Criminal Justice
Incarceration, policing, and disparate enforcement. The world's largest prison population, and the system that built it.
Claims in this domain
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Individual
Structural
Broken windows policing reduces serious crime
NYC crime declined after broken windows adoption, but so did crime in cities with no such policy — the causal mechanism remains unverified and the enforcement costs fall …
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90
Individual
Structural
Cash bail punishes poverty, not flight risk
Pretrial detention is predicted by ability to pay, not risk — and causes a 13% increase in conviction rates and 42% longer sentences independent of underlying charges.
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86
Individual
Structural
Crime is caused by individual moral failure
Crime rates correlate strongly and consistently with inequality, unemployment, and concentrated neighborhood poverty across countries, states, and cities — not with individual …
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50
Individual
Structural
Crime victims support tough, long sentences
Survey data show crime survivors, especially in high-violence communities, prefer prevention and rehabilitation over incarceration at roughly 2:1 — yet victim preferences are …
34
74
Individual
Structural
Criminal rehabilitation programs don't work — recidivism proves it
The evidence base for rehabilitation is substantial and replicable. High US recidivism rates reflect the absence of rehabilitation investment, not its futility — Norway achieves …
9
92
Individual
Structural
Drug enforcement is racially disparate despite comparable use rates across races
Black Americans are 3.73x more likely to be arrested for marijuana despite near-identical use rates — a disparity that persists across substances, jurisdictions, and decades.
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82
Individual
Structural
Felony disenfranchisement structurally suppresses minority political power
Approximately 6 million Americans cannot vote because of felony convictions. One in 16 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised — a rate 3.7 times higher than the general …
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78
Individual
Structural
Mandatory minimum sentences deter crime
Decades of research show certainty of punishment deters crime; severity does not — and the US incarceration surge produced no proportional crime dividend.
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78
Individual
Structural
Mass incarceration increases future crime by destroying social networks
The evidence that concentrated incarceration erodes collective efficacy and produces net increases in community-level crime is substantial. States with the highest incarceration …
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42
Individual
Structural
More police presence makes communities safer
Targeted hot-spots policing reduces crime in specific locations; generalized patrol staffing shows modest and inconsistent effects. Trust, clearance rates, and co-responder models …
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62
Individual
Structural
People choose to join gangs; gang membership is not structurally determined
Individual choice is real but operates within a severely constrained set — concentrated disadvantage, absent labor markets, and recruitment at age 12-14 limit the scope of …
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72
Individual
Structural
Private prisons create financial incentives that drive mass incarceration
Private prison corporations have demonstrably lobbied against sentencing reform, funded model legislation expanding incarceration, and written contracts with minimum-occupancy …
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89
Individual
Structural
Racial disparities in criminal justice reflect behavioral differences
Racial disparities in the criminal justice system persist after controlling for offense type and severity at every decision point — arrest, charging, bail, plea, sentencing. The …
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90
Individual
Structural
Solitary confinement constitutes torture and causes lasting mental harm
Decades of psychiatric research, natural experiments in Colorado and elsewhere, and international consensus — including the UN Nelson Mandela Rules — establish that prolonged …
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