Tough on Crime

Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe do? Welcome to Why we Do
what we do. I am yourTough on Crime host, Abraham, and
I'm going to be the I guessgood cop to your bad cop host.

(00:23):
Shame nice as I probably still yours. And I didn't even tell you I
was going to do that, soI know that's fine. That's what bad
cops do. Where a psychology podcast, we talk about what humans do,
what animals do, what things do, all the things and kind of why
we do them as much as wecan. And there has been this thing
going on in the world, Ithink for a long time, and we'll

(00:45):
talk about the history of this alittle bit. We'll talk about what it
is of people and how they needto solve crimes and what they're what a
strategy is going to be for doingthat, and so we thought it's time
to take that on today. Yeah, so we are going to talk about
being tough on crime and what thatmeans in the and just kind of how
truly silly it is. We've gotso much to talk about with it.

(01:07):
I don't even I don't want tolike spill the beans just yet. So
yeah, yeah, yeah, thisepisode comes out on May thirty. First,
if you're joining us for the veryfirst time. By the way,
we like to acknowledge the holidays onwhich the publication of this episode correlates,
and so I'm gonna just going torattle through those really quick. One is
that it's flip Flop Day, whichI love. It's also Senior Health and
Fitness Day, which is awesome,and it is National Save your Hearing Day,

(01:32):
so you know, protect your hearingwhere it flip flops and maybe go
work out with some seniors. Yeah. I like that, especially Savior Hearing
Day as a musician who has lostmuch of his hearing. Right. Yes,
it's the worst big ear plug day. Absolutely. It's also National Smile
Day, which I love. Smileat people or don't. You don't have
to, but smiles are nice.Yeah. It's Macaroon Day. I believe

(01:55):
this is the coconut macaroon variety,not macarons, which are different, right,
Yeah, correct, Yes, Ijust want to make sure that's clear
because there's a whole debate about that. And it's also World Note Tobacco Day,
so in line with health and Fitness, which I like. And finally,
it is Web Designer Day and theone the gra major Amos Boush billboarded

(02:16):
top holiday on the website we useto source this information is that it is
infidelity Hurts Awareness Day in case youdidn't know. Yes, it's like so
out of left field and sad.But I feel like for folks that's happened
too, that's the last thing theywant. They're like, oh, I'm

(02:36):
very well aware. I don't needa reminder. Yeah, let's have a
day to celebrate how much that sucked. Right, And then like the people
that I guess this would be aimedtowards don't care, right, They're like,
yeah, that's the thing that happened. Yeah, it's like moving on.
Interesting. Interesting. I'll let allof you know now if you haven't
already, you can help support thisshow by leaving us a reading and review,

(02:57):
subscribing, telling a friend, joiningus on Patreon. You could also
write a law to actually decrease crimeby addressing the systemic issues that cause crime
and call it the why we dowhat we do Act. And they'll talk
about the other ways that you cansupport us at the end of this discussion
today. But we should actually getinto this today, Shane, what are
we doing? We are talking abouttough on crime and what that means as

(03:20):
a general rule. What we're findingis that a lot of people, politicians
mostly have kind of adopted this rhetoricabout being tough on crime, and so
we wanted to tackle that and definewhat that is. So tough on crime
policies are actual criminal justice policies thatprimarily focus on exactly what it says in
the title, justice systems will betougher on crimes that are committed. And

(03:40):
obviously that leads to a subjective interpretationthat we're going to kind of unpack,
and so we should do that.Now, what does it mean to look
at kind of what tough is andthose different interpretations exactly? It sounds fluffy,
it sounds nice, It sounds likepeople here and they're like, yes,
we need to be tough on crime. And politicians have been valuing to
do this since at least the nineteensixties when they found out that their righteous

(04:04):
vindictiveness could rally people behind them.And the viewpoint of tough on crime policies
is that what that means when peoplesay that usually implies harsher penalties, bigger
fines and preset sentences for crimes committedEssentially, these were supposed to be universal
policies for any crime. I mean, it's not unlike Camarabi's Code. Yeah,

(04:27):
and we'll get into this, butit also has like it kind of
ignores motive in there. So it'slike if you were knocked unconscious and while
driving and plowed into a store andhurt someone, that would be treated the
same as if you were like,I'm going to go drive into the store
because I want to hurt someone,and you deliberately made that choice. And
they're like, doesn't matter, samething or treating this with an even hand.

(04:51):
You did a bad thing, soyou shall be punished. And I
think that's an important piece here,because like essentially what they're saying is a
crime is a c as a crime, regardless of motive, regardless of circumstance,
regardless of history, right, Andso like you have somebody who could
have committed that same crime multiple times, or somebody who committed that crime the
very first time, and they're goingto receive the same sentence, And so

(05:14):
it's kind of an unfair thing.And you know, that's not to say
that our current justice system is doinganybody favors by having a more subjective way
to look at this, because youhave judges and you have places that are
going to kind of say, well, you know, because of the color
of your skin, you're going togo away for thirty years for having a
bag of pot on you versus ohyou're white, Okay, well, community
service. Like, we know thosesystemic things exist. We know racism is

(05:35):
a very big problem, but itis one of those things where universal policies
are a different kind of problem thatwill also just not work. Or you
sexually assaulted someone, but you're white, so we're gonna lect you president.
Right, See, that's problems,right, problems. Now. During the
nineteen sixties, more lenient sentencing policieswere established in the US, which ultimately

(05:58):
led to a decrease in incarcerated orin prisoned persons, which sounds like,
we don't want as many people inprison. That's probably a good thing,
right, I mean, I wouldthink so, yeah, And there are
people that disagree, and we're goingto talk a little bit about that.
But in nineteen sixty nine, therewere only one hundred and eighty eight thousand
people in prisons across the US,with an overall decreasing trend through nineteen seventy
three. That statistic is going tobe really important later. So remember this.

(06:23):
In nineteen sixty nine, there wereonly one hundred and eighty eight thousand
people in prison, with a decreasingtrend up through nineteen seventy three across the
entire country. The entire country.Now, violent crime did begin to increase
during the same time period, andI think a lot of people might point
to that and say that's why.But it's important to know there is no

(06:45):
specific causal relationship between less strict lawsand crime increases. And we'll talk more
about that as we get through thediscussion, because there are some really important
data that do show what the correlationis there. During the same time periods
noted that there was a lot ofunresting states that more likely accounted for this
increase in crime. That had todo with things like civil rights, the
Vietnam War. There's a lot ofprotesting going on. I think we're about

(07:09):
at the point that we maybe gotinto quite the seventies, but more the
eighties get into like satanic panic andthe like refor madness. That's what it
is. Okay, Okay, thatsounds great. Yeah, that sounds like
fun which was a scare tactic depictingweed as being this drug that would cause
you to throw your hand in ablender and do like all kinds of crazy
stuff that nobody's ever done one high. Nobody's ever done that wall on cannabis,

(07:32):
right. So it's super interesting too, because I think another kind of
contextual thing that's going on around thistime is that you've got kind of sixties
and seventies, you start seeing kindof the development of like new age movements.
You see a lot of new religionspopping up, You see a lot
of kind of like the hippie stuffis starting to come up. And then
going into the seventies, you startseeing people become very disenfranchised with it because

(07:56):
the idealistic kind of hopes and dreamsthey had is like hippie free love news
societies, we're not working out.So like you have like this kind of
like unrest that's part of like atheological unrest as well as like social unrest
and all that too. There's alot, I mean, there's a lot
happening here. I was reading somewhereapparently there were a lot of mail bombs
happening during this time. Oh no, it was really really wild. Yeah,

(08:18):
there was a lot of stuff happeningthen. And just to tie it
back for those of you who havebeen following us and listening for a while,
just as a coincidence, this isalso around the time that scientology has
really taken off and moving into itsactivities a high gear. I'm not saying
they're related, just pointing out thething, just pointing that out. Also,
you know, this is around thesame time period that deinstitutionalization is happening.

