I thought, okay,
you can't cart from thesidelines forever at some point
to say, ask you to participatein the policy that you've been
talking about for years, thenyou've got to go do it.
So I had just written an articleon the federal influence and
local law enforcement.
(03:56):
It felt like it couldn't say no.
And so I went and uh served asuh on the domestic policy
council.
SPEAKER_00 (04:04):
So, first overarching big question is is
just like, what is it likeworking at the White House?
SPEAKER_01 (04:10):
It's actually an incredible institution in many
ways.
It's very, very different frommy experience working at the
Department of Justice or andother even policy work.
I before I went to law school, Iworked for the Manhattanboro
President in New York.
I had done policy work there.
But it it's just such adifferent institution.
(04:31):
First of all, the place getsbuilt every four years from the
ground up.
And so it's it it's a um uh umreally challenging thing to do.
It has a vast uh responsibilityand and and this, you know, if
you think about the portfolio ofthe White House, it's just
(04:52):
completely vast.
And yet the personnel, you know,there's really just uh not that
many people working there.
Uh if it's a thousand, I'd besurprised.
I don't know exactly the number.
And so it it has this incredibleresponsibility and intensity.
And the, you know, when I firstgot there, I didn't even know
what my job was, and nobody hadtime to slow down and tell me.
(05:14):
I mean, it's just the thingsare, you know, somebody compared
it when I for when I first gotthere, it's like you're it
you're it's a crew race, and alleight people in the boat are
rowing as hard as they can, andsomeone jumps out of the boat
and you jump in and you justhave to start rowing.
And so there is just it the thespeed at which the White House
(05:38):
works and the intensity of theresponsibility, it's and and the
things that could happen on anygiven day.
So you're pursuing bothlong-term policies and then
short-term responsiveness isreally quite incredible.
And especially from my stayedoffice at the University of
Virginia where things movedpretty slowly.
I mean, of course, I'd been aprosecutor for years and I had
(06:00):
done trials.
I I know what intensity feelslike, but this really felt like
a, you know, the the emailswould start to pick up at 6 a.m.
and they wouldn't finish upuntil 11 or 11:30.
And you couldn't be, I mean, I Imust I I did a lot of cycling
before I got to the White House,White House.
In fact, before I went there, Ijust finished a 700-mile ride
(06:21):
from Portland, Oregon toMissoula, Montana.
And then I got to the WhiteHouse and didn't get on my bike
again for a year because Icouldn't be away from my laptop
for an hour.
I mean, and and to be at a cellservice was just impossible.
SPEAKER_00 (06:36):
You have to learn to ride your bike with your laptop
sort of on the front barbalanced, I think is the is the
ethics.
SPEAKER_01 (06:41):
I watch movies, but I'm not that good at the at the
at the responding to emails onmy bike.
SPEAKER_00 (06:46):
All right, fair enough.
How how do you compare havingworked at the White House to
having clerked with the SupremeCourt?
Is there any comparison?
How do you how do youconceptualize those two
experiences?
SPEAKER_01 (06:58):
Yeah, so that they are extremely different.
Um the White House is responsivein a daily way, in an hourly,
minutely way.
I mean, it's just so in theworld.
And the work of the SupremeCourt is much more insulated
(07:19):
from both public view, but alsoit it's slower and more
thoughtful, and the justiceschoose their cases, and then it
takes months to brief them, andthen they get argued, and then
it takes months to write anddraft the opinions.
And so it's just sort of a timeframe on the two is very, very
(07:39):
different.
I also think that it's not tosay there are, I mean, there are
all sorts of things to say aboutpolitics and the Supreme Court,
and I am hardly an expert onthem, but it is not
fundamentally a politicalinstitution in the same way that
the White House is.
And you feel that every day.
(08:00):
So power within the building,you know, in the White House,
there the president and vicepresident are elected, and the
president, everything reallyfunnels down from that.
Everyone else in the White Househas a job because the person
above them has a job, and theperson above them to the
(08:20):
president.
And so there's just this lookingup sense of, you know,
responding to the leadershipthat it is so it's both power
within the building, I guess isanother way to say it, and the
responsiveness to the world,that it just feels very
different.
You know, that each SupremeCourt justice is um they
(08:43):
interact to be sure, but they'reeach an island.
They each have a constitutionalresponsibility that's separate.
