The David Knight Show - INTERVIEW Crime & Immigration Problems Aren't What You're Told

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

INTERVIEW Crime Problems Aren't What You're Told Desc: Is the justice system racist? Is there overpunishment? A look at the numbers and the history by Barry Latzer PHD (Professor of Criminal Justice at John Jay College), author of "The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public"Find out more about the show and where you can watch it at TheDavidKnightShow.comIf you would like to support the show and our family please consider subscribing monthly here:SubscribeStar https://www.subscribestar.com/the-david-knight-showOr you can send a donation through Mail: David Knight POB 994 Kodak, TN 37764Zelle: @[e-mail] App at: $davidknightshowBTC to: bc1qkuec29hkuye4xse9unh7nptvu3y9qmv24vanh7Money is only what YOU hold: Go to DavidKnight.gold for great deals on physical gold/silverFor 10% off Gerald Celente's prescient Trends Journal, go to TrendsJournal.com and enter the code KNIGHTBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-david-knight-show--2653468/support.

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No, we bet. More power to you. T's and C's apply. 18 plus bet responsibly. Gamblingcare.ie. Joining us now is Barry Latzer. He's a PhD, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College. And, of course, with the migrant crisis that is happening,

he put it in a political, historical perspective, I should say. He wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal, This Isn't the First Migrant Crisis. And so we're going to talk about mass immigration crime, progressive policy. He's also got a book. His new book is The Myth of Overpunishment, A Defense of the American Justice System, and a Proposal to Reduce In proposal to reduce incarceration while protecting the public.

I think it's going to be an interesting discussion since we have earlier in the program been talking about the Soros district attorneys. And we just showed Titanic, which a lot of people were on there as part of their immigration back in 1912. Joining us now is Barry Latzer. Thank you for joining us, sir. Yes, you're welcome. And I'm delighted to be with you. Well, thank you. Tell us a little bit about the beginning of this, the first migrant crisis that the U.S. went through, and what did we, well, when was it? When was it? Well, starting in the late 19th century, we had an enormous influx of people into the United States. And the thing that fascinated me most was, despite this enormous in-migration, and this was a very impoverished immigration,

Jews from Eastern Europe, Italians from Southern italy more germans they had started coming in the middle of the century more irish who also started coming during the great potato famine that was the big push factor so this was an enormous uh of new entrants into the United States, impoverished, crowded into big cities like New York, abused by the police who really were untrained back then and pretty totally unprofessional as well. And here's the fascinating thing, Travis, despite all of these adversities, when I went to track the crime rates at that time, because I was writing a history of violent crime in the United States, an earlier book, the crime rates were pretty low in the 1890s. I said, wow, what's going on here? According to contemporary theories, this was a petri dish for crime. We should have had enormous crime rates. And when I compared the crime rates in New York City to the rates in the last piece of the 20th century, which I had also written about, the rates were

much higher in the 1970s, 1980s, and right up to 1990. So I said, wow, we need to do a rethink about our crime theories. And I'll pass this back to you because I'm sure you're going to have questions about this, but that was one of the big discoveries for me. Well, certainly, yeah, it wasn't nearly the kind of free-for-all society that we see now. I've got a couple of theories that I think about. Clearly, as we're talking about the Titanic just before you came on, there was a different culture completely different people had different values they had they didn't live for themselves grab anything they could uh they had um you know and even the poor people were staying behind on uh on that ship if they were told that you know

had to let women and children first or women and children only. So there was something that was very different about that. It was a very different culture, had different values. And so I think that was part of it. But even though they were poor, it seems to me like they were coming for freedom and for a chance instead of coming to get something for free. And I think that's a key part of it. Today, everybody, whether they're immigrants or whether they're Americans who have been here for generations, I think the currentos is uh looking out for number one

