Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our mission is to foster allyship empathy and understanding. I am your host, Ramsey's job. He is Ramsey's job. I am Q Warden. You are tuned into Civic Sciphon, dude, you are. Please stick around because we have another one of these types of shows that are you know, we're going to have to come to terms with some stuff on today's episode.
The first thing we're going to spend some time talking about is the new wave of tough on crime laws that are aiming to intimidate criminals, and we're going to provide a critical examination of how that tough on crime rhetoric and that approach doesn't really help anyone. It is basically fear mongering, and you know, it sounds like it would be effective, but in practice it just isn't.
Yeah, they frame it that way. It's intentional dishonesty. They know that they're not being tough quote unquote crime and the crime the term being vague enough for them to keep using it in that way right right when it really it solves nothing. It just gives them an excuse and a public license to harass, fearmonger, and intimidate people who they have already pre criminalized.
Exactly. That's a great way of describing it. So we're going to give you a more critical breakdown of this phenomenon, and then we're going to spend the second part of the show discussing the migrant workers who fell into the river and lost their lives in Baltimore. We feel like somebody needs to speak up for them, and you know who better to do it than us. We're here with the microphones and we feel that those people and indeed that community deserve some representation. So we'll do our best.
But before we get there, as always, we're going to start off with some Ebony excellence, and I think that you should probably take this one because it's another one that's kind of right up your.
Alley, Right up my alley. It's funny Ebony Excellence sponsored by Actively Black. Visit actively black dot com. There is greatness in our DNA. This story is from the Philadelphia Inquirer. Tessa Johnson scored fifteen points, Kimla Cordoso added twelve, and undefeated South Carolina advanced to the final four of the women's NCAA Tournament with a seven to fifty eight win over Oregon State.
On Sunday seventy.
To fifty eight win over Oregon State on Sunday, I'm sorry. South Carolina made it to the national semifinals unbeaten for the second straight season. The Game Cocks lost to Caitlin Clark and Iowan the Final four last year. So imagine head coach Don Staley being so incredible that with an entirely new team, she is once again undefeated and once again in the final four. The game Cocks, who have made the Final four for four straight years, will play
North Carolina State on Friday night in Cleveland. Two and more wins would make South Carolina the tenth school to finish undefeated and the second to do it since Yukon did in twenty sixteen. Top seed is South Carolina thirty six and oer led by four and half through the fourteen point lead before number three number three seed Oregon State got within sixty two to fifty eight with three minutes and fifty five seconds left in the game, but the Beavers then missed their final seven shots and the
Game Cocks were able to prevail. Coach Staley, an all time great player in her own right, and now showing that she is one of the best to ever do it in the coaching ranks as well.
You see why I have him read these things, because he knows all this extra stuff. It's not even in the article. I don't know anything. I've never heard of these people, but I'm glad that they are doing so well. And I'm glad obviously for any time there's a black woman who is thriving. So all right, so let's talk about this new wave of tough on crime laws. These
laws aren't aim to intimidate criminals. In the article that we're going to read suggest that the experts that are kind of monitoring this phenomenon are skeptical with that approach having the intended results. So before we actually get into the USA Today article, I want to explain how police work. Now, we do this all the time and UQ on the show Police are. They respond to crime once the crime has already taken place. They respond In ninety nine percent
of instances the police respond to crime. They don't prevent the crime from happening in first place.
But a very interesting thing because I every time you say this out loud when you're saying it. I'm a member of the audience. I know this to be true, and it's still kind of like calibrates me back into reality. It's television propaganda, movies, books would have aganda that the police are out here full time working to prevent crimes from happen, Like that's what they do all day.
Is that's what your mind, And so you would think more police electively as.
A group out here making sure that things don't happen, when in essence, what you just said is very true. So watch the response to crime mechanism not a crime prevention thing.