They each have their own staff,in addition to the collective
library and other staff.
And they each make decisions,um, certainly in interaction,
but they're kind of you knowmore independent than anyone in
(09:03):
the White House is you allworking towards one die.
SPEAKER_00 (09:07):
Getting a little more granular, what what
specifically is the domesticpolicy council?
Because until we startedinteracting, uh you just kind of
assume there's this monolith andthere's a person at the top and
they have underlings arranged insome sort of random pattern and
they do the thing.
But there's a there's ahierarchy in organization to it,
which makes sense.
So I'm curious, like how howwould you summarize the domestic
(09:28):
policy council and morespecifically, what is the role
that that you played and thepolicy council plays in sort of
setting criminal justice policyat a national level?
SPEAKER_01 (09:38):
So the domestic policy council exists to help
the president form and implementhis domestic policy across a
whole range of issues.
And so that means it's a very uhdiverse internally.
You know, I shared an officewith somebody who was working on
disability policy, and I workedevery day with people who were
(10:01):
doing the national anti-Semitismpolicy.
And so there were people doingall sorts of things that had
very little to do with the stuffthat I do, which is crime and
criminal justice.
So the policy council as anoffice is diverse.
It is led by the domestic policyadvisor, and the domestic policy
(10:24):
advisor is one of several senioradvisors to the president who
help formulate and implementpolicy in different areas.
And each of the councils isorganized differently.
So the domestic policy councildoesn't look like the National
Security Council, which is or ithas obviously a different
portfolio, but it's alsoorganized differently.
(10:45):
We were helped the domesticpolicy advisor help the
president uh form and implementpolicy.
And that meant both, givenPresident Biden's priorities,
that meant both crime policy andit also meant criminal justice
policy.
So he, his executive order, forexample, on effective and
(11:08):
accountable policing andcriminal justice was intended to
pursue policing and criminaljustice policy that both worked
to make communities safer andalso that was responsive to the
law, to uh community concernsabout the ways that policing and
criminal justice is carried out.
SPEAKER_00 (11:29):
And are there there's subject matters?
I don't know the degree to whichyou could talk about it, but the
the things that you worked on.
Are there subject matters thatthat you helped push along the
line, specifically things thatyour academic research helped to
sort of inform the policy goingforward?
Is there anything that youworked on that you're
particularly proud of that likeyou were, this is a thing that I
did that suddenly was a a thingnationally?
SPEAKER_01 (11:52):
Well, so I I will give all credit to the president
for any policies that we helpedimplement.
But what I would say is that Iwas glad to be there in the
moment I was there because Ithink the the events around 2020
and the death of George Floydand the interest in reform and
(12:14):
accountability and policing thatgrew really from the ground up
and that involved police chiefsall over the country trying to
be responsive to communities andbuild trust.
And though this was not, youknow, this wasn't didn't start
in 2020.
You could think of the events of2015, around Ferguson and and
and beyond that drew attention.
(12:36):
But President Biden's EO, Ithink it is probably the most
important effort at national uhuh law enforcement reform ever
in this country.
And I came with a lot ofexpertise in policing and the
law.
So that was a really excitingthing for me to be a part of
(12:56):
implementing.
You know, from the outside, Ihad sort of contributed a little
bit.
And then from the inside, I gotto work on trying to make that
happen.
And, you know, one of the thingsthat's not at all obvious from
the outside is how hard it is toimplement policies so the
president can announce whateverhe wants, but that doesn't make
it so.
It's not self-executing.
So it means working intenselywith agencies like the
(13:17):
Department of Homeland Security,like the Department of Justice,
to get the actual things donethat are in an executive order.
And some of them are really,really challenging.
So one of the things I worked ona lot was try helping get the
national law enforcementaccountability database, which
we called NLEED, National LawEnforcement Accountability
(13:38):
Database, off the ground.
And that database is intended,was intended.
It was the executive order hadtold the agent to the Department
of Justice to create it andfederal agencies to contribute
to it and try to promote itbeyond the federal government to
state and local agencies.
And it was intended to collectinformation that is useful to
law enforcement agencies inhiring new personnel.
(14:01):
So things about previousterminations or decertifications
of law enforcement officers bystate agencies or civil suit
judgments against officers thatmight be relevant to hiring
decisions.