so i don't know that's just my take what what did you find in your studies that would be my impression but what what did you find well you know maybe we're a bit spoiled by our affluence uh we're very fortunate i mean certainly my generation the bloomers i, we're very fortunate. I mean, certainly my generation, the boomers, I mean, we're really lucky, very lucky. And it was those types of people that made us affluent in our society as well. Yeah, and they came here. They came here really for, you know, economic opportunities. And they had them, but it was no gift, that's for sure. Most of them, like my

grandparents, lived really so their children could have benefits that they couldn't have overseas. And it worked. I mean, it really worked. And by the way, it worked with regard to crime too. Here's another point that I like to make in my work. It's not so much that poverty causes crime because we have lots of impoverished people who don't do crime. And we have some impoverished groups, socially defined groups, who do much more violent crime than other socially defined groups, notwithstanding comparable rates of poverty and other adversities. Another interesting finding. So, despite that, we never talk about the poverty of most of these migrants who entered in the late 19th and early 20th century anymore. We don't talk about their crime. Why? Because they've risen up

to relative affluence, and affluent people don't do a lot of violent crime. I mean, who talks about Irish violent crime anymore? Who talks about Italian violent crime? Except, you know, if you watch one of those old mafia movies, maybe you might, okay. And this is what's going to happen to current day minorities that's why i'm very optimistic about america still i think now that we see african americans getting the rights that they were entitled to long ago but never got post civil rights era now that hispanics are coming here and are being treated more respectfully, I think they're going to move up the economic ladder. And I think in generations to come, I won't be here to tell you about it, Travis, but in generations to come,

I think we're going to see a big decline in violent crime among these groups. Yeah, I'm hoping so. I think a lot of this is culturally defined. You're talking about different groups, so the same economic level. And of course, a culture and religion is going to be a part of that. You mentioned how our parents, our grandparents, or maybe our great-grandparents, they're willing to go through hardship and sacrifice. Why? They weren't doing it for a country. They were doing it for their kids. You know, it was a family thing.

You know, the love of their children, they would do anything for their children. And that's really actually what we see with the Titanic again. You know, women and children first. Why? Because we want to propagate the family. I'll sacrifice my life, my comfort, anything to provide for my family. And so I think the real key thing is going to be, and I am somewhat optimistic about a lot of the immigration.

Of course, there's concern about this crisis. There's concern about the crime that is coming across and everything. But in general, when we look at it, the one thing that I think is deleterious to it is the welfare aspect of it. And I think that was a key part of why this worked out in previous generations was that there wasn't any social safety net there. I think, you know, safety net can keep you from falling, but it also can keep you from rising in many ways. But I think, you know, when you look at the Hispanics that are coming across, they're very family-oriented, and I think that is going to be, you know, a saving thing. In many cases, you might say, I think what I saw in Texas, they seem to be more family and community-oriented

than the people who are already in Texas when I lived there. That interesting. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah. It doesn't surprise me, too. They're coming from more traditional, if you will, conservative societies where religion plays a major role. This was true, by the way, of African Americans who came north from the south. That, too, was a more traditional society. It had an unfortunate side to it, Travis, because because unfortunately many of these traditional societies have what we call an honor culture where if you're if you perceive that you're being insulted or offended you reach for your weapon and shoot the guy which is terrible yeah and of course is a big factor in

crime and the whites and down south did this sort of stuff they had jewels the more affluent ones and the young ones duped it out and tore each other to pieces hand and to hand battle and the blacks picked this up from whites and when they came north unfortunately we saw a perpetuation of this honor culture where you diss me oh oh really? I'm going to waste you now. And this is a cause of crime, believe it or not. It's a cause of crime. And writ large, we see this in the gang fights in the big cities now, right? They're easily offended, they protect their turf, their possessions, their women, meaning girlfriends, of course, and they're willing to fight to preserve what they perceive to be their values,

