The original draft of this email was sent to Manhattan Institute scholar and weekly Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley. It was copied to two of his opinion page colleagues, two fellow MI scholars and John Jay College criminology professor emeritus Barry Latzer, quoted at some length by Riley in today’s column.
Dear Jason,
The seemingly sanguine Prof. Latzer says he doesn’t “see the big . . . multiyear factors” driving crime today like “the baby-boom generation reaching their most crime-prone years,” a “very weak criminal justice system” and “crack cocaine” drove crime in the late-1960s through the 1980s [“Will Crime Keep Rising? Not Necessarily.” Opinion, June 16].
Really? How about today’s systemic fatherlessness, cheered by anti-nuclear family neo-Marxists who, at least since LBJ, have been urging Uncle Sam to undermine and supplant Daddy; wholesale anti-cop lie-telling by legacy media and the related censorship by Big Tech that are goading grandstanding Soros D.A.’s to go soft on criminals and hard on police; or the self-described “progressive” legislators, executives and their appointees (see Merrick Garland) who are otherwise working feverishly to castrate police with consent decrees, civil immunity “reform” and other hostile measures that are already emptying training academies and hastening veteran officers’ early retirements?
This list of such multiyear factors, as I and many law-abiding Americans see them, could go on for at least another paragraph. But I’ve made my point. And while the professor’s principal point is true enough — namely, that no one’s crystal ball can necessarily predict with certitude the direction crime rates will go next year — even cockeyed optimist John Lennon himself would have had a hard time imagining less crime next year or the year after in light of what’s happening in our politics and culture now.
Maybe Atlanta’s suddenly violent and thus rebellious Buckhead section will prove to be the Lexington of the next American Revolution, inspiring a silent majority of increasingly fed-up, non-criminal citizens from mostly two-parent families to rise like a righteous tidal wave and declare: “No Taxation without Adequately Aggressive Police Protection!” Maybe this Howard Beale wave will swamp next year’s midterm elections and wash the criminal-coddling, division-stoking Saul Alinskys out to sea without paddles for the next 20 years or so.
But such positive developments are less likely if respected experts like Prof. Latzer keep telling respected columnists like you that we don’t necessarily have much to worry about. Because we do.
Darren McKinney, Washington, D.C.
Post script: Prof. Latzer was kind enough to get back to me by email this afternoon, saying some of my points are “well taken.” He added that, if I’m right about the likelihood of still higher crime rates, the “soft-on-crime prosecutors” and “their legislative enablers” probably “won’t survive crime spikes in their counties [because] voters will give them the heave-ho.” Fingers crossed.