And it turns out to be far morecomplicated than anyone imagined
to create such a database andhave federal agencies contribute
(14:24):
to it in a way that law thatagencies could then use, or to
create a database for localstate and state actors, which
did not get off the ground bythe time the the end of the
administration came.
But it was that kind of thingwhere I had a lot of experience
on law enforcementaccountability issues that I
felt like I could contributesomething substantive.
(14:45):
And on the crime side, theadministration came in at a time
when crime had just experiencedthe you know murder rates in
2020.
I learned everything I ever knewabout crime data from you.
And murder in 2020 was at itshighest, you know, went up its
highest one-year increase ever.
(15:06):
And that's how theadministration started.
And we had to respond to that.
And so, even as we're trying tomake policing more accountable
and it effectiveness and supportfor crime prevention and control
in communities was absolutelyessential.
And so that I had done a coupleof years ago, participated in
(15:28):
the National Academies ofSciences work on proactive
policing.
And so I felt like I was kind ofup to speed on the research on
some of the strategies that areeffective in crime, control in
terms of law enforcementactivities.
But of course, there was alsoattention to lots of non-law
enforcement activities.
And this was the administrationinvested more, really the first
(15:52):
focused investments in communityviolence intervention ever, and
other ways, you know, mentalhealth services, other ways to
try to prevent and address crimebeyond law enforcement.
But of course, you know, I camein focused on crime and law
enforcement, mostly through alaw enforcement lot.
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
And as you're making these sort of or trying to make
these policies, what are thebiggest hurdles that you face,
especially like coming in,murder's risen the fastest ever?
It sort of as as you it wasn'treally until towards the latter
half of your time in office thatit was really clear that it was
falling and falling fast.
How do you respond to these,these big national issues and
(16:31):
sort of what are the biggestchallenges to doing so
effectively from the federalgovernment?
SPEAKER_01 (16:36):
Yeah, so it's funny, I felt very much like as an
academic and as someone whosecareer did not depend on
anything that happened in theWhite House or on anyone liking
me or liking my opinions.
And you know, if they didn'twant to hear from me, they could
just say I could just go home.
I there was no sense that I hadto be there, I had to
contribute.
And I feel like that gave me alittle bit of privilege and and
(16:59):
perspective as an almostoutsider, now insider at the
White House.
And what I found was that it itcan be very hard for the White
House to sort of quickly respondto current events.
So you're you know the the speedat which things go and the vast
(17:21):
number of things that the WhiteHouse has to deal with means
that you don't always have lotsof time to stop and think, okay,
what are going to be the mosteffective long-term strategies
to address this problem?
And you don't have a long clock,right?
You're you're on a four-yearclock, which means whatever
you're gonna get done, if you'reyou're either you're gonna have
(17:45):
to make the case for it at thevery least, um in a midterm
election or in anotherpresidential election.
And so there's this very,there's a little bit of a
conflict between the long termand the short term.
And then there's the collectingenough information and having
enough time and space to makegood policy and then sell that
(18:06):
policy both internally andexternally.
So, in terms of formulatingpolicy, and and we could talk
about crime data and the rolecrime data plays in that, but
formulating policy is not soeasy.
And then once you have thepolicy in place, the president
decides what he wants to do, heissues an executive order.
You have to get agencies onboard and and not just agencies,
(18:30):
but outside actors who cancontribute to the policy agenda
and to implementing policy.
And that turned out to beextremely challenging.
And it's not because people areobstructionist or because, but
because they have jobs too, andthey have incentives and they
have, you know, the JusticeDepartment has to do a lot
beyond implement crime policy ofthe White House as it's
(18:55):
responsible for law enforcementin a way that at least should be
and was in the Bidenadministration, independent of
the White House's politicalinterests.
It it it you know, it operates avast bureaucracy.
Um and you have to get you haveto align the gears to make a
priority in the agencies thethings that are priority in the
(19:18):
White House.
And I I I found, I mean, I haveutter respect for the actors in
the Department of Justice.
Um, but that sometimes waschallenging.
I mean, for the White House andthe Department of Justice to get
aligned.
And in under the Bidenadministration, the Justice
Department was treated with arespect and a distance and to in
(19:39):
order to preserve itsindependence.