(08:41):
So like there's a lot of wildthings. This is not too far
off from lobotomies. Oh yeah,they're even happening during this time. So
it's a wild time for people thatwas like our friends, like four different
episodes we've done too. Yeah,yeah, there you go. So if
you want to listen to a lotof stuff, we have done all those
topics. Now, policies began todevelop related to victims rights in relation to
criminal justice at this time, sojust shaping perspective along with kind of ongoing

(09:03):
debates about the use of the deathpenalty essentially created a motivating context for the
development of more strict crime control laws. And so all of these things together
have kind of created like, hey, we need to get this under control.
It was at this time that therewas a bit of a shift from
like more rehabilitative systems to control systems, and so you're going to start seeing
that. Like it went from like, hey, you're going to jail so

(09:24):
you can learn a lesson and kindof come out better to now, hey,
you're going to get punished for thisno matter what you did. And
the extent to which the prison system, ever, like in good faith,
actually plans to rehabilitate people, Ithink is questionable, but it definitely seemed
like they kind of gave up thefacade around this point and they're like,
no, we're about the pain.We bring the justice hammer down swiftly.

(09:46):
Yeah. So this reform perspective startedin late seventies early eighties with the goal
in mind to help reduce crime acrossthe US. Targets of this reform included
people who are considered habitual offenders andpeople who committed violent times, high profile
drug traffickers, and crimes involving weaponsof some sort, right, and so,
you know, just as an exampleof what this might look like,

(10:07):
Florida had developed a three strikes policyregarding this kind of targeting anybody who is
a habitual offender, specifically involving weaponsand so habitual just being like somebody who
has committed multiple crimes the same crimeand stuff like that, just so we're
clear, like, we're not sayingthat they are offenders themselves, but they
have engaged his behavior multiple times.Yeah. Well, this three strikes policy
was essentially this, if you engagein any crime involving a weapon, you

(10:31):
got ten years in prison, flatlike baseline. If you did it again
after you got out, it wastwenty years, and then if you did
it again after that, it waslife in prison. Yeah. So three
strikes was obviously a reference to baseball. But the idea of like, and
I guess we sort of alluded tothis but not really said it explicitly yet.
I guess part of the idea probablybehind to get tough on crime was

(10:54):
that if there are harsher sentences inplace, people will be less likely to
engage in criminal activity because they'll beso afraid of the consequences for doing so,
which implies essentially that people just wantto commit crimes. The only thing
that's holding them back is the punishmentthat is being handed down from the government
and that's the only motive for themto stay doing the right thing is the

(11:15):
government that needs to have that levelof control by having a sentencing policy.
And then as you engage in criminalactivity, the harsh you make the sentences,
the less likely you'll be to wantto repeat that activity because of the
severity of the outcomes. So thatagain assumes that essentially the nature of this
is just what can I get awaywith, and not that there's some other

(11:37):
reason that you might be engaging incriminal activity whatever that may be. Right,
So, just as a thing tokeep in mind, yes, it
is not a circumstantial view. Now. I remember and like the nineties when
there are specific advertisements for this threestrikes policy in Florida, and it was
like, you know, when theywould do it, they would put these

(11:58):
commercials out in there, like ifyou commit a crime with a weapon.
There was always some like gruff guywho was like probably was just hired to
do it, right, and he'sgoing like, if you commit a crime
with a weapon, it is tentwenty life. Like it had a slogan
wow, like and there were billboardsand stuff and like you know, it
was like ten hyphen twenty hyphen life, hyphen and they were in like you
know, like they made it scary. So it was like, you know,
a set of like prison bars,but in the background, and like

(12:22):
from a graphic design standpoint, you'vegot like the all the numbers were like
steel plates with rivets in it,and you're like, okay, like that
sounds scary. Like as a kid, we're like, oh, well,
I definitely don't want to have aweapon, so I would like even throw
away my sticks because I didn't wantto be caught with a weapon. And
fun fact, there's no more crimein Florida. Oh yeah, it's all
gone. So it was truly effective. Florida is a very calm place,

(12:45):
that's right. It never makes thenews ever, Florida man who exactly this
new reform focus highly on incarceration isa primary punishment for crime. Commit certain
crimes, there is a mandatory prisonsentence might be ten to twenty days,
it might be ten to twenty years, just depends on the crime. But
again you just have a mandatory minimumsentencing. And the idea again there was

(13:09):
that it did not matter what thenature of the intention of the crime was.
It was just do the crime,do the time. They would probably
say, thinking that was really cleverbecause it rhymed. They probably brought in
some marketing genius to do that,which is bonkers to me. I could
not imagine like the ethics that goesalong with marketing and the like, knowing
that that's that's your legacy, Like, oh, I came up with that's
logan. That's great. Yeah,that's how imagine how that they sounded too.

(13:31):
So all right, So according toa report in nineteen ninety four,
so we're still talking about these policiesand stuff, incarcerated persons increased from three
hundred and twenty nine thousand people innineteen eighty. Okay, so remember that
other number before when we talked aboutwhat year was it, nineteen sixty nine,
So nineteen sixty nine we had onehundred and eighty thousand people. Eleven

(13:54):
years later, in nineteen eighty wehad three hundred and twenty nine thousand people,
and then in nineteen ninety four therewere nine hundred and forty nine thousand
people incarcerated in the United States.So just as a kind of like just
as a numbers game, putting allthat together, there was a five hundred
and four percent increase since nineteen sixtynine. Yeah, it basically doubled in

(14:16):
eleven years from nineteen sixty nine tonineteen eighty, and then just about tripled
from nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety four. Yeah, and that is a huge,
huge amount. Absolutely. All right, we should probably talk about more
people who are in prison, butfirst we're going to imprison you in an
ad. We're back talking about allthe people who are in prison that are

(14:45):
going on during our tough on crimespree, and so as a couple of
metrics for whether or not tough oncrime is working, you could look at
rates of crime, you could lookat the number of imprisoned people. There's
a lot of different things you couldlook at. You look at the types
of crimes that are out there.At the time of this recording, there
are about two million people up fromthat nine hundred and forty nine thousand number

(15:07):
and one thousand, five hundred andsixty six state prisons, ninety eight federal
prisons, three thousand, one hundredand sixteen local jails, one thousand,
three hundred twenty three juvenile correction facilities, and one hundred eighty one immigration detention
facilities, and eighty Native American countryjails, including military prisons, civil commitment
centers, state psychiatric hospitals, andprisons in US territories. Who that is

