Washington Examiner: “No, CJR isn’t Causing the Current Crime Wave”

Editors note: The following text has been published by The Washington Examiner.

by Lars Trautman & Brett Tolman

Conservative criminal justice reformers have faced occasional skepticism over our tried-and-true criminal justice solutions, but never something quite so outlandish as a recent suggestion, by an avowed conservative, no less, that conservative reformers somehow bear blame for rising violent crime in liberal bastions such as New York City and Portland.

Sean Kennedy, in his recent Washington Examiner article , attacks our organization, Right on Crime, using just such an argument. Kennedy actually acknowledges our record of helping Texas and other conservative states simultaneously reduce their crime rates, prison populations, and criminal justice spending. But he then claims, without evidence and employing a classic logical fallacy , that this activity then caused subsequent increases in crime in Texas. Note that he makes this claim even though crime spiked at exactly the same time he refers to in many states where none of our reforms were enacted.

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