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Tough on Crime · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we Do what we do? Welcome to Why we Do
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what we do. I am your Tough on Crime host, Abraham, and
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I'm going to be the I guess good cop to your bad cop host.
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Shame nice as I probably still yours. And I didn't even tell you I
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was going to do that, so I know that's fine. That's what bad
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cops do. Where a psychology podcast, we talk about what humans do,
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what animals do, what things do, all the things and kind of why
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we do them as much as we can. And there has been this thing
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going on in the world, I think for a long time, and we'll
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talk about the history of this a little bit. We'll talk about what it
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is of people and how they need to solve crimes and what they're what a
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strategy is going to be for doing that, and so we thought it's time
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to take that on today. Yeah, so we are going to talk about
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being tough on crime and what that means in the and just kind of how
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truly silly it is. We've got so much to talk about with it.
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I don't even I don't want to like spill the beans just yet. So
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yeah, yeah, yeah, this episode comes out on May thirty. First,
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if you're joining us for the very first time. By the way,
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we like to acknowledge the holidays on which the publication of this episode correlates,
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and so I'm gonna just going to rattle through those really quick. One is
1:23
that it's flip Flop Day, which I love. It's also Senior Health and
1:26
Fitness Day, which is awesome, and it is National Save your Hearing Day,
1:32
so you know, protect your hearing where it flip flops and maybe go
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work out with some seniors. Yeah. I like that, especially Savior Hearing
1:38
Day as a musician who has lost much of his hearing. Right. Yes,
1:44
it's the worst big ear plug day. Absolutely. It's also National Smile
1:48
Day, which I love. Smile at people or don't. You don't have
1:51
to, but smiles are nice. Yeah. It's Macaroon Day. I believe
1:55
this is the coconut macaroon variety, not macarons, which are different, right,
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Yeah, correct, Yes, I just want to make sure that's clear
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because there's a whole debate about that. And it's also World Note Tobacco Day,
2:05
so in line with health and Fitness, which I like. And finally,
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it is Web Designer Day and the one the gra major Amos Boush billboarded
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top holiday on the website we use to source this information is that it is
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infidelity Hurts Awareness Day in case you didn't know. Yes, it's like so
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out of left field and sad. But I feel like for folks that's happened
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too, that's the last thing they want. They're like, oh, I'm
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very well aware. I don't need a reminder. Yeah, let's have a
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day to celebrate how much that sucked. Right, And then like the people
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that I guess this would be aimed towards don't care, right, They're like,
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yeah, that's the thing that happened. Yeah, it's like moving on.
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Interesting. Interesting. I'll let all of you know now if you haven't
2:53
already, you can help support this show by leaving us a reading and review,
2:57
subscribing, telling a friend, joining us on Patreon. You could also
3:00
write a law to actually decrease crime by addressing the systemic issues that cause crime
3:04
and call it the why we do what we do Act. And they'll talk
3:07
about the other ways that you can support us at the end of this discussion
3:10
today. But we should actually get into this today, Shane, what are
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we doing? We are talking about tough on crime and what that means as
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a general rule. What we're finding is that a lot of people, politicians
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mostly have kind of adopted this rhetoric about being tough on crime, and so
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we wanted to tackle that and define what that is. So tough on crime
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policies are actual criminal justice policies that primarily focus on exactly what it says in
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the title, justice systems will be tougher on crimes that are committed. And
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obviously that leads to a subjective interpretation that we're going to kind of unpack,
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and so we should do that. Now, what does it mean to look
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at kind of what tough is and those different interpretations exactly? It sounds fluffy,
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it sounds nice, It sounds like people here and they're like, yes,
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we need to be tough on crime. And politicians have been valuing to
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do this since at least the nineteen sixties when they found out that their righteous
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vindictiveness could rally people behind them. And the viewpoint of tough on crime policies
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is that what that means when people say that usually implies harsher penalties, bigger
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fines and preset sentences for crimes committed Essentially, these were supposed to be universal
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policies for any crime. I mean, it's not unlike Camarabi's Code. Yeah,
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and we'll get into this, but it also has like it kind of
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ignores motive in there. So it's like if you were knocked unconscious and while
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driving and plowed into a store and hurt someone, that would be treated the
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same as if you were like, I'm going to go drive into the store
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because I want to hurt someone, and you deliberately made that choice. And
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they're like, doesn't matter, same thing or treating this with an even hand.
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You did a bad thing, so you shall be punished. And I
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think that's an important piece here, because like essentially what they're saying is a
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crime is a c as a crime, regardless of motive, regardless of circumstance,
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regardless of history, right, And so like you have somebody who could
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have committed that same crime multiple times, or somebody who committed that crime the
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very first time, and they're going to receive the same sentence, And so
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it's kind of an unfair thing. And you know, that's not to say
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that our current justice system is doing anybody favors by having a more subjective way
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to look at this, because you have judges and you have places that are
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going to kind of say, well, you know, because of the color
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of your skin, you're going to go away for thirty years for having a
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bag of pot on you versus oh you're white, Okay, well, community
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service. Like, we know those systemic things exist. We know racism is
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a very big problem, but it is one of those things where universal policies
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are a different kind of problem that will also just not work. Or you
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sexually assaulted someone, but you're white, so we're gonna lect you president.
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Right, See, that's problems, right, problems. Now. During the
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nineteen sixties, more lenient sentencing policies were established in the US, which ultimately
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led to a decrease in incarcerated or in prisoned persons, which sounds like,
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we don't want as many people in prison. That's probably a good thing,
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right, I mean, I would think so, yeah, And there are
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people that disagree, and we're going to talk a little bit about that.
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But in nineteen sixty nine, there were only one hundred and eighty eight thousand
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people in prisons across the US, with an overall decreasing trend through nineteen seventy
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three. That statistic is going to be really important later. So remember this.
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In nineteen sixty nine, there were only one hundred and eighty eight thousand
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people in prison, with a decreasing trend up through nineteen seventy three across the
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entire country. The entire country. Now, violent crime did begin to increase
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during the same time period, and I think a lot of people might point
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to that and say that's why. But it's important to know there is no
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specific causal relationship between less strict laws and crime increases. And we'll talk more
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about that as we get through the discussion, because there are some really important
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data that do show what the correlation is there. During the same time periods
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noted that there was a lot of unresting states that more likely accounted for this
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increase in crime. That had to do with things like civil rights, the
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Vietnam War. There's a lot of protesting going on. I think we're about
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at the point that we maybe got into quite the seventies, but more the
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eighties get into like satanic panic and the like refor madness. That's what it
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is. Okay, Okay, that sounds great. Yeah, that sounds like
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fun which was a scare tactic depicting weed as being this drug that would cause
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you to throw your hand in a blender and do like all kinds of crazy
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stuff that nobody's ever done one high. Nobody's ever done that wall on cannabis,
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right. So it's super interesting too, because I think another kind of
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contextual thing that's going on around this time is that you've got kind of sixties
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and seventies, you start seeing kind of the development of like new age movements.
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You see a lot of new religions popping up, You see a lot
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of kind of like the hippie stuff is starting to come up. And then
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going into the seventies, you start seeing people become very disenfranchised with it because
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the idealistic kind of hopes and dreams they had is like hippie free love news
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societies, we're not working out. So like you have like this kind of
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like unrest that's part of like a theological unrest as well as like social unrest
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and all that too. There's a lot, I mean, there's a lot
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happening here. I was reading somewhere apparently there were a lot of mail bombs
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happening during this time. Oh no, it was really really wild. Yeah,
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there was a lot of stuff happening then. And just to tie it
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back for those of you who have been following us and listening for a while,
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just as a coincidence, this is also around the time that scientology has
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really taken off and moving into its activities a high gear. I'm not saying
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they're related, just pointing out the thing, just pointing that out. Also,
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you know, this is around the same time period that deinstitutionalization is happening.
