Community policing, the importance of broken windows and that it was being attacked and being attacked successfully, unfortunately. And so the idea that he was about to leave this life, his lifes work was being torn apart and he the good fortune in that last year to meet rafael. And id like to think that a lot of the influence in this magnificent book was through that exposure to. George georges last work for the Manhattan Institute was a 3000 word effort that by rafael defending Community Policing and the Community Policing. It effectively was what could make safe. So from that exposure to rafael developed a friendship it the admiration of a mentorship not only of me of him but him of me because hes an extraordinary young man with an extraordinary research and most importantly the ability to take what he has learned, what he is analyzed it presented in a use friendly fashion. So many academics, so many writers, so many researchers as they effectively write for themselves and other researchers. Rafael writes for the people on the left. On the right. In center. The idea of trying to bring them to common ground. The idea of this issue of Public Safety is too important to be in the trenches throwing hand grenades at each other constantly, but trying to find a way to get us out those trenches on the left and the right and to get us into what is no mans land and have it become common ground. With this book, he pushes back on a lot of the misinformed action that has taken hold over these last ten years. And im hoping that if we can advocate forcefully for it myself and many others who will have the opportunity to read it. We can begin turn the tide this negative tide that has engulfed america over these last half dozen years. Were in a perilous place at the moment. But new yorkers, were in a perilous in years past. We through it and we got through it with hard work. We got through it with inspiration we got through it with knowledge. Rafaels hard work is providing us inspiration. Its providing us with knowledge. Its providing us with the ground work, the platform to stand on to begin to make a difference, to once again take back our and those who destroy it, take back our state and take back our country. My prediction is that this will be as influential in the criminal world as broken windows back in the 1980s. Why . Because its crime sense. It makes sense. So, rafael, thank you for your incredible contribution to, this area of research. But importantly to the real world. Thank you. Wow. You when you get an introduction like that from someone whos important is as commissioner just before you deliver a talk about your first book in a great room this one at a club associated one of the most elite universities in the world. It becomes basically impos able to resist the sense of accomplishment that feeling right now. And so before i get into the talk, i want to just take a quick a brief moment to acknowledge some of the people who have helped me get to where i am. And my family, my mom, my dad, my wife, friends, mentors but also the supporters of the Manhattan Institute, the organization, has given me a professional home. Our trustees and in particular, mr. Nick oneill, who has not just generously supported this project, but has been an incredible supporter of my in the work at the institute for for years now. And i just want you all to know how deeply i am for that support. I couldnt have done it without you. So now if im if im being honest my sense of accomplishment, i think makes me a bit uneasy. And the for that is that its intention with the reality thats always animated. My work on these issues, the issues that here to discuss. And that reality that this isnt about me tonight. This book the debate that it contributes our first and foremost about the far too many victims of the sort of injustices that inspired my books title, injustices like the 2019 murder detailed in the books introduction of a young, unarmed chicago mother allegedly shot a parolee with nine prior felony convictions, including one for Second Degree murder. Injustices like the little boy who was forced to run for his life in that same city earlier this summer, backpacking to as he dodged bullets meant the group of young men. He made the mistake walking past at the time injustices like the young woman police say was stabbed to death in her lower east apartment earlier this year by a homeless career criminal with not one, not two, but with three open cases. And finally like the incredibly strong woman who was robbed of her husband, detective jason rivera, a man many of us her eulogize after he and his partner moore, were murdered by a repeat out on probation. I wrote this book largely because i was tired of reading stories the heinous crimes carried out by offenders had no business being on the street. Stories that the data make clear are not outliers. And i wanted to do something about it. A desire that only grew as i 2020 unfold in the wake of george murder and all of the unrest, political grandstanding that followed it. Politicians and activists saw to the enactment a wave of policy proposals that were explicitly aimed at systematically the transaction costs of Crime Commission and raising the transaction costs. Law enforcement, according to the New York Times, more than states collectively