(15:31):
a lot to see a lot ofpeople locked up. There's a lot of
people locked up, and there's alot of places to put them. Yes,
that is also true. So wehave fifty states. There are one
thousand, five hundred and sixty sixstate prisons. There's a county prison right
down the road from where I live. It is a ten minute drive from
where I've worked in that prison.So, like just to kind of tell
you a little bit about like howprevalent they are, well, yeah,

(15:52):
what is the math? Do somesort of quick back of the envelope calculations
to figure out what is the mathof the fifteen hundred and sixty six distributed
across fifty states. That would bethirty one prisons per state. Thirty one
prisons per state. Wow, thatdoesn't include the juvenile correction centers, like,
which is about the same, right, So you're talking abot thirteen hundred

(16:12):
and twenty three. There are almostas many juvenile correction centers as there are
state prisons. And I've worked insome juvenile correction centers and they are straight
up prisons. They're prisons for kids. Though they're hardcore. They are really
hardcore. So to go a littlebit further, twenty four states in the
US have the highest incarceration rates inthe world, the entire world, in

(16:36):
the entire world. That's crazy.Let me say that again. Twenty four
US states, separate states, holdthe highest incarceration rates of all the world,
of other countries, countries. Yeah, that's a lot. If you're
keeping track from nineteen sixty nine onehundred and eighty eight thousand to the two
million people currently, that is aone thousand, sixty three percent increase send

(17:02):
nineteen sixty nine in the number ofincarcerated people in the United States. It's
too much. It's a lot,is what I'll say. So, who
are we putting in prison? Sothere are a lot of people we're putting
in prison. Forty nine percent ofinmates are white, thirty five percent are
black, and fourteen percent are Hispanic. Now, people ages eighteen to thirty
four makeup about fifty three percent ofthe population, while fifty five and older

(17:22):
makeup about seven percent. And oneof the more interesting ones I thought here
was sixty six percent of inmates havesome type of disability, with sixty percent
of them being men. Wow,and that could be both physical and mental
disabilities. Yes, but there's ahigh rate of intellectual disabilities in prisons.
That is an astonishing number. Iwould not have expected that. So if
you look at that, although fortynine percent of the inmates are white and

(17:45):
thirty five percent are black, youwould have to then wonder our thirty five
percent of the people in this countryblack then, so that because that would
represent equal distribution there. Now amatter of fact, black residents are incarcerated
at three point five times higher therate that white residents are incarcerated, even
for the same crimes. Right,they're often given harsher penalties, right,

(18:06):
Like, not only they're going toget they're more likely to go to jail,
they're more likely to go to jaillonger based on subjective criteria and stuff
like that. So, yeah,a truly systemic issue. We should probably
at one time do like the schoolto prison pipeline and talk about that because
that is a huge thing that contributesto this. Yeah. Now, federal
data show this ninety three point onepercent of inmates or mail, with six

(18:29):
point nine percent being female, andthere's no reporting on gender nonconforming inmates.
So like, we pulled like agovernment website and there was nothing on gender
nonconforming inmates. So there's a lotof really problematic policies around gender affirming care
and stuff like that within prisons.Nearly sixty thousand miners, which is to
say, people who are under eighteenyears of age are also incarcerated in the

(18:51):
US, and if I remember correctly, that might also be more than the
number of scientologists in the world.That is, let's put that in perspective,
there are more children been jailed andscientologists in the world. Good job,
United States. Yeah, we're justlike number one where number one where
number one? So frustrating. Ohmy god, it's so frustrating. It's
easy to get lots of this mixedup because there are several interlocking systems here.

(19:15):
We've obviously got local, county,state, federal, and hospital.
And this episode is not necessarily aboutthe prison system is in general, but
it is pertinent to this discussion andwhy we needed to spend a little time
on it before we get to talkingmore about those numbers and the effects that
these policies have had. But youknow, we need to sort of start
to paint a brief picture of thescope of incarceration to see how the tough

(19:37):
on crime, what that means,and how it's affected people. We need
to see kind of the impact onthis to understand how wrong this was.
And this is like the equivalent oflooking at the War on drugs and how
the War on drugs disproportionately targeted groupsof people, specifically black residents in the
United States, and how it becamea significant problem, the War on drugs
being a symptom of tough on crime. By the way, that was like

(20:00):
kind of like couched in this.So this idea off on crime is doing
more damage than good and we'll seeas we kind of go forward. The
good news is, though, andI do you know, all the doom
and gloom that we just shared,there is some good news. Incarcerations have
begun to decrease since about two thousandand nine, so we've been on a
decreasing trend over the past several years, which is really really nice. Like

(20:21):
there is an overall decreasing trend comparedto where we were, which means that
two thousand and nine was about wherewe peaked with how many people were in
prison. Yeah, that's fair,and that does make sense if you look
at the numbers again. You hadthat nearly doubling in the eleven years from
sixty nine to eighty, you hada tripling almost from the fourteen years from
eighty to nineteen ninety four, andsince ninety four, it's been almost twenty

(20:44):
years, and the number just barelydouble in that amount of time as opposed
to tripling in the fourteen years precedingit. So it did suggest a slowdown
and as you said, probably decreasesince then, which I think ultimately is
a good thing. Yeah. Okay, we've been talking about the prisons,
the prison system, the people whoare incarcerated. Let's actually dig in on
these tough on crime policies and theactive ingredients contained therein Yeah. So,

(21:08):
as we mentioned earlier, one ofthe staples of tough on crime policies is
actually the standardization of sentencing for crimeswith multipliers. So we talked about the
ten twenty life thing, and that'sa big part of this is no matter
what your crime is, no matterwhat your circumstances are, if you commit
a crime, you are going toprison or going to jail or going to
wherever for x amount of time,and there's a formula for it instead of

(21:30):
looking at like individual cases, right, which means, commit one crime,
get one sentence, the same sentence, no matter what, regardless of the
demographic, regardless of the circumstance,commit the same crime. Oh now it's
times two sentencing. And again ifyou do it a third time life Maybe.
I think on the surface, thatsounds like a nice idea, like

(21:51):
somebody might go, oh, well, it's equal. It makes sense no
matter who you are, it's thesame crime. I think, on the
surface, without any sort of likeactual thought, it sounds good. But
when you start kind of getting intoit, what we find is the overall
rationale was not to focus on whysomeone might have committed the crime or what
their circumstances were that led to thecrime. This might all be aired out
in the courtroom, and this mighthave been done during the trial where people

(22:14):
have talked about that, but thosepesky details weren't necessary when it came to
sentencing. We didn't need to talkabout it, right, It was just
you committed this crime, You're goingto jail. Whether someone stole bread because
they were starving to death or becausethey just liked stealing for fun, they
were going away for the same amountof time. And now you can start
seeing why this is in general,can be a significant problem. Understanding this,
the shift in perspective went from rehabilitationto suppression. The active ingredient and

(22:40):
tough on crime policies could be describedas righteous retribution to punish the criminal behavior
severely, regardless of the circumstance.Essentially, it was just it's coercion.
It's coercion, it's fear based,its suppression tactics, and ultimately it's not
fair, Like it doesn't account forsomebody's learning history, their disability, doesn't
account for any of those things.It is a blanket policy that does not

