Murder Spike in Rural, Red Counties Exposes Media's Anti-Reform Double Standard

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/murder-spike-in-rural-red-counties

One essential point that police and prison reform activists and abolitionists have been making over the past year, as reaction to modest reform has grown into a full blown moral panic, is that data very clearly indicates that crime—namely, murder rate—increases appear to be entirely divorced from the policies of the prosecutors and police budgets of the affected areas. Despite the widespread, casual lie that radical, far-left reform prosecutors or defunded police budgets have caused a spike in crime, a number of researchers have noted this is entirely without basis.

Of course, this doesn’t matter. The Narrative had emerged, one backed by leaders in both parties, that the covid-era surge in crime was the result of lax DAs, bail reform, and other far-left measures. And the only way to combat it, by extension, was to remove these reforms, fund more police, and effectively sunset the Black Lives Matter movement. And no amount of data, essay writing, or graphs showing spikes in murders in Republican or Tough on Crime Democratic jurisdictions was going to undermine The Narrative.

A stark example of this ideological thingamajig is a glaring double standard in a Wall Street Journal report from June 10 on the surge of murders in rural, largely red areas of the country. New CDC data shows an increase in murders of 25%, not too dissimilar to the 30% increase in urban areas. The piece points not to a lack of over policing, or of conservative Tough-on-crime policies as causing the spike in crime, or a lack of social services, safety net, or investment in anti-poverty measures. Instead, the primary culprits offered are covid lockdowns and a lack of “pastoral care” from churches.

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[ck4829]

1. K&R

[Skittles]

2. WSJ opinion is rightwing racist garbage

yup