So watch this. Okay, So I watch this YouTube channel. It's called Not Just Bikes, and it's a YouTube channel
about city planning. I'm into some weird stuff, so forgive me, but I like the idea of living in a peaceful, livable, walkable city where you can go out and enjoy nature and take your son on a walk and that sort of thing, right, And I'm not saying that I'm complaining where I do live, but I just kind of like the thinking, right and in other parts of the world, when so in this part of the world right where
we live, if you're driving your car too fast. The police will clock you, pull you over and write you a ticket. Right, And that's how they quote unquote control crime. But this fits what we're discussing right now too, because they can only respond to the crime that has been committed right now in other parts of the countries. What they do is they rework the road in such a way to where drivers' habits reflect the intended speed of
the road. In other words, they might they incorporate it's called traffic calming elements like a little bit of a wiggle in the road or you know speed bumps, or you know tabletop crosswalks, or you know these sorts of
things that naturally will cause drivers to slow down. And so they're proactive in preventing the speeding, not reactive, and it works and as a result, they're less pedestrian deaths, and people walk more, and they get out and they enjoy the city and they're not cooped up in the home, and then they can get places. They don't have to have a car, so it doesn't disproportionately punish more people. Oh it all right, So the way of thinking translates
over into like bona fide crimes. Okay, So Again, we've talked on the show. If you want to take the reins of this one, because I know you've talked about it before.
They don't want to take the rains, but I do want to speak on the things that you just said. The problem, however, and this is kind of the elephant in the room with these preventative measures, there's a lot of money to be made in crime response and incarceration and the way that they do business. Now it's not the way that they enforce the law, it's the way that they do business.
Yeah, that's a great way to say.
Enforcing the law the way that they do, watching crimes happen and then responding to them the punishing accordingly, is big business.
So WHATQ was talking about here is the privatization of prisons. There are people that stand to make money from imprisoned individuals, right and all of that. Yeah, they just they just have their necks on society at large. Right. And of course, this disprope disproportionately affects black, brown, or marginalized peoples. So we're paying this as a tax, not just fiscally, but in terms of our freedom and our capacity to move around and so forth. We have the highest incarceration rate
on earth in this country because of this way of thinking. Right, So, what I was going to say is, on this show, we often suggest that if a person wanted to fight crime, if the governmental agency wanted to fight crime, they could invest in programs that address the root cause of crime, which is often poverty or wealth, inequality, access to resources. Yeah, things like this. Right, There was one study that I read some years ago. So please don't quote me on this,
but I believe it to be true. Again, this is not me standing on this one, but there was in.
The idea and pick out the semantics that make.
It wrong, thank you, thank you. So, there is a correlation between crime rates and access to head start programs, access to preschool programs. There is a correlation between crime rates. In other words, crime rates drop when communities have after school programs. Uh, there's a disproportionate effect on crime. In
other words, crime goes down as job opportunities increase. Right, And and so what we have been conditioned into thinking through the propaganda and copaganda and on and on is that, you know, all the people in jail are just bad guys and not these people come from bad circumstances where they it's like, look, I got to bus and move, I gotta figure something out. This is this is what was going on. I had no alternative blah blah blah, which accounts for a significant amount of what we consider
to be crime. And by investing in these programs, by investing in head start programs, if you really wanted to see the crime rates drop, you would invest in head start programs right based on the data. And we'll get into the article because the article kind of explains a
little bit better than I do. But this was the whole way of thinking behind the defund the police movement, because you know, people would say this and they would show this data, and then the lawmakers would push back and say, well, where are we going to get the money from. And they'd be like, well, you're spending the money that you're trying to use to quote unquote fight crime in the wrong place. You know what I'm saying. You're responding to crime while doing nothing to address the
root cause. So crime doesn't go down, and then you have this runaway effect where you're just hiring more and more police officers while crime goes up.
Or increasing your budget even if it doesn't always mean more officers. Who does mean more money?
Right, And we've covered on this show too several cities that increase their police budget, they hire more police, and it does nothing on the crime rate. The crime rate doesn't go down whatsoever. Right. So, now I'll get into this article and then we'll break it down a bit further so from USA today, a recent wave of new policies and ballot measures make it clear many politicians across the country think crime is out of control and tougher
laws will help fix the problem. See, this is why it's so weird that you can elect people who are not that informed. Right, these people can if you're longer and good. I think you're showing, as usual, a lot of grace here. I don't think that they don't know any better that they're not informed. They just understand the things the way they are profit them the most. And
conversations like this. We're from Arizona and we had a very notably tough on crime sheriff for a long time, Sheriff Joel Apyo, and his thing was I'm going to round everyone up, put him intense city. That was the name of the jail out here. I don't know if it still exists, but I think they'd stop doing it.
