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Matthew Yglesias
@mattyglesias.bsky.social
Catch more criminals is weirdly underrated.
I have an op-ed in the NYT today about how to reduce crime.
The key idea, based on decades of strong research evidence: focus on increasing the probability of getting caught, not the punishment.
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...
December 7, 2024 at 8:52 AM
17 reposts
2 quotes
289 likes
I think many parents get the basic intuition behind “swift, certain, and fair” sanctions.
Moderate consequences, applied calmly but forcefully and consistently, generate compliance and you don’t actually need to dole them out very much because the kid learns to follow the rules.
You end mass incarceration by making it credible that rule-breaking will be caught and punished.
Most people will stop doing crimes and then a relatively small minority needs to be taken out of circulation.
www.slowboring.com/p/the-best-w...
Yes definitely don't address the material economic conditions that create the impetus for crime in the first place
The vast majority of crime is not caused by systematic factors. Crime is heavily concentrated among an extremely small pool of serial offenders. You can drastically cut down on, e.g., the number of carjackings in a major city by arresting a number of perpetrators that is in the low double digits.
Where systematic factors impact crime is on the collapse of the ability of the state to provide *safety* to potential victims. You stop solving murders and endemic violence rapidly takes root in a community.
That's because increasing criminal sentences is really easy and actually catching criminals is really hard.
I mean, have you *met* cops? The golden age of NYC law enforcement was stopping and frisking every black man in Manhattan.
Fair, but I disagree with your support of the death penalty.
Deterrence by predictable and probable consequences scares off many people who listen to social queues to gather information about the permissiveness of crime. For the truly maladjusted, long sentences matter.
In Ontario, the problem is we catch the criminals but then don't even test the case in Court. (But Premier Ford never mentions this issue - only the issue of people on bail committing crimes.) www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
Okay, I am not necessarily against catching criminals but then what?
Put them through a vicious system where they need to be wealthy to post bail to get back to their lives?
Give them overworked and underpaid public defenders?
Bully them into confessing even crimes they didn't commit?
Catch more criminals is weirdly underrated.
I can't even imagine your privilege if your conversation on how to lower crime begins and ends at, lets get better at catching criminals
Even disregarding that the start should be fighting criminogenic social effects, after catching a criminal...
Bail should be abolished
Public defenders need to be funded
Private prisons should be abolished and every prison should focus on rehabilitation and reintegration
Incentives are funny things, most people respond to them
It's very hard! Longer sentences are mostly ineffective but we know how to implement them
Longer sentences are good at keeping repeat offenders away from the public where they can do harm.
