Peter Moskos: What Does Good Policing Look Like?

Peter Moskos, criminal justice professor and former Baltimore police officer, discusses ways to reform policing and turn failing cities around on the latest Just Asking Questions podcast.

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Peter Moskos: What Does Good Policing Look Like?

Are American cities crime-ridden hellscapes right now? Have cities rebounded from pandemic-era homicide spikes? Why do subway shootings in New York and carjackings in D.C. keep making the news?

"I think a lot of this has to be disaggregated: There is a public order problem, and there is a violent crime problem, and they're not necessarily the same problem," Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City and former Baltimore cop, tells Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe on the latest episode of Just Asking Questions.

They discussed the pros and cons of broken-windows policing, how "soft-on-crime" district attorneys affect the cities they're tasked with keeping safe, and whether New York City should become more like Singapore by cracking down on petty crimes.

Watch the full conversation on Reason's YouTube channel or on the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. "More Americans See U.S. Crime Problem as Serious," by Jeffrey F. Jones in Gallup
2. Crime Data Explorer
3. "Crime Trends in U.S. Cities: Mid-Year 2023 Update," by the Council on Criminal Justice, which tracks rates of homicide and other major crimes in 37 select cities.
4. New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority's December 2023 crime report

5. "National Guard and State Police Will Patrol the Subways and Check Bags," by Maria Cramer and Ana Ley in The New York Times

6. The Reason Foundation's study on Ferguson, by Vittorio Nastasi and Caroline Greer

7. "The correlation between more police enforcement and fewer shooting incidents in NYC," by Peter Moskos
8. Fifty years of officer-involved shooting data, compiled by Peter Moskos

Comments

[I woke up when Hillary talked about Reconstruction]

From real life, a family , a neighborhood, working and being in schools and as a programmer/consultant : Most everyone who is not schooled to think differently supports the 'broken windows" approach. We now have 1/4 of all yourn males (the overwhelming source for all social problems) without a father. Unless someone tells the shoplifter 'that is wrong and illegal and you will be charged" we are cultivating tomorrow's terrorists and life criminals

Most kids I see even in my college can not work profitably for anybody on the skills and habits they have. ANd this is what Biden promotes with his attacks on school choice!!!

Technological society leads to increasing numbers of people who cannot adapt to the inhuman rhythm of modern life with its emphasis on specialization. A class of people is growing up who are unexploitable because they are not worth employing even for the minimum wage. Technological progress makes whole categories of people useless without making it possible to support them with the wealth produced by the progress.

Jacques Ellul

[Z Crazy]

Singapore's results speak for itself.

why not be more like Singapore, where there's no school shootings nor gang violence?

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Singapore is a terrible country from the perspective of civil liberties.

[sarcasmic]

It's heaven if you're in law enforcement. So many victimless crimes that there's no need to bother with actual crime victims.

[sarcasmic]

I think “victimless crime” is a misnomer in that the people who are caught breaking those laws are victims of injustice.
Eliminate such laws and I think many of the problems with policing would fix themselves.
Currently there are people who will not ask the police for help when they’re the victim of a crime because they know all the cops will do is search them, run them for warrants, and express disappointment at not being able to arrest them for some victimless crime or steal their stuff. They know the cops don’t give a flying fuck about crimes with victims because investigations are work and there’s nothing to steal.
If police couldn’t arrest anyone without a defined victim or steal people's stuff, then they’d have an incentive to do the right thing. People wouldn’t be afraid to ask them for help because the job would attract honorable folks instead of thugs.
If the laws themselves were just, then the enforcers would be enforcers of justice, not the enforcers of injustice that they are today.

[MWAocdoc]

I haven't heard the entire discussion, but aside from the fact that "broken windows policing" doesn't work and leads to increased contacts that frequently end in tragedy, there are lots of other reasons to reform police tactics and strategies. First, victimless crimes should be stricken from the books at all levels of government. Driving "vice" underground does nothing to eliminate it while at the same time causing damage to the social fabric that is worse than the vice itself by creating lucrative opportunities for violent criminals, including the official enforcers themselves. Victimless crimes clog the criminal courts and confinement facilities, impairing their ability to quickly try and punish violent criminals. Patrolling itself is expensive and counterproductive. Police should respond only to actual emergencies and should contact members of the public only if they themselves witness a crime in progress. Otherwise, they should engage only in evidence collection and investigation of suspects; obtaining search and arrest warrants only based upon probable cause and subject to punishment for fraudulent affidavits. Magistrates who issue warrants should be held accountable for failing to use due diligence and should have the authority to punish fraudulent police officers and prosecutors for violations. Prosecutors and detectives should be proscribed from prosecutor abuse such as lying to suspects, engaging in prolonged questioning, questioning suspects without a defense attorney present, threatening to prosecute family members unless the suspect cops a plea, and ladder climbing; and criminal judges should be proscribed from allowing plea deals or guilty pleas. EVERY conviction should be arrived at through an actual trial that examines all the evidence and verifies that due process without prosecutor abuse was followed. There should be a requirement that ALL forensic evidence relied upon is based on actual science. The list is, of course, much longer but enforcing the above reforms would be a major start.

[d.b]

After watching the useless chicken Contra Costa county California deputies tuck tail and run a couple of dozen times, after being called SEVENTY FOUR (74) times and running away from vandals, meth sales, and the violent physical assault of a senior citizen, I have come to the conclusion that "Good Policing" looks a lot like Dead Policing.

[Jokibif0]

I would have appreciated a lot more pushback on various assertions that the guest made that he didn't really support. Plausibility arguments are not evidence.