Following the recent release of the FBI’s crime data for 2020, which shows a 30 percent rise in homicides, proponents of the status quo in our criminal legal system doubled down on their demands to roll back reform and increase our investments in conventional policing strategies. This knee-jerk reaction reflects overly simplistic and outdated thinking about homicide. To break our over-reliance on policing, we need to reframe how we discuss homicide trends in the first place.
Understandably, we tend to think about homicides in the context of other crimes—but we should also look at homicides in the context of other deaths. Homicide is not the only kind of death that implicates how we invest in policing. In fact, the three other significant causes of death alongside homicides among those under 40—deaths by suicide, drug overdose, and vehicular accidents—are all strongly influenced by our reliance on, or unwillingness to move away from, policing.
Read Full Article »