passed, more than 140 Police Reform bills in the year following george floyds. This was an unprecedented acceleration of a trend that had been slowly taking shape since at least 2010. And to my the acceleration of this policy agenda was going to do real damage to Public Safety, particularly in the communities that reformers say they wanted to help. Hence the subtitle with push for decarceration and de policing gets wrong and who it hurts most. So i was entirely unsurprised when 2020 saw homicides spike 30 across the United States, the largest one year increase in generations. And i remained unsurprised by the fact that between 2020 and 2021, more than a dozen cities set all time records, homicides and more than a dozen more cities flirted with their 1990 peaks over the last several. Serious Violent Crime shootings homicides in particular became much larger problem here in america, but not one whose effects are evenly distributed throughout. Our society. Criminal violence has long been both geographically endemic, graphically, hyper concentrated. Here in new york, about three and a half percent of streets segments about 50 of the citys Violent Crime. And every year for well over a decade, a minimum of 95 of all shooting victims in the city are either black or hispanic. The majority of the male. Uncomfortable as it may make people in certain circles, youll see similar in the statistics of shooting suspects. Nationally, black males between six and 7 of the population but make but are murdered at nearly ten times the rate of their white counterparts. And crimes like homicide are tightly clustered in relative handful of neighborhoods in and around american cities. For example, in 2019, the National Murder was five per 100,000. The ten most dangerous chicago neighborhoods, the other hand, which are 95. 7 black or latino, 2019 homicide rate was a whopping 61. 7 per 100,000. It was high as that number is. It actually understates how dangerous some those neighborhoods actually are. West garfield park, for example had a 2019 murder rate of 131 per 100,000. Now my book highlights data like these for two reasons. First, i think a thorough understanding of how violence is and has long been concentrated helps us understand exactly who it is that will suffer the most should a particular policy program diminish Public Safety and biological extension who it is that will gain the most should a particular policy program enhance Public Safety . Which takes us to the second reason i highlight these data the reality of crime concentration can help contextualize some of the disparities in enforcement statistics that we hear so much about, disparities that are often seized upon to make the case for mass decarceration and policing as a means of pursuing racial equity. If, in fact, the most serious crimes occurring in very small slices of our citys and are affecting a particular demographic more than others, then it isnt entirely reasonable for enforcement to be disproportionately deployed to these areas, and by extension to see disparities arise from that uneven distribution of Law Enforcement resources. In other words if we accept as legitimate the decision to police neighborhoods where victimization rates are highest, we must accept as legitimate that police are going to interact disproportion merely with the people spending time in those neighborhoods. And to focus on the disparate rate of interactions in a vacuum is to ignore really important context that when accounted for undermines the assertion that Law Enforcement disparities are driven exclusively racial animus. Another example of this very thing can be found in the studies of Racial Disparity in incarceration, which show that when you control for the type and severity of the crime committed as well as for the age criminal histories of the offenders in question, the Racial Disparities in sentencing shrink substantially, leading us to the same conclusion drawn the National Academies of sciences in the 2014 meta analysis of the literature on disparities incarceration, which i will quote quote racial bias and discrimination are not the primary causes of disparities, sentencing decisions, or rates of. Overall, when statistical controls are used to account of events, characteristics prior criminal records and characteristics, black defendants are on average sentencing somewhat, but not substantially more severely than whites. Contextualizing the data inform our criminal justice debate is a theme of this book because placing the data in their proper context often mutes the rhetorical impact of some of the harshest critiques of american justice. Two prominent examples of this include the charges that america has a massive conservation and Police Violence problem. Lets start with mass incarceration, we often hear it lamented that United States houses just 5 of the worlds population, but 25 of its prisoners, or that the u. S. An incarceration rate that is significantly higher than that of other developed democracies. But much of that difference can be to the simple, if sad fact, that the United States is home to many, many more of highly concentrated criminal violence, violence of the sort that would result lengthy prison terms. Even the countries that were so often unfavorably with in 2018, germany, england and wales experienced approximately 3200 homicides with a combined population of 142. 