What We Learned About Crime in 2014

This was not a good year for the American criminal justice system. With violent crime rates lower than than they've been since the 1970s, we still saw a fresh deluge of attacks by police against unarmed people of color, from New York to Ferguson to a ​Walmart in Ohio. Making it all worse is that the cops involved avoided criminal prosecution, and militarized responses to the resulting unrest sent the message that the long arm of the law can do whatever it pleases. Likewise, ​white-collar criminals like Wall Street bankers continue to duck punishment for mercilessly fucking the global economy. The only question is if all of the protests and rage that have bubbled to the surface these past few months ​over two justice systems—one for the rich and white, another for the poor and brown—will amount to anything.