Speaker 1: Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
Speaker 1: welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
Speaker 1: mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am
Speaker 1: your host, Ramsey's job. He is Ramsey's job. I am
Speaker 1: Q Warden. You are tuned into Civic Sciphon, dude, you are.
Speaker 1: Please stick around because we have another one of these
Speaker 1: types of shows that are you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to come to terms with some stuff on today's episode.
Speaker 1: The first thing we're going to spend some time talking
Speaker 1: about is the new wave of tough on crime laws
Speaker 1: that are aiming to intimidate criminals, and we're going to
Speaker 1: provide a critical examination of how that tough on crime
Speaker 1: rhetoric and that approach doesn't really help anyone. It is
Speaker 1: basically fear mongering, and you know, it sounds like it
Speaker 1: would be effective, but in practice it just isn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they frame it that way. It's intentional dishonesty. They
Speaker 2: know that they're not being tough quote unquote crime and
Speaker 2: the crime the term being vague enough for them to
Speaker 2: keep using it in that way right right when it
Speaker 2: really it solves nothing. It just gives them an excuse
Speaker 2: and a public license to harass, fearmonger, and intimidate people
Speaker 2: who they have already pre criminalized.
Speaker 1: Exactly. That's a great way of describing it. So we're
Speaker 1: going to give you a more critical breakdown of this phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to spend the second part of
Speaker 1: the show discussing the migrant workers who fell into the
Speaker 1: river and lost their lives in Baltimore. We feel like
Speaker 1: somebody needs to speak up for them, and you know
Speaker 1: who better to do it than us. We're here with
Speaker 1: the microphones and we feel that those people and indeed
Speaker 1: that community deserve some representation. So we'll do our best.
Speaker 1: But before we get there, as always, we're going to
Speaker 1: start off with some Ebony excellence, and I think that
Speaker 1: you should probably take this one because it's another one
Speaker 1: that's kind of right up your.
Speaker 2: Alley, Right up my alley. It's funny Ebony Excellence sponsored
Speaker 2: by Actively Black. Visit actively black dot com. There is
Speaker 2: greatness in our DNA. This story is from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Speaker 2: Tessa Johnson scored fifteen points, Kimla Cordoso added twelve, and
Speaker 2: undefeated South Carolina advanced to the final four of the
Speaker 2: women's NCAA Tournament with a seven to fifty eight win
Speaker 2: over Oregon State.
Speaker 1: On Sunday seventy.
Speaker 2: To fifty eight win over Oregon State on Sunday, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: South Carolina made it to the national semifinals unbeaten for
Speaker 2: the second straight season. The Game Cocks lost to Caitlin
Speaker 2: Clark and Iowan the Final four last year. So imagine
Speaker 2: head coach Don Staley being so incredible that with an
Speaker 2: entirely new team, she is once again undefeated and once
Speaker 2: again in the final four. The game Cocks, who have
Speaker 2: made the Final four for four straight years, will play
Speaker 2: North Carolina State on Friday night in Cleveland. Two and
Speaker 2: more wins would make South Carolina the tenth school to
Speaker 2: finish undefeated and the second to do it since Yukon
Speaker 2: did in twenty sixteen. Top seed is South Carolina thirty
Speaker 2: six and oer led by four and half through the
Speaker 2: fourteen point lead before number three number three seed Oregon
Speaker 2: State got within sixty two to fifty eight with three
Speaker 2: minutes and fifty five seconds left in the game, but
Speaker 2: the Beavers then missed their final seven shots and the
Speaker 2: Game Cocks were able to prevail. Coach Staley, an all
Speaker 2: time great player in her own right, and now showing
Speaker 2: that she is one of the best to ever do
Speaker 2: it in the coaching ranks as well.