2 Million People by. Just a few in just four american cities. Chicago detroit, saint louis and baltimore, with a combined population of just over 470,000, saw 336 homicides that year. In other words, just a few american neighborhoods, some more than 10 of the homicides experienced in three whole countries, despite housing, less than half a percent of those countries combined. I would note here that germany sentences, a higher percentage of convicted murderers to in prison than does the u. S. And in the u. K. The mandatory for illegal gun possession is years in prison. Such offenses are regularly met with probation in cities like new york. So no, our compare it every higher incarceration rate is not primarily a function of a more punitive approach to crime. What about Police Violence . Well, it turns out that its thankfully way less common over the last few decades and is now not very common at all. In 1971, the nypd, over 220 people. That number is now down in the low twenties. The problem is that you wouldnt know this from listening to the critiques of law that are often amplified in our nations legacy. Media outlets. What youll see a lot of if youre just a casual consumer of the medias coverage of police, is a hyper focus on rare but highly salient anecdotes of alleged police misconduct, as well as data on police use of that is presented in the least light possible. Now, sometimes injustice of a particular Police Action is plain to the, even the untrained eye. The murder of george floyd is, i think, a clear example of that. But the reality is that police use force somewhere in the range of 1 of all arrests. They fire their guns in about 0. 03 of all arrests. In one study of over 1 million calls for Service Across three Police Departments, calls resulted in more than 114,000 criminal arrests. Police officers physical force in less. 1 of those arrests. And in that entire data set, it captures just one fatal police shooting. And in 98 of the cases in which police did use force in that dataset, the suspect sustained no or very mild injury. Now, as important as it is me that you all understand the statistics or realities that i present in the book and that ive mentioned here tonight, its even more important to me that you understand. I am not arguing. I am not arguing that the criminal Justice System is perfect. I am not arguing that there isnt a subset of americas prison and jail populations constituted by people whose incarceration does serve a legitimate genealogical end. I am not arguing that dont make mistakes or abuse their. And i am not arguing that cops do mess up that mechanisms meant to ensure accountable city are batting a thousand. However, the fact that the institute has traditionally relied upon to play a major roles in the provision of Public Safety arent perfect, does not the sorts of radical reorganise stations or reimaginings being proposed today in the name of equity . Calls for mass decarceration and policing must be force resisted not out of antipathy for criminal offenders, but out of a deep and sincere empathy for the communities that those harm. Such resistance begins with understanding precisely what it is that the advocates of this misguided program get wrong and who theyll hurt most if they get their way. Only then can we bring true justice to the communities suffering under the weight of americas Violent Crime problem. Thank you. So with that, i think we have some time our audience questions. So just raise your hand. Is there a mike going around . I think there may be. If not. Yes, is. So just raise your hand. Wait for the mic and well go from there. Okay. Gentleman in the blue shirt back here. Mike is, coming to you is guess you were running the nypd. And then just based on, you know, the statistics, you enumerated. Like what three or four things would you do differently than whats being done right now to remedy this . Im not sure i would do much very differently. I mean, one of the biggest problems that i see when i look at the data on criminal justice outcomes are data. For example, like under the city of chicago, the average homicide or shooting suspect has, 12 prior arrests, where 20 of those individuals have more than 20 prior tests. You see the same thing a lot here in new york city. What that tells is that the Police Department is actually doing a pretty good job of focusing its resources, the individuals that pose the greatest dangers to their communities. But it also tells you is that the criminal Justice System around policing is failing to do its part to back them up in those efforts. And so i do think that what the nypd learned from the 1990s is being continued today. They theyre continuing deploy resources to the neighborhoods need them most of the places where crime is most concentrated hotspots so to speak. But what we i think have failed to truly understand and as a society, particularly in this city, is that the efforts of the nypd can only do so much as the rest of the criminal Justice System will allow to do. And if prosecutors refuse to prosecute and judges to incarcerate and parole boards to hold anybody inside the effects of an nypd arrest on the Community Safety is going to be increasingly muted. And i think where we are today. The question here up