their rights, their property. And this is a cause of crime nowadays. So it tracks back to the 19th century. But when they came up north, these immigrants and migrants, when they came north or when they came overseas to the big cities, boy, they had very little. They had nothing. They had to sleep in police stations, just as I said in that article. The cops didn't like it either, by the way, but they had to do it. It was their job back then. It was their job. You mentioned the black families going north and how they had a lot of family values. I don't know where Burgess Owens is from. The football player is now a congressman. He's from Utah. I don't know where his family was, but he talked about how when he was growing up, he said there was

a vibrant black middle class. They had their own businesses and all the rest of the stuff. They had intact families and everything. He all the rest of the stuff had intact families and everything he lays it you know the the root of the problem at the welfare system you know wreaking havoc upon that um that's his opinion i i tend to regard uh regard it the same way uh but you know he taught and it is true i mean if you go back and you look at it uh even though there was an integration within their society uh they had uh you know a vibrant uh middle class and you would see certain things like they'd set up jitney taxi service because the taxi companies would not go into that area they were afraid to they thought there was going to be crime there whatever they would start their own uh little entrepreneurship uh thing there with their own taxi companies to

service people there. And they started doing really well. And so then they sent in the inspectors to shut that down and say, no, you got to get your taxi medallion from us and things like that. So, you know, they did have a, you know, even though, and maybe even because they were their own kind of closed community, they had in some regards, like the Jitney taxis, they had some other freedoms that they then lost as, as they became integrated with the other part of it. But you also talk about the myth of overpunishment in your book. Tell us a little bit about that. Yes.

So I really became interested in this whole mass incarceration movement, Travis. The whole thing seemed inconsistent with everything I had learned about the criminal justice system. So I went and did more research to find out, to find the data. Is it true, for instance, that we were putting people in prison who didn't deserve it? Is it true that we were locking up more people than should have been locked up because they weren't really doing bad things? And the more I researched, the more I found that it was bogus. These claims were just not true. We have very good data disproving most of these claims. For instance, when I found the studies done by the Census Bureau, by the way, on crime victimization, where people were interviewed, know, who had an ax to grind. When they asked them, were you victimized by crime? Over 18 million of them said yes, they were.

And they explained how they were either assaulted or property of theirs was taken. When we tracked in this one year when the study was done, and by the way, it's done every year with a massive number of interviewees, over 249,000 of them, which is, for a survey, incredibly, incredibly populated. The Gallup people will interview 1,000 people and then tell you who's going to win the election, right? Yeah. 249,000. One of the reasons why they get it wrong so often.

Maybe, maybe. And that's one of the reasons why this is so accurate, the flip coin, right? Right. So of these 18.6 million crimes that were reported, we had in that year 10 million arrests in the United States because a lot of crimes are not reported to the police. A lot of them, the police never find the perpetrator. And so we only had 10 million out of the 18.6 million victimizations leading to an arrest. Of those arrested, and here's the key point, of those arrested, 577,000 went to prison that year in 2019 before the pandemic. So a small percentage of those people who committed crimes end up being punished. A very small percentage, actually. So when I hear these claims that we're over punishing, too many people are gone to prison, too many people are going into

jail. I say, really? Too many compared with what? You have to look at the number of crimes before you can decide that too many people are being punished. Here's another shocking one, and then I'll let you go, I'm sure you have questions. Here's another shocking one. Of all convicted felons, convicted now, 31% do not spend a single day in prison, not one day. Wow. A couple of days in jail, because after you're arrested, you're put in jail until you get to see the judge, and then the judge usually releases you. A few, of course, are kept in because they can't make bail. In states like New York, they're trying to eliminate

bail altogether. 31% of convicted felons never spend a day in jail, and 23% of violent offenders, violent crime offenders, do not spend any time in prison. I said jail, I meant prison. So, do we overpunish? Are people who commit crimes always going to end up in prison? No. Half the murder is due. And when you look at rape and robbery and aggravated assault, it's more like 6% of the perpetrators go to prison. So this blows away the myth of overpunishment. And I think the overpunishment is the argument that the Soros district attorneys have made in terms of, well, we're just going to turn these people out. And, you know, we're not going to let them spend a single day in jail. And we see these types of things happening all the time.