Speaker 1: You see why I have him read these things, because
Speaker 1: he knows all this extra stuff. It's not even in
Speaker 1: the article. I don't know anything. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: these people, but I'm glad that they are doing so well.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad obviously for any time there's a black
Speaker 1: woman who is thriving. So all right, so let's talk
Speaker 1: about this new wave of tough on crime laws. These
Speaker 1: laws aren't aim to intimidate criminals. In the article that
Speaker 1: we're going to read suggest that the experts that are
Speaker 1: kind of monitoring this phenomenon are skeptical with that approach
Speaker 1: having the intended results. So before we actually get into
Speaker 1: the USA Today article, I want to explain how police work. Now,
Speaker 1: we do this all the time and UQ on the
Speaker 1: show Police are. They respond to crime once the crime
Speaker 1: has already taken place. They respond In ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of instances the police respond to crime. They don't prevent
Speaker 1: the crime from happening in first place.
Speaker 2: But a very interesting thing because I every time you
Speaker 2: say this out loud when you're saying it. I'm a
Speaker 2: member of the audience. I know this to be true,
Speaker 2: and it's still kind of like calibrates me back into reality.
Speaker 2: It's television propaganda, movies, books would have aganda that the
Speaker 2: police are out here full time working to prevent crimes
Speaker 2: from happen, Like that's what they do all day.
Speaker 1: Is that's what your mind, And so you would think
Speaker 1: more police electively as.
Speaker 2: A group out here making sure that things don't happen,
Speaker 2: when in essence, what you just said is very true.
Speaker 2: So watch the response to crime mechanism not a crime
Speaker 2: prevention thing.
Speaker 1: So watch this. Okay, So I watch this YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: It's called Not Just Bikes, and it's a YouTube channel
Speaker 1: about city planning. I'm into some weird stuff, so forgive me,
Speaker 1: but I like the idea of living in a peaceful, livable,
Speaker 1: walkable city where you can go out and enjoy nature
Speaker 1: and take your son on a walk and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, right, And I'm not saying that I'm complaining
Speaker 1: where I do live, but I just kind of like
Speaker 1: the thinking, right and in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: when so in this part of the world right where
Speaker 1: we live, if you're driving your car too fast. The
Speaker 1: police will clock you, pull you over and write you
Speaker 1: a ticket. Right, And that's how they quote unquote control crime.
Speaker 1: But this fits what we're discussing right now too, because
Speaker 1: they can only respond to the crime that has been
Speaker 1: committed right now in other parts of the countries. What
Speaker 1: they do is they rework the road in such a
Speaker 1: way to where drivers' habits reflect the intended speed of
Speaker 1: the road. In other words, they might they incorporate it's
Speaker 1: called traffic calming elements like a little bit of a
Speaker 1: wiggle in the road or you know speed bumps, or
Speaker 1: you know tabletop crosswalks, or you know these sorts of
Speaker 1: things that naturally will cause drivers to slow down. And
Speaker 1: so they're proactive in preventing the speeding, not reactive, and
Speaker 1: it works and as a result, they're less pedestrian deaths,
Speaker 1: and people walk more, and they get out and they
Speaker 1: enjoy the city and they're not cooped up in the home,
Speaker 1: and then they can get places. They don't have to
Speaker 1: have a car, so it doesn't disproportionately punish more people.
Speaker 1: Oh it all right, So the way of thinking translates
Speaker 1: over into like bona fide crimes. Okay, So Again, we've
Speaker 1: talked on the show. If you want to take the
Speaker 1: reins of this one, because I know you've talked about
Speaker 1: it before.
Speaker 2: They don't want to take the rains, but I do
Speaker 2: want to speak on the things that you just said.
Speaker 2: The problem, however, and this is kind of the elephant
Speaker 2: in the room with these preventative measures, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of money to be made in crime response and incarceration
Speaker 2: and the way that they do business. Now it's not
Speaker 2: the way that they enforce the law, it's the way
Speaker 2: that they do business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great way to say.