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So like there's a lot of wild things. This is not too far
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off from lobotomies. Oh yeah, they're even happening during this time. So
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it's a wild time for people that was like our friends, like four different
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episodes we've done too. Yeah, yeah, there you go. So if
8:52
you want to listen to a lot of stuff, we have done all those
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topics. Now, policies began to develop related to victims rights in relation to
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criminal justice at this time, so just shaping perspective along with kind of ongoing
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debates about the use of the death penalty essentially created a motivating context for the
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development of more strict crime control laws. And so all of these things together
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have kind of created like, hey, we need to get this under control.
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It was at this time that there was a bit of a shift from
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like more rehabilitative systems to control systems, and so you're going to start seeing
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that. Like it went from like, hey, you're going to jail so
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you can learn a lesson and kind of come out better to now, hey,
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you're going to get punished for this no matter what you did. And
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the extent to which the prison system, ever, like in good faith,
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actually plans to rehabilitate people, I think is questionable, but it definitely seemed
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like they kind of gave up the facade around this point and they're like,
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no, we're about the pain. We bring the justice hammer down swiftly.
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Yeah. So this reform perspective started in late seventies early eighties with the goal
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in mind to help reduce crime across the US. Targets of this reform included
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people who are considered habitual offenders and people who committed violent times, high profile
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drug traffickers, and crimes involving weapons of some sort, right, and so,
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you know, just as an example of what this might look like,
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Florida had developed a three strikes policy regarding this kind of targeting anybody who is
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a habitual offender, specifically involving weapons and so habitual just being like somebody who
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has committed multiple crimes the same crime and stuff like that, just so we're
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clear, like, we're not saying that they are offenders themselves, but they
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have engaged his behavior multiple times. Yeah. Well, this three strikes policy
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was essentially this, if you engage in any crime involving a weapon, you
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got ten years in prison, flat like baseline. If you did it again
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after you got out, it was twenty years, and then if you did
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it again after that, it was life in prison. Yeah. So three
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strikes was obviously a reference to baseball. But the idea of like, and
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I guess we sort of alluded to this but not really said it explicitly yet.
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I guess part of the idea probably behind to get tough on crime was
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that if there are harsher sentences in place, people will be less likely to
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engage in criminal activity because they'll be so afraid of the consequences for doing so,
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which implies essentially that people just want to commit crimes. The only thing
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that's holding them back is the punishment that is being handed down from the government
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and that's the only motive for them to stay doing the right thing is the
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government that needs to have that level of control by having a sentencing policy.
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And then as you engage in criminal activity, the harsh you make the sentences,
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the less likely you'll be to want to repeat that activity because of the
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severity of the outcomes. So that again assumes that essentially the nature of this
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is just what can I get away with, and not that there's some other
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reason that you might be engaging in criminal activity whatever that may be. Right,
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So, just as a thing to keep in mind, yes, it
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is not a circumstantial view. Now. I remember and like the nineties when
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there are specific advertisements for this three strikes policy in Florida, and it was
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like, you know, when they would do it, they would put these
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commercials out in there, like if you commit a crime with a weapon.
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There was always some like gruff guy who was like probably was just hired to
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do it, right, and he's going like, if you commit a crime
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with a weapon, it is ten twenty life. Like it had a slogan
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wow, like and there were billboards and stuff and like you know, it
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was like ten hyphen twenty hyphen life, hyphen and they were in like you
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know, like they made it scary. So it was like, you know,
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a set of like prison bars, but in the background, and like
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from a graphic design standpoint, you've got like the all the numbers were like
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steel plates with rivets in it, and you're like, okay, like that
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sounds scary. Like as a kid, we're like, oh, well,
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I definitely don't want to have a weapon, so I would like even throw
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away my sticks because I didn't want to be caught with a weapon. And
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fun fact, there's no more crime in Florida. Oh yeah, it's all
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gone. So it was truly effective. Florida is a very calm place,
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that's right. It never makes the news ever, Florida man who exactly this
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new reform focus highly on incarceration is a primary punishment for crime. Commit certain
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crimes, there is a mandatory prison sentence might be ten to twenty days,
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it might be ten to twenty years, just depends on the crime. But
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again you just have a mandatory minimum sentencing. And the idea again there was
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that it did not matter what the nature of the intention of the crime was.
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It was just do the crime, do the time. They would probably
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say, thinking that was really clever because it rhymed. They probably brought in
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some marketing genius to do that, which is bonkers to me. I could
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not imagine like the ethics that goes along with marketing and the like, knowing
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that that's that's your legacy, Like, oh, I came up with that's
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logan. That's great. Yeah, that's how imagine how that they sounded too.
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So all right, So according to a report in nineteen ninety four,
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so we're still talking about these policies and stuff, incarcerated persons increased from three
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hundred and twenty nine thousand people in nineteen eighty. Okay, so remember that
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other number before when we talked about what year was it, nineteen sixty nine,
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So nineteen sixty nine we had one hundred and eighty thousand people. Eleven
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years later, in nineteen eighty we had three hundred and twenty nine thousand people,
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and then in nineteen ninety four there were nine hundred and forty nine thousand
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people incarcerated in the United States. So just as a kind of like just
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as a numbers game, putting all that together, there was a five hundred
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and four percent increase since nineteen sixty nine. Yeah, it basically doubled in
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eleven years from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen eighty, and then just about tripled
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from nineteen eighty to nineteen ninety four. Yeah, and that is a huge,
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huge amount. Absolutely. All right, we should probably talk about more
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people who are in prison, but first we're going to imprison you in an
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ad. We're back talking about all the people who are in prison that are
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going on during our tough on crime spree, and so as a couple of
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metrics for whether or not tough on crime is working, you could look at
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rates of crime, you could look at the number of imprisoned people. There's
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a lot of different things you could look at. You look at the types
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of crimes that are out there. At the time of this recording, there
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are about two million people up from that nine hundred and forty nine thousand number
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and one thousand, five hundred and sixty six state prisons, ninety eight federal
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prisons, three thousand, one hundred and sixteen local jails, one thousand,
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three hundred twenty three juvenile correction facilities, and one hundred eighty one immigration detention
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facilities, and eighty Native American country jails, including military prisons, civil commitment
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centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in US territories. Who that is
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a lot to see a lot of people locked up. There's a lot of
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people locked up, and there's a lot of places to put them. Yes,
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that is also true. So we have fifty states. There are one
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thousand, five hundred and sixty six state prisons. There's a county prison right
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down the road from where I live. It is a ten minute drive from
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where I've worked in that prison. So, like just to kind of tell
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you a little bit about like how prevalent they are, well, yeah,
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what is the math? Do some sort of quick back of the envelope calculations
15:56
to figure out what is the math of the fifteen hundred and sixty six distributed
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across fifty states. That would be thirty one prisons per state. Thirty one
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prisons per state. Wow, that doesn't include the juvenile correction centers, like,
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which is about the same, right, So you're talking abot thirteen hundred
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and twenty three. There are almost as many juvenile correction centers as there are
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state prisons. And I've worked in some juvenile correction centers and they are straight
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up prisons. They're prisons for kids. Though they're hardcore. They are really
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hardcore. So to go a little bit further, twenty four states in the
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US have the highest incarceration rates in the world, the entire world, in
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the entire world. That's crazy. Let me say that again. Twenty four
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US states, separate states, hold the highest incarceration rates of all the world,
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of other countries, countries. Yeah, that's a lot. If you're
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keeping track from nineteen sixty nine one hundred and eighty eight thousand to the two
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million people currently, that is a one thousand, sixty three percent increase send
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nineteen sixty nine in the number of incarcerated people in the United States. It's
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too much. It's a lot, is what I'll say. So, who
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are we putting in prison? So there are a lot of people we're putting
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in prison. Forty nine percent of inmates are white, thirty five percent are
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black, and fourteen percent are Hispanic. Now, people ages eighteen to thirty
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four makeup about fifty three percent of the population, while fifty five and older
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makeup about seven percent. And one of the more interesting ones I thought here
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was sixty six percent of inmates have some type of disability, with sixty percent
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of them being men. Wow, and that could be both physical and mental
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disabilities. Yes, but there's a high rate of intellectual disabilities in prisons.
