Crime After Crime

It’s been a while since the Remnant featured an expert on crime, but today, Manhattan ...

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It’s been a while since the Remnant featured an expert on crime, but today, Manhattan Institute fellow Rafael Mangual joins the program to fill that void. Recently, Rafael published Criminal (In)Justice, in which he argues against decarceration and depolicing. Using that book as a launch pad, he and Jonah discuss the sociological factors behind criminality, how crime can be deterred, and why the U.S. is an outlier in its incarceration rate. Plenty of policy wonkery is also mixed in.

Show Notes:

– Rafael’s Manhattan Institute webpage

– Rafael’s new book, Criminal (In)Justice

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  1. Bronwyn James

    Mangual points out that economic conditions don't explain crime (because some poor ethnic communities have much less of a crime problem than others), and as examples of other factors lists time discounting made famous in the marshmallow experiment, and Jonah cites families having library cards, but both fail to follow that logic to possible solutions aside from criminal punishment: what about childhood interventions? What about programs that get kids reading and teach them to be productive members of society? Wouldn't funding programs like that be money well spent, as opposed to only arrest and detention, which Manguel admits is of limited effectiveness?

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  2. Karen OT10

    I truly wish someone would start reporting on what is happening in NYC. I understand that Chicago, Boston, Philly and elsewhere are having their bad times too but the New York metro area is so broad and the City's life has natl and intl significance and these daily atrocities don't even hit prime time news. The politics involved has to do with the still relatively new Mayor Eric Adams, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, majority leader of the NYS Senate, Governor Kathy Holcomb, bail reform and the NYPD. There is clearly a cultural problem involved here and one of the worst consequences of progressive politics, maybe the worst, is that leaders cannot talk about that culture. It would be good to see your guest on PBS' MetroFocus. We need to have a conversation Nationwide. Even better, pitch the idea to FRONTLINE.

    This here is the kind of news we receive multiple times a day in NYC area:
    https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/mom-in-custody-after-3-kids-drown-at-coney-island-beach?utm_source=WINS-AM&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=WINS-AM%20NEWSLETTER&utm_content=WINS%20Daily%209%2F12%2F2022&mi_u=23966555&mi_ecmp=WINS%20Daily%209%2F12%2F2022

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    Black Publius

    I apologize in advance for this long comment.

    My problem with this episode is that we’re drifting back to the conservative mantra that the culture in the Black inner city community is the root of problems with crime, and that conveys a message that the “they” are the ones that need to fix the problem…wholly ignoring the fact that culture is something that is established based on both internal and external factors that impact a specific community over time. Yes, it is unacceptable to view the perpetrators of crimes as victims, but I’m not sure how a lack of access to economic mobility (the American Dream) over multiple generations cannot be considered when truly trying to figure out how to address the issue. The guest uses poverty statistics from the 80s and the 2010s to defend his position…but does he truly think the American Dream is about moving from poverty to just getting by in the bottom half of the income/wealth distribution?

    Jonah pointed out that social capital may be missing in many of these communities. That, in my mind, is something that should be thought about and experimented with if we want to fix the crime problem. You can’t compare the African American experience to the experience of other communities because it is unique and multigenerational. While I was born here, my parents were West Indian, so I’ve been exposed to the belief in the American Dream and the bourgeois values that Jonah always talks about, but I also see that those bourgeois values have been repeatedly attempted and repeatedly rebuffed for vast swaths of slave-descended African American community, to the point where there is justifiable skepticism about whether the Dream is really accessible for everyone. The destruction of that belief is the real wound that is a direct result of the tragedy of slavery and healing that wound requires acknowledgment of the damage and innovative thinking about restoring that belief. It won’t be solved by just throwing money at the problem, making government bigger or just focusing on law enforcement or social programs; it has to start with social capital and restoring belief in the Dream and commitment of people who are truly care about addressing the problem at the community level (IMO, adding vast sums of money/funding often compromises the goals of these types of problem). It won’t be easy, but I believe that if enough committed, conscious, capitalist Americans decide to experiment with innovative solutions to the issue, it will indeed be solved.

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    Bel

    Very interesting podcast. One frustration, the idea that high levels of violence are part of American exceptionalism sounds like giving up.

    Given the high incidence of mental health issues in the prison population, could early intervention/better mental health services, particularly for kids, decrease crime in the long run? Or is intervening doomed to fail if the parents are anti-social?

    Does the US have a higher rate of mental illness and anti-social behavior then peer nations? If so, why? If not, then why are we more violent, on average?

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      The one explanation I’ve heard for the U.S. being more violent is because it took a certain type of person to come here in the first place. Leaving a place that is familiar to you, and going off to another place that is completely foreign and unknown is not for the faint of heart.

      Now, I’m talking about the people who came here originally, and I can understand where others would say this no longer holds true, so what accounts for it now? I’m honestly not sure, but there does seem to be something unique about the U.S.

