Crime Trends - Heritage and Berkeley Law Symposium

This panel discussion was part of a larger Law Symposium titled Justice Unveiled: Debating Crime and Public Safety. It took place on March 8, 2024 and was hosted by Berkley Law in partnership with The Heritage Foundation.
Members of this panel included:
Alec Karakatsanis, Founder, Civil Rights Corp and former Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia
Jody Armour, Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law, USC Gould School of Law
Barry Latzer, Emeritus Professor of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Moderator: Andrea Roth, Professor of Law and Barry Tarlow Chancellor's Chair in Criminal Justice, University of California at Berkeley School of Law

[@teddybass9511]

Latzer's response to Karakatsanis was right on the money. Bravo.

[@lupin4444]

HMD thank you for the brilliant, reality-based remarks.

[@melodydunn4546]

Really would have been nice to have structured this in order to provide for a more thorough debate between the speakers.

[@paulnathanson5953]

🤐Even in San Francisco, outraged citizens re-called Chesa Boudin, the district attorney, for his approval of “defunding” the police and installing revolving doors in prisons. He was involved in staging the event in order to facilitate what I’d call “dialogue” between polarized advocates for the Left and the Right. He made it sound like a useful and badly needed forum. But the event was a disaster for anyone who was actually hoping for a genuine exchange of ideas, let alone even the pretense of good will. It was a medieval disputation (the goal of which was conversion), not a debate, let alone a dialogue (the goal of which is reconciliation or at least mutual respect). The goal of several participants in this event was conversion, not learning. The event was not only a disputation but also the revival meeting of a secular religion. The first speaker (after several preliminary urges for non-partisanship) presented a testimonial with statistics to show that there’s really no crime problem at all, only a Right-wing conspiracy to incarcerate as many (black) people as possible; all this talk about district attorneys who arrest criminals only to let them go without bail, let alone a trial, it’s a preposterous lie, a sinister ruse of Right-wingers. The only way to prevent crime, he added, is to prevent poverty or racism. He was a ranter. The second speaker was more modest in his claims but also more focused on the specific topic of this event. He discussed the complexity of keeping and interpreting statistics. The third speaker presented statistics to show that there is indeed a major crime problem, one that accounts for the fact that most criminals by far happen to be black (although she didn’t use that word) as are most by far of their victims. I’ve read many of her articles, and I find them very convincing. But I’m not a statistician, only the author of an appendix on “Lying with Stats” in Legalizing Misandry. So those three speakers cancelled themselves out, leaving the audience with a bunch of contested numbers. The fourth and final speaker was another ranter. He made it clear from the get-go that his presentation was the result of his own identity as someone who truly cares for the downtrodden and who has no use at all for the entire justice system, which is hopelessly corrupt (even though he himself, as a lawyer, earns his living within it). And he began by attacking some of the previous speakers, and one in particular, for promoting Hitlerian or Stalinist propaganda. So much for mutual respect. The two ranters framed this disputation as a revival meeting. I suspect that this was no accident by the organizer. But here’s my point. Nothing could reveal more clearly the fault-line that is destroying society. Not even the pretext of “dialogue” could hide what’s at stake for the ideologues (or, as I call them, “ideologians”). Both ranters were explicitly and aggressively utopian. To attain their goals, their standards of compassion, would mean cultural, moral, spiritual and even political revolution-not reform. The dispute was primarily not over whose stats on crime are most accurate or useful but about the definition of “crime,” “justice,” “compassion” or whatever. At least two speakers spent most of their time talking about the “root causes” of crime-that is, the real forms of injustice and real causes of crime. This was an excellent illustration of what I call “linguistic inflation.” Why are we so preoccupied, they asked rhetorically, by the violent crimes of “marginalized” people, let alone shoplifting among the “poor”? What about the white-collar crimes of “privileged” people (as if the latter were more immoral than the former)? In fact, what about disease and poverty and all the other causes of unhappiness? Why not create a “transformative” society that would be genuinely humane? One of the moderate speakers challenged him to get real. How, he asked, can we keep people safe in the meantime (that is, before the revolution)? The ranters were not only virtue-signaling like theatrical performers. They were screaming and therefore revealing the revolutionary goal of what amounts to destroying the entire legal system and the entire society that supports it.