It turns out 23% who have committed a violent crime, they're just turned out right away. And then we see them committing another violent crime and another and another. And that's the outrage that people are seeing. That is what the Soros district attorneys have focused on. I think when we look at it, part of it seems like to me, the things that all of us would agree that we want the police to do and to protect us from, theft, rape, violence, murder, things like that. I think that they've been too lenient on that. I think they focus instead on other things like marijuana possession and they make that the big issue and they put mandatory minimums. And so that created, I think,

some of the stuff they did with the war on drugs, civil asset forfeiture that I've talked about many times, taking property, in many cases, substantial property, somebody's home without a conviction, without even charging somebody with a crime, that type of stuff. We look at it and we say, Whoa, that's, that's bad. And they use this then to say, well, then therefore we're going to let the people who are real criminals who do the theft, the rape, the murders, we're going to let them back out on the street. And, and that's, those are the two things that are out. It seems like there's one type of crime that they are over punishing. And then there's the real's what we consider to be real crime that is harming other people, and we see that as something

that they go lax on, incredibly lax on, and that is a big part of a movement right now. I mean, it's even bankrupting major national and multinational corporations are having million-dollar losses, or I having um you know million dollar losses or i should say several hundred million dollars losses yeah with uh this stuff and having to shut down massive numbers of stores because it is organized crime that goes unpunished and so they're very lenient with the things that we would all agree are crimes but in other things it seems like they they do get overzealous and it's even easier for them to process that uh

i i kind of think of it as um you know the situation of how easy it is to write a parking ticket or a speeding ticket versus how difficult it is for them to actually get into a situation where there's lives at stake in a shootout or something like that and they they go for the easier prey seems like yeah yeah and the the progressive DAs would say to you, well, I'm going after the big guns, the ones who do the most serious crimes. But you have to go after the ones who do the less serious ones, too, for two reasons.

First of all, they cause a lot of problems on the streets, disorder, as we call it, right? And second of all, they graduate. They go on to do more serious crimes. So, especially if there's no incentive not to do more serious crimes, I mean, what's the message? If you don't get punished for the less serious offenses, what message is that delivering to the potential offender? The message is, oh, I can get away with this, and maybe a little more than that. So it's very bad. And by the way, who suffers the most for

this? The communities that have high disorder rates, high crime rates, often poor black communities, by the way, suffer the most. Of course they suffer the most. That's where a lot of these offenses occur. So who's being punished? The public, the general public in those communities are being punished. So this is really a very misguided policy. And I don't blame Soros so much as the public that elected these people. After all, these people in the U.S., we elect prosecutors, except for New Jersey, maybe. And the public has chosen them. And now, of course, they're starting to boot them out. I just did an interview with someone from St. Louis, and they told me their progressive prosecutor has been given the boot.

And we know what happened in san francisco and so maybe that's going to be a wake-up call for these prosecutors to get their act together and and start taking even the minor offenses seriously and by the way one last point when the police department hears that the prosecutor is not going to prosecute a crime, you think they're going to waste their time going out and arresting the guy for that offense? That's right. No way. They stop arresting.

So it's great. You not only don't get punished, you don't even get arrested for these offenses. And then they break in into these department stores, into these drug stores, and just steal stuff willy-nilly. They don't have any restraint because they don't fear the hand of the law on them. That's right. It's a terrible situation and a really self-defeating policy.

