Has Criminal Justice Reform Made Us Less Safe? A Debate.

Honestly with Bari Weiss

The Free Press

News, Society & Culture

4.6 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2022

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Over the past two years, the United States has experienced the largest crime surge in decades. Aggravated assaults went up. Shoplifting went up. Domestic violence went up. Homicides went up. In 2020, the U.S. murder rate rose 30%, the largest single year increase in recorded U.S. history. And yet, the most dominant voices in the last few years, are the ones that believe our attempts to mitigate crime have been too punitive, and that the solutions lie in less people in prison and less police on the streets. Today, guest host Kmele Foster moderates a debate with Lara Bazelon and Rafael Mangual about the state of criminal justice in America. Bazelon has spent her career advocating for criminal defendants, directs The Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic and The Racial Justice Clinic at the University of San Francisco School of Law, and was a federal public defender in LA. Mangual, author of Criminal Injustice, is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where he's the head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative. While Foster, Bazelon and Mangual all agree that the criminal justice system is, in many ways, broken, today they debate the particular defects, the scale of the issues, the root causes, and ultimately what we ought to do about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Camille Foster in for Barry Weiss and this is honestly
0:04.8	Good evening again. I'm Sandra Buckman and I'm Bill Ritter. There's no question that crime is up. There's no question that these
0:10.2	horrific high-profile tragedies need to stop and there's no question that this fear of crime is real and growing.
0:16.1	But there are many questions about how to regain control of our streets or subway.
0:20.8	Over the past two years, the United States has experienced the largest crime surge in decades.
0:26.0	In Times Square a woman pushed to death on the subway tracks.
0:30.0	In the Bronx an 11-month-old baby shot in the face, and in Harlem two police officers shot to death
0:36.2	while on duty.
0:37.9	It sent newly inaugurated.
0:39.2	Aggravated assaults, went up.
0:41.4	Shoplifting went up. Domestic violence went up. Carjacking became so common that cities
0:46.4	put up signs warning that entire streets were no longer safe to park on. And of course, homicides also went up.
0:54.0	In 2020, the U.S. murder rate rose 30 percent,
0:58.0	the largest single year increase in recorded U.S. history.
1:02.0	I've never seen so many guns in the neighborhood.
1:05.0	It's just a very sad situation.
1:07.0	Certainly the levels of safety that we saw during the last 10 years are now being reversed and it's a serious moment. No one should
1:15.5	undermine how serious this is. And yet the most dominant voices for the past
1:20.8	decade and especially since the summer of 2020 are the ones that believe
1:25.9	our attempts to mitigate crime have been too punitive.
1:30.3	Hey, hey, go home, these next cops are about to go. Too racially discriminatory.
1:35.0	The protesters took to the streets Saturday in St. Paul outside of the state fair
	...

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