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That is an astonishing number. I would not have expected that. So if
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you look at that, although forty nine percent of the inmates are white and
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thirty five percent are black, you would have to then wonder our thirty five
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percent of the people in this country black then, so that because that would
17:52
represent equal distribution there. Now a matter of fact, black residents are incarcerated
17:56
at three point five times higher the rate that white residents are incarcerated, even
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for the same crimes. Right, they're often given harsher penalties, right,
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Like, not only they're going to get they're more likely to go to jail,
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they're more likely to go to jail longer based on subjective criteria and stuff
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like that. So, yeah, a truly systemic issue. We should probably
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at one time do like the school to prison pipeline and talk about that because
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that is a huge thing that contributes to this. Yeah. Now, federal
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data show this ninety three point one percent of inmates or mail, with six
18:29
point nine percent being female, and there's no reporting on gender nonconforming inmates.
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So like, we pulled like a government website and there was nothing on gender
18:37
nonconforming inmates. So there's a lot of really problematic policies around gender affirming care
18:42
and stuff like that within prisons. Nearly sixty thousand miners, which is to
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say, people who are under eighteen years of age are also incarcerated in the
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US, and if I remember correctly, that might also be more than the
18:53
number of scientologists in the world. That is, let's put that in perspective,
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there are more children been jailed and scientologists in the world. Good job,
19:02
United States. Yeah, we're just like number one where number one where
19:07
number one? So frustrating. Oh my god, it's so frustrating. It's
19:11
easy to get lots of this mixed up because there are several interlocking systems here.
19:15
We've obviously got local, county, state, federal, and hospital.
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And this episode is not necessarily about the prison system is in general, but
19:22
it is pertinent to this discussion and why we needed to spend a little time
19:26
on it before we get to talking more about those numbers and the effects that
19:29
these policies have had. But you know, we need to sort of start
19:33
to paint a brief picture of the scope of incarceration to see how the tough
19:37
on crime, what that means, and how it's affected people. We need
19:41
to see kind of the impact on this to understand how wrong this was.
19:45
And this is like the equivalent of looking at the War on drugs and how
19:48
the War on drugs disproportionately targeted groups of people, specifically black residents in the
19:53
United States, and how it became a significant problem, the War on drugs
19:56
being a symptom of tough on crime. By the way, that was like
20:00
kind of like couched in this. So this idea off on crime is doing
20:04
more damage than good and we'll see as we kind of go forward. The
20:07
good news is, though, and I do you know, all the doom
20:11
and gloom that we just shared, there is some good news. Incarcerations have
20:14
begun to decrease since about two thousand and nine, so we've been on a
20:17
decreasing trend over the past several years, which is really really nice. Like
20:21
there is an overall decreasing trend compared to where we were, which means that
20:25
two thousand and nine was about where we peaked with how many people were in
20:27
prison. Yeah, that's fair, and that does make sense if you look
20:30
at the numbers again. You had that nearly doubling in the eleven years from
20:34
sixty nine to eighty, you had a tripling almost from the fourteen years from
20:38
eighty to nineteen ninety four, and since ninety four, it's been almost twenty
20:44
years, and the number just barely double in that amount of time as opposed
20:48
to tripling in the fourteen years preceding it. So it did suggest a slowdown
20:52
and as you said, probably decrease since then, which I think ultimately is
20:56
a good thing. Yeah. Okay, we've been talking about the prisons,
21:00
the prison system, the people who are incarcerated. Let's actually dig in on
21:03
these tough on crime policies and the active ingredients contained therein Yeah. So,
21:08
as we mentioned earlier, one of the staples of tough on crime policies is
21:12
actually the standardization of sentencing for crimes with multipliers. So we talked about the
21:17
ten twenty life thing, and that's a big part of this is no matter
21:21
what your crime is, no matter what your circumstances are, if you commit
21:23
a crime, you are going to prison or going to jail or going to
21:26
wherever for x amount of time, and there's a formula for it instead of
21:30
looking at like individual cases, right, which means, commit one crime,
21:36
get one sentence, the same sentence, no matter what, regardless of the
21:38
demographic, regardless of the circumstance, commit the same crime. Oh now it's
21:44
times two sentencing. And again if you do it a third time life Maybe.
21:48
I think on the surface, that sounds like a nice idea, like
21:51
somebody might go, oh, well, it's equal. It makes sense no
21:55
matter who you are, it's the same crime. I think, on the
21:56
surface, without any sort of like actual thought, it sounds good. But
22:00
when you start kind of getting into it, what we find is the overall
22:03
rationale was not to focus on why someone might have committed the crime or what
22:07
their circumstances were that led to the crime. This might all be aired out
22:11
in the courtroom, and this might have been done during the trial where people
22:14
have talked about that, but those pesky details weren't necessary when it came to
22:17
sentencing. We didn't need to talk about it, right, It was just
22:19
you committed this crime, You're going to jail. Whether someone stole bread because
22:22
they were starving to death or because they just liked stealing for fun, they
22:26
were going away for the same amount of time. And now you can start
22:29
seeing why this is in general, can be a significant problem. Understanding this,
22:33
the shift in perspective went from rehabilitation to suppression. The active ingredient and
22:40
tough on crime policies could be described as righteous retribution to punish the criminal behavior
22:45
severely, regardless of the circumstance. Essentially, it was just it's coercion.
22:49
It's coercion, it's fear based, its suppression tactics, and ultimately it's not
22:55
fair, Like it doesn't account for somebody's learning history, their disability, doesn't
22:57
account for any of those things. It is a blanket policy that does not
23:02
account for the nuances that occur in people's lives. And I think that in
23:06
itself is not helpful. It's not helpful for resolving the issues. It's not
23:10
helpful for resolving that person situation or their circumstances, and it puts people in
23:14
a really bad spot. But Shane, wait, who cares if it's fair?
23:18
Who cares if it's not addressing the circumstance. The point is that there
23:22
is less crime on the streets because it's working, right, That's a really
23:26
great question. I'm going to think about that while we listen to these ads.
23:37
Okay, we made it. We're back somehow asking the question who cares
23:41
about all the nuanced detail of whether or not it's appropriate to be incarcerating these
23:47
people. As long as it's working, it's having the effect that it needs
23:49
to have in decreasing crime. So the question of doesn't work, the short
23:52
answer is no, it doesn't. It didn't work, and it doesn't work.