Speaker 2: Enforcing the law the way that they do, watching crimes
Speaker 2: happen and then responding to them the punishing accordingly, is
Speaker 2: big business.
Speaker 1: So WHATQ was talking about here is the privatization of prisons.
Speaker 1: There are people that stand to make money from imprisoned individuals,
Speaker 1: right and all of that. Yeah, they just they just
Speaker 1: have their necks on society at large. Right. And of course,
Speaker 1: this disprope disproportionately affects black, brown, or marginalized peoples. So
Speaker 1: we're paying this as a tax, not just fiscally, but
Speaker 1: in terms of our freedom and our capacity to move
Speaker 1: around and so forth. We have the highest incarceration rate
Speaker 1: on earth in this country because of this way of thinking. Right, So,
Speaker 1: what I was going to say is, on this show,
Speaker 1: we often suggest that if a person wanted to fight crime,
Speaker 1: if the governmental agency wanted to fight crime, they could
Speaker 1: invest in programs that address the root cause of crime,
Speaker 1: which is often poverty or wealth, inequality, access to resources. Yeah,
Speaker 1: things like this. Right, There was one study that I
Speaker 1: read some years ago. So please don't quote me on this,
Speaker 1: but I believe it to be true. Again, this is
Speaker 1: not me standing on this one, but there was in.
Speaker 2: The idea and pick out the semantics that make.
Speaker 1: It wrong, thank you, thank you. So, there is a
Speaker 1: correlation between crime rates and access to head start programs,
Speaker 1: access to preschool programs. There is a correlation between crime rates.
Speaker 1: In other words, crime rates drop when communities have after
Speaker 1: school programs. Uh, there's a disproportionate effect on crime. In
Speaker 1: other words, crime goes down as job opportunities increase. Right,
Speaker 1: And and so what we have been conditioned into thinking
Speaker 1: through the propaganda and copaganda and on and on is that,
Speaker 1: you know, all the people in jail are just bad
Speaker 1: guys and not these people come from bad circumstances where
Speaker 1: they it's like, look, I got to bus and move,
Speaker 1: I gotta figure something out. This is this is what
Speaker 1: was going on. I had no alternative blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: which accounts for a significant amount of what we consider
Speaker 1: to be crime. And by investing in these programs, by
Speaker 1: investing in head start programs, if you really wanted to
Speaker 1: see the crime rates drop, you would invest in head
Speaker 1: start programs right based on the data. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into the article because the article kind of explains a
Speaker 1: little bit better than I do. But this was the
Speaker 1: whole way of thinking behind the defund the police movement,
Speaker 1: because you know, people would say this and they would
Speaker 1: show this data, and then the lawmakers would push back
Speaker 1: and say, well, where are we going to get the
Speaker 1: money from. And they'd be like, well, you're spending the
Speaker 1: money that you're trying to use to quote unquote fight
Speaker 1: crime in the wrong place. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You're responding to crime while doing nothing to address the
Speaker 1: root cause. So crime doesn't go down, and then you
Speaker 1: have this runaway effect where you're just hiring more and
Speaker 1: more police officers while crime goes up.
Speaker 2: Or increasing your budget even if it doesn't always mean
Speaker 2: more officers. Who does mean more money?
