One of the most persuasive arguments is that two things correlate. Crime went down significantly in New York City when the “stop & frisk” was a predominant police tactic, and cops took credit for the drop in crime. Makes sense, right? Except crime went down across the country, where other departments didn’t engage in stop & frisk. So it no longer makes sense. It’s the logical fallacy that correlation does not imply causation. They could be connected, but they also may not be. Correlation, alone, does not answer the question.
In San Francisco, Chesa Boudin, whose parents were part of the Weather Underground crew who perpetrated the notorious Brinks Heist in 1981, was elected district attorney. Why he wanted to be DA is a curious question. I have no desire to be a district attorney and wouldn’t take the job if it was handed to me on a silver platter, but that’s me. He wanted the post, ran for it and won.
Boudin is part of the “progressive prosecutor” movement, a takeover of the previously unsexy job of prosecutor to use its powers, long abused by the overly carceral, to promote an anti-carceral agenda. I’ve express reservations about the scheme, but if progressive prosecutors get elected, then the people have spoken. Maybe my concerns are wrong. Maybe they realize that the responsibility that goes with the job isn’t as one-sided as they believed when they ran. Maybe their approach will work. For better or worse, they get the chance to do the job and the results will speak for themselves. Heck, Philly progressive prosecutor Larry Krasner was re-elected by a 2-1 margin.
But what happens when the results won’t speak for themselves because their detractors, including in the media, refuse to present them fairly?
Boudin himself has already been targeted by a recall campaign, funded by several Silicon Valley financiers. His critics claim crime has soared since he took office, and they blame Boudin’s policies such as abolishing cash bail, compassionate release during the covid-19 pandemic and his refusal to seek sentencing enhancements.
It’s unclear why this recall campaign being funded by “Silicon Valley financiers” should suggest it’s somehow tainted. It smells much like tossing in the Kochs or Soros to suggest that people with money using it for purposes they support is any more evil than, say, a reporter promoting facts that back his views. The wealthy are allowed to hold views too. They’re allowed to act on them. Just because they throw money rather than Molotov cocktails doesn’t make them bad people. But it also doesn’t make them right.
Yet the case against Boudin’s record plays out a bit like Lim’s story: It’s compelling at first blush, but it ultimately collapses with some scrutiny. It’s true, for example, that San Francisco saw a considerable increase in car thefts and home burglaries last year. But violent crime in the city was down in 2020. Overall crime was down 25 percent from 2019. And all major categories of crime remained well below their five-year average. Murders did increase in 2020, but only by 14 percent (from 41 to 47) from a 56-year low in 2019. By comparison, murders nationwide were up about 25 percent in 2020. So far in 2021, murders in San Francisco are down 20 percent from last year.
So what does all this mean for Boudin’s policies? Who knows? First, there is the anomaly of the pandemic, the impact of which remains a matter of some conjecture. People were out of work and needed money. Cops were busy with protests and weren’t copping in the usual course. Opportunistic crime saw the chance to grab stuff when streets were empty, and other opportunistic crime saw the chance to grab stuff when streets were filled with angry people.
And then there are murders, which the media has long made the gold standard for fear of crime. If it bleeds, it leads, and creates a sense that if murders are up, crime is up. And if crime is up, someone must be at fault. But the increase in 2020 of 41 to 47 murders suffers from the law of small numbers and isn’t so significant as to mean much of anything. More to the point, murders are up everywhere, and surely it’s not Boudin’s fault that New York City saw a 41% increase in murders. Hell, maybe it’s Boudin’s policies that held Frisco to a mere 14% increase. Or maybe the rise has nothing to do with who was elected prosecutor.
Ultimately, the case against Boudin rests on two assumptions: that crime in the city has exploded and that Boudin isn’t charging people at the rate his predecessors did. And neither of those assumptions is true. There’s also little evidence that progressive policies such as ending cash bail or refusing to charge low-level offenses have anything to do with the spike in violence nationwide. The 2020 figures are expected to show a homicide surge coast to coast, in rural areas and urban areas, in jurisdictions with both reform-minded radicals and law-and-order stalwarts in the DA’s chair.
There are some stats, and consequences, that appear to be more directly related to non-prosecution policies, such as shoplifting and petty theft. Maybe the loss of retail stores to the city will push changes in some of the more aspirational assumptions about crime and people. Feeling empathy toward the marginalized doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not going to steal if nobody is going to do anything to stop them. Maybe the people of San Francisco will decide that the trade-off is worth it, and they will be fine with people stealing small things with impunity.
But the point is that condemning Chesa Boudin through fake stories and quotes generated by lies about what he’s done, by statistics that don’t prove what his adversaries claim they do, and media representing the other side of “moral clarity” pushing out stories to generate fear and horror, are just as wrong as ignoring the facts that don’t make progressive prosecutors heroes. Boudin was elected, whether or not you support him. Give him the chance to do the job as he believes the job should be done, and then judge him on the results, factually, honestly and fairly. Who knows, maybe he’s right, at least about some things. Now that he’s in office, let’s wait until we find out.
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