It is. Of course, in San he said this is the people who are suffering are the people in the poor communities there because this is where most of the crime is happening but of course in san francisco uh the soros d.a helped to democratize that uh to bring it to everybody you know everybody's suffering now it's just so far widespread but maybe that's why he got kicked out you know he brought in the people who vote and are and are vocal and and have influence yeah that was this that was a bad move but it still remains to be seen if if they were going to get this thing back under control because as i reported earlier today a target ceo said they're on their way to losing 1.2 billion dollars in theft and it's not

just the theft but it's these gangs that are coming in are getting increasingly violent with the store employees, with people who may be customers in the store. I mean, this thing is just metastasizing and getting worse and worse. And I guess, you know, when we talk about the Soros district attorneys, it's because, you know, the PAC, the political action committee that he set up

is putting in big money in these local races and the way that elon musk described it he said hey you saw an arbitrage opportunity here we're for a little bit of money relatively he could have a huge outsized effect because typically nobody paid any attention to these district attorney races and uh so you know they they tried to get the guy out gascon in la they even had a thing there, but they played games with the signature counts and kept the recall from happening. But it's really horrific everywhere that it's happening. Everybody said that was what was going to happen. We've now seen that's what's going to happen, but it's still very difficult to get these people out.

It was good that in Missouri they were able to get that one prosecutor out, but they caught her red-handed making lies and excuses about somebody that they didn't keep in jail going on to commit crime. She said it was the judge that did it, and they said, no, you didn't even file any paperwork to keep him in there because you don't want to keep these criminals in. That's where we really are with these people. But let me ask you this. When we're talking about crime and punishment,

one of the things a lot of people say, well, this whole mosaic law standard of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that was really harsh. But if you look at the contemporary legal codes at the time, it was actually a limiting thing for most crimes that was a death penalty for people. So that was putting a limit on it. But the key thing, which I've never seen in Western society, which kind of bothers me, is the idea of restitution. And we don't make any, I know this is kind of off the topic of what George is talking about, but it seems to me in terms of, you know, we're talking about punishment, crime and punishment. It seems to me the thing that is missing out of our equation, don't even ever really talk about it is the idea that the people who are harmed should have restitution paid to them by the people who harm them and that's never even been part of the discussion as far as i can tell in our country or the western europe you know where we get our kind of inherited our legal uh ideas

from never been a part of the discussion yeah yeah, yeah. Briefly, Travis, in the early 90s, there was a crime victims movement. And during that movement, you did have some calls for restitution. And, of course, restitution shouldn't be confused with retribution. Retribution is when the punishment is suitable. It fits the crime, as they say. Okay? But restitution is compensating a crime victim for his losses now of course there have to be measurable losses before you can do that and

in some cases there just aren't measurable losses but but sometimes there are and then it would really be appropriate um i got restitution once this is it's an aside but it's a personal thing it's kind of amusing but it wasn't me at the time some guy took my deposit to to put in storm windows in my house and ran off with the money and the storm window so so i went to the local cop house and the police officer was as outraged as i was it seemed he said i'm going to arrest this guy and sure enough he did and they brought him to trial and i wrote the judge and i said judge you know i would really like restitution for this i'd like my my deposit money back and also the price of the of the because he took them. He kept them.

So it was about, I don't know, $7,000, $8,000, but I was damned exercised about it. And sure enough, the judge sentenced him and ordered him to pay me back. And New Jersey did it right. He had to pay the probation department the money, and then the probation department would send me the check. Why'd they do it that way because if he didn't if he didn't send the money to the probation department they'd arrest him and throw him in prison yeah so he had an incentive to do it well you know normally you would have to sue him to get restitution and that's what we typically say we see civil suits so we can get restitution but right often i tried that in a crime yeah that's difficult. And a crime. I tried that.

And a crime, you know, when you have a situation like that, a lot of times the government will put them in prison, hit them with a fine or whatever, and keep the money itself instead of handing it over to the victims. And that's the thing I find so frustrating. But that's great. You just got to ask, and sometimes you'll get. They should.