And that was very important onthe crime enforcement side, but
that distance, which was createdto insulate that decisions and
assure the American public thatthey were neutral and fair,
could sometimes bleed over tothings like the policy agenda on
funding priorities, which isn't,doesn't require the same level
(20:00):
of independence or insulation.
So I don't know, maybe that'snot a real really great answer,
but I would say there arepolitical obstacles, there are
climbing obstacles, there areagency obstacles, there are
personnel obstacles, there werelots of obstacles.
SPEAKER_00 (20:18):
And since you brought this up, what role does
data and and specifically, youknow, the I mean the whole
podcast is about this lack ofperception of what's actually
happening with this issue?
How can data sort of overcomethat in the policy-making
process?
And and in your experience, wasit mostly a crime is out of
(20:40):
control, we need to do somethingabout it, or was it at a hey,
things are, you know, here'swhere things are sort of leveled
off and now it's starting tofall.
These are the policies thatmight be working.
How did data play a role in anyof these decision making?
SPEAKER_01 (20:51):
So, for one thing, the the the you know, one of the
biggest challenges for the WhiteHouse is if you think about the
White House as a short-termenterprise that has to be
responsive on a daily basis tothe American concerns.
Crime data operates in a verydifferent time frame.
And the so your crime dataaside, and that's pretty new,
(21:13):
that's that is post to theadministration or at the very
end of the administration.
But the, you know, one of thethings we struggled with is the
American public's concernedabout carjacking.
It seems like there's a rash ofcarjacking in DC, and carjacking
numbers look like they're goingup.
But we don't have national primecarjacking data.
(21:33):
And even if we did have reallygood national carjacking data,
we wouldn't have it for 18months.
And that's not that's very, verychallenging if you're trying
what you're trying to do is say,how big a problem is this?
And what are the and what kindsof strategies might we use to
intervene to stop it?
(21:54):
And yet you can't ignorecarjackings because you don't
have the data.
Um, it I think of carjacking.
Checking is actually in what oneof the crimes that most affects
Americans' perceptions ofsafety.
It's a pretty rare crime.
It doesn't happen in vastnumbers, but but it's also one
of the most violent randomcrimes, right?
(22:16):
It mostly doesn't happen betweenpeople who know each other.
It's very unlike assaults andgun violence.
It and it's sudden, it's scary,it can be violent, it often
involves a gun.
And it so people feel it showsthem that things are out of
(22:36):
control in a way that few othercrimes do.
And yet we have very little gooddata about it.
And that so responding to thatconcern, you know, the
Washington Post reports about arise in carjacking, and everyone
in the White House reads thatreport from my boss, the
domestic policy advisor, thepresident, everybody.
(22:57):
Um, and so it's impossible notto respond to those concerns.
And yet it it we're oftenhamstrung in our ability to do
so um by the absence of data.
SPEAKER_00 (23:08):
It's really funny you mentioned specifically
carjackings, because one of theprojects I'm working on now is
with NIBER's data, we can theythe carjacking is defined as a
robbery where a car was stolen.
SPEAKER_01 (23:21):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (23:21):
Yeah.
And we can actually pull thatdata.
And because the FBI is runningthese things monthly, they're
publishing new data.
We actually suddenly arestarting to have decent
carjacking data.
And so what I'm doing now is I'msort of building an AI that's
scraping all of the data,getting the master files from
the FBI.
And if you want to know how manycarjackings were there in Los
(23:44):
Angeles, it'll pull that datafrom the FBI and have it
through, you know, Los Angelesthrough January 2026 right now,
which is the most recent likesort of updated data.
I guess how, because this all ofthese structures are improving
so fast, how do we get people,and I don't know if you have any
insights from your work, likehow do how do we get people to
(24:05):
understand that like theinfrastructure, our awareness,
our ability to understand crimetrends is changing.
This is this is much less of alike, how do you do it from the
White House?
But like, do you have advicefrom your experience of someone
sitting in my seat that's like,we can actually answer a lot of
these questions fast, but nobodyknows about it?
SPEAKER_01 (24:21):
It's a very long-winded question for No, I
so I think the work you've donehere is critical.
As you know, I'm a big fan ofyour work.
I I follow your Substack.
I I I used you as a resourcewhen I was out the White House.
I needed to understand data.
I I I think you're doingcritical work.