Speaker 1: Right, And we've covered on this show too several cities
Speaker 1: that increase their police budget, they hire more police, and
Speaker 1: it does nothing on the crime rate. The crime rate
Speaker 1: doesn't go down whatsoever. Right. So, now I'll get into
Speaker 1: this article and then we'll break it down a bit
Speaker 1: further so from USA today, a recent wave of new
Speaker 1: policies and ballot measures make it clear many politicians across
Speaker 1: the country think crime is out of control and tougher
Speaker 1: laws will help fix the problem. See, this is why
Speaker 1: it's so weird that you can elect people who are
Speaker 1: not that informed. Right, these people can if you're longer
Speaker 1: and good. I think you're showing, as usual, a lot
Speaker 1: of grace here. I don't think that they don't know
Speaker 1: any better that they're not informed. They just understand the
Speaker 1: things the way they are profit them the most. And
Speaker 1: conversations like this. We're from Arizona and we had a
Speaker 1: very notably tough on crime sheriff for a long time,
Speaker 1: Sheriff Joel Apyo, and his thing was I'm going to
Speaker 1: round everyone up, put him intense city. That was the
Speaker 1: name of the jail out here. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it still exists, but I think they'd stop doing it.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was always inhumane, you know, it's one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty five degrees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Diamerican stuff. Anyway, So this guy was
Speaker 1: famously quote unquote tough on crime, and so it's interesting
Speaker 1: to see the effect of that. I'm going to keep
Speaker 1: reading here. So from Louisiana to California, efforts to increase
Speaker 1: criminal penalties and give more power to police have made
Speaker 1: it on the books. As politicians say they want to
Speaker 1: make their streets safer. Most Americans fifty eight percent, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: now think the country is not tough enough on crime,
Speaker 1: a reversal from just a few years earlier forty one percent,
Speaker 1: according to Public Opinion pulling from Gallop. Efforts to crack
Speaker 1: down on crime, commonly called tough on crime laws, have
Speaker 1: been studied for years and have been found to boost
Speaker 1: the number of people in jail, but there's little evidence
Speaker 1: that their effective. Their effective crime deterrent experts say that's
Speaker 1: in part because most people who commit crime aren't thinking
Speaker 1: about the penalties for their action.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I fear mongering, just to be clear, works
Speaker 2: on both sides of the aisle, right, Yeah, yeah, most
Speaker 2: affected by this these policies still think we need more
Speaker 2: because we've been taught that, we've been doctor NATed. You
Speaker 2: know what, we do need more police so we can
Speaker 2: be safer.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing for anyone listening to us today.
Speaker 1: If you think this, if you thought this in the past,
Speaker 1: I'm not mad at you because it makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: It makes sense. Yeah, well, more police, tougher laws. Right,
Speaker 1: it just makes sense if you just hear it and
Speaker 1: listen to it on its face. But we are a
Speaker 1: data driven your prize here at Civic Cipher. We use
Speaker 1: the stories to give you an aperture into the data
Speaker 1: to help you interpret and understand the data. But this
Speaker 1: is all based on data, right. Every every episode we
Speaker 1: do is either based on lived experience or data. There's
Speaker 1: some data set that affirms the positions that we take.
Speaker 1: And this is no exception. Right. So again for people
Speaker 1: that once thought, okay, well yeah that makes sense, I
Speaker 1: want more police that I want to live in a
Speaker 1: safe community. More police. Police make me feel safe, So
Speaker 1: let's get more police. Why not, Well, you're spending the
Speaker 1: money and you're not safer. It just doesn't work. And
Speaker 1: so when you look at the data. Logical people would
Speaker 1: not give into their emotions, you know, not say well,
Speaker 1: the police make me feel safe, so let's just get
Speaker 1: more police. Logical people say, well, if the police aren't
Speaker 1: making us safer, we should probably do something that makes us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about giving people the proper lens to stop
Speaker 2: and have that conversation with themselves. Though, because this next
Speaker 2: paragraph that you're about to read speaks to how they
Speaker 2: so effectively frame this so that even lots of people
Speaker 2: hear it and don't process.
Speaker 1: So, so do me a favor. Why don't you take
Speaker 1: this one because you got you got something for me.
