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In October 2022, the Ronald Brownstein of The<\/em> Atlantic <\/em>wrote<\/a> an impassioned defense of the left-wing progressive criminal justice reform movement, claiming there is no clear connection between rising crime rates and the polices of allegedly \u201csoft-on-crime\u201d district attorneys (DAs).<\/p>\n The article provides an . . . interesting . . . argument.<\/p>\n Brownstein concedes, among other things, that<\/p>\n The very frame of the story seems to undermine its central argument, but Brownstein claims that the anecdotal evidence of correlation is not to be trusted as proof of causation. To back up his claims, Brownstein presents two academic studies that serve as the basis of his entire argument.<\/p>\n Study 1: \u201cThe Red State Murder Problem\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the studies\u2014conducted by the far-left Third Way<\/a>, which Brownstein characterizes as a \u201ccentrist Democratic group\u201d\u2014claims that Republicans, not left-wing progressives, are responsible for rising crime because \u201cper capita murder rates in 2020 were 40 percent higher in states that voted for Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Was this study reputable? No, not really.<\/p>\n In fact, the Third Way study had been thoroughly debunked<\/a> in the left-leaning Washington Post<\/em> just the day before Brownstein\u2019s article. The study was widely ridiculed<\/a> because it ignored the obvious fact that almost all \u201cred state murders\u201d happened in Democrat-controlled districts within those states. Discrediting the study\u2019s claims about Missouri, Marc Thiessen of the American Enterprise Institute wrote:<\/p>\n Take Missouri. Yes, it voted for Trump. But it is also home to two of the\u00a0most dangerous<\/a>\u00a0U.S. cities\u2014St. Louis and Kansas City\u2014both of which are run by Democrats. Earlier this year, CBS News did an\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0of the \u201cdeadliest U.S. cities\u201d using the latest FBI and other crime data. In 2019, it found, St. Louis had the highest murder rate in the nation, with 64.54 murders per 100,000 residents. Kansas City, meanwhile, had the eighth-highest murder rate, with 29.88 murders per 100,000. According to\u00a0the FBI<\/a>, the state had about 520 murders in major metropolitan areas that year, 20 in cities outside metropolitan areas, and 28 in nonmetropolitan counties. So, the vast majority of Missouri\u2019s homicides took place in its Democrat-run cities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Third Way study was also mocked for trying to claim that high percentage increases in crime in Wyoming, South Dakota, and Nebraska were proof that rising crime rates were a Republican-caused problem. As Thiessen highlights, Third Way omitted the fact that these three states saw a combined 75 murders in 2019, fewer than some neighborhoods in Chicago or St. Louis.<\/p>\n Although some basic critical thinking might have told him that the Third Way study was bogus, Brownstein can be forgiven for using it since it had, after all, been debunked just one day before. On top of that, the Third Way study isn\u2019t really the heart of his argument anyway. Perhaps the second study is more trustworthy?<\/p>\n Study 2: Violent Crime and Public Prosecution<\/strong><\/p>\n The centerpiece of the article was \u201cViolent Crime and Public Prosecution,\u201d a new study<\/a> by the University of Toronto\u2019s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. The researchers behind the study, Brownstein claimed, had found that\u00a0\u201chomicides over recent years increased\u00a0less rapidly\u00a0<\/em>in cities with left-wing progressive prosecutors than in those with more traditional district attorneys.\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike the Third Way article, the Munk School article had not been thoroughly debunked when Brownstein\u2019s article was published. In fact, nothing major had yet been written about the study at all because it had been published earlier that same day<\/em>. Without any significant commentary available to review, a look at the summary of the study can help explain the bare bones of its claims.<\/p>\n For example, the summary aims to score political points by pointing out that \u201cthe greatest proportional increase<\/em> in homicide in 2020 took place in Mesa, Arizona, a city served by a conservative prosecutor.\u201d What it doesn\u2019t<\/em> mention is that Mesa, a city of over 500,000, saw just 24 total homicides during 2020, which is hardly an indictment of conservative prosecution.<\/p>\n The study\u2019s central claim, as Brownstein writes, is that \u201cfrom 2015 to 2019, for instance, the study found that murder rates increased in a smaller share of cities with progressive prosecutors (56 percent) than in those with traditional prosecutors (68 percent) or prosecutors who fell in the middle (62 percent).\u201d The data are interesting but not terribly useful because, among other things, they exclude data for 202o, the banner-year for left-wing progressive criminal justice reform. It also doesn\u2019t account for state and local legislation that might affect crime rates. Nor does it consider changes to policing or police budgets. It draws data from only 65 cities and counties in the nation. Additionally, a glance at the data and methodology from the full study reveals that cities like New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, and Austin were lumped into the \u201cmiddle\u201d category.<\/p>\n Later on, the summary presents data from the study that supposedly vindicate the left-wing progressive DAs of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n Kim Foxx, the summary claims, can\u2019t be blamed for Chicago\u2019s staggering 56 percent <\/em>increase in homicides during 2020 and the continued increases in 2021 because homicides spiked just before she assumed office in 2017 and were decreasing for three years after that until the pandemic began in 2020. What the summary doesn\u2019t <\/em>mention is that Foxx only announced she would not prosecute<\/a> most drug offenses in 2020, that she refused to seek charges<\/a> against people accused of rioting during 2020, and that Illinois passed left-wing progressive criminal justice reform laws<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n Similar excuses were made for Larry Krasner of Philadelphia where the summary claims a combined 57 percent increase in homicides somehow could not be his fault just because the murders were concentrated in August and December. And for George Gascon of Los Angeles County, a 12 percent increase in homicides during his first year was somehow not his fault because murders increased 12 percent at the Los Angeles city center but 41 percent in the outlying county neighborhoods (which were also in his jurisdiction).<\/p>\n The claims made in the summary seem weak or deeply flawed, but time and further examination by experts will tell whether the study holds merit.<\/p>\n Follow the Money<\/strong><\/p>\n The questionable assertions of the summary and the untested data of the full study are not the only possible problems with Brownstein\u2019s primary source. There is also a disturbing money trail behind the study that suggests potential biases.<\/p>\n As both the Munk School authors and Brownstein admit, the study was commissioned and funded by the Center for American Progress<\/a>, one of America\u2019s leading left-of-center think tanks and policy-advocacy organizations. This alone is cause for concern, but there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n The lead author, Todd Foglesong, is working as a fellow at the Munk School \u201cIn cooperation with the Open Society Foundations<\/a>\u201d and has been working on \u201cdeveloping a peer-based system of support for government officials that seek to solve persistent problems in criminal justice.\u201d<\/p>\n Open Society Foundations<\/a> is the private charitable foundation and influence-buying network of the infamous left-wing billionaire George Soros<\/a>, who is also the number one campaign donor to left-wing progressive DAs. Soros has spent well over $30 million on contributions to left-wing progressive DAs across the country since 2015, and over two-dozen DAs<\/a> who have received his money are currently in office. It seems notable that at least part of the primary author\u2019s salary is apparently being paid by the largest campaign donor of many of the DAs being studied, but neither Brownstein nor the Munk School study makes any mention of this fact.<\/p>\n\n
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