23:56
And we're gonna unpack a few things about this. The first part of
23:59
this is that the original perspective about what was described as lenient sentences kind of
24:03
in the sixties and stuff, when they and going into the seventies, before
24:06
the tough on crime era came up this idea of lenient sentences, it was
24:10
widely a misconception by the public. What they found was with the increasing crime
24:14
rates, there's a motivation for something to be done. But these reforms that
24:18
we talked about with this tough on crime stuff were the equivalent of putting a
24:21
band aid on a tumor without cutting the tumor out. Didn't address the core
24:23
issue, the civil unrest among the US population, all the things that were
24:27
going on. Then it was just kind of like, hey, you guys
24:30
are having a bad time. Here's more bad times. Is essentially what happened.
24:33
This misconception comes from a few places. One is confusion about the types
24:37
of crime that we're being committed, that is homicide, murder, robbery,
24:41
and theft. And two misunderstanding how sentencing procedures were being implemented. Right,
24:48
So, to illustrate this, someone who may have committed a violent crime in
24:51
nineteen seventy nine prior to any reform may have still been in prison as late
24:55
as nineteen ninety six, depending on the crimes they committed. Sentencing for violent
24:59
crimes was still quite harsh prior to any of these reforms, and so there
25:03
was no like leniency for these violent crimes that everybody was so worried about.
25:07
Second, these reforms began to categorize people as dangerous persons and as a result,
25:12
increased sentences based on these labels. But why is this a problem.
25:18
If someone is labeled dangerous, they can never get better. But if they
25:21
engage in dangerous behavior, that's something that can change, because we know that
25:25
behavior can change. Right, So, earlier you heard us use the term
25:27
habitual offender, using the term habitual offender means that person can never get better
25:32
because they have habitually offended right like, they will do it again no matter
25:36
what. And so even that term is a real problem. But that's the
25:38
term. It's often used and to describe people who are kind of constantly in
25:42
and out of the legal systems. Yeah, trade is a character trait is
25:45
something fundamental to who they are and actually is related to the fundamental attribution error,
25:49
which I think we've already also done an episode on five episodes we've reverenced
25:52
dont great. Yeah, and that one again is the tendency to associate someone
25:59
else behavior to who they are. When you capture a snapshot of their behavior
26:03
in any given circumstance, you don't consider what that circumstance might be, but
26:07
you always see sort of yourself making decisions based on your situation and what that
26:11
situation calls for. And this is sort of a similar thing here. It
26:15
basically saying like, if someone engages in crime, it's because they're a bad
26:18
person who does criminal things and they can never change, and therefore we need
26:22
to punish them as harshly as possible because that's just who they are right now.
26:26
To add to that, I think like the label of dangerous persons means
26:30
that they probably and this is kind of around the time that criminal profiling starts
26:33
coming up too, and so you have this issue of now somebody has a
26:37
criminal profile for what a dangerous person is. So like somebody who is dealing
26:40
drugs or a drug trafficker is considered a dangerous person, which means that automatically,
26:45
whether they have committed this crime multiple times or it's the first time they've
26:48
ever gotten caught, they're going to get a harsher penalty. So, for
26:51
example, as part of this new label of dangerous persons and for targeted criminals,
26:56
it was found that high profile drug dealers were less likely to receive tough
27:00
sentences at certain times, but any drug dealer would get sentenced for a drug
27:04
related crime. So what they found was like the high profile people, the
27:07
people at top, weren't getting charged as much, but drug dealers, any
27:11
drug dealer was deemed a dangerous person, and so any drug dealer was getting
27:15
really harsh sentences. And so this is partially why we still have so many
27:21
people in prison for like small amounts of cannabis possession, and one day we
27:25
are going to dive into the failed attempt of the war on drugs and all
27:27
that we've already done, dare so six episodes. But it is one of
27:30
those things where that label was applied to people who were committing essentially petty crimes,
27:36
right, and they got harsh sentences for having just for possession. Yeah,
27:40
And just as you said, it made it so people who are engaged
27:41
in much much more serious crimes we're not getting harsh sentencing, not equivalent to
27:47
the level of the crime, because it was like a first offense type of
27:49
thing, and people who are not engaging in very serious crimes, we're getting
27:52
harsh sentencing even though what they were doing was relatively mild and not hurting a
27:56
lot of people. And of course, thinking about the likelihood that someone's going
28:00
to reoffend, thinking about what was the motive for doing this thing in the
28:03
first place. For those people for whom they've built their empire, for example,
28:07
on violence and crime, it's you know, they're very likely to go
28:11
back to that versus people who were just like, need to make a buck,
28:15
you know, I'll scrape together, you know whatever. I'm going to
28:18
repackage these drugs and sell them or something like that, just to get back
28:21
on my feet. We're unlikely to continue to do that beyond having absolutely necessary
28:26
needing to have to do it. Absolutely But I kind of got this off
28:29
track. We had a first second, we're on a third point here.
28:33
So the third misconception about this and why this doesn't work is that this is
28:36
designed to be a deterrent for anyone committing a crime. As we stated earlier
28:40
that why do this because presumably tough on crime policies means people will not want
28:45
to engage in crime. They would have engaged in crime, but you made
28:48
these policies too intense, and now they're like, no, now I'm not
28:51
going to do crime. Is essentially what they believed those people's internal dialogue must
28:55
be right. Essentially, the message being sent was that crime was governed in
28:59
control by fear, the control of the government. Those harsh sentencing and just
29:03
knowing that you could be sentenced to life in prison should be enough to prevent
29:07
you from committing the crime, because again, the only logical conclusion that you
29:11
could possibly reach for. What their rationale then is is that people just want
29:15
to crime all the time, and that the only way to get people under
29:19
control is to instill the fear of consequences like punishment and severe punishment and what
29:29
eventually and kind of does amount to torture and slave labor if you do that
29:33
crime, and then you're like, oh, I guess I won't do this
29:37
thing that I really want to do because if I do, then I'll have
29:40
to go, you know, into prison for a long time. So I'll
29:44
I'll just stay the course, I guess a sort of again, It's fine.
29:48
Yeah, that's the only I feel like way that you can logically explain
29:51
that orientation to it, right, And so when you unpack that, we
29:53
know fear doesn't teach what you do. Instead, so like this person who
29:57
wants to commit a crime more is is like predisposed or has a learning history
30:02
related to whatever crime. It is like they're not learning what happens. Like
30:06
what it all all it did was really teach somebody what to avoid. I'm
30:07
gonna avoid using a weapon when I go here, and I'm gonna go ahead
30:11
and I'm still going to commit this crime, but I'm not gonna use a
30:12
weapon. As a matter of fact, I had a friend of mine who
30:15
robbed a bank without a weapon, and they got a much less harsh sentence
30:19
for robbing a bank man, just to be clear about all that. Wow,
30:23
But if they would have done it with a weapon, they would have
30:26
gotten many, many, many more years. But because they didn't have a
30:27
weapon, they still they spent a couple of years in prison. But they
30:30
robbed a bank. They robbed a bank. This is a friend, This
30:33
is a friend of mine, this friend of mine. Yeah yeah, yeah,
30:34
so I know, I know people as all I'm saying. So essentially,
30:40
what happens is somebody who's considered who commits a crime, never learns an
30:42
adaptive skill to survive in a social structure that's not supported to their needs.
30:47
So and again we remember we talked about this, sixty six percent of people
30:49
are in prisons with some form of disability, many of them being intellectual delays.