front, hang on for the mic here. What pieces of legislation have been passed in possibly the last two years . Up in albany have created this mess. Absolutely. So there are a few things that have happened on the criminal Justice Front at the state level. So weve had the bail reform, im sure youve all heard about. Right. And im sure all heard, ive been told an in the New York Times that its not having any impact on crime. Dont you worry. Well, theyre wrong. Its plainly obvious that theyre wrong. What they what they like to do is they like to kind of aggregate the criminal population into one big pile. And they say that, hey, well, you know, these individuals who have, you know, maybe one prior arrest or who are first time offenders. Yeah, theyre not going out and hurting anyone. What they fail to tell you is that when we look at the population of people that are most to be held in system thats properly functioning with respect to detention, those individuals have a very very high recidivism rate. And one of the things that weve seen here in new york is a massive jump in the share offenders, particularly violent offenders who have open cases. So both with respect to total arrest and violent felony in new york city, we have seen a 5 increase in share of offenders constituted by who have opened cases. I think thats a major hole in the bail reform defense. The other piece of legislation, which was passed alongside bail reform was discovery which drastically the compliance burden associated with bringing a criminal prosecution in new york state. This was done without funding to allow prosecute just to absorb that new burden. And i think that was done by design. This is a starve beast kind of approach to criminal justice. We dont like this thing, so lets give that thing way more work that we know it handle and no new money with which to do it, which is force prosecutors to spend increasing amounts of time doing grunt work and paperwork which has raised the transaction costs of a criminal prosecution, forcing prosecutors triage cases and decide not to bring charges at all or to delay them entirely. Those really misguided legislative efforts have been backed up by by the age are proceeded by raise the age requirement which have made it nearly impossible to charge even the most chronic offenders in Adult Criminal Court which has had disastrous results. Weve seen huge recidivism rate jump within population. And now, of course, we have the less is more legislation which makes it more difficult to send people back prison for violating their parole terms or probation terms. These, i think just very characteristic the move to decarceration on a massive scale i think they will prove to be disastrous for the city of new york, as they have proven to be disastrous in other jurisdictions as well. I was going to ask, especially in light sort of political changes in your city know eric adams at least he talks a good game on sort of you know wanting curb crime and so on where theres this politically where theres impetus to sort of you know, defend criminals and sort of put them back on the street. Where does this from . And, you know, what is the of how do you see it . How did they come about . Sort of how do you think it can be solved . I think part of it comes from a fading of how bad things were, the 1970s, eighties and nineties, well, as a faded memory of how we got to the point that we got to in the mid 2000s. You know safety us all comfortable and it the sense that we have to be we have to have a sense of urgency with respect to issues surrounding Public Safety. And so i think also made people much less comfortable with operating system that has long been characterized as overly punitive. I think there also is some evidence to suggest that we overcorrected in the 1990s in the punitive direction. The problem is, is that that has been met with an attempt to throw the baby out with the bathwater rather than reform at the margins, which is what should have been done. Right. Again, i dont think anyone worth their salt would ever argue that criminal Justice System is perfect, that its never made mistakes. The question is, is what risks are we willing to take with the lives of people who live in neighborhoods that most people in this room understandably would never dare set foot in . What risk are we willing to take their lives as a result of, wanting to make ourselves feel better . And i think there a lot of people who have been made to feel guilty by virtue of the misrepresentation of what the data on criminal say. And they are trying assuage that guilt by backtracking in ways that have been disastrous for low income communities of color. Kenny eshoo, you said in your speech that that the u. S. Has disproportionate percentage of its population incarcerated, but that its not due to more punitive laws. And then you went on to cite various punitive laws that European Countries have done so far, but the facts still remains that the u. S. Still has a significantly larger portion of its population incarcerated than these European Countries. And so why is that . Simply because we have a lot more crime. Again, you know, most of the United States is as safe as, any safe place in the world. Whats different here is that we have a number of pockets of concentrated crime. The crime that that