Why, Sometimes, You Need To Question the Source

While looking at the entry on my Georgetown Law Faculty page (which lists inter alia news articles in which professors are quoted) I found this one from the Washington Post, titled “Five myths about criminal justice” and subtitled, “Being ‘tough’ on crime doesn’t always make sense.”  I’m happy to say that I make the bad list with both Kent and former US District Judge, now law professor, Paul Cassell.  I’m listed as a sponsor of Myth # 5, to wit, “Criminal Justice Reform Means More Crime.”  The error of my ways is described as follows:

We’ve seen leaders hesitate to engage in criminal justice reform strategies because they seem too new, nuanced or radical. Law enforcement officials and prosecutors across the country have been outspoken critics of policies to reduce or eliminate cash bail. Georgetown University law professor Bill Otis, nominated to the U.S. Sentencing Commission by President Trump, called efforts toward sentencing reform “more-crime-faster proposals.”

My observation is then appropriately debunked.

The debunking consists of this one paragraph:

But cities and counties have been working for years to implement tested, data-driven reform strategies that keep communities safe while reducing the misuse and overuse of jails. This includes bail reform, which, despite the naysayers, has not been found to increase crime. In research released this month by Loyola University Chicago, scholars found the 2017 order by Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County Timothy Evans to reevaluate the use of monetary bail in Cook County, Ill., increased the percent and number of people released pretrial without any associated significant change in new criminal activity, violent or otherwise, nor any change in the amount of crime in Chicago after 2017. Though critics insist we need to choose between reform and safety, cities and counties are proving that this is a false choice — the system can be made more fair, and all communities can be kept safe.

It’s certainly true that various locales have been working for some time now to implement “reform” proposals, including bail reform.  Over the last several years  —  beginning in the latter stages of the Obama administration  —  they have increasingly succeeded in that endeavor.  Over those same roughly six years  —  2015-2020, inclusive  —  violent crime increased in three of them, after a steady and dramatic reduction for more than 20 years before then.

Does that mean that criminal justice reform measures caused the jarring increase we’ve seen starting in 2015?  No, without more, it cannot be said to mean that.  On the other hand, the increase in violent crime over this recent span does not sit easily with the proposition that the simultaneously stepped-up implementation of “reform” measures keeps us just as safe.  We are not just as safe.  Indeed, as has been reported here and in many other places, last year, murder was at its highest level in a generation.  We’re not anywhere near as safe.

What particularly struck me, though, was the discussion’s sourcing, that being what is claimed to be the experience in Chicago.  To repeat, the article says that, “research released this month” (November 2020) showed no “significant change in new criminal activity, violent or otherwise, nor any change in the amount of crime in Chicago after 2017.”

Really?

A less biased source has a different take, ranking Chicago as Number One in the country in the number of murders in 2020, easily outdistancing larger cities such as New York and Los Angeles.  Specifically, “There were a total of 524 murders in Chicago in 2020 through September 6th. This figure was 345 during the same period in 2019. Overall, Chicago has a daily average of 2.1 murders so far in 2020….Chicago is one of the main cities for the drug operations of Mexican drug cartels and local gangs.” See, “The top 15 U.S. U.S. cities With Highest Number of Murders in 2020.”

But what struck me most is just this:  It’s a signal of how much the smug, Happy Face narrative of criminal justice reform thinks it will go unquestioned that it chooses Chicago, of all places, to showcase as an example of “how we can be kept safe.”

These people just don’t hear themselves.