30:53
So somebody in prison may not have known any better, and they committed
30:57
a crime because that's what worked for them, not because they wanted to be
31:00
a criminal. Then that's taking a circumstantial view and thinking about it. It's
31:04
easier to commit a crime than it is to learn a new skill in a
31:07
social hierarchy that includes as many barriers as you would find in the United states,
31:12
because it's so difficult to climb out of your social economic goal or whatever
31:18
place you find yourself. I think a lot of the system is designed to
31:21
keep people where they're at, and we go where those rewards flow. As
31:25
they say, even if the risk is great, if you're someone in these
31:27
situations, you've got to imagine that, Like, they're desperate, they don't
31:33
know how to do anything else. They do know how to commit crimes,
31:37
and they need to get access to something for whatever reason, be it money
31:41
or safety or shelter or whatever. And they're like, look, I don't
31:45
know how to get money or safety or shelter without going these other roots.
31:48
The only way I've ever done it is by stealing bicycles and cars and like
31:52
you know, turn around selling them in that sort of thing. And so
31:56
like, I'm desperate again, don't know what else to do. Got to
31:59
do the thing I know how to do. Dear listeners, I'm not speaking
32:01
from experience. I'm speaking from what I may know about this lifestyle. But
32:07
from what I understand and what I've heard, stealing is very easy. I
32:12
have also heard this. I've heard this a lot from you know, mutual
32:15
mutual contacts is what I'll say. But the thing is like, like,
32:19
it's very easy to like, I could walk into a store and grab something
32:22
and wanting to walk out and probably not have too much of a problem.
32:24
So I've done this very easy thing, and I have also saved money.
32:28
So it makes sense that people would want to go certain routes for certain behaviors.
32:32
And I'd say, like, even though I'm like, I also sort
32:36
of follow that rule to a fault of not stealing. I'm not like,
32:39
if I find a five dollar bill on the street, I don't then report
32:43
it to the IRS as part of my taxes. But but I think,
32:45
you know, even when I've seen people make mistakes when they're supposed to charge
32:49
me for something and they didn't, rather than like get away with it,
32:52
and I'm like, oh, he he, I got this for you,
32:54
I'll like going and be like I don't think you charged me enough money and
32:58
then right then they'll fix it. And that didn't help me at all.
33:01
But sort of, you know, I feel like it's the right thing to
33:06
do. Yeah. Absolutely. Another point on why this tough on crime policy
33:10
or these policies didn't work, as this type of reform had led to a
33:14
higher rate of incarceration. We saw that, but more importantly, a lot
33:16
of it was unnecessary incarceration, between absurdly harsh sentences and wrongful convictions. It
33:22
is estimated that these policies have cost the US and its communities around one hundred
33:27
and eighty two billion dollars per year. Man, So the cost of these
33:32
policies two million people in prisons, one hundred and eighty two billion dollars per
33:37
year. So just go ahead and like, let's let's look at this.
33:39
If we would assume that this were the costs for the fifteen years, this
33:44
movement really took place, like really like those really harsh policies from like nineteen
33:47
eighty to nineteen ninety four, Okay, one hundred and eighty two billion dollars,
33:51
we are talking two point seven three trillion dollars in the US and fifteen
33:55
years. You know, it makes me think the next time they're taught,
33:59
the government's trying to work out the budget and they're like, people are disagreeing
34:01
about it, and they're like, well, what are we going to do
34:04
about you know, all these expenses. Maybe go in a place like this
34:07
and cut all the wasteful spending that is absolutely and completely unnecessary. Yeah,
34:12
decriminalize cannabis, get everybody who sentenced to marijuana crimes out cannabis crimes out of
34:17
prison, and then that will cut your costs dramatically. Yeah, billions of
34:22
dollars. Yeah, exactly. God, it's so easy, and it doesn't
34:27
seem like it it would actually result in an increase in crime, because the
34:31
other thing about this is that it just didn't work. Just like dare,
34:35
it was a failed attempt to scare people straight, but that just does not
34:37
how people work. And the time that these reforms started to take place,
34:40
we saw a mass increase in our incarceration from nineteen eighty through two thousand and
34:45
nine, almost thirty years of increases in reported and sentenced crimes, and it
34:50
was quite clear that it didn't work, just based on those publicly available data.
34:53
There's something to acknowledge here, I think a little bit, just to
34:55
understand that, like crime has been decreasing for some time, it really largely
35:01
started decreasing around the early nineties. And this was already again three decades after
35:08
tough on crime policies went into place. So tough on crime has been a
35:13
talking points since the sixties, and violent crime was on the rise for over
35:16
twenty years after that started being a thing, and then finally started to decrease,
35:21
and it's continued to decrease even after we saw decreases in the amount of
35:24
people who were being convicted. So it just the data just do not show
35:30
that tough on crime policies have had the effect of reducing the amount of crimeates
35:34
going on the United States. As a matter of fact, one of the
35:37
things the United States is famous for, sadly is our gun violence, among
35:43
which I believe we're the highest rate country by like three times, you know,
35:47
like no, something really intense. I think we Actually I'll have to
35:51
double check this, but I remember the last time I looked, it was
35:52
something like more gun deaths here than every other country on Earth put together,
35:57
or something like that. It was. It is extra ordinarily high in the
36:00
United States. Maybe infamous is the better word for it. Yeah, yeah,
36:06
but that's the thing that's been going on, even with these stuff on
36:07
crime policies. Even with the highest incarceration rates in the world, we have
36:13
the highest rates of gun violence of any country on Earth. Yeah. So
36:16
just based on that fact alone, that should tell you that none of these
36:20
policies work the way you think it does. Also, we need gun reform,
36:22
but that's different. That's a whole different conversation. I want to make
36:25
sure I got my numbers right. So the US does have the highest overall
36:29
rate, but what it is is it's five times that of the next highest
36:32
country, which is France. Wow. So while you take a moment to
36:37
digest all of those numbers and all of those stats, and then also maybe
36:42
I don't know, write some letters to your representatives or like get into any
36:45
sort of like prison reform. We're gonna let you go ahead and set some
36:49
goals. We're gonna take some breaks for ads. Okay, So I think
37:00
we need to talk about what behavior science has to say about tough on crime
37:04
policies and how that might work, Yes, and also some solutions using behavioral
37:08
science. And I think this is something that I because again we've kind of
37:13
referenced the circumstantial view multiple times throughout this, and I do want to talk
37:16
about some things that do exist in policy reform that do have to include that
37:21
nuance and also behavioral policies. So with all this talk on moving toward reform
37:25
and returning to tough on crime, policies. We got to figure out what's
37:30
next because we can't let this tough on crime stuff keep happening. We're already
37:34
seeing an overall decrease in violent crime through twenty twenty two, despite increasing mass
37:37
shootings. That's another topic entirely, Okay, So for the most part,
37:39
overall violent crime is decreasing. Mass shootings are increasing, different problems. But
37:45
what are people considering as effective data based practices going forward? And these are
37:51
all different databased interventions that are being used to impact the current systems and move
37:57
away from these tough on crime policies. One of them is something called decarceration.
38:00
So the goal of decarceration, and this specific value of decarceration is to
38:06
reduce the number of people that are in prisoned. That's nice and simple,
38:08
right, So incarceration is putting people in. Decarceration is taking people out.
