Heather Mac Donald, who unlike most commentators about urban crime knows something about urban crime, testified before a Congressional committee:

We are in the midst of a national movement for deincarceration and decriminalization. That movement rests on the following narrative: America’s criminal justice system, it is said, has become irrationally draconian, ushering in an era of so-called “mass incarceration.” The driving force behind “mass incarceration,” the story goes, is a misconceived war on drugs. As President Barack Obama said in July in Philadelphia: “The real reason our prison population is so high” is that we have “locked up more and more nonviolent drug offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before.” In popular understanding, prisons and jails are filled with harmless pot smokers.

The most poisonous claim in the dominant narrative is that our criminal justice system is a product and a source of racial inequity. The drug war in particular is said to be infected by racial bias. “Mass incarceration” is allegedly destroying black communities by taking fathers away from their families and imposing crippling criminal records on released convicts. Finally, prison is condemned as a huge waste of resources.

Nothing in this dominant narrative is true. Prison remains a lifetime achievement award for persistence in criminal offending. Drug enforcement is not the driving factor in the prison system, violent crime is. Even during the most rapid period of prison growth from 1980 to 1990, increased sentences for violent crime played a larger role than drug sentences in the incarceration build up. Since 1999, violent offenders have accounted for all of the increase in the national prison census.

Today, only 16 percent of state prisoners are serving time for drug offenses—nearly all of them for trafficking. Drug possession accounts for only 3.6 percent of state prisoners. Drug offenders make up a larger portion of the federal prison caseload—about 50 percent—but only 13 percent of the nation’s prisoners are under federal control. In 2014, less than 1 percent of sentenced drug offenders in federal court were convicted of simple drug possession; the rest were convicted of trafficking. The size of America’s prison population is a function of our violent crime rate. The U.S. homicide rate is seven times higher than the combined rate of 21 Western nations plus Japan, according to a 2011 study by researchers of the Harvard School of Public Health and UCLA School of Public Health.

The most dangerous misconception about our criminal justice system is that it is pervaded by racial bias. For decades, criminologists have tried to find evidence proving that the overrepresentation of blacks in prison is due to systemic racial inequity. That effort has always come up short. In fact, racial differences in offending account for the disproportionate representation of blacks in prison. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country’s 75 largest urban areas found that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to be sentenced to prison, however, due to their more extensive criminal histories and the gravity of their current offense.

The drug war was not a war on blacks. It was the Congressional Black Caucus that demanded a federal response to the 1980s crack epidemic, including more severe penalties for crack trafficking. The Rockefeller drug laws in New York State were also an outgrowth of black political pressure to eradicate open-air drug markets. This local demand for suppression of the drug trade continues today. Go to any police-community meeting in Harlem, South-Central Los Angeles, or Anacostia in Washington, D.C., and you will hear some variant of the following plea: “We want the dealers off the streets, you arrest them and they are back the next day.” Such voices are rarely heard in the media.

Incarceration is not destroying the black family. Family breakdown is in fact the country’s most serious social problem, and it is most acute in black communities. But the black marriage rate was collapsing long before incarceration started rising at the end of the 1970s, as my colleague Kay Hymowitz has shown. Indeed, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued his prescient call for attention to black out-of-wedlock child-rearing in 1965, just as that era’s deincarceration and decriminalization movement was gaining speed.

It is crime, not incarceration, that squelches freedom and enterprise in urban areas. And there have been no more successful government programs for liberating inner-city residents from fear and disorder than proactive policing and the incapacitation of criminals.

Compared with the costs of crime, prison is a bargain. The federal system spends about $6 billion on incarceration; the state system spent $37 billion in 2010 on institutional corrections. The economic, social, and psychological costs of uncontrolled crime and drug trafficking dwarf such outlays. And prison spending is a minute fraction of the $1.3 trillion in taxpayer dollars devoted to means-tested federal welfare programs, as Senator Sessions has documented.

To be sure, the federal drug penalties are not sacrosanct. But though all sentencing schemes are ultimately arbitrary, our current penalty structure arguably has been arrived at empirically through trial and error. Sentences were increased incrementally in response to the rising crime rates of the 1960s and 1970s. Those rising crime rates were themselves the product of an earlier era of deincarceration and decriminalization. Sentences lengthened until they took a serious bite out of crime, in conjunction with the policing revolution of the 1990s.

Violent crime is currently shooting up again in cities across the country. Police officers are backing away from proactive enforcement in response to the yearlong campaign that holds that police are the greatest threat facing young black men today. Officers encounter increasing hostility and resistance when they make a lawful arrest. With pedestrian stops, criminal summons, and arrests falling precipitously in urban areas, criminals are becoming emboldened. While I do not think that the current crime increase is a result of previous changes in federal sentencing policy, it behooves the government to tread cautiously in making further changes. However, I unequivocally support the “productive activities” component of Section 202 of the Act, to the extent that it aims to engage all prisoners in work.

In closing, let me say that the committee would provide an enormous public service if it could rebut the myth that the criminal justice system is racist.

A. Benjamin Mannes wrote for The Hill:

The Black Lives Matter movement has received a great deal of credibility from the news media, and had recently become the “cause célèbre” for multi-millionaire stars like San Francisco 49ers Quarterback Colin Kaepernick and pop star Beyonce Knowles.