And I think one of the thingsyou're doing, which I hate to
(24:42):
do, but you do very, very well,is translate that into things
like op-eds and responding tomedia calls and the Substack and
to try to help people see bothwhat the data says, but also
where the data comes from andhow to understand what it means,
the difference between, youknow, the uniform crime reports
(25:03):
and NIBERS and the victim surveyand the like.
I agree with you.
One of the things that isamazing is, you know, I was in
the White House, I don't know,what was it two years ago?
It wasn't that long ago.
And what we know about crime isvery different than it was then.
So in the two years since, wehave much more current data than
(25:27):
was available to the White Houseat the beginning or middle of
the Biden administration.
And so what do we do with that,or how do we convey that we have
that?
I think one is in making youknow resources available to
political actors at all levels.
And that is partly a publicityissue and partly it's a it's an
(25:50):
experience.
Um I think politicians learn inpart from politicians and from
law enforcement and making, youknow, they'll use the data that
they that builds trust and thatis reliable and that's
consistent over time and that isproduced on a regular calendar
and that gets press attention.
And then and then they start tosay, oh, I get it.
(26:13):
I can rely on that data, andthat helps them in their policy
making.
I think also, you know, weshouldn't, it's so crime data is
obviously extremely critical,but crime data in some ways is
our best case scenario.
There's lots of other data thatwe don't have that would help us
(26:33):
in making communities safer.
So we have very little dataabout what law enforcement is
doing, you know, what strategiesthey're using.
We know a little bit aboutarrests from the arrest data.
We don't know anything aboutcriminal charges.
There's no national data onthat.
And then we don't know how manypeople are convicted or how many
charges are dropped or whythey're dropped, or, you know,
(26:55):
there's just a lot we don't knowabout the criminal justice
system and the criminal process.
Though, you know, so crime datais getting better in some of
those areas.
Data is no better than it was 20years ago.
SPEAKER_00 (27:09):
Is there a way to improve those data sets in your
experience?
SPEAKER_01 (27:13):
Yeah, I I mean, I I think so.
Like one of the efforts that theBiden administration did was to
start a use of force databaseand the National Law Enforcement
Accountability Database.
Both of those are resources thatagencies in theory could use to
check their own performance andalso to give us some handle on
(27:36):
some of the costs and benefitsof policing and how to make
policing better.
That's, you know, we neednational data.
We don't even have nationalstandards for data collection,
for example, on the use offorests.
Something that's of vitalimportance to understanding how
police are interacting with thecommunity and also that affect
(27:59):
community trust in policing,which in turn affects, we think,
the effectiveness of lawenforcement and getting
cooperation and the like.
And so that seems important, butcommunities can't even check
themselves.
If you're a police chief and yousay, hey, I really want to know
in LA how I'm doing compared toother cities, you would need
(28:20):
national data standards on theuse of force and some national
way of collecting anddistributing that information,
ideally.
And we have that in some otherareas.
We have that in the NationalCrime Information Center or the
DNA database or fingerprints,but we haven't done that as much
in criminal charges.
We haven't done it insentencing, we haven't done it
(28:41):
in um uses of force and otherpolicing data.
And as a result, I think we'rewe're a little bit, you know,
we're operating half in thedocument.
SPEAKER_00 (28:50):
Yeah.
Response times is the one thatalways comes to mind is we have
no idea what's good and whatshould be standard and how fast
should a police department getto an emergency.
And and yet each department sortof collects it.
And if it's good, they say aboutwhat it is, and if it's not,
they don't.
SPEAKER_01 (29:05):
So yes, but you know, one of the the most
important things about policingin America is how local and
diverse it is.
So by constitution and historyand tradition, policing is
mostly a local phenomenon.
And local conditions, at leastaround response times, are
really different.
(29:25):
If you're talking about anagency that operates over a
vacuum, I mean, if you if youlook at agencies in Alaska, it
could be hundreds of squaremiles.
And New York City is the very,very few square miles.
Obviously, response times indifferent places might look
different.
And so it's not that we'realways going to say, oh, well,
(29:48):
you have a worse response timethan this agency, therefore
you're doing a bad job.
And the same thing's true ofcrime, and the same thing's true
of use of force, and the samething's true of lots of other
aspects of um safety anddisorder.
You know, homelessness looksdifferent in different cities.
Um, car crime looks different indifferent cities.
Well, you know, I grew up in NewYork.
