This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, March 12, 2021. I'm Caleb Brown.

The will to punish can be strong, especially when it's clear that someone is harming an innocent person, but when we believe

the perp received a mere slap on the wrist, we ought to understand what that actually

looks like, and we should also understand that harsh penalties for wealthier elites can mean less privileged people will face those same punishments in far higher numbers and without any fanfare. John Faff is a professor of law at Fordham Law and author of locked in the true causes of mass incarceration

and how to achieve real reform.

I want to start by saying I am an unfortunate Twitter person, which is, I don't think anyone should take pride in being

on Twitter, but I do it in part because there's just enough news among the angry vitriol to make it worth my while or at least

that's what I tell myself. And so among the people on Twitter I find you to be an essential follow because there are these cases where

the Twitter mob with their virtual pitchforks are ready to come after somebody and then you pop in and say,

now hold on a second. Maybe the punishment that you think is perfectly appropriate for this person who's committed this crime or has

behaved in an inappropriate way. You don't want that to be used on your friends down the road. So very recently there was this case of Amy Cooper who was

threatening a man in Central Park, Christian Cooper,

and her charges have now gone away.

And this has angered some people in sort of a familiar way online.

So if you wouldn't mind, walk us through what we ought to understand about that case and cases like it.

Yeah, so the basic story in the Cooper case is that Amy Cooper and

Christian Cooper completely unrelated people. Amy Cooper is a white woman, Christian Cooper is a black man,

Amy Cooper is walking her dog, the essential park, Christian Cooper is bird watching.

And for reasons that I honestly have now since forgotten, Amy Cooper gets very, very angry.

She clearly feels threatened in some way by Christian Cooper who poses no threat at all.

And caught on film, she basically says, I'm going to call the cops on you to say that you're threatening me if you don't I think I think she wanted to leash his dog and so she threatens like if you don't leash your dog I'm going to call the cops and say you're threatening me.

But in a strangely cold kind of way,

...