(23:02):
account for the nuances that occur inpeople's lives. And I think that in
itself is not helpful. It's nothelpful for resolving the issues. It's not
helpful for resolving that person situation ortheir circumstances, and it puts people in
a really bad spot. But Shane, wait, who cares if it's fair?
Who cares if it's not addressing thecircumstance. The point is that there

(23:22):
is less crime on the streets becauseit's working, right, That's a really
great question. I'm going to thinkabout that while we listen to these ads.
Okay, we made it. We'reback somehow asking the question who cares
about all the nuanced detail of whetheror not it's appropriate to be incarcerating these

(23:47):
people. As long as it's working, it's having the effect that it needs
to have in decreasing crime. Sothe question of doesn't work, the short
answer is no, it doesn't.It didn't work, and it doesn't work.
And we're gonna unpack a few thingsabout this. The first part of
this is that the original perspective aboutwhat was described as lenient sentences kind of
in the sixties and stuff, whenthey and going into the seventies, before
the tough on crime era came upthis idea of lenient sentences, it was

(24:10):
widely a misconception by the public.What they found was with the increasing crime
rates, there's a motivation for somethingto be done. But these reforms that
we talked about with this tough oncrime stuff were the equivalent of putting a
band aid on a tumor without cuttingthe tumor out. Didn't address the core
issue, the civil unrest among theUS population, all the things that were
going on. Then it was justkind of like, hey, you guys
are having a bad time. Here'smore bad times. Is essentially what happened.

(24:33):
This misconception comes from a few places. One is confusion about the types
of crime that we're being committed,that is homicide, murder, robbery,
and theft. And two misunderstanding howsentencing procedures were being implemented. Right,
So, to illustrate this, someonewho may have committed a violent crime in
nineteen seventy nine prior to any reformmay have still been in prison as late

(24:55):
as nineteen ninety six, depending onthe crimes they committed. Sentencing for violent
crimes was still quite harsh prior toany of these reforms, and so there
was no like leniency for these violentcrimes that everybody was so worried about.
Second, these reforms began to categorizepeople as dangerous persons and as a result,
increased sentences based on these labels.But why is this a problem.

(25:18):
If someone is labeled dangerous, theycan never get better. But if they
engage in dangerous behavior, that's somethingthat can change, because we know that
behavior can change. Right, So, earlier you heard us use the term
habitual offender, using the term habitualoffender means that person can never get better
because they have habitually offended right like, they will do it again no matter
what. And so even that termis a real problem. But that's the

(25:38):
term. It's often used and todescribe people who are kind of constantly in
and out of the legal systems.Yeah, trade is a character trait is
something fundamental to who they are andactually is related to the fundamental attribution error,
which I think we've already also donean episode on five episodes we've reverenced
dont great. Yeah, and thatone again is the tendency to associate someone

(25:59):
else behavior to who they are.When you capture a snapshot of their behavior
in any given circumstance, you don'tconsider what that circumstance might be, but
you always see sort of yourself makingdecisions based on your situation and what that
situation calls for. And this issort of a similar thing here. It
basically saying like, if someone engagesin crime, it's because they're a bad
person who does criminal things and theycan never change, and therefore we need

(26:22):
to punish them as harshly as possiblebecause that's just who they are right now.
To add to that, I thinklike the label of dangerous persons means
that they probably and this is kindof around the time that criminal profiling starts
coming up too, and so youhave this issue of now somebody has a
criminal profile for what a dangerous personis. So like somebody who is dealing
drugs or a drug trafficker is considereda dangerous person, which means that automatically,

(26:45):
whether they have committed this crime multipletimes or it's the first time they've
ever gotten caught, they're going toget a harsher penalty. So, for
example, as part of this newlabel of dangerous persons and for targeted criminals,
it was found that high profile drugdealers were less likely to receive tough
sentences at certain times, but anydrug dealer would get sentenced for a drug
related crime. So what they foundwas like the high profile people, the

(27:07):
people at top, weren't getting chargedas much, but drug dealers, any
drug dealer was deemed a dangerous person, and so any drug dealer was getting
really harsh sentences. And so thisis partially why we still have so many
people in prison for like small amountsof cannabis possession, and one day we
are going to dive into the failedattempt of the war on drugs and all
that we've already done, dare sosix episodes. But it is one of

(27:30):
those things where that label was appliedto people who were committing essentially petty crimes,
right, and they got harsh sentencesfor having just for possession. Yeah,
And just as you said, itmade it so people who are engaged
in much much more serious crimes we'renot getting harsh sentencing, not equivalent to
the level of the crime, becauseit was like a first offense type of
thing, and people who are notengaging in very serious crimes, we're getting

(27:52):
harsh sentencing even though what they weredoing was relatively mild and not hurting a
lot of people. And of course, thinking about the likelihood that someone's going
to reoffend, thinking about what wasthe motive for doing this thing in the
first place. For those people forwhom they've built their empire, for example,
on violence and crime, it's youknow, they're very likely to go
back to that versus people who werejust like, need to make a buck,

(28:15):
you know, I'll scrape together,you know whatever. I'm going to
repackage these drugs and sell them orsomething like that, just to get back
on my feet. We're unlikely tocontinue to do that beyond having absolutely necessary
needing to have to do it.Absolutely But I kind of got this off
track. We had a first second, we're on a third point here.
So the third misconception about this andwhy this doesn't work is that this is

(28:36):
designed to be a deterrent for anyonecommitting a crime. As we stated earlier
that why do this because presumably toughon crime policies means people will not want
to engage in crime. They wouldhave engaged in crime, but you made
these policies too intense, and nowthey're like, no, now I'm not
going to do crime. Is essentiallywhat they believed those people's internal dialogue must
be right. Essentially, the messagebeing sent was that crime was governed in

(28:59):
control by fear, the control ofthe government. Those harsh sentencing and just
knowing that you could be sentenced tolife in prison should be enough to prevent
you from committing the crime, becauseagain, the only logical conclusion that you
could possibly reach for. What theirrationale then is is that people just want
to crime all the time, andthat the only way to get people under

(29:19):
control is to instill the fear ofconsequences like punishment and severe punishment and what
eventually and kind of does amount totorture and slave labor if you do that
crime, and then you're like,oh, I guess I won't do this
thing that I really want to dobecause if I do, then I'll have

(29:40):
to go, you know, intoprison for a long time. So I'll
I'll just stay the course, Iguess a sort of again, It's fine.
Yeah, that's the only I feellike way that you can logically explain
that orientation to it, right,And so when you unpack that, we
know fear doesn't teach what you do. Instead, so like this person who
wants to commit a crime more isis like predisposed or has a learning history

(30:02):
related to whatever crime. It islike they're not learning what happens. Like
what it all all it did wasreally teach somebody what to avoid. I'm
gonna avoid using a weapon when Igo here, and I'm gonna go ahead
and I'm still going to commit thiscrime, but I'm not gonna use a
weapon. As a matter of fact, I had a friend of mine who
robbed a bank without a weapon,and they got a much less harsh sentence
for robbing a bank man, justto be clear about all that. Wow,

(30:23):
But if they would have done itwith a weapon, they would have
gotten many, many, many moreyears. But because they didn't have a
weapon, they still they spent acouple of years in prison. But they
robbed a bank. They robbed abank. This is a friend, This
is a friend of mine, thisfriend of mine. Yeah yeah, yeah,
so I know, I know peopleas all I'm saying. So essentially,
what happens is somebody who's considered whocommits a crime, never learns an
adaptive skill to survive in a socialstructure that's not supported to their needs.