38:12
And this may actually be simpler than you might think. For example, when
38:15
certain drugs are decriminalized, I mentioned it before. If you were to federally
38:19
decriminalize cannabis, prior sentences can be revised to match current laws, removing incarcerated
38:24
persons for outdated laws. There are people that are sentenced to crimes that are
38:29
no longer relevant, especially in state prisons. Yeah, and they're still in
38:32
prison for them, right. They have been getting moved out of the prison
38:37
system. A lot of them have lingered there for a long time after the
38:39
thing that they did is no longer considered a crime, which I feel like
38:43
should automatically commute their sentence and doesn't. Right. For example, if you
38:46
have committed a crime related to cannabis in Colorado, there's no reason that you
38:51
should be in a Colorado state prison at this point in time for a cannabis
38:54
related crime. Yeah, four cannibals. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not saying
38:57
the ampty all the prison but what I'm saying is like, there should not
38:59
be a cannabis related crime in a prison system in Colorado right now. Yeah,
39:02
save with Florida, same with California, same of Washington, anywhere where
39:06
it's decriminalized. Oregon, everything's decriminalized right now. Yeah. Right. Another
39:10
strategy here is challenging racial disparity in sentencing, which if BIPOC people are disproportionately
39:16
impacted by sentencing laws, then reforming sentencing laws to include nuance and alternative sentences
39:22
would be a good idea. Trying to decrease bias that has led to the
39:27
disproportionate imprisonment. There, things as simple as bodycams can help hold those to
39:31
power accountable for their actions towards marginalized groups and reduce unnecessary sentencing. That actually
39:37
be an interesting topic to dig in on because that was part of the idea
39:40
of bodycams, and I think that has changed how people do their policing.
39:45
Yeah, men, sometimes in ways that are even problematic. That'll be a
39:49
conversation for another time. Yeah. Another strategy that you can look at as
39:52
drug policy reforms, So you can look at decriminalizing and legalizing certain drugs and
39:57
that can dramatically reduce crimes related to minor offenses. And the war on drugs
40:00
again was both and it harmed millions and millions of people and entire groups of
40:06
people. I strongly recommend when it comes to drug policy reform, start with
40:09
the book Drug Use for Grown Ups by doctor Carl Hart. It is an
40:14
incredible look and how harmful the rhetoric around drug use has become and how that
40:19
has directly impacted specific racist policies around a lot of different drugs. Yeah.
40:23
Another one here is limiting incarceration for probation and parole violations, which are very
40:29
very minor offenses most of the time. Right many incarcerated persons have ended up
40:34
back in prison simply of these probation parole violations. Sometimes they miss an appointment,
40:38
Sometimes they like I don't know, they were like in the wrong place
40:42
at the wrong time, or for some reason they ended up somewhere they weren't
40:45
supposed to be those sorts of things, even when it wasn't that they were
40:47
going out of their way to do anything wrong. By offering alternatives like education,
40:52
extensions on probation and parole sentencing, etc. We can reduce the amount
40:55
of people who unnecessarily return to prison. And again there's always an opportunity here
41:00
for increasing skill acquisition opportunities to help teach them something that they can do instead
41:07
of whatever it is they were doing that was a criminal behavior as their primary
41:09
strategy for getting what they needed. That's a simple change, I think.
41:13
Now. Expanding voting privileges was another thing that was brought up in some of
41:16
the resources, and specifically they mentioned this. They are countless former criminals who
41:22
have no voice in current voting systems. So by restoring voting privileges to people
41:25
who have been directly impacted by these tough on crime policies, we can have
41:30
a meaningful change from people who have experienced the system. Now, I think
41:35
this is really important. A lot of times people that are making these policies
41:37
are people who are you know, let's face it, if you have like
41:40
somebody who is like cracking down on something, they are probably somebody who is
41:45
actively committing a crime. We've seen that plenty of times, right where it's
41:47
like somebody's like, oh, we don't like this, it's like, but
41:50
you're doing that thing. So I think by expanding voting privileges to people who
41:53
are felons or committed felons or anything like that, you're giving people who have
41:58
directly experienced these types of policies first hands, who have impacted their lives.
42:01
You're giving them an opportunity to have a voice in changing and reforming and refining
42:06
these things so they don't have the same adverse effects on other people. Yeah.
42:10
Another one is improving youth justice initiatives, as we mentioned before with the
42:15
sixty thousand plus miners who are currently incarcerated in the United States, by spending
42:20
more money on social programs and youth initiatives, improving access to resources for example,
42:24
social help, mental health resources, education resources. We can teach those
42:30
skills earlier as a preventative measure to reduce the likelihood that they'll ever do anything
42:35
criminal and then end up in the system where it's often very difficult to get
42:38
out of that system. We should probably do an episode one day on like
42:42
things like the Boys and Girls Club and like different youth initiatives like that which
42:45
are like like local community services and in low socioeconomic areas, and how they
42:51
influence and impact those places, because those are I mean from you hear stories
42:54
all the time about how impactful those programs are for sure. Yeah, all
42:58
right. And the last thing that I think is something that's totally doable is
43:00
a reform extreme sentencing statutes. So the current statutes haven't been helpful to the
43:07
tune of over two trillion dollars at least at least, So what we're finding
43:10
is these policies and these statutes are not working the way that they intended,
43:14
and it's actually costing us a lot more money in the United States. By
43:17
reforming statutes, reforming laws, reforming processes, we can actually begin to implement
43:22
alternative options, alternative sentencing, education, stuff like that. For sentencing,
43:25
they can focus on rehabilitation, and ultimately that's what we should be looking at.
43:29
If somebody is committing a crime, then we need to look at some
43:31
rehabilitative, some acquisition level intervention that's going to be far more effective, exactly,
43:37
and that does speak to considering why people are doing these criminal things to
43:42
begin with. At the time of this episode, there are four hundred and
43:45
eleven private prisons, meaning these are prisons that are monitored by the Department of
43:51
Justice but operated by a private company and as a private company. But we
43:55
got to think about this for a second. This is capitalism and incarceration.
44:00
While many people might see that ultimately is a good thing as it relieves the
44:02
burden on the state, there's a couple important considerations. One, the state
44:07
does still have to fund a lot of these in many ways, almost entirely.
44:10
Sometimes yes, that is the way that it is funded. And what
44:15
that often means is thinking about two the priorities of the prison. When you're
44:19
a private entity, your priorities are your bottom line, how much money you
44:22
can make, which means that three, they're going to pack that place as
44:27
tightly as they possibly can and reduce their overhead as much as they possibly can.
44:30
So you end up with these disease written, filthy, violent, terrifying
44:36
places that people routinely die in because they basically get paid per head and various
44:42
compensations for how to you essentially just keep the doors open and the lights on,
44:47
and they are not incentivized at all to take care of those people.
44:50
They're incentivized to basically keep them in there, and that's it keeping them alive.
44:53
It's kind of secondary priority, although they do get more money for that,
44:58
and so it's really not designed to be a place that is suitable for
45:01
humans to survive long term. Then they can just be really horrible places.
