The United States locks up nearly two million people, the highest number of prisoners for any country in the world. That represents about 20 percent of the world’s prison population, even though the U.S. makes up only around 5 percent of the global population.
It's not surprising that over the past two decades, more and more people have embraced the idea of criminal justice reform. In 2020, there were calls around the country to defund the police and divert money to programs meant to address the root causes of crime. Voters embraced reforms in Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, St. Louis, and beyond. Progressive prosecutors in many blue cities pledged to reduce sentences, stop prosecuting lower level offenses, and address police misconduct.
But crime has become, once again, a major issue for American voters. Sixty-three percent of Americans said that crime was “extremely or very serious” in the country, according to the annual Gallup survey on crime released in November. And many believe that criminal justice reform initiatives have exacerbated the problem.
That’s why The Free Press brought together four expert debaters last month in San Francisco—a city where everything from shampoo to gum is under lock and key at Walgreens—to ask: has criminal justice reform made our cities unsafe?
Arguing in the affirmative are Seneca Scott and Michael Shellenberger. Seneca is a labor leader, a community organizer, and founder of Neighbors Together Oakland. He ran for mayor of Oakland in 2022, focusing on solutions to homelessness, drug tourism, and violent crime. Michael is the founder of Public News and the best-selling author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.
Arguing that, no, criminal justice reform has not made our cities unsafe are Kmele Foster and Lara Bazelon. Kmele is a commentator and co-host of the popular podcast The Fifth Column. He is a founding partner at Freethink, the award-winning digital media company. Lara is a professor at the University of San Francisco, where she holds the Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy and directs the criminal and racial justice clinical programs. Lara is a former federal public defender and a former director of the Project for the Innocent, at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Before the debate, 87 percent of our audience said that, yes, criminal justice reform has made our cities unsafe. At the end of the night, we polled them again—and you’ll see for yourself which side won.
To watch the debate in full, go to thefp.com/watch.
Finally: lucky for you, we have more live debates in store. Our next debate will be on the state of the American dream, and it will take place in Washington, D.C., on September 10. Get your tickets at thefp.com/events
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Criminal behavior (and school misbehavior) is overwhelmingly a male phenomenon. Since 1960 the number of boys raised without fathers has grown along with welfare state policies that make fathers less relevant. The debaters ignore this and promote drug legalization and government interventions they assume will fix toxic American family culture that inculcates many boys. "Life at the Bottom" by Theodore Dalrymple describes English city life (pathological violence, drug use, fatherless boys, unemployment) among lower classes identical to ghetto culture in US cities. Yet these cultural patterns go unnoticed by political and media elites promoting government solutions with little empirical evidence of success. Government can't create healthy families, but unintended consequences of feel-good policies certainly incentivized family dysfunction.
Lara was exhausting. Especially her comment that we can't lock up everybody who is "Scary or problematic". I find the idea that people should be able to deny treatment for chronic mental illness or chronic substance use while simultaneously lowering the quality of life of strangers to be problematic. Your rights stop where they intersect with my rights. Your safety becomes irrelevant when you become a threat to my safety. Zero apologies.