When I was a DA, in the limited time I served as an assistant DA, I always tried to get restitution. Here's the problem with it, of course. A lot of this crime is done by people who don't have any money. In fact, that's one of the incentives for them to steal, right? So you can't get blood from a stone. And so one of the limitations of restitution is it's hard to get anything out of these people. It's hard to get them to pay anything because they don't have very much to begin with. I'm not making a sob story here for criminals. I'm just saying as a reality, it's very hard to get anything out of them. It's hard to get them to

give money back. By the way, in the big tax fraud and the big white collar crimes, they do get restitution often and they make them pay back. Those guys, of course, have the money and can pay back and should pay back. I agree with you. I'm a big supporter of restitution when you can get it. Yeah, I would agree with that. Yeah. And, and I would say, you know, that the government doesn't get a penny until everybody that's been ripped off gets something, you know, they would, I like that the very last ones. Unfortunately, sometimes they're at the front of the line. Yeah. I like that. Then whatever left over, they might hand out to people. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. My college

used to get that money, by the way. John Jay College of Criminal Justice used to get some of that money, too. So, yeah. How did that work out? Well, because it was a public institution, you see. It was part of the city university. So when the government would take that money, we would get a piece of that money.

So they kind of like that part of the system help the budget and all that yeah just like civil asset forfeiture helps everybody that gets a piece of the pie that's right the reason why it's going on and on and on but let's talk a little bit about this because i think a lot of this you know we talked about there's a you know there is a a disconnect i think between the violent crime that is out there and then the crimes of prohibition. And, you know, most of the drug, the majority of the convictions in the drug war, at least in the past, were for things like marijuana, which are now being legalized and in so many different places. And that has caused a large population, you know, a large percentage

of the population to be locked up. A large percentage of the population be locked up. A large percentage of that locked up population is black. Talk a little bit about that, about the racial disparity. Yeah, yeah. One of the allegations, you may remember Michelle Alexander's book, The New Jim Crow, that sort of started the whole mass incarceration business moving, right? But when I looked into her claims, they weren't really holding up. She argued that it was the whole war on drugs that put Blacks in prison. And furthermore, that it was really a plot. It was a conspiracy to deny Blacks their civil rights, and this was the way that that was carried out.

She was wrong on all counts. First of all, the reason African Americans went to prison in large numbers was because of violent crime, not because of drug crime. I did the research on this, and I found out that she was mistaken. I wasn't the only one, by the way. John Pfaff, law professor at Fordham, did the research before I did even and said that Michelle Alexander was just simply wrong. And it's still true today. 55% of the people in prison have done violent crimes. Only 14% have done violent crimes only 14 percent have done drug crimes and of the 14 percent travis 10

are drug dealers drug pushers they're traffickers okay and only four percent less than four percent are in there for mere possession and by the way the realities of the criminal justice system, sometimes the prosecutor knows it's not just mere possession he was really dealing, but there may be problems with the case, you see, illegal search and seizure, weak witnesses, witnesses who themselves are involved with crime. So what happens? They have to plead it down. And when they plead down a trafficking case, it ends up a mere possession case. So the reality is that while on the books, it goes down as a possession case, he's probably a drug trafficker too. So the point is, the overwhelming number of people in prison are in for very serious violent crimes

or 16 percent for quite serious property crimes like burglary major theft motor vehicle theft stealing your car big time fraud these are what put people behind bars. The drug war put maybe, even at its apogee, 20% of the black population that was in prison in prison. In other words, the overwhelming number of African Americans put into prison were there because of violent crime and not drug crime. Well, that's interesting because I've looked at it and not at the detail of the statistics that you've looked at, you know, to look at all the charges against them and why they're in crime. But just in a, you know, from a, you know, 5,000 foot viewpoint, you look at it and you say the prisons are exploding. We're building all these new prisons.

It seems to happen as the war on drugs is ramping up there. So why would you say that that was happening? Was it the fact that we had a societal change at the same time that the war on drugs was ramping up or was it a contributing factor to that big increase in prison population? We had a massive increase in violent crime in this country. And you're a young fellow yet, Travis. I'm an old geezer. I remember it. I remember it very well. Starting in the late 1960s and running right up to the early 1990s, we had one of the biggest violent crime rises in American history.