(30:09):
When I first went out to LA, Ihad no idea that cars could play
such a role in American society.
I mean, I who knew?
It looks very, very different.
So there's a lot of diversity,and that I think is challenging
to policy.
I think one of the hard thingsabout the White House, this is
back on the White House issue,which is that people really
(30:29):
don't realize is of coursepeople hold the president
responsible for national policyand national and national
conditions.
And it's not that I think weshouldn't, but we should also
recognize that in some areas, insome areas, the federal
government really is in charge,and they are the primary
(30:51):
determinants and implementers ofpolicy, and they should be held
accountable.
Immigration is one of those.
But crime looks very, verydifferent because the federal
government isn't the primaryactor here.
There are, I don't know what itis now, but it might be 17,000
law enforcement agencies in theUnited States, most of which are
(31:15):
local agencies and sheriff'soffices.
And what the federal governmentdoes is offer them funding and
collects and distributesinformation to them and
partnerships like joint taskforces and crime gun
intelligence centers andtechnical assistance and
enforcing federal law, whichincludes both criminal law and
civil rights law, and acting asa role model, you know, by
(31:38):
getting its own house in order.
And that's very different from,you know, if you talk to a
police chief and a mayor,they're in charge of the policy.
Now they're constrained by stateaction and federal action, but
but they they have a much moredaily effect on the quality of
lives in that community.
SPEAKER_00 (31:59):
So, like if you go back and had a time machine and
you went back like seven to tenyears, you'd see criminal
justice policy and criminaljustice reform as one of those
things that there's maybe a pathforward in a bipartisan sense
where the parties can cometogether and actually make
policy change.
It feels like that hasevaporated in the last three or
(32:20):
four years.
Is that something that you thinkis possible, or do you just do
you disagree with thatassessment that I've sort of
assertion that I've made?
SPEAKER_01 (32:28):
Well, so I think bipartisan work is more
challenging today in manyissues, not just crime and
criminal justice policy.
So, you know, do I think this isso it might not be uniquely
challenging, but yeah, I dothink that there, you know, we
(32:48):
had the the President Bidensigned the bipartisan Safer
Communities Act that expandedbackground checks and funded
state red flag laws and expandedmental health services and
community violence intervention.
And you know, the it the hesigned the American Rescue Plan
that led to the biggest federalinvestment ever in public safety
(33:10):
by states and localities.
And that included hiring policeofficers and but also supporting
community violence interventionand mental health professional
responses to mental healthcrises and things like that.
And so I think we did have aperiod in which there was a
sense that we could worktogether, and that has faded
(33:32):
some.
But I don't have no hope.
I I'm not confident under thecurrent administration that
bipartisan efforts on crime andcriminal justice policy will
thrive.
But I also think that droppingcrime rates gives us some
runway, which is not only havecrime rates, I mean crime rates
(33:53):
dropped during the Bidenadministration and biggest, I
don't know, or biggest and50-year drop in 2023 and then a
bigger drop in 2024, if Iremember correctly.
That started, you know, a trend,which is, as you point out in
your work, continued in dramaticfashion.
And so now we have this, we dolive in a safer America.
(34:18):
I don't know that everyoneexperiences that way because
they still, because actually theconflict and disorder and
conflicts over things likeimmigration policy create a
sense of fear that probablypervades people's experience of
crime and as well.
But I do think that that crimedrop, especially if it's
(34:39):
sustained, could help us gettogether on criminal justice
policies and crime controlpolicies and re-entry policies
that are both supported by theevidence and that are likely to
actually make things better.
And so I don't have any hope.
In fact, I think lower crimegives us room to start
(35:03):
identifying policies that wecould implement over the long
run.
And they'll face less oppositionwhen people don't feel like they
have to respond to the rise incar thefts by cracking down on
kids or shoplifting, you know,videos of shoplifters.
We could talk about, I mean, Ibecame obsessed at the White
(35:23):
House with car crimes, includingcar thefts, carjacking, and
thefts from cars, especially ofguns, and then also shoplifting
and organized retail crime,which was a a huge political
issue at the time and now hasfaded in significant part
because people are payingattention to other things.
And of course, we have no ideawhether it went up or went down
(35:43):
then or now or anytime, uh,because we have no data on that.
But we do know that it was ofsignificant public concern and
now maybe less so, which mightgive us a way to say, okay, so
what are good policies at thestate and local level?