45:06
Just from first end experience, I had a family member who passed away as
45:08
a result of poor care in a private prison system. Wow. And that
45:12
is not an exaggeration. And so when we talk about this like it is,
45:15
the incentives are low. The training program, I mean, most of
45:19
what the private prison systems are as like the correctional officers and all the folks
45:22
that are working there. The personnel are usually on a private payroll. It's
45:27
a company that gets a government fund and they are on a private payroll,
45:30
so they're not state or government employees. And that's usually where all the funding
45:35
goes, is like, Okay, we can train people, we can do
45:37
all this, we can bring in correctional officers, but they are usually private
45:40
employees. And that was important to mention too, because that goes to the
45:45
rehabilitative part of this and thinking about why people do criminal things in the first
45:50
place is when they end up in these particular any prison really that doesn't have
45:52
rebilitation as a focus, but in private prisons, for example, they really
45:57
have no incentive to try and help people get out and get back on their
46:00
feet, right. It's really to keep them in and just don't let them
46:04
escape and try not to let them die, right exactly. Now, a
46:07
couple other things too. I think it's worth mentioning only about twenty three percent
46:10
of people who have been in prison stay out of prison. Yeah, so
46:15
twenty three percent of people who go into prison stay out. There's a very
46:19
high recidivism rate for folks that come out of prison. And again that goes
46:22
back to alternative sentencing. That could be a solution that goes back to teaching
46:25
and education, all those things. That we talk about. And then the
46:29
last little bit is that drug possession is actually sentenced at a higher rate than
46:31
drug sale. So remember earlier when we talked about how they were trying to
46:36
target these high profile drug traffickers. What we're finding is possession is getting sentenced
46:40
at a higher rate more often, and more people are going to prison for
46:45
possession over sale. Yes, I'm gonna throw in just my own I guess
46:50
is sort of a take home but also my own opinion about this, because
46:52
I think someone might hear this and think, like, well, hold on,
46:55
if we're seeing a decrease in crime that's happening overall and there's like to
47:00
these tough on crime policies, then maybe those those tough on crime policies are
47:04
working. And the other thing you might be thinking is, so what if
47:07
a lot of people end up in prison, Like the fact that we're decreasing
47:09
the amount of people just means we're putting more criminals on the street. Like,
47:13
I could hear someone having that argument toward this, But I think there's
47:15
a couple of things to consider in that. With respect to the first part,
47:20
the path of correlations don't line up very well. Like we've actually had
47:23
a decrease in crime, long after people are trying to put in the tough
47:28
on crime policies, after which there was actually a huge increase in crime.
47:30
And it does seem like they just those data just don't map onto each other.
47:35
It doesn't. It really does not seem to suggest that tough on crime
47:37
has had the beneficial impact. It seems like the circumstances under which crime was
47:42
taking place or being addressed in such a way that crime was on the decrease
47:45
overall anyway, at least in some amounts, because it's getting to the point
47:49
where it's at some of the lowest rates has been in decades, barring some
47:52
things that happen in the last six or seven years that are worth talking about
47:57
in some capacity. But anyway, that's the thing considers. So the second
48:00
part here is thinking about what prison is intended to do and why people end
48:02
up there in the first place. And one of them is that people see
48:07
prison as of a few things. It can be just punishment. We're mad
48:10
at you, We want you to suffer for the thing that you've done right
48:14
right. Another thing that that prison can serve as you are dangerous, we
48:17
need to keep you and prevent you from doing this dangerous thing again. And
48:22
those are those are kind of the two ways that people orient to it,
48:24
and people might also think about prison is like, this is a place where
48:28
you can learn to get better and then when you come out, then you'll
48:30
be in a position to better serve society. The last one, I think
48:34
is a pipe dream. I think it's almost never been realized, and I
48:36
don't think most people who are involved in the policy making around this actually care
48:39
whether that's the outcome, and so instead, I think you kind of have
48:44
the other two, which is we're mad at you when we want you to
48:45
suffer, or dangerous when we want to keep you away from other one.
48:49
And my opinion on this has been for a while now, I feel like
48:52
the most efficient way for us to use our space and our money that we're
48:57
spending on the system is that the people who are dangerous, like they have
49:01
motive, they have means, they have a network, they have demonstrated time
49:06
and time again that they have done violent, harmful crimes, or they have
49:09
harmed people. Those are the people that I think are the most needing to
49:14
be kept away from the general public, because we've already seen that when they're
49:17
out, they are going to harm people. That's the thing that like they
49:21
have that pattern as well established. We should still try and rehabilitate them.
49:23
Absolutely we should. Yeah, but those are the people that I think are
49:28
they need to be kept away from other people. Most people are going to
49:31
prison for things that are not violent crimes. And for those people, I
49:36
think, first of all, a lot of time they're unlikely to reoffend anyway
49:39
because the circumstances on once they did that were a one time thing that just
49:43
happened to come up for them. But second of all, even if they
49:45
like that was a thing they did a lot, and that was a skillet
49:47
they developed and they just eventually got caught for it, putting them away,
49:52
it doesn't do anything really like if they were just out doing things where they
49:55
weren't actually harming someone. And I think the drugs is a really good example
49:59
of people who just took rugs for example, or like if they just took
50:01
someone's money, Like, yes, it's a problem and that can be really
50:04
harmful for that can be really impactful for a lot of people. But like
50:07
things that are just like petty theft or other crimes of that nature that are
50:12
just stealing just property related that sort of thing that to me is like it
50:17
makes sense for you to lose privileges and rights for doing that, But being
50:22
locked in a cage and like a place that like really does not care about
50:25
you, right and like having all of your freedoms taken away, it does
50:30
not seem like it's calibrated for the level of that crime and the likelihood of
50:35
it occurring again. So that's that's sort of been my thought about it,
50:37
is like, let's think about this practically. What are we trying to get
50:40
here? What are we trying to do? And to me, it seems
50:43
like violent crime is the one that is that needs to be kept away from
50:45
people, and other crimes like sure lose rights and privileges, but I don't
50:49
think it does anything to like take away people's freedoms. That that dramatically and
50:52
it is extremely expensive, right and in that money that's being used, that's
50:58
that's making these programs as costly as they are. This is probably taken on
51:00
point for me. The money is being used at the end of all this,
51:04
right, Like when you think about it and how much money and time
51:07
is spent incarcerating people could be used for prevention programs and social programs that would
51:12
easily prevent this at a discount. Oh yeah, a huge discount, huge
51:15
discount. I mean, for examples of this, I tell I recommend everybody
51:20
go read The Nurture Effect by Anthony big Lunn, because as a perfect example
51:22
of multiple examples of programs that are designed to be preventative in nature, that
51:28
prevent things that are are significant strains on social resources. He shows it time
51:32
and time again. Oh you want to end teen smoking, here's how you
51:36
do this. Oh you worried about teen pregnancy, here's how you do this.
51:37
And boom, boom boom. It is all these things. And why
51:40
that's not applied here is astounding to me. And why nobody thinks for a
51:45
second that a crime is essentially some level of skill deficit on some way,
51:52
and the fact that none of our programs are teaching skill acquisition to keep people
51:55
out or at least at the majority of them or not. I mean,
51:59
just you see that by the twenty three percent people staying out right right,
52:02
And so I think a lot of work could be done to reallocate those funds.
52:07
We're already doing the work. We're already doing the effort. We're already
52:09
putting it out there, we're already spending the money, so why not reallocate
52:13
it to the front end and save billions or trillions of dollars on this?
52:17
Yeah. So I think my final take home just is that this whole idea
52:22
of tough on crime it doesn't mean anything like once you really start to think
52:24
about it, it is at best problematic like right, and at worst could
52:30
be extremely harmful and counterproductive. I think we look at countries that do not
52:35
have as severe penalties, that do not have as severe and as many widespread
52:39
laws as the United States does, and they also do not have high crime
52:44
rates. Right. It's not because everything's legal, and it's not because everyone's
52:47
getting away with crime. It is because people don't need to get away with
52:51
crime because a lot of times those countries have invested in systems to address the
52:55
kinds of variables that tend to result in people engaging in criminal behavior. Right.
53:00
So, like the United States spends a ton of money incarcerating people and
53:05
has a crime problem, other countries do not spend a ton of money and
53:07
do not incarcerating a lot of people and do not have crime problems. That
53:10
alone should tell you that the system is not working. Yeah, that should
53:15
be enough. That should be enough, but it is not apparently apparently,
53:17
So all right, you have any other take on points before we wrap this
53:21
up, go check out the Sentencing Project dot com. It's a general recommendation.