occurs at levels i think it be very, very difficult for most people to imagine when you talk about, you know, a homicide rate of 131 per 100,000 like like exist in west garfield park. We understand that as abstraction, as a comparison to what the National Rate is, but we have no idea what thats really like in terms of living a community. And what it means when you leave the house, you genuinely dont know if youre going to have to fight at some point during the day before, you come home. You genuinely dont know. If youre going to have to dodge a bullet. The United States has a lot of that. This is something that a lot of people understand in the context of the gun control debate. We often hear it, you know, that while we have so many guns here in the u. S. , and thats why we have such a higher Violent Crime rate than than other western european democracies. But then we completely forget that reality when we talk about disparities and then conservation. I think we would do well to remember that that that terrible that the United States has worked correct it. But but the main reason why we incarcerate many people compared to lots of other countries our crime also the fact that we a lot more resources with which to do this than a lot of other countries. Right. Brazil has significantly more violent than the United States, but a smaller a lower incarceration rate. I dont think thats brazil prefers not to incarcerate potential murderers, robbers and rapists. Its just that they dont the sort of wealth that the united has as its disposal to dedicate its criminal justice as its criminal justice apparatus. My friend here on the left. So fantastic job again on this book and congratulations. Many cities are with either early retirement of their Police Forces or struggling to recruit Police Officers. Biden, i think has recently course and now endorses increasing funding for Police Departments. People on the republican side also do the same. My question is, is increase in funding enough to the retention and hiring problems Police Departments are facing . Or do you have other recommendations for this problem . I dont think its enough, in part because dont think that the Recruitment Retention crisis is simply a function of the resources being dedicated to and retention. We have particularly over the last couple of years the profession of policing and it is a profession be demonized in a way that i dont think any other profession has ever really seen. And it makes people really themselves. Why on earth would i take a job that requires to wear a bulletproof vest and have a gun on my hip to do only to be, you know, if only metaphorically spit on by the public that im risking my life to serve. These are questions i ask myself in 2010, when i took the lsat in the exam in the same week, my father, whos sitting here today, talked out of becoming a cop precisely because of the reality that even back Police Officers couldnt count on the support of their communities, of their cities, of news media when they engaged in something that looked controversial video. And so i lots of people particularly people that we in policing people who have high of Educational Attainment who have high levels of psychological stability, people that we want to become cops and serve their communities. These are also people who have other options. And when they weigh those options alongside a career in policing, its not all surprising to me, given the rhetoric of the last two years that they choose those other and were all worse off for it. What i really, really dont want see happen in the United States, particularly new york city, is for the delta, the average cop and the average perp to shrink. And thats exactly what going to see if we make policing sort of job that only people without options want to do. And if you have one question there in the back row. Unfortunately, were moving that direction. As far choosing Police Officers. And we see a lot of cities requirements at exactly the wrong time. But thats not the issue. I wanted to bring up. 65 people were shot in chicago over the last weekend. The majority of them were shot in what we normally would drive bys. Supposedly they were not known to people who shot them. What is impact . And i think this raises the impact of drugs and gang news on these shootings. Most of these shootings, i would predict as a former Police Officer were retaliatory involving drugs and gangs and possibly someone who ratted on someone else. And this is an issue that politicians and the media refuse address and it ties very much into your discussion of that its primarily young minority males shooting other young males that only gets attention when few quote unquote innocent people are caught up in the gunplay. Yeah, i think you make some really good there and the direct answer to your question is that gangs are playing a huge of the shooting violence in the city of chicago. Drugs a much smaller part than you would think the dea unclassified report, i think, in 2015 that actually looked at the percentage of shootings that were a result of drug gang beefs. And i think it was only 5 of all the shootings. However, gang related shootings constituted the majority or at least a plurality, a large plurality of all shootings. But you the drug point is a really interesting one, because