And how can we look atexperiences that have worked
(36:03):
well and share them?
And, you know, so I don't know.
That's a long-winded way ofsaying, I mean, I'm an academic,
so of course I'm long-winded,but the the it's a way of
saying, you know, I don't haveno hope because I think people
do get together on smart oncrime, smart and criminal
justice policies when they arenot under the gun.
SPEAKER_00 (36:24):
I'm going to give a quick plug to the FBI again.
They have a really cool dataset.
They did a report a couple ofmonths ago on this on was it
flash mob shopliftings.
You take NIBER's data, you findshoplifting offenses where there
were six or more offenders inonly one business.
And they're calling the, sothose that's what they're
calling the flash mobshopliftings.
Obviously, you have thereporting issue, so we can't
(36:46):
really tell whether it's goingup or down because that
shoplifting is sometimesreported and sometimes not.
But it's really cool that likeconceptually we can start to
think about measuring thosethings.
So again, uh you know, giving aplug again to the NIBERS
discussion.
SPEAKER_01 (37:00):
I love it.
And it shows you want to move toNIBERS, which was like a
technocratic policy issue.
Right.
So it was it was terrible to do.
It was really hard for theagencies.
It's still hard.
You're getting local, you thinkabout the lift that it took to
get NIBERS underway.
And obviously, it was not asmooth.
(37:20):
I mean, you could talk moreabout this, but it was not a
smooth path.
And yet think about what it hasempowered us to know now.
I mean, you're describing thingsthat we could not see in the uh,
you know, from crime report datathat we now can see in NIBER's
data.
And hopefully that will getbetter with time as we refine
that.
So I that I I I definitely givecredit to the FBI.
(37:44):
I mean, I think the lift, youknow, nobody was celebrating
their efforts in this regard.
Nobody was, you know, saying tothe director, you know, what
you've done a great job at, isdo doing this massive lift,
which is yeah, yeah.
So I I think that, you know,data isn't sexy.
(38:05):
Information collection isn'tsexy, evaluation isn't sexy
either.
SPEAKER_00 (38:09):
You know we're gonna have to agree to disagree on all
of those points.
SPEAKER_01 (38:12):
Well, it is to me, of course.
And it is to you, I know.
And yeah, I think you've made itsexier, actually.
I think you've done a good jobat that.
Uh yeah, you've definitely madedate cron data hotter than it
used to be.
SPEAKER_00 (38:25):
That is that is a that is the plug for my
newsletter now.
You can call it making cron datahotter since 2022.
SPEAKER_01 (38:34):
I I think that's absolutely right.
Um, but yeah, I that's a reallyinteresting area.
I mean, the so i i if we thoughit's true, I I would the one
thing I would say to you is thatwhen you're thinking about the
flash mob issue, and that ofcourse it's true mo that
(38:55):
shoplifting is an under-reportedcrime, and it's partly
under-reported because the inincentives to report are very
limited.
But I bet flash mobs, which isto say shoplifting events
involving six or more people,are more consistently reported
than individual shoplifters.
And so uh you might get slightlybetter data there, especially
(39:19):
once it's publicized that thereis a data set, because then
there might be an incentive.
And one of the things I got todo is talk with the some of the
retail organizations that wereconcerned about retail crime and
what they were doing and howtrying to coordinate with local
agencies and helping facilitatethat.
(39:40):
And that was just fascinating tosee people responding to
something that was both ofconcern to businesses, concern
to local law enforcement, anddefinitely it with the rise of
social media, concern about it,concern to the public.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
So have you given any thought, because I guess the
craze hadn't really hit quite asmuch as it has now from AI when
you were at the White House.
Have you given any thought tohow that would change your job
if you were starting a new stintthere, or even how is changing
your job sort of as an academicworking in this world?
SPEAKER_01 (40:14):
Yeah, it's already influencing certainly the work I
see and how people are thinkingabout research and data and
information and conveyinginformation.
I worry a lot about AI.
There was certainly concernabout it when I was at the White
House, but it was not, you know,we weren't where we are today on
(40:38):
AI.
And I've seen a dramatic changein when I use, for example,
ChatGPT.
It was really bad at law sixmonths ago.
If you asked it any legalquestion, it could not come up
with a plausible answer.
And it's gotten significantlybetter.
