11 Comments
author

As always, I hope you like my paintings. I made this one several years ago as part of a series of paintings in different colors of prison walls with flowering vines growing on them, inspired by the amazing poem by Jackie Wang: “What do we make of the flowering vine that uses as its trellis the walls of the prison?

Expand full comment
Jun 21, 2022Liked by Alec Karakatsanis

Thanks for this Alec, assigned/required reading this fall.

Expand full comment
author

My apologies, the tax evasion link was an error. The article I meant to link to is this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-13/tax-cheats-are-costing-u-s-1-trillion-a-year-irs-estimates

Expand full comment

Suggestion; I mentally preface every article I read with the mental note; reported crime has been been dropping for very steadily for 30 years, and even with the few urban upticks recently, we still the safest we have been since the fifties(? can't remember).

The hard evidence is that local policing strategy had little if anything to do with it. NYPD did broken windows, San Diego PD did community policing, LAPD didn't didn't change anything. If there was a measurable difference between the strategies, I haven't heard of it.

In case you haven't this, the most likely reason; The Clean Air Act.

Because not only did crime go down here, it went down in Europe and other places.

Which is crazy, social phenomena just doesn't do that.

It looks like every country that banned leaded gasoline, about twenty years later saw a dramatic continuing decrease in crime. If there is a better explanation, I haven't heard it. It would have to be one hell of an explanation.

Expand full comment

Very perceptive and disconcerting.

I agree entirely with your premises.

Keep up the good work!

Expand full comment

I like the advice and am here to learn, but there’s lots of journalistic wiggle language here. “There have been numerous” + “experts caution” + “Police have been shown to” + “Prosecutors have been shown to” + “Based on the available scientific evidence” x3, with no links on any of those vague assertions that intend to carry a lot of weight.

Expand full comment