(30:47):
So and again we remember we talkedabout this, sixty six percent of people
are in prisons with some form ofdisability, many of them being intellectual delays.
So somebody in prison may not haveknown any better, and they committed
a crime because that's what worked forthem, not because they wanted to be
a criminal. Then that's taking acircumstantial view and thinking about it. It's
easier to commit a crime than itis to learn a new skill in a

(31:07):
social hierarchy that includes as many barriersas you would find in the United states,
because it's so difficult to climb outof your social economic goal or whatever
place you find yourself. I thinka lot of the system is designed to
keep people where they're at, andwe go where those rewards flow. As
they say, even if the riskis great, if you're someone in these
situations, you've got to imagine that, Like, they're desperate, they don't

(31:33):
know how to do anything else.They do know how to commit crimes,
and they need to get access tosomething for whatever reason, be it money
or safety or shelter or whatever.And they're like, look, I don't
know how to get money or safetyor shelter without going these other roots.
The only way I've ever done itis by stealing bicycles and cars and like
you know, turn around selling themin that sort of thing. And so

(31:56):
like, I'm desperate again, don'tknow what else to do. Got to
do the thing I know how todo. Dear listeners, I'm not speaking
from experience. I'm speaking from whatI may know about this lifestyle. But
from what I understand and what I'veheard, stealing is very easy. I
have also heard this. I've heardthis a lot from you know, mutual
mutual contacts is what I'll say.But the thing is like, like,

(32:19):
it's very easy to like, Icould walk into a store and grab something
and wanting to walk out and probablynot have too much of a problem.
So I've done this very easy thing, and I have also saved money.
So it makes sense that people wouldwant to go certain routes for certain behaviors.
And I'd say, like, eventhough I'm like, I also sort
of follow that rule to a faultof not stealing. I'm not like,
if I find a five dollar billon the street, I don't then report

(32:43):
it to the IRS as part ofmy taxes. But but I think,
you know, even when I've seenpeople make mistakes when they're supposed to charge
me for something and they didn't,rather than like get away with it,
and I'm like, oh, hehe, I got this for you,
I'll like going and be like Idon't think you charged me enough money and
then right then they'll fix it.And that didn't help me at all.
But sort of, you know,I feel like it's the right thing to

(33:06):
do. Yeah. Absolutely. Anotherpoint on why this tough on crime policy
or these policies didn't work, asthis type of reform had led to a
higher rate of incarceration. We sawthat, but more importantly, a lot
of it was unnecessary incarceration, betweenabsurdly harsh sentences and wrongful convictions. It
is estimated that these policies have costthe US and its communities around one hundred

(33:27):
and eighty two billion dollars per year. Man, So the cost of these
policies two million people in prisons,one hundred and eighty two billion dollars per
year. So just go ahead andlike, let's let's look at this.
If we would assume that this werethe costs for the fifteen years, this
movement really took place, like reallylike those really harsh policies from like nineteen
eighty to nineteen ninety four, Okay, one hundred and eighty two billion dollars,

(33:51):
we are talking two point seven threetrillion dollars in the US and fifteen
years. You know, it makesme think the next time they're taught,
the government's trying to work out thebudget and they're like, people are disagreeing
about it, and they're like,well, what are we going to do
about you know, all these expenses. Maybe go in a place like this
and cut all the wasteful spending thatis absolutely and completely unnecessary. Yeah,

(34:12):
decriminalize cannabis, get everybody who sentencedto marijuana crimes out cannabis crimes out of
prison, and then that will cutyour costs dramatically. Yeah, billions of
dollars. Yeah, exactly. God, it's so easy, and it doesn't
seem like it it would actually resultin an increase in crime, because the
other thing about this is that itjust didn't work. Just like dare,

(34:35):
it was a failed attempt to scarepeople straight, but that just does not
how people work. And the timethat these reforms started to take place,
we saw a mass increase in ourincarceration from nineteen eighty through two thousand and
nine, almost thirty years of increasesin reported and sentenced crimes, and it
was quite clear that it didn't work, just based on those publicly available data.
There's something to acknowledge here, Ithink a little bit, just to

(34:55):
understand that, like crime has beendecreasing for some time, it really largely
started decreasing around the early nineties.And this was already again three decades after
tough on crime policies went into place. So tough on crime has been a
talking points since the sixties, andviolent crime was on the rise for over

(35:16):
twenty years after that started being athing, and then finally started to decrease,
and it's continued to decrease even afterwe saw decreases in the amount of
people who were being convicted. Soit just the data just do not show
that tough on crime policies have hadthe effect of reducing the amount of crimeates
going on the United States. Asa matter of fact, one of the

(35:37):
things the United States is famous for, sadly is our gun violence, among
which I believe we're the highest ratecountry by like three times, you know,
like no, something really intense.I think we Actually I'll have to
double check this, but I rememberthe last time I looked, it was
something like more gun deaths here thanevery other country on Earth put together,

(35:57):
or something like that. It was. It is extra ordinarily high in the
United States. Maybe infamous is thebetter word for it. Yeah, yeah,
but that's the thing that's been goingon, even with these stuff on
crime policies. Even with the highestincarceration rates in the world, we have
the highest rates of gun violence ofany country on Earth. Yeah. So
just based on that fact alone,that should tell you that none of these

(36:20):
policies work the way you think itdoes. Also, we need gun reform,
but that's different. That's a wholedifferent conversation. I want to make
sure I got my numbers right.So the US does have the highest overall
rate, but what it is isit's five times that of the next highest
country, which is France. Wow. So while you take a moment to
digest all of those numbers and allof those stats, and then also maybe

(36:42):
I don't know, write some lettersto your representatives or like get into any
sort of like prison reform. We'regonna let you go ahead and set some
goals. We're gonna take some breaksfor ads. Okay, So I think
we need to talk about what behaviorscience has to say about tough on crime

(37:04):
policies and how that might work,Yes, and also some solutions using behavioral
science. And I think this issomething that I because again we've kind of
referenced the circumstantial view multiple times throughoutthis, and I do want to talk
about some things that do exist inpolicy reform that do have to include that
nuance and also behavioral policies. Sowith all this talk on moving toward reform

(37:25):
and returning to tough on crime,policies. We got to figure out what's
next because we can't let this toughon crime stuff keep happening. We're already
seeing an overall decrease in violent crimethrough twenty twenty two, despite increasing mass
shootings. That's another topic entirely,Okay, So for the most part,
overall violent crime is decreasing. Massshootings are increasing, different problems. But
what are people considering as effective databased practices going forward? And these are

(37:51):
all different databased interventions that are beingused to impact the current systems and move
away from these tough on crime policies. One of them is something called decarceration.
So the goal of decarceration, andthis specific value of decarceration is to
reduce the number of people that arein prisoned. That's nice and simple,
right, So incarceration is putting peoplein. Decarceration is taking people out.