Maybe it was always inhumane, you know, it's one hundred and twenty five degrees.
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Diamerican stuff. Anyway, So this guy was famously quote unquote tough on crime, and so it's interesting to see the effect of that. I'm going to keep reading here. So from Louisiana to California, efforts to increase criminal penalties and give more power to police have made it on the books. As politicians say they want to
make their streets safer. Most Americans fifty eight percent, meanwhile, now think the country is not tough enough on crime, a reversal from just a few years earlier forty one percent, according to Public Opinion pulling from Gallop. Efforts to crack down on crime, commonly called tough on crime laws, have been studied for years and have been found to boost the number of people in jail, but there's little evidence
that their effective. Their effective crime deterrent experts say that's in part because most people who commit crime aren't thinking about the penalties for their action.
Okay, and I fear mongering, just to be clear, works on both sides of the aisle, right, Yeah, yeah, most affected by this these policies still think we need more because we've been taught that, we've been doctor NATed. You know what, we do need more police so we can be safer.
And here's the thing for anyone listening to us today. If you think this, if you thought this in the past, I'm not mad at you because it makes sense, right, It makes sense. Yeah, well, more police, tougher laws. Right, it just makes sense if you just hear it and listen to it on its face. But we are a data driven your prize here at Civic Cipher. We use the stories to give you an aperture into the data to help you interpret and understand the data. But this
is all based on data, right. Every every episode we do is either based on lived experience or data. There's some data set that affirms the positions that we take. And this is no exception. Right. So again for people that once thought, okay, well yeah that makes sense, I want more police that I want to live in a safe community. More police. Police make me feel safe, So let's get more police. Why not, Well, you're spending the money and you're not safer. It just doesn't work. And
so when you look at the data. Logical people would not give into their emotions, you know, not say well, the police make me feel safe, so let's just get more police. Logical people say, well, if the police aren't making us safer, we should probably do something that makes us.
Yeah, it's about giving people the proper lens to stop and have that conversation with themselves. Though, because this next paragraph that you're about to read speaks to how they so effectively frame this so that even lots of people hear it and don't process.
So, so do me a favor. Why don't you take this one because you got you got something for me.
Tough on crime laws attempt to solve crime by stigmatizing people who commit crimes rather than addressing the root causes, driving mass incarceration and disrupting families and communities while heavily impacting people of color, said Sherry Stone. I think that's media tour, the co founder of the advacy group Pero
Illinois and a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University. Some policies that have popped up recently may have intended to send a message about crime tolerance rather than stopping crime directly, or crime intolerance. If you will right if you do something, we're going to punish you worse. But it was mentioned earlier in the story. When scarcity and poverty and hunger and sometimes health crisis like drug addiction come into play, people are not thinking, Man, if I do this, I
might get in trouble. People are thinking I'm starving and you got it and I don't got it. And I forgive my lack of proper dictation there, but that was intentional. You have it and I don't have it. No, you got it that food money, whatever, they're they're fixed.
These are property. Yeah, so it's not easy. People are are doing fraud, wire.
Fraud, and they're not weighing the consequence.
I mean, let me hold on, because there's some people to do please believe it, but some straight up bad actors. But the crimes that we're thinking of, like property crimes.
And well, the crimes that they're being tougher on, Let's be honest, that's what I'm They're not being tougher on all crimes. That's how you see people quote unquote getting away with things where they're found guilty and then you see the punishment.
You're like, wait what, Yeah, they're they're focused on street crimes, not they're.
Focused on the type of crimes that you do when you're poor or hungry, you know, so the way that a lot of people in this country have to survive is categorized as criminal. You know, there's a reason ironically that marijuana legal. Marijuana has become a multi billion dollar industry, but it's still categorized.
The same way as the Schedule one drug.
