Welcome to the Dig, a podcast from Jacobin magazine. My name is Daniel Denver and I'm broadcasting

from Providence, Rhode Island. I've got a bonus episode for you today which is

audio from a debate between Alex Vitali, a recent guest on the show, sociologist, and author of the book The End of Policing, and Heather McDonald, one of the leading intellectual champions of urban neo-conservatism, over-policing, and mass incarceration.

She's at the Manhattan Institute, surprise surprise. violence in black communities perpetrated by and large by black men.

Vatale was civil and careful in his arguments. Most importantly though,

his critique of over-policing and mass incarceration took crime seriously as the real problem that it is for the most marginalized and exploited people in our society.

In doing so, he deftly disarmed McDonald, who was left making the absurd case that the

absence of fathers in black homes is the primary cause of gun violence in black communities as if family

structure and stability does more to shape political economic reality rather

than the other way around to name just one of many many problems with that argument.

That and her touting the so-called Ferguson effect of which she is a leading

tauter, the notion that the intensifying criticism of police in recent years

is responsible for a recent rise in violent crime in some cities.

I've made this point before in my interviews with both Fatale and James Foreman Jr.

And that point is that it's critical for the left to not run from debates about crime.

When we do run from those debates, we cede the stage to reactionary law-and-order charlatans like McDonald.

As Vitali shows, when we engage those debates and make the evidence-based case that political

economic exclusion and exploitation foment crime and that mass incarceration

hardens and reproduces those very same underlying inequalities,

we win those debates.

Also, you might have to hold your nose during the moderator's introduction, which Vitali in his opening statement offers a decisive rejoinder to.

Really quick, before we get started, if you haven't already, please support the show with a monthly

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