And those who lived through it remember it. They were scared to go to the big cities. They were scared to ride in public transportation. They were scared even to send their kids to school or to go to the grocery store. The cities of this country, and not just the cities, became dangerous places. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, we see that with school shootings. We never had school shootings before.

Why is it in society that's changed? So what happened? The public, of course, pressured the politicians, do something, lock them up, do something to punish them. And who favored and who shepherded through Congress one of the tough bills, 1994 crime measure? That was Joe Biden. Yes, the same Joe Biden who now pretends that that never happened. I don't follow Biden because all the politicians, the Clintons, the Bidens, whether Democrat or Republican, favored strong measures because the

public demanded it, because the crime was high. So what led to the real jump in prison construction and prosecution for crime? It was the crime wave. I call it a crime tsunami. It wasn't just a wave. This was a tsunami of crime. And this is the real cause of the start of so-called mass incarceration. Crime was the cause, and not just some fiendish plot to lock up African Americans and deny them their rights. No, it was violent crime. Yeah, I fault Biden for his over-the-top reactionary solution, quote-unquote, like civil asset forfeiture. But I agree, it's what happened to our society. And we see it happening even further,

as now we've got our children that are going in and shooting other children and that type of thing. There's real sickness that is in our society. Now, you talk about incarceration. Talk a little bit about incarceration and how you see that working. Yeah, yeah. So here we have a country that has developed this technology, invented this technology, and we're underutilizing it.

Ecarceration means the bracelet, the ankle bracelet. It means electronically monitoring the whereabouts of people. And by the way, we should do this too with illegal immigrants as well. If they're captured and then they're released awaiting their hearing, okay, they should have a bracelet put on them too, so that they don't just skip and disappear. Oh, but they give them a cell phone. They give a cell phone a court date in five years. Well, I wouldn't even mind a cell phone if the cell phone tracked where they are. You could put that tracking stuff on a phone. We do it when we ride in our vehicles. So I'm in favor of using more electronic monitoring. Let's take the case of parolees, people who serve time in prison. And as I said,

most of them are in there for very violent offenses. And here's another statistic. 83% of them released from prison will go on to commit another crime and be arrested for it. 83%. And by the way, before they went to prison, they were arrested on average 11 times per man. Per man. Parole officers, try as they might, dedicated as they might be, cannot possibly keep up with such a massive caseload as they have. Let's put ankle bracelets on parolees. Let's monitor them. Let's remind them about their obligations to go to a facility where they can get drug treatment or about their

need to report for a job. Let's remind them too that they can't go and re-victimize their wives or girlfriends if they committed crimes related to them in the first place. We can make the perimeter of a woman's home or her place of business a no-go zone for these offenders. Let's keep them out of there. And the police could track them this way. With geofencing and that type of thing. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And you know, the most progressive countries in the world, the Scandinavian countries, they're using this stuff. They're using our invention, our technologies, and we're not using them as much as we could. I really think we need a whole movement to support expanded use of electronic monitoring.

Let's use the technology that we invented, that we developed. Let's use it to help us get control of this criminal population. And it is a small population, relatively speaking. Let's use it. That's my pitch. I agree. I think where the disconnect in the debate comes in is that, you know, we're talking about, well, how do we control violent criminals and that type of thing? Whereas I said before, I don't really think that the system is really concerned about that. They've, they've got, you know, they're looking at people increasingly, uh, that they disagree with what they have to say. How can we restrict this person? How can we stop them from saying this or stop them from saying that as we've seen for the last several years here, uh, you know of uh what what people have to say and and so i think you know

when we look at it we're thinking we think crime and punishment you and i would look at this i think this is about violence and keeping control of violent criminals whereas they want to control people that uh that they oppose for political reasons or whatever. And just like they're more focused on issuing speeding tickets than they are about protecting people against violent attacks. And so it pushes it back to that and how is this going to be used by the politicians as well as the types of discussions we had about the district attorneys who want to do the catch and release stuff. So that's really, you know, we've got to kind of get our collective heads around what is the real mission of government.

