One of the first things you learn in the trenches is that you do not tell a judge that something that’s obviously real isn’t real. Not only will you lose your argument, but you lose your credibility. The former is bad for the client. The latter is a disaster for the lawyer. Credibility once lost is likely gone forever.
Yet, denying reality has been at the forefront of many of the battles for reform. Despite a spike in murders and assaults, police and crim law reformers vehemently deny that there is a crime problem. The reason is obvious, that fear of crime pushes the public to back simplistic Draconian fixes and reject the efforts to reform many of the worst aspects of the legal system. The window of opportunity opened by the public’s shift against police and “systemic racism” will slam shut as fear of crime seizes their consciousness.
But is fighting the problem of retail theft in jurisdictions where progressive prosecutors have chosen not to prosecute petty larceny by denying that it happens going to work? It’s unclear that we’re undergoing a crime wave, as some crimes are up and others are not, but what is clear is that something is happening, and there are dead bodies to prove it. Are they not there? Do they not count? Can they be denied?
There is a similar phenomenon occurring with regard to education, where red state legislatures are enacting laws to keep Critical Race Theory out of the public school classroom. The laws are bad, incoherently written and almost certainly unconstitutional, but they make for good political theater. But then, opponents of these laws argue that CRT isn’t being taught in schools, that this is a manufactured issue by Republicans and nobody is trying to indoctrinate your child into their progressive ideology under the guise of CRT.
But parents see it. It’s not really critical race theory, and fighting over what to call it is a diversion, even if the words keep inappropriately appearing in laws. Teach history all you want, warts and all, but reimagine history at your peril. Denying that it’s happening got Glenn Youngkin elected governor of Virginia. And while advocates for progressive change try to soothe parents’ fears by pretending it’s just good and honest pedagogy, school boards’ training manuals surface reflecting how good and honest means turning children into guilt-ridden allies for the cause.
The dilemma is that there are, and always have been, reforms needed to make things better, whether in law, education or pretty much every governmental function. Whether the answer is to undo past “fixes” that failed miserably or to improve upon historic processes that were premised on accepted assumptions that we now recognize as flawed, real problems exist and need to be identified, even if they conflict with the way some would prefer, and real solutions sought.
Notably, there aren’t always fixes, and even if there are, the fixes aren’t necessarily to be found in laws. People are pretty exceptional at coming up with problems that the law can’t fix.
By denying the existence of facts, of reality, that those already not on board with your team readily see, are you winning them over? Are you at least blunting your opposition’s push for their alternative, whether it’s laws, elections or fixes? Or are you squandering the short time when the window for reform is open by blowing your credibility?
Another problem that arises from the existence of inconvenient facts is that it may serve to demonstrate why your Utopian solution won’t work. There are serious problems in policing, but to presume they’re all a bunch of racist murderers and “fix” the police by making them superfluous, creating an alternate force of therapists and putting cameras on light posts, isn’t going to make murders disappear or prevent flat-screen TVs from disappearing from the shelves of looted stores.
Your good intentions are not going to make your fantasy fixes work, and reality on the ground is telling you that these bad things you’re denying are happening despite your vehement insistence that they’re not. You’re blowing it, if you haven’t blown it already. As someone who has fought for decades to make sustainable reform happen, and at this moment in time when the opportunity for reform is as good as it gets, watching this opportunity burned on the altar of ideological orthodoxy is a crying shame.
No one is persuaded that these things that are definitely happening aren’t. No one is persuaded that these things that are definitely happening can be spun into oblivion if you just keep stamping your feet and pointing in some other direction as if nobody is going to see the ugliness on the street if you keep pointing at the clouds.
If you want better than what we have, then recognize that denying reality isn’t going to win the day and convince anyone that your fantasies will work. If you want reform, get real. Hard, cold and real. Like the dead bodies that just won’t go away because you wish they would.
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Do you ever get the sense that you’re the last liberal crim law reformer who cares about making changes that actually work, will survive the next wave of crime hysteria and produce sound results that everyone can live with?