53:24
It's a really good organization that does some really cool work around prison reform
53:30
and sentencing reform. Nice to know. All right, I'll put that link
53:35
in here so people, when you go to this you can find the Sentencing
53:37
Project dot com. All right, perfect, Well, I know that you
53:40
love to listen to recommendations, So before we get to recommendations, we're gonna
53:45
get to some ads. All right, welcome back. We're gonna talk about
53:54
recommendations, but first I'm gonna say my thank You're going to get them out
53:58
of the way now. I would like to thank all of our people on
54:00
Patreon who have helped support us over the years and continue to do so.
54:04
You are amazing. Thank you to Mike m Megan, Layla, Mike T,
54:07
Justin, Kim, Josh, the Daily BA, Brad, Stephanie,
54:10
Olivia, and Brian. Thank you to my team of course, editing in
54:14
production by Justin Greenhouse, writing and fact checking by Shane Jess and myself,
54:19
and then of course thank you to everybody who is listening to us right now.
54:22
Now let us go ahead and get to our recommendations. Recommendations. So
54:36
I recently sat and watched a movie that I've been wanting to see you because
54:39
I liked the director and I heard it was really good. And I watched
54:43
Elvis by Bob Lurman. Nice. Have you seen that yet? I have
54:46
not seen it yet. It's long. It's a long movie. Good to
54:51
know. I will say this, though I never had a particular interest about
54:53
Elvis, just knowing that he's like generally kind of like a problematic figure for
54:58
multiple reasons. But I I think that this movie was done pretty tastefully and
55:01
did show a little bit about how he was kind of a victim of certain
55:05
circumstances, like kind of being like young and bright eyed and being taken into
55:08
advantage of people in the industry. Like there's a whole lot to unpack within
55:13
that, Like was Elvis a great person? Ah, he had some problems,
55:15
So we'll kind of leave it at that. But Austin Butler does an
55:19
incredible job in this, and every actor in it does really, really great.
55:22
Even Tom Hanks. He has a weird accent in it. Apparently the
55:25
person he plays was Dutch and had like kind of like a stilted accent.
55:30
So at first it's kind of jarring when you don't know that, but once
55:34
you do know that about the person that he's playing, you realize, like,
55:36
oh, this is what's going on. But if you're not familiar with
55:38
Boz's Luhman's work, he did The Great Gatsby, he did Mulan Rouge.
55:42
He has like a very stylized look about the way he directs, and he
55:45
applies that here. So it's like almost like the story of Elvis as a
55:50
fever dream and it's pretty great. Like it's a pretty incredible thing. And
55:54
Austin, like I said, Austin Butler, it's worth it just for watching
55:58
Austin Butler's performance alone. Fun all right, cool? Well, yeah,
56:01
on the list, I love it, Okay. I have a recommendation and
56:06
kind of a bonus recommendation. My actual recommendation is the TV show Pen and
56:09
Teller fool us. So, for those of you who are unfamiliar, Pen
56:14
and Teller are Las Vegas musicians, magicians, not musicians. Well, Penn
56:17
plays stand up base But yeah, they're magicians. They're the longest running headlining
56:22
act in all of Las Vegas history. They are very famous for a lot
56:28
of revealing how magic tricks are done. But also just like they have been
56:30
their hands, they've been doing a lot of stuff for a long time.
56:32
Yeah. Anyway, this TV show, like I'm not a huge fan of
56:36
reality, but reality TV shows and reality in general, I guess, but
56:43
reality TV shows, but this one. What happens is other magicians come on,
56:46
they perform a trick, and Penn and Teller basically have they try and
56:50
guess how the trick was done. They basically talk in kind of code to
56:53
the magician to let them know like things about the trick that how it might
56:58
be done. As the audience member, you don't really know what that is,
57:00
but you kind of get a sense of what Anyway, it's just really
57:04
fun to watch as them sort of breaking down how the trick has done.
57:06
So they don't they don't really spoil most of the tricks. What's always fun
57:08
is is how often, like somebody does fool Penn and Teller basically mean that
57:12
Pent Teller don't know how the trick is done. Yeah, and then those
57:15
people they call foolers then get to end up doing a show with Penn and
57:19
Teller at their theater, which is really cool. That is really cool.
57:22
It's such a fun show. I love watching it. It's you get a
57:25
huge cool demographic of different people around the world, different genders and races and
57:30
backgrounds and ethnicities and histories and languages. Some of them even have to like
57:36
translators up there to help with the show, which is kind of fun.
57:38
So it's it's really cool. There's like nine seasons and I'm actually on season
57:43
five right now, so I'm a little behind, but I've really been enjoying
57:45
it. What does it stream on CW CW Okay, Yeah, yeah,
57:47
it is a cool show. I've seen a couple episodes of it, and
57:51
it's like, it is really really cool. It's really interesting watching them interact
57:53
and like how they explain how the trick is done without spoiling the trick,
57:59
because that's like the magician's bread and butter, right, Like if you spoil
58:02
my trick, then I can't do it anywhere. But it's cool how they
58:05
protect the industry secrets around that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
58:08
really fun show. My sort of bonus recommend is. I've been having this
58:12
thought, and just because we're talking about sort of violence and crime on this
58:15
I've been having this thought that I would like to propose that the entire world
58:21
from here on out, if ever any country is going to engage in war,
58:24
they do it as a paintball gun war instead, and we just all
58:29
agree that the rule is, if you get hit in a critical spot with
58:34
a paintball, you're out and you have to sit on sidelines. And then
58:37
eventually the last person standing or whoever has the largest group after a certain amount
58:40
of time or whatever, are the winners of that war. And that's just
58:43
how we'll resolve conflicts from now on, is with paintball. I think we
58:46
should give it a try. I think if everyone, look, I'm just
58:50
going to put that idea out there, all you world leaders who are definitely
58:52
listening to our podcast, just consider from now on, we'll all just do
58:57
paintball battles instead, and we'll just get rid of guns and instead paintball.
59:01
Well, it will be how we resolve world conflicts. That's that's my proposal
59:05
i'd like to I'll just like to put that out there. I like that
59:07
I actually like that, and I like that. I like the idea of
59:09
just like healthy sports competition, yeah in general, or like just something like
59:14
that. It's like, oh, like okay, so like you know,
59:15
we'll say, you know, maybe like France and England get into some conflict
59:19
about something and they have to duke get out with ski ball exactly exactly.
59:25
I think it's love that. I think it's the best way to go is
59:29
just some sort of sport event. In the paintball you still get to shoot
59:32
at each other and you just would just agree with the rules that you just
59:35
out. Yeah, I like it. I like that main rule, no
59:37
frozen paintballs. That's not nice. That's true. That Yeah, you have
59:40
to know frozen paintballs. Come on, we got to be civil. Yeah.
59:45
I like it. All right, Please consider supporting our show. You
59:47
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59:51
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1:00:08
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1:00:12
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1:00:15
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1:00:22
accept constructive criticism, so feel free to send that that way. But all
1:00:24
of you haters who have nothing useful to say, you can keep your opinions
1:00:28
to yourselves and go away. Yeah, but I think that's all that I
1:00:30
have about this. Anything that I forgot or anything that you would like to
1:00:32
add, Shane, nothing on my end. I think that covers it.
1:00:35
Cool. Have an unincarcerated happy day. This is Abraham and it's a Shane.
1:00:38
We're out see you. You've been listening to Why we do what we
1:00:43
do. You can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWDWWD
1:00:49
podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day.