(38:12):
And this may actually be simpler thanyou might think. For example, when
certain drugs are decriminalized, I mentionedit before. If you were to federally
decriminalize cannabis, prior sentences can berevised to match current laws, removing incarcerated
persons for outdated laws. There arepeople that are sentenced to crimes that are
no longer relevant, especially in stateprisons. Yeah, and they're still in
prison for them, right. Theyhave been getting moved out of the prison

(38:37):
system. A lot of them havelingered there for a long time after the
thing that they did is no longerconsidered a crime, which I feel like
should automatically commute their sentence and doesn't. Right. For example, if you
have committed a crime related to cannabisin Colorado, there's no reason that you
should be in a Colorado state prisonat this point in time for a cannabis
related crime. Yeah, four cannibals. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying

(38:57):
the ampty all the prison but whatI'm saying is like, there should not
be a cannabis related crime in aprison system in Colorado right now. Yeah,
save with Florida, same with California, same of Washington, anywhere where
it's decriminalized. Oregon, everything's decriminalizedright now. Yeah. Right. Another
strategy here is challenging racial disparity insentencing, which if BIPOC people are disproportionately
impacted by sentencing laws, then reformingsentencing laws to include nuance and alternative sentences

(39:22):
would be a good idea. Tryingto decrease bias that has led to the
disproportionate imprisonment. There, things assimple as bodycams can help hold those to
power accountable for their actions towards marginalizedgroups and reduce unnecessary sentencing. That actually
be an interesting topic to dig inon because that was part of the idea
of bodycams, and I think thathas changed how people do their policing.

(39:45):
Yeah, men, sometimes in waysthat are even problematic. That'll be a
conversation for another time. Yeah.Another strategy that you can look at as
drug policy reforms, So you canlook at decriminalizing and legalizing certain drugs and
that can dramatically reduce crimes related tominor offenses. And the war on drugs
again was both and it harmed millionsand millions of people and entire groups of

(40:06):
people. I strongly recommend when itcomes to drug policy reform, start with
the book Drug Use for Grown Upsby doctor Carl Hart. It is an
incredible look and how harmful the rhetoricaround drug use has become and how that
has directly impacted specific racist policies arounda lot of different drugs. Yeah.
Another one here is limiting incarceration forprobation and parole violations, which are very

(40:29):
very minor offenses most of the time. Right many incarcerated persons have ended up
back in prison simply of these probationparole violations. Sometimes they miss an appointment,
Sometimes they like I don't know,they were like in the wrong place
at the wrong time, or forsome reason they ended up somewhere they weren't
supposed to be those sorts of things, even when it wasn't that they were
going out of their way to doanything wrong. By offering alternatives like education,

(40:52):
extensions on probation and parole sentencing,etc. We can reduce the amount
of people who unnecessarily return to prison. And again there's always an opportunity here
for increasing skill acquisition opportunities to helpteach them something that they can do instead
of whatever it is they were doingthat was a criminal behavior as their primary
strategy for getting what they needed.That's a simple change, I think.

(41:13):
Now. Expanding voting privileges was anotherthing that was brought up in some of
the resources, and specifically they mentionedthis. They are countless former criminals who
have no voice in current voting systems. So by restoring voting privileges to people
who have been directly impacted by thesetough on crime policies, we can have
a meaningful change from people who haveexperienced the system. Now, I think

(41:35):
this is really important. A lotof times people that are making these policies
are people who are you know,let's face it, if you have like
somebody who is like cracking down onsomething, they are probably somebody who is
actively committing a crime. We've seenthat plenty of times, right where it's
like somebody's like, oh, wedon't like this, it's like, but
you're doing that thing. So Ithink by expanding voting privileges to people who
are felons or committed felons or anythinglike that, you're giving people who have

(41:58):
directly experienced these types of policies firsthands, who have impacted their lives.
You're giving them an opportunity to havea voice in changing and reforming and refining
these things so they don't have thesame adverse effects on other people. Yeah.
Another one is improving youth justice initiatives, as we mentioned before with the
sixty thousand plus miners who are currentlyincarcerated in the United States, by spending

(42:20):
more money on social programs and youthinitiatives, improving access to resources for example,
social help, mental health resources,education resources. We can teach those
skills earlier as a preventative measure toreduce the likelihood that they'll ever do anything
criminal and then end up in thesystem where it's often very difficult to get
out of that system. We shouldprobably do an episode one day on like

(42:42):
things like the Boys and Girls Cluband like different youth initiatives like that which
are like like local community services andin low socioeconomic areas, and how they
influence and impact those places, becausethose are I mean from you hear stories
all the time about how impactful thoseprograms are for sure. Yeah, all
right. And the last thing thatI think is something that's totally doable is
a reform extreme sentencing statutes. Sothe current statutes haven't been helpful to the

(43:07):
tune of over two trillion dollars atleast at least, So what we're finding
is these policies and these statutes arenot working the way that they intended,
and it's actually costing us a lotmore money in the United States. By
reforming statutes, reforming laws, reformingprocesses, we can actually begin to implement
alternative options, alternative sentencing, education, stuff like that. For sentencing,
they can focus on rehabilitation, andultimately that's what we should be looking at.

(43:29):
If somebody is committing a crime,then we need to look at some
rehabilitative, some acquisition level intervention that'sgoing to be far more effective, exactly,
and that does speak to considering whypeople are doing these criminal things to
begin with. At the time ofthis episode, there are four hundred and
eleven private prisons, meaning these areprisons that are monitored by the Department of

(43:51):
Justice but operated by a private companyand as a private company. But we
got to think about this for asecond. This is capitalism and incarceration.
While many people might see that ultimatelyis a good thing as it relieves the
burden on the state, there's acouple important considerations. One, the state
does still have to fund a lotof these in many ways, almost entirely.
Sometimes yes, that is the waythat it is funded. And what

(44:15):
that often means is thinking about twothe priorities of the prison. When you're
a private entity, your priorities areyour bottom line, how much money you
can make, which means that three, they're going to pack that place as
tightly as they possibly can and reducetheir overhead as much as they possibly can.
So you end up with these diseasewritten, filthy, violent, terrifying

(44:36):
places that people routinely die in becausethey basically get paid per head and various
compensations for how to you essentially justkeep the doors open and the lights on,
and they are not incentivized at allto take care of those people.
They're incentivized to basically keep them inthere, and that's it keeping them alive.
It's kind of secondary priority, althoughthey do get more money for that,

(44:58):
and so it's really not designed tobe a place that is suitable for
humans to survive long term. Thenthey can just be really horrible places.
Just from first end experience, Ihad a family member who passed away as
a result of poor care in aprivate prison system. Wow. And that
is not an exaggeration. And sowhen we talk about this like it is,
the incentives are low. The trainingprogram, I mean, most of

(45:19):
what the private prison systems are aslike the correctional officers and all the folks
that are working there. The personnelare usually on a private payroll. It's
a company that gets a government fundand they are on a private payroll,
so they're not state or government employees. And that's usually where all the funding
goes, is like, Okay,we can train people, we can do
all this, we can bring incorrectional officers, but they are usually private

(45:40):
employees. And that was important tomention too, because that goes to the
rehabilitative part of this and thinking aboutwhy people do criminal things in the first
place is when they end up inthese particular any prison really that doesn't have
rebilitation as a focus, but inprivate prisons, for example, they really
have no incentive to try and helppeople get out and get back on their