oftentimes when we talk about the drug debate, we often hear, you know lots of terrible stories about people spending, decades in prison, on end for, you know, simple drug possession, which of course, doesnt actually really happen. Only about 14 of all state prisoners are incarcerated for a drug offense. Most of them have very criminal histories, very lengthy criminal histories. But but it also ignores the fact that the Drug Enforcement isnt really about use. Right. Drug enforcement is often understood by police to be a tool through to pretextual the attack more serious Violent Crime. Its one of the reasons that crack was treated much more harshly than powder cocaine in 1980s. We hear a lot that sort of racist construction of the antidrug abuse act of 1986, which established the 100 to 1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, where people dont tell you is that the antidrug abuse act of 1986 was cosponsored by 16 of the 19 members of the congressional black caucus. The time not just voted for, but cosponsored. It passed the senate by a vote of 97 to 3. Black americans played huge role in the advent of the rockefeller drug laws here in new york city, which established mandatory minimums for crack cocaine. Its a really wonderful book by a great scholar that i would recommend to all of you called black silent majority by a guy michael jay fortner. And so i think its really important for us to understand that when we hear talk about drug or ending the drug war. Were also talking about taking really important tool out of the belt of enforcement officers who are trying to impact Violent Crime any way that they can. And there is a massive overlap between people who engage in drug offenses and people who engage in serious, violent offenses. One quick statistic on this. In 2017, the Baltimore Department identified over 100 homicide suspects. Seven in ten had at least one prior arrest for drugs. So the idea that drug offender can be understood to mean nonviolent offender, i think is is deeply wrong, misguided. And so when we hear about drugs, i its important to make the point that you made which is that they actually do drive of the most serious forms of violence certainly did a lot more the past but that that is a tool that Police Officers i think need retain at least in the near term. And any others. Got a second question here. Can be do they have. Hang on. One second. The mic is coming to you. We have a. Why dont we give her a shot . Because she hasnt asked the question yet. Its for gavin. Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay. I was actually silent. She asked my previous question. I was going to ask about the disparity between the u. S. And europe with gang related violence, especially gun violence. But i was going to maybe ask more generic question. You touched on it kind of throughout your speech. How much of this is less a policing issue . Obviously, these Police Departments are, you know, welloiled machines. They understand the tactics. They understand the philosophy behind, you know, the criminal criminology. And more of this is just a failure of the judicial process, the prosecutorial process, and how can we fix that system through, you know, actual legislative reform . How can we enforce these days to actually do their job, effectuate on their mandates and prosecute crime rather than simply letting their communities, you know, fall into chaos and criminality . Yeah, i think the the general answer to your question is that through the political process, you know, i dont think we can force prosecutors prosecute and they dont want to. What we can is stop voting in prosecutors who been very open about what theyre going to do if they win the election. Okay, alvin bragg did not hide the fact that he wanted to decarceration on a massive scale. He was right. You could have gone on his website months before the election and read exactly what he was going to say in his memo. Everyone was so shocked to read. What weve done is weve kind of really pretended that the rest of, the criminal Justice System continues to operate like a welloiled machine that doesnt need maintenance that doesnt need oversight. And i think weve learned that thats wrong. Larry krasner, the radical d. A. In philadelphia was reelected to reelection by, i think, just 17 of eligible voters came out in that primary. So, you know, this is a political problem that i think requires a political. Are there good ideas are waiting in the wings . Yes. One of those good ideas is to stop all the bad ideas, to roll those back. Thats a good place to start. But i think were starting to see that there was a real perhaps really good reason for. Policies like three strikes and youre out policies like truth in sentencing. Is three the right number . Probably not. Maybe its five, but i know that im tired. Absolutely tired. Exhausted of reading stories about people who 15, 20, 30 prior arrests, ten prior convictions who are out on street free to kill to rape, to maim, to rob, to terrorize. These are real communities with real people trying to go about their everyday lives deserve better. Than what theyre getting. Okay. Im being signaled that thats all the time that we have. Thank you all so very much for coming. Its truly an honor. Thank you
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