Yeah, it's in the same category as whatever you're whatever, the worst drug you're thinking of right now. Marijuana still stays in the same category. There's a reason because they're they're kind of stuck, right They're benefiting the most from this new legal industry, but they understand that there are still people that look like you and I who could and do profit from the sale legally or legally of that plant, and they need to still be able to
punish it as aggressively as they always have. So they're they're kind of stuck right now trying to justify that to themselves how this is still the way that it is. And you know, conversations that our that our president has had to have with some of the people around him.
Regarding that it's been it's been a heavier lift for him than he originally suggested. And we've looked into this recently, given me both to see kind of what the status of Neither one of us have ever tried any drug, Neither one of us have ever drank alcohol in our lives, and we're in our forties. But this is something we're very interested in because again we know that it disproportionately affects black and brown people. So you're not wrong about that.
But yeah, again, these these people that approach crime like it's almost like it's it's cool when they do it. It's a problem when I.
Do it right. And even then they figured out a way to to make one form of a sustance.
Oh yeah, I heard cracking cocaine.
Yeah, in another form of the exact same substance.
And entirely Yeah.
I think it's times who's more likely to commit the crime, right is they don't even it's not in the shadows. Yeah, they're playing in our face as young people say, Yeah, this is.
This has been forty years now. The example Q was talking about is cocaine compared to crack, and the sentences were harsher for crack, and the compassion and the approach from the criminal justice system was certainly a lot more lenient with cocaine than it was with crack because crack disproportionately affected black and brown communities, Black communities in particular, and poor community.
We don't forget to leave that part out, I mean, don't forget to include that part.
You're sorry, sure, all right. So tough on crime in this country is a way of thinking about how to deal with social problems. It became strongly articulated in the late seventies and eighties. Stone Mediatore said, since then, study after study has shown that it does not work, all right. A good example of tough on crime approaching the US is the War on Drugs that saw a sharp increase in the number of people sent to prison for drug
offenses starting in the seventies. Berlin Bellin said, yet that didn't reduce the availability of drugs or the number of people using them. Bell And said, so, all it did, and we talked about this too before on the show. All the War on Drugs did was criminalized drugs so that you could put black people and.
Jay turn sick people into criminals.
Yeah, and drugs. On this show, we affirmed that that drug abuse and drug addiction is a health issue, not a criminalist.
And that's not I don't even want you to frame it that way, not on this show health professionals. Yeah, yeah, on this show makes it.
Sound like that's no, no, yeah, we got that from someone now.
That the right people have become victims of this health crist Yeah.
When it's like if you figured out how to frame it problem and that that feels very hurtful. You got to imagine for those of us listening that aren't aren't black and old enough to have lived in the eighties, uh, and seen what crack does to a poorer community, and to now see the governmental response, which is a lot
more compassionate, a lot less heavy handed. To see the criminal justice system have a lot less a lot more compassionate approach, a lot less heavy handed, and they treat these you know, often enough, they're white kids who are addicted to these drugs and it's a health issue and it always has been. But when they when you see the approach and you remember the approach that they had
to black people in our community. You're from Detroit, I'm from Compton, so that's really where the crack hit hit, right, So I was I was born into that. The first years of my life was that the environment was very much shaped by that. So when you see now, you know, those of us that kind of have that amount of perspective, it almost seems very hurtful. It's like, man, where was y'all at when this was happening to my people? We had to we had to overcome that, and I'm proud
of us for having done that. You know, there's some people obviously there's not all of us, you know, but you know that that term being associated with crack babies and you know all that, you know, all this sort of stuff that that made us feel like they hated us. Yeah, and then now to see something similar happen to you know a different group of people, who are you know, there are brothers and sisters. We're not I'm not angry.
I don't want it to sound like I'm angry, but it's it's like in my lifetime, I've been able to see this and realize, you know, I'm not crazy when when people when the elders told me, hey, the deck stacked against you. You got to play the game right. And I have played the game right, Like I said, never done a drugs. We can best we can never done
a drug, never drink alcohol. Q Q can say the same thing, and it's because we listened to that and that turned out to be true, So you know, poves your thought