(46:00):
feet, right. It's really tokeep them in and just don't let them
escape and try not to let themdie, right exactly. Now, a
couple other things too. I thinkit's worth mentioning only about twenty three percent
of people who have been in prisonstay out of prison. Yeah, so
twenty three percent of people who gointo prison stay out. There's a very
high recidivism rate for folks that comeout of prison. And again that goes

(46:22):
back to alternative sentencing. That couldbe a solution that goes back to teaching
and education, all those things.That we talk about. And then the
last little bit is that drug possessionis actually sentenced at a higher rate than
drug sale. So remember earlier whenwe talked about how they were trying to
target these high profile drug traffickers.What we're finding is possession is getting sentenced
at a higher rate more often,and more people are going to prison for

(46:45):
possession over sale. Yes, I'mgonna throw in just my own I guess
is sort of a take home butalso my own opinion about this, because
I think someone might hear this andthink, like, well, hold on,
if we're seeing a decrease in crimethat's happening overall and there's like to
these tough on crime policies, thenmaybe those those tough on crime policies are
working. And the other thing youmight be thinking is, so what if

(47:07):
a lot of people end up inprison, Like the fact that we're decreasing
the amount of people just means we'reputting more criminals on the street. Like,
I could hear someone having that argumenttoward this, But I think there's
a couple of things to consider inthat. With respect to the first part,
the path of correlations don't line upvery well. Like we've actually had
a decrease in crime, long afterpeople are trying to put in the tough

(47:28):
on crime policies, after which therewas actually a huge increase in crime.
And it does seem like they justthose data just don't map onto each other.
It doesn't. It really does notseem to suggest that tough on crime
has had the beneficial impact. Itseems like the circumstances under which crime was
taking place or being addressed in sucha way that crime was on the decrease
overall anyway, at least in someamounts, because it's getting to the point

(47:49):
where it's at some of the lowestrates has been in decades, barring some
things that happen in the last sixor seven years that are worth talking about
in some capacity. But anyway,that's the thing considers. So the second
part here is thinking about what prisonis intended to do and why people end
up there in the first place.And one of them is that people see
prison as of a few things.It can be just punishment. We're mad

(48:10):
at you, We want you tosuffer for the thing that you've done right
right. Another thing that that prisoncan serve as you are dangerous, we
need to keep you and prevent youfrom doing this dangerous thing again. And
those are those are kind of thetwo ways that people orient to it,
and people might also think about prisonis like, this is a place where
you can learn to get better andthen when you come out, then you'll
be in a position to better servesociety. The last one, I think

(48:34):
is a pipe dream. I thinkit's almost never been realized, and I
don't think most people who are involvedin the policy making around this actually care
whether that's the outcome, and soinstead, I think you kind of have
the other two, which is we'remad at you when we want you to
suffer, or dangerous when we wantto keep you away from other one.
And my opinion on this has beenfor a while now, I feel like
the most efficient way for us touse our space and our money that we're

(48:57):
spending on the system is that thepeople who are dangerous, like they have
motive, they have means, theyhave a network, they have demonstrated time
and time again that they have doneviolent, harmful crimes, or they have
harmed people. Those are the peoplethat I think are the most needing to
be kept away from the general public, because we've already seen that when they're

(49:17):
out, they are going to harmpeople. That's the thing that like they
have that pattern as well established.We should still try and rehabilitate them.
Absolutely we should. Yeah, butthose are the people that I think are
they need to be kept away fromother people. Most people are going to
prison for things that are not violentcrimes. And for those people, I
think, first of all, alot of time they're unlikely to reoffend anyway

(49:39):
because the circumstances on once they didthat were a one time thing that just
happened to come up for them.But second of all, even if they
like that was a thing they dida lot, and that was a skillet
they developed and they just eventually gotcaught for it, putting them away,
it doesn't do anything really like ifthey were just out doing things where they
weren't actually harming someone. And Ithink the drugs is a really good example
of people who just took rugs forexample, or like if they just took

(50:01):
someone's money, Like, yes,it's a problem and that can be really
harmful for that can be really impactfulfor a lot of people. But like
things that are just like petty theftor other crimes of that nature that are
just stealing just property related that sortof thing that to me is like it
makes sense for you to lose privilegesand rights for doing that, But being

(50:22):
locked in a cage and like aplace that like really does not care about
you, right and like having allof your freedoms taken away, it does
not seem like it's calibrated for thelevel of that crime and the likelihood of
it occurring again. So that's that'ssort of been my thought about it,
is like, let's think about thispractically. What are we trying to get
here? What are we trying todo? And to me, it seems

(50:43):
like violent crime is the one thatis that needs to be kept away from
people, and other crimes like surelose rights and privileges, but I don't
think it does anything to like takeaway people's freedoms. That that dramatically and
it is extremely expensive, right andin that money that's being used, that's
that's making these programs as costly asthey are. This is probably taken on
point for me. The money isbeing used at the end of all this,

(51:04):
right, Like when you think aboutit and how much money and time
is spent incarcerating people could be usedfor prevention programs and social programs that would
easily prevent this at a discount.Oh yeah, a huge discount, huge
discount. I mean, for examplesof this, I tell I recommend everybody
go read The Nurture Effect by Anthonybig Lunn, because as a perfect example
of multiple examples of programs that aredesigned to be preventative in nature, that

(51:28):
prevent things that are are significant strainson social resources. He shows it time
and time again. Oh you wantto end teen smoking, here's how you
do this. Oh you worried aboutteen pregnancy, here's how you do this.
And boom, boom boom. Itis all these things. And why
that's not applied here is astounding tome. And why nobody thinks for a
second that a crime is essentially somelevel of skill deficit on some way,

(51:52):
and the fact that none of ourprograms are teaching skill acquisition to keep people
out or at least at the majorityof them or not. I mean,
just you see that by the twentythree percent people staying out right right,
And so I think a lot ofwork could be done to reallocate those funds.
We're already doing the work. We'realready doing the effort. We're already
putting it out there, we're alreadyspending the money, so why not reallocate

(52:13):
it to the front end and savebillions or trillions of dollars on this?
Yeah. So I think my finaltake home just is that this whole idea
of tough on crime it doesn't meananything like once you really start to think
about it, it is at bestproblematic like right, and at worst could
be extremely harmful and counterproductive. Ithink we look at countries that do not

(52:35):
have as severe penalties, that donot have as severe and as many widespread
laws as the United States does,and they also do not have high crime
rates. Right. It's not becauseeverything's legal, and it's not because everyone's
getting away with crime. It isbecause people don't need to get away with
crime because a lot of times thosecountries have invested in systems to address the
kinds of variables that tend to resultin people engaging in criminal behavior. Right.