Speaker 2: Tough on crime laws attempt to solve crime by stigmatizing
Speaker 2: people who commit crimes rather than addressing the root causes,
Speaker 2: driving mass incarceration and disrupting families and communities while heavily
Speaker 2: impacting people of color, said Sherry Stone. I think that's
Speaker 2: media tour, the co founder of the advacy group Pero
Speaker 2: Illinois and a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. Some policies
Speaker 2: that have popped up recently may have intended to send
Speaker 2: a message about crime tolerance rather than stopping crime directly,
Speaker 2: or crime intolerance. If you will right if you do something,
Speaker 2: we're going to punish you worse. But it was mentioned
Speaker 2: earlier in the story. When scarcity and poverty and hunger
Speaker 2: and sometimes health crisis like drug addiction come into play,
Speaker 2: people are not thinking, Man, if I do this, I
Speaker 2: might get in trouble. People are thinking I'm starving and
Speaker 2: you got it and I don't got it. And I
Speaker 2: forgive my lack of proper dictation there, but that was intentional.
Speaker 2: You have it and I don't have it. No, you
Speaker 2: got it that food money, whatever, they're they're fixed.
Speaker 1: These are property. Yeah, so it's not easy. People are
Speaker 1: are doing fraud, wire.
Speaker 2: Fraud, and they're not weighing the consequence.
Speaker 1: I mean, let me hold on, because there's some people
Speaker 1: to do please believe it, but some straight up bad actors.
Speaker 1: But the crimes that we're thinking of, like property crimes.
Speaker 2: And well, the crimes that they're being tougher on, Let's
Speaker 2: be honest, that's what I'm They're not being tougher on
Speaker 2: all crimes. That's how you see people quote unquote getting
Speaker 2: away with things where they're found guilty and then you
Speaker 2: see the punishment.
Speaker 1: You're like, wait what, Yeah, they're they're focused on street crimes,
Speaker 1: not they're.
Speaker 2: Focused on the type of crimes that you do when
Speaker 2: you're poor or hungry, you know, so the way that
Speaker 2: a lot of people in this country have to survive
Speaker 2: is categorized as criminal. You know, there's a reason ironically
Speaker 2: that marijuana legal. Marijuana has become a multi billion dollar industry,
Speaker 2: but it's still categorized.
Speaker 1: The same way as the Schedule one drug.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's in the same category as whatever you're whatever,
Speaker 2: the worst drug you're thinking of right now. Marijuana still
Speaker 2: stays in the same category. There's a reason because they're
Speaker 2: they're kind of stuck, right They're benefiting the most from
Speaker 2: this new legal industry, but they understand that there are
Speaker 2: still people that look like you and I who could
Speaker 2: and do profit from the sale legally or legally of
Speaker 2: that plant, and they need to still be able to
Speaker 2: punish it as aggressively as they always have. So they're
Speaker 2: they're kind of stuck right now trying to justify that
Speaker 2: to themselves how this is still the way that it is.
Speaker 2: And you know, conversations that our that our president has
Speaker 2: had to have with some of the people around him.
Speaker 1: Regarding that it's been it's been a heavier lift for
Speaker 1: him than he originally suggested. And we've looked into this recently,
Speaker 1: given me both to see kind of what the status
Speaker 1: of Neither one of us have ever tried any drug,
Speaker 1: Neither one of us have ever drank alcohol in our lives,
Speaker 1: and we're in our forties. But this is something we're
Speaker 1: very interested in because again we know that it disproportionately
Speaker 1: affects black and brown people. So you're not wrong about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again, these these people that approach crime like
Speaker 1: it's almost like it's it's cool when they do it.
Speaker 1: It's a problem when I.
Speaker 2: Do it right. And even then they figured out a
Speaker 2: way to to make one form of a sustance.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I heard cracking cocaine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in another form of the exact same substance.
Speaker 1: And entirely Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's times who's more likely to commit the crime,
Speaker 2: right is they don't even it's not in the shadows. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're playing in our face as young people say, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is.
Speaker 1: This has been forty years now. The example Q was
Speaker 1: talking about is cocaine compared to crack, and the sentences
Speaker 1: were harsher for crack, and the compassion and the approach
Speaker 1: from the criminal justice system was certainly a lot more
Speaker 1: lenient with cocaine than it was with crack because crack
Speaker 1: disproportionately affected black and brown communities, Black communities in particular,
Speaker 1: and poor community.
