Criminal Justice
Enforcement, incarceration, and structural accountability. How the system distributes punishment based on race and class, not crime.
Claims in this domain
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Individual
Structural
Three-strikes laws produce modest crime reduction; selective prosecution more cost-effective
Three-strikes laws do incapacitate some offenders, reducing their direct criminal activity. But incapacitation effects are modest (5-10% crime reduction in most estimates), …
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22
Individual
Structural
Trying juveniles as adults produces modest safety effects at high cost
Transfer to adult courts does not deter youth crime more effectively than juvenile court. Longitudinal studies show transferred youth have equal or higher recidivism than …
32
68
Individual
Structural
Police body cameras reduce use-of-force incidents
Body cameras can reduce force in some settings, but the effect is inconsistent enough that the broad claim is not settled.
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35
Individual
Structural
Police presence has heterogeneous effects; deterrence is not universal
The claim that police presence uniformly deters criminal behavior across all communities significantly oversimplifies empirical criminology and is contradicted by substantial …
28
72
Individual
Structural
Prison rehabilitation programs produce modest, heterogeneous effects on recidivism
Rehabilitation programs reduce recidivism, but effects are modest and heterogeneous. Meta-analyses of randomized trials find average reductions of 5-15%, with larger effects for …
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28
Individual
Structural
Police funding and crime: evidence shows negligible relationship
Police funding cuts do not directly cause crime increases. Long-term studies find negligible relationship between police staffing and crime rates. Short-term crime spikes following …
19
76
Individual
Structural
Probation/parole supervision effects are modest; rehabilitation requires treatment
Probation and parole operate primarily as surveillance and punishment rather than rehabilitation. Technical violations (non-criminal compliance failures) drive high return rates, …
28
44
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 …
26
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 …
70
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 …
45
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 …
28
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 …
85
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 …
9
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 …
95