The almost immediate protests that have on at least one occasion turned violent have fueled incorrect rhetoric that there is an epidemic of “killer cops” who are targeting African-Americans for mass incarceration or worse, death for no apparent reason. This narrative has been proven legally incorrect by numerous federal and local grand juries who, despite a condemning by the court of public opinion, find no wrongdoing on behalf of law enforcement. These findings in legal courts are usually due to the analysis of physical, scientific and testimonial evidence that is presented within the secrecy and discretion of a grand jury; which in the cases of Eric Garner and Michael Brown and others show that the officers acted within the law. 

Instead of pointing fingers in an argument with a league of online social justice warriors, I feel it more constructive to remind the public that much of what law enforcement is being asked to do in response to the mass-criticism is not within their scope of authority. Therefore, what the public needs is a necessary role clarification for what law enforcement is tasked with doing, and what community resources should be invested in the vastly important services that can actually prevent citizens from having contact with law enforcement in the first place.

If you are in contact with a law enforcement officer, that’s normally because something is wrong. This could be because you are reporting a crime; which means you’re having a bad day as you’re a victim, are being stopped for a traffic/safety issue, or are under investigation for a crime. Law enforcement officers in these instances have to deal with people at their worst, not their best. They enforce laws, they are not there to write the laws and decide what laws are socially acceptable enough to not enforce. If someone resists arrests, fails to cooperate with a lawful order, or commits further crimes in the presence of that officer; then they will be arrested.

The public reactions to the Eric Garner and Alton Sterling videos best demonstrated the need for this reality check.Many people contacted me following Eric Garner to cry foul as to why “he was killed for selling loose cigarettes?” He wasn’t.  Eric Garner had over thirty prior arrests and knew, barring a felony warrant, he would be brought into the station, had his fingerprints ran, and would have been released with a “C-Summons” ticket for that minor infraction. However, upon noticing that someone was recording with a cellphone, Garner became belligerent and physically resistant to his arrest.

Did anyone expect that the police officers, in the course of their duties, were just going to say“Ok” and walk away?  Of course not. Garner resisted, and was brought to the ground by an unauthorized chokehold. He died from a cardiac arrest likely brought on by aggravating a number of his serious health concerns. What was clear in the video was that, despite the loud public outcry in the belief that he died from being choked by the officer; Garner was breathing while being handcuffed because he was loudly exclaiming that he couldn’t breathe. As famed NYC Commissioner William Bratton stated after Garner’s death, “You have no constitutional right to resist arrest.” 

Therefore, it is vital to understand the role of the law enforcement officer; who performs the job of policing and to make it home at night unscathed.  If you are on the other side of that equation and you resist, threaten or fight… you will likely be met with physical force and lose your freedom.  That’s the law.

Mass incarceration is a serious problem in America, but what leads to it? To attack the police for mass incarceration is akin to the famous line from the film Apocalypse Now of “Handing out Speeding Tickets at the Indianapolis 500.” What social contributors are bringing those incarcerated into contact with law enforcement in the first place? If every other rung of the social structure has failed someone to the point where they are being arrested in the first place, then something is very wrong with society and it would be extremely valuable to direct the public attention given to BLM to improving social services that prevent folks from turning to crime.  Of course, some will argue that reforming mandatory minimums for things like Marijuana and assuring that new gun control measures don’t make criminals out of law-abiding gun owners, but the majority of the argument currently directed at law enforcement should be aimed at keeping people from having contact with law enforcement to begin with.

So this highlights the need to clarify other, more important societal roles. First, the role of parental participation and supervision is needed to create a support network in the lives of young people that, if not met, is filled with gangs or antisocial behavior.  Penalties need to be defined more clearly for child endangerment to include fostering a positive environment for a child that includes them being taught right from wrong in accordance with our laws and social norms.  No, I am not talking religion or morality as preached by conservative groups. I, myself, come from a divorced home; but both my parents were a part of my life and worked hard to keep me from emulating so much of the criminal behavior I was exposed to when growing up in the city.

Second, a serious role clarification in education is needed. This includes socialization outside what is the norm in many of the communities where there are high crime rates and assuring that students learn a path in life outside the next standardized test cycle; and learn money management, a trade, and vocational skills that translate to real jobs if a four-year college followed by grad school isn’t in the budget yet.  Pathways in crime and drug use are rooted in poverty and a feeling of hopelessness, and a set of useful skills are key in breaking that cycle; but so many public school systems are not offering such as skill-set, and are resistant to school choice programs that will.

At the end of the day, the constant arguing and finger-pointing online is exhausting.  Instead of tearing our country apart and pointing fingers at the civil servants who volunteer to risk their lives in service to the community; why not focus on the roots of the issues resulting in these tragic losses of life?  Having a serious conversation on parenting, education, and poverty will serve the community far beyond the current, corrosive rhetoric offered by BLM and the media currently will. 

If not, consider the alternatives of forcing law enforcement to become more lenient on criminal behavior, and remember how bad places like New York City were in the 1970s and 80s when this was common.  Then ask yourselves, why should law-abiding citizens be victimized to further a political argument?