13: Criminal Justice Reform

Today’s disagreement is about criminal justice reform, specifically the state of policing and incarceration in the United States. To explore its contours, we’ve brought on two experts in criminal justice.

Rafael A. Mangual works on the Policing & Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He is a contributing editor of City Journal AND is the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What The Push For Decarceration And Depolicing Gets Wrong And Who It Hurts Most.

Chesa Boudin is the founding executive director of Berkeley's Criminal Law and Justice Center. Previously, Chesa served as elected district attorney for the city of San Francisco from 2020 - 2022 as part of a wave of “progressive prosecutors.” In 2022, there was a successful recall campaign that resulted in him leaving the office. Chesa’s biological parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, were members of the weather underground, who went to prison and served a combined 62 years. As you’ll hear him reference, he grew up visiting his parents in prison.

Today we ask a wide range of important questions about criminal justice reform.

• What is the rationale behind incarceration? Is it an effective means of deterring and preventing crime?
• What is the right role for the police to play in communities?
• Should police spend less time and energy responding to smaller, non-violent offenses and be more focused on preventing and responding to violent crime?

This is an incredibly consequential topic that has a massive impact on the lives of millions of Americans. As you are likely aware, the entire life cycle of the criminal justice system impacts marginalized communities and communities of color in highly disproportionate ways. We discuss this explicitly at times but it also hovers over the entire conversation.

There’s a lot of data in this episode so strap in – take breaks whenever you need it.

Show Notes

• Four theories of incarceration - [10:00]
• Deterrence and Sentence Length [15:00]
• Incapacitation [18:00]
• Recidivism, Cost and Age [19:30]
• Measuring Arrests versus Convictions [26:00]
• Geographic concentration of violence [29:00]
• Arrest patterns and offenders [31:00]
• Role of policing [39:00]
• Policing versus prosecution

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