And because otherwise, if they're going off on a tangent that is completely different than what we think, these things can be weaponized against people who are not really even criminals while they let the other criminals go free. That's the thing that concerns me when I look at this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. We need to keep focused on the main mission here of the criminal justice system, and we need to stop these ideologically motivated persecutions of people.

And we just saw with this new report that came out about the FBI, we just saw what happens when a law enforcement agency gets corrupted and starts pursuing things for political or ideological reasons, rather than carrying out their real criminal justice mission. And it took a good smacking from this report, and well, they should. And let's hope that it'll lead to some changes. But we're in a polarized situation in this country now, politically. So there's this tendency, you know, for each side to try and smack the other one or silence the other side. It's very unhealthy, and I hope we can come out of this before too long because I know it's infecting the universities too.

Oh, yeah. It's very hard for me to find a place to present my views in the universities. They don't want to hear it, so they simply don't invite you. Or if they do invite you, they disinvite you. So it's a very important's nobody wants to have a discussion anymore yeah yeah this is my truth and my truth is the truth and i'm not going to even listen to you and so that's that's the other that's the other side of this is how uh you know we have lost the ability to even discuss uh things that we find points of agreement as well as points

of disagreement but yeah i hope that they that something comes out of it other than a tongue lashing but i don't think anything's gonna come out of it other than a tongue lashing i mean there'll be hearings there'll be hearings you can bet the republicans will will will hold hearings on this sort of thing i just hope it isn't too ideologically driven you know what i? I hope it's more objective and therefore more persuasive, even to the Democrats, but certainly to the, you know, independent thinkers in the electorate. That's right. That would be much better than anything that really looks like it's,

you know, a pro-Trump or pro-Republican effort. Well, what seems to come along with hyper-polit to come along with hyper politicization is hyper partisanship. And, uh, so, you know, we're seeing both two sides of the same coin and I'm, I'm afraid that we're just going to continue to see that.

So I, I'm, I'm very pessimistic. I would like to see something change, but I'm very pessimistic about that. Yeah. Well, it's been very fascinating talking to you,

uh, Mr. Latzer. And again, the book is Barry Latzer, L A T Z E R. Uh, the book is very fascinating talking to you, Mr. Latzer. And again, the book is Barry Latzer, L-A-T-Z-E-R. The book is The Myth of Overpunishment, A Defense of the American Justice System, and A Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public.

And that's the game. Look what I just found. Hey, you got a copy of it right there. That's great. That's what it looks like. Where can people find it? Where's the best place to find it? The usual outlets. And of course, Amazon has it. And by the way, nice little intro by Senator Tom

Cotton in this book. I was delighted to get that. And he did a terrific job. He took this very seriously, by the way. He's very interested in the issue. So I was very pleased to have him. Well, that's good. I think people on both sides of the partisan divide believe that our justice system is not working. The question is, you know, what are they even? And I think the big problem is people have different goals in it. You know, if we could agree on the same goal, what it's going to do, then we could start to try to come up with a solution. But, you know, they can't even agree that we need to punish violent crime. So that's the big issue.

That's the big issue. That's the big fight there. But at the very least, they need to know the facts, and they need to have the data. And we all have to work from that base, no matter what position we take. Well, that would be where you and I are coming from. But unfortunately, they don't like to talk about facts. They've got their minds made up in many cases.

But it's a very interesting discussion, very interesting to see what the actual data says as to who is there, why they're there, what is happening in a violent crime. That's a very important discussion to have. Again, Barry Latzer, professor of criminal justice, and the book is The Myth of Overpunishment. That'd be the best way to find it and what we can do about it. Thank you so much for joining us, sir.

Thank you. It was a real pleasure. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Stay with us. The Common man. They created common core to dumb down our children.

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