Speaker 2: We don't forget to leave that part out, I mean,
Speaker 2: don't forget to include that part.
Speaker 1: You're sorry, sure, all right. So tough on crime in
Speaker 1: this country is a way of thinking about how to
Speaker 1: deal with social problems. It became strongly articulated in the
Speaker 1: late seventies and eighties. Stone Mediatore said, since then, study
Speaker 1: after study has shown that it does not work, all right.
Speaker 1: A good example of tough on crime approaching the US
Speaker 1: is the War on Drugs that saw a sharp increase
Speaker 1: in the number of people sent to prison for drug
Speaker 1: offenses starting in the seventies. Berlin Bellin said, yet that
Speaker 1: didn't reduce the availability of drugs or the number of
Speaker 1: people using them. Bell And said, so, all it did,
Speaker 1: and we talked about this too before on the show.
Speaker 1: All the War on Drugs did was criminalized drugs so
Speaker 1: that you could put black people and.
Speaker 2: Jay turn sick people into criminals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and drugs. On this show, we affirmed that that
Speaker 1: drug abuse and drug addiction is a health issue, not
Speaker 1: a criminalist.
Speaker 2: And that's not I don't even want you to frame
Speaker 2: it that way, not on this show health professionals. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: on this show makes it.
Speaker 1: Sound like that's no, no, yeah, we got that from
Speaker 1: someone now.
Speaker 2: That the right people have become victims of this health
Speaker 2: crist Yeah.
Speaker 1: When it's like if you figured out how to frame
Speaker 1: it problem and that that feels very hurtful. You got
Speaker 1: to imagine for those of us listening that aren't aren't
Speaker 1: black and old enough to have lived in the eighties, uh,
Speaker 1: and seen what crack does to a poorer community, and
Speaker 1: to now see the governmental response, which is a lot
Speaker 1: more compassionate, a lot less heavy handed. To see the
Speaker 1: criminal justice system have a lot less a lot more
Speaker 1: compassionate approach, a lot less heavy handed, and they treat
Speaker 1: these you know, often enough, they're white kids who are
Speaker 1: addicted to these drugs and it's a health issue and
Speaker 1: it always has been. But when they when you see
Speaker 1: the approach and you remember the approach that they had
Speaker 1: to black people in our community. You're from Detroit, I'm
Speaker 1: from Compton, so that's really where the crack hit hit, right,
Speaker 1: So I was I was born into that. The first
Speaker 1: years of my life was that the environment was very
Speaker 1: much shaped by that. So when you see now, you know,
Speaker 1: those of us that kind of have that amount of perspective,
Speaker 1: it almost seems very hurtful. It's like, man, where was
Speaker 1: y'all at when this was happening to my people? We
Speaker 1: had to we had to overcome that, and I'm proud
Speaker 1: of us for having done that. You know, there's some
Speaker 1: people obviously there's not all of us, you know, but
Speaker 1: you know that that term being associated with crack babies
Speaker 1: and you know all that, you know, all this sort
Speaker 1: of stuff that that made us feel like they hated us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then now to see something similar happen to you
Speaker 1: know a different group of people, who are you know,
Speaker 1: there are brothers and sisters. We're not I'm not angry.
Speaker 1: I don't want it to sound like I'm angry, but
Speaker 1: it's it's like in my lifetime, I've been able to
Speaker 1: see this and realize, you know, I'm not crazy when
Speaker 1: when people when the elders told me, hey, the deck
Speaker 1: stacked against you. You got to play the game right. And
Speaker 1: I have played the game right, Like I said, never
Speaker 1: done a drugs. We can best we can never done
Speaker 1: a drug, never drink alcohol. Q Q can say the
Speaker 1: same thing, and it's because we listened to that and
Speaker 1: that turned out to be true, So you know, poves
Speaker 1: your thought