But in this “reform” environment, that makes you a heretic because you actually want to save lives rather than virtue signal.
I’m not the only one, but then, some of my realist liberal (and libertarian) pals who sought real solutions have since gone off the reservation. Whether they went SJW for popularity or validation or because they believe is unclear, but they no longer want anything to do with unwoke me.
When (if?) this dark age ends, I wonder how they’ll rationalize their rejection of principle in favor of popularity. I wonder if they’ll want to be friends with me again. I wonder if I’ll want to be friends with them.
I have to wonder.
Did they move the liberal goal posts on you or, as I have long suspected, there is no real difference between an actual liberal and a real conservative. They seem to want the same thing.
Have I changed? I think your point is that liberal or conservative, reasonable people can disagree, argue and yet not hate each other. Maybe we can even find common ground and arrive at viable solutions. The dogmatic fringes are lost causes.
Your parenthetical is duly noted. One of the saddest things to come of the past couple of years is to see strong but rational reform voices dive into the social justice gutter. When it comes to criminal law reform, is there any libertarian left who hasn’t whored themselves out for likes? I don’t think so.
One of my old pals blocked me the other day. My guess is that he was very offended by my criticism of his pandering to the unduly passionate, but rather than reach out to me as friends once did, he decided best to be rid of this meddlesome blawger.
To your point – inferring intent using info automatically sent from some web service might be contributing to this mess. There are still two ends to a phone call or email.
Ironically, I sent an email after I realized that my old friend blocked me. I received no reply. You can’t make someone else pick up the phone.
The answer is that the “reformers” are not the progressive egalitarians they would paint themselves to be, and that the dead bodies can accordingly be denied recognition unless and until they are the dead bodies of important people. Proles and denizens of the inner city do not count.
George Floyd’s life mattered. Other black lives, not so much.
Perhaps “People are pretty exceptional at coming up with problems that the law can’t fix.” could be emblazoned in 12″ letters above the dais of every legislative body in these United States. A little individual and institutional humility would be an excellent first step.
There’s no humility left from either side, both of which believe they can legislate their way to their own vision of Utopia.
These people must live in gated communities far from the violence that is occurring. My daughter decided she wanted to go to college in a big city which sounded great but murders there are up 80%. She returned for Christmas break talking about the multiple shootings at the nearby gas station and the stabbing outside the student union.
None of the victims have been students but that does not calm my parental fear. She and her friends seem to take the violence in stride. Most go on group adventures to minimize risk while taking advantage of the city. Her stories are great but I have to hide my shudders.
None of the victims were students? So it wasn’t Columbia.
No, she visited one Ivy and did like not the snootiness. She chose a relatively unknown engineering school that fits her well. It may not be the best for her career but seems like a great choice for her life journey – assuming she stays safe.
So what should be the honest position taken by advocates of criminal justice reform in response to such concerns? Admit that crime may increase because of progressive reforms but that it’s an acceptable price for the greater good of reform?
Something similar to what Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm said?
“Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill somebody? You bet. Guaranteed. It’s guaranteed to happen. It does not invalidate the overall approach.”
That’s one piece. Pretending there are magic bullet solutions that will make intransigent societal problems disappear is a doomed strategy. Too bad the vast majority of activists lack Chisholm’s honesty, understanding and maturity.
Well now Chisholm can look forward to endless allegations that he let a scary black man out of jail to run over and kill white grandmothers and white children.
In a world of simplistic activists, that’s what happens to an adult with integrity. I suspect Chisholm knew it would happen and still chose integrity over bullshit.
Maybe, but Chisholm is hedging bets on blame. He’s not admitting that the low bond release of Darrell Brooks was how he intended to run his office. He claims the $1,000 bail for Brooks was “inappropriately low” and blamed it on an overworked underling who was working on a jury trial and assigned two dozen felony-level trials to review when she was assigned the Brooks case in November. Chisholm said she didn’t have access to Brooks’ public safety assessment because it wasn’t in the computer.
You’re caught up in one instance. It’s not about one instance.