I run all my exams through AI tosee through ChatGPT to see
(40:59):
whether, you know, what I'mlikely to get from a student who
used AI in an exam just to tryto figure out like what's going
on in the world and also to seehow good it is at doing the
things that lawyers do.
And it's still got a ways to go.
So I'm not totally persuaded.
I am, in terms of the work oncrime and criminal justice, one
(41:24):
problem is that it has alwaysbeen true that social media,
both you know, if you look atbody camera footage from
officers, or if you look at cellcamera footage from the members
of the public, that has beenvery critical in helping people
understand policing in a waythey didn't.
(41:45):
So this starts with, you know,in 1992, with Rodney King, the
video of Rodney King's beating.
And that's really the first timethat Americans had their views
about law enforcement challengedby video evidence.
That it took a while before camcameras were common, but even
(42:07):
when they were, you know,YouTube didn't yet exist yet,
phones didn't exist yet, and theAmerican public had relatively
little and relatively mediatedinformation about what law
enforcement looked like.
That all changed not only withthe invention of the iPhone in
2006, but with the invention ofYouTube, which meant that it
wasn't media companies that weredistributing information about
(42:30):
what people were seeing, but itwas people themselves could
share it.
And of course, that's gottenmuch, much more expansive.
I am actually not on socialmedia.
I'm probably one of the lastpeople in America.
Not on social media.
So I but I but of course thatbecause I work on policing
issues, I do get that uh thatpeople share those videos with
(42:52):
me.
And the big change, this hasbeen a radical transformation in
our understanding of policingand really an opportunity
actually now with national withnatural language processing in
AI to start turning body camerafootage into data about
policing.
You know, we had this newopportunity, but AI actually
(43:14):
threatens that as well becausepeople can't trust the video
they see anymore.
And so, of course, it's alwaystrue that it could be edited, it
could be altered, but now we'rein a different world around
video.
And I think as the distrust forvideo goes up, we we it feels
like we had this heyday wheresuddenly we could see a lot
(43:37):
about crime, both what crimelooked like and what criminal uh
criminal enforcement lookedlike.
And now we're gonna be in thisworld where we're we don't know
again.
So we we it gives us betterdata, but I think it also
threatens what we know.
SPEAKER_00 (43:53):
Of course, we had Ian Adams on, who talked about
AI and policing specifically afew weeks ago and talked about
that case in Utah where The bodyworn camera picked up the
Princess and the Frog movie andthen the draft one software
picked it up as oh, the officertransformed into a frog.
And that was and they and nobodychecked the report.
So that's a an outlier example,but certainly a a amusing
(44:17):
anecdote of what could actuallybe the worst case scenario.
So so Rachel, what's what's nextfor you?
SPEAKER_01 (44:23):
Well, I'm as I have been, I'm back in my office at
the University of Virginia.
I'm working on papers oncriminal justice and including
policing.
I have a paper coming out thisyear with a philosopher and uh
legal philosopher Kim Frizan atthe University of Pennsylvania
about how we should think aboutinnocent people in the criminal
(44:45):
process and how we treat themand also whether we should
consider compensating innocentpeople who are are stopped or
arrested or charged or releasedbecause of the they're really
doing a kind of public serviceof the same kind that jury
service is, or that being awitness to a crime is in court
because they did nothing wrongand yet are caught up in the
(45:06):
criminal process.
And so I have a little work inthat vein going on.
I have a bunch of projects onpolicing and police
accountability.
I continue to do some consultingor advice giving to nonprofits
and agencies, governmentagencies about policing issues.
And, you know, I'm trying tohave fun.
SPEAKER_00 (45:26):
That's good.
That that's the goal foreveryone, right?
Rachel, thank you so much forjoining.
Uh, this has been a wonderfulconversation.
You've given my newsletter a newtagline.
So you know, very, very useful,very interesting.
And uh, I really appreciate youcoming on.
SPEAKER_01 (45:40):
Jeff, I really want to thank you for the work you've
done in this area.
It was important to me as apolicymaker, and it's important
to me as an academic.
So thank you.
SPEAKER_00 (45:49):
Thank you.
That's lovely to hear.
Thanks for listening to theJeffalytics Podcast.
Be sure to subscribe and tolearn more, head on over to
ahdatalytics.com for moreinformation and previous
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.
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