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        Bel

        I can see that explaining 1800, or the Wild West, or Irish and Italian ghettos a century ago. But yeah, now I don’t get it. Immigrants today are less likely to commit crime then native borns. And why would Australians be so comparatively docile now given their history?

        I guess it’s possible there is an unknown genetic predisposition for violence. Assuming not, I would have expected we would have tamed that barbarian by now.

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          Anne W (Raw5254)

          Just wanted to add that I read a couple of interesting articles in National Review on this subject. If you happen to subscribe, you might want to check them out.

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          Anne W (Raw5254)

          I can’t remember everything in the podcast, and I would love to read the book. I do remember that the U.S. often gets compared to other countries without using all the data. I was surprised that a lot of them don’t have the same kind of money to prosecute and incarcerate so it looks, statistically, like they have less crime.

          What worries me is that it’s getting worse again. My friend loves going to Chicago, and now she worries. My husband and I used to like going to Milwaukee. I know most of the crime seems to be happening in poorer neighborhoods, but if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s easy enough to end up going through there.

          One of the saddest things I’ve seen is Detroit. We lived just north of there for about a year. It was awful, and very scary. Houses looked gutted, and people were living in them. What happened?

          I remember listening to Thomas Sowell talk about growing up, and how, on hot summer nights, families would sleep on their porches. There was a thriving middle class, with two parents, and a lot of that’s gone. Why?

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            Bel

            Not sure what happened In Detroit, but it seems to be revitalizing. Some of those empty blocks are filling in again. Maybe simply a cycle of decline and renewal that hits different cities at different times.

            I do think some of what happens is we hear about crime more now. The sleeping on the porch times weren’t necessarily great and it’s not necessarily worse now. Although crime is up it’s still at historically low levels. My Mom grew up sleeping on her porch but her Dad was an alcoholic and her mother beat them. Her town may have been safe, but home wasn’t. And there was violence between the local polish and Italian gangs but she only knew because she lived there. It was rarely mentioned in the local news, never mind national media.

            I wouldn’t be overly concerned about visiting Chicago. I volunteer in a high crime neighborhood in Atlanta and even it doesn’t feel particularly unsafe. It’s obvious the area is troubled; decaying homes, homeless people, prostitutes. I think it’s unlikely you would stumble into a bad area without realizing it and Individual risk is still quite low.

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  5. Matt

    I think it’s messed up that friends of Jonah are freeloading dispatch content. Pretty shameful of Pippa and Zoe.

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      😊

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    Mike B

    When you all were discussing the deterrent effects of the certainty of punishment vs. the severity of punishment, I thought of the old saying, "I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb." Might it be that especially draconian punishment for relatively minor crimes, such as hanging for petty theft, actually has the effect of making crime worse? I think you were spot on in pointing out that the certainty of 6 months (or even 30 days) for shoplifting has a greater deterrent effect than a remote chance of a harsh sentence? That also goes to the point of time discounting that you were discussing earlier in the podcast.

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  7. Payette

    Living in Oregon, I wish all the voters in Oregon (which decriminalized "small" amounts of drugs) could listen to this! Great discussion!

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    Jonathan Crymes

    As a person whose family was terrorized by a man who was convicted of drug trafficking, released early, and then went to work trafficking drugs for a Mexican drug cartel, I can attest that there are indeed many people who are too broken to be rehabilitated. Second chances are great until somebody brings heavily armed gangsters and meth addicts into the communal spaces of the duplex where your children live. It took months after he was re-incarcerated before I could sleep through the night again. My body stayed in fight-or-flight mode 24/7 because of him for a long time. It took years before I stopped aggressively questioning people who seemed to linger around my house. I live in a nice neighborhood and this was a few months for us. I can’t imagine what it would be like to grow up in that situation and to know it won’t end.

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      I am so sad that you had to go through that. I have listened to a lot of true crime podcasts over the years, and none of them that I can recall advocate early release. And, some definitely should never be set loose again.

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        Jonathan Crymes

        I would definitely agree with the doves of this issue that the system makes no real attempt to reform people. Essentially, most people who behave violently get away with it, we convict a minority of offenders, lock them up for a long time, and then send them back into the world to see what they do next. That doesn't sound like an ideal solution to violent crime. I would love to find something better. My only beef with the criminal justice reform crowd is that they are under-attentive to how truly horrible many offenders are and how traumatic it is to *everyone* who has to live in physical proximity to them.

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          Anne W (Raw5254)

          Good points. I certainly don’t have any solutions. I do know that drug addiction is very difficult to treat, and I imagine a lot of these people have that problem.

          I’m concerned about the people who are convicted by an ambitious prosecutor, who are either obviously innocent or at least their guilt is very questionable. But, I’m also concerned about the ones who are released over and over again, and who have already committed some heinous crime or who will.

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  9. S Castro

    Great guest and Rafael's book is excellent too.

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      Anne W (Raw5254)

      Another one I’d like to read.

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  10. eoncarlyle

    Pretty controversial point when Jonah called Bill Cosby ‘deeply flawed’

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