(53:00):
So, like the United States spendsa ton of money incarcerating people and
has a crime problem, other countriesdo not spend a ton of money and
do not incarcerating a lot of peopleand do not have crime problems. That
alone should tell you that the systemis not working. Yeah, that should
be enough. That should be enough, but it is not apparently apparently,
So all right, you have anyother take on points before we wrap this

(53:21):
up, go check out the SentencingProject dot com. It's a general recommendation.
It's a really good organization that doessome really cool work around prison reform
and sentencing reform. Nice to know. All right, I'll put that link
in here so people, when yougo to this you can find the Sentencing
Project dot com. All right,perfect, Well, I know that you
love to listen to recommendations, Sobefore we get to recommendations, we're gonna

(53:45):
get to some ads. All right, welcome back. We're gonna talk about
recommendations, but first I'm gonna saymy thank You're going to get them out
of the way now. I wouldlike to thank all of our people on
Patreon who have helped support us overthe years and continue to do so.
You are amazing. Thank you toMike m Megan, Layla, Mike T,

(54:07):
Justin, Kim, Josh, theDaily BA, Brad, Stephanie,
Olivia, and Brian. Thank youto my team of course, editing in
production by Justin Greenhouse, writing andfact checking by Shane Jess and myself,
and then of course thank you toeverybody who is listening to us right now.
Now let us go ahead and getto our recommendations. Recommendations. So

(54:36):
I recently sat and watched a moviethat I've been wanting to see you because
I liked the director and I heardit was really good. And I watched
Elvis by Bob Lurman. Nice.Have you seen that yet? I have
not seen it yet. It's long. It's a long movie. Good to
know. I will say this,though I never had a particular interest about
Elvis, just knowing that he's likegenerally kind of like a problematic figure for

(54:58):
multiple reasons. But I I thinkthat this movie was done pretty tastefully and
did show a little bit about howhe was kind of a victim of certain
circumstances, like kind of being likeyoung and bright eyed and being taken into
advantage of people in the industry.Like there's a whole lot to unpack within
that, Like was Elvis a greatperson? Ah, he had some problems,
So we'll kind of leave it atthat. But Austin Butler does an

(55:19):
incredible job in this, and everyactor in it does really, really great.
Even Tom Hanks. He has aweird accent in it. Apparently the
person he plays was Dutch and hadlike kind of like a stilted accent.
So at first it's kind of jarringwhen you don't know that, but once
you do know that about the personthat he's playing, you realize, like,
oh, this is what's going on. But if you're not familiar with
Boz's Luhman's work, he did TheGreat Gatsby, he did Mulan Rouge.

(55:42):
He has like a very stylized lookabout the way he directs, and he
applies that here. So it's likealmost like the story of Elvis as a
fever dream and it's pretty great.Like it's a pretty incredible thing. And
Austin, like I said, AustinButler, it's worth it just for watching
Austin Butler's performance alone. Fun allright, cool? Well, yeah,
on the list, I love it, Okay. I have a recommendation and

(56:06):
kind of a bonus recommendation. Myactual recommendation is the TV show Pen and
Teller fool us. So, forthose of you who are unfamiliar, Pen
and Teller are Las Vegas musicians,magicians, not musicians. Well, Penn
plays stand up base But yeah,they're magicians. They're the longest running headlining
act in all of Las Vegas history. They are very famous for a lot

(56:28):
of revealing how magic tricks are done. But also just like they have been
their hands, they've been doing alot of stuff for a long time.
Yeah. Anyway, this TV show, like I'm not a huge fan of
reality, but reality TV shows andreality in general, I guess, but
reality TV shows, but this one. What happens is other magicians come on,
they perform a trick, and Pennand Teller basically have they try and

(56:50):
guess how the trick was done.They basically talk in kind of code to
the magician to let them know likethings about the trick that how it might
be done. As the audience member, you don't really know what that is,
but you kind of get a senseof what Anyway, it's just really
fun to watch as them sort ofbreaking down how the trick has done.
So they don't they don't really spoilmost of the tricks. What's always fun
is is how often, like somebodydoes fool Penn and Teller basically mean that

(57:12):
Pent Teller don't know how the trickis done. Yeah, and then those
people they call foolers then get toend up doing a show with Penn and
Teller at their theater, which isreally cool. That is really cool.
It's such a fun show. Ilove watching it. It's you get a
huge cool demographic of different people aroundthe world, different genders and races and
backgrounds and ethnicities and histories and languages. Some of them even have to like

(57:36):
translators up there to help with theshow, which is kind of fun.
So it's it's really cool. There'slike nine seasons and I'm actually on season
five right now, so I'm alittle behind, but I've really been enjoying
it. What does it stream onCW CW Okay, Yeah, yeah,
it is a cool show. I'veseen a couple episodes of it, and
it's like, it is really reallycool. It's really interesting watching them interact
and like how they explain how thetrick is done without spoiling the trick,

(57:59):
because that's like the magician's bread andbutter, right, Like if you spoil
my trick, then I can't doit anywhere. But it's cool how they
protect the industry secrets around that.Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
really fun show. My sort ofbonus recommend is. I've been having this
thought, and just because we're talkingabout sort of violence and crime on this
I've been having this thought that Iwould like to propose that the entire world

(58:21):
from here on out, if everany country is going to engage in war,
they do it as a paintball gunwar instead, and we just all
agree that the rule is, ifyou get hit in a critical spot with
a paintball, you're out and youhave to sit on sidelines. And then
eventually the last person standing or whoeverhas the largest group after a certain amount
of time or whatever, are thewinners of that war. And that's just

(58:43):
how we'll resolve conflicts from now on, is with paintball. I think we
should give it a try. Ithink if everyone, look, I'm just
going to put that idea out there, all you world leaders who are definitely
listening to our podcast, just considerfrom now on, we'll all just do
paintball battles instead, and we'll justget rid of guns and instead paintball.
Well, it will be how weresolve world conflicts. That's that's my proposal

(59:05):
i'd like to I'll just like toput that out there. I like that
I actually like that, and Ilike that. I like the idea of
just like healthy sports competition, yeahin general, or like just something like
that. It's like, oh,like okay, so like you know,
we'll say, you know, maybelike France and England get into some conflict
about something and they have to dukeget out with ski ball exactly exactly.
I think it's love that. Ithink it's the best way to go is

(59:29):
just some sort of sport event.In the paintball you still get to shoot
at each other and you just wouldjust agree with the rules that you just
out. Yeah, I like it. I like that main rule, no
frozen paintballs. That's not nice.That's true. That Yeah, you have
to know frozen paintballs. Come on, we got to be civil. Yeah.
I like it. All right,Please consider supporting our show. You
can pick up merch at our webstore. You've got mugs and sweaters and

(59:51):
hats and all kinds of stuff thatyou can get over there. You can
join us on patron. If weget up to fifteen patrons, then we
are going to do a live hangoutevent where he will talk and chat and
do kind of fun stuff and we'llset up some more activities like that as
we set more patron goals, socome over and join us so that we
can reach that goal. Otherwise,if you'd like to tell us about your
thoughts on tough on crime, you'dlike to agree with us, send us

(01:00:12):
some awesome compliments, and just tellus generally how great it of a job
we did. You can email usdirectly info at WWDWWD podcast dot com,
or reach out to us on socialmedia. Of course, we're happy to
accept constructive criticism, so feel freeto send that that way. But all
of you haters who have nothing usefulto say, you can keep your opinions
to yourselves and go away. Yeah, but I think that's all that I
have about this. Anything that Iforgot or anything that you would like to

(01:00:32):
add, Shane, nothing on myend. I think that covers it.
Cool. Have an unincarcerated happy day. This is Abraham and it's a Shane.
We're out see you. You've beenlistening to Why we do what we
do. You can learn more aboutthis and other episodes by going to WWDWWD
podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.

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