Speaking of Kevin Drum, he has another one of his nifty charts concerning how widespread lead poisoning, and its reduction, is a better explanation than policing methods for crime level fluctuations:
This is one reason why, for example, stop-and-frisk programs like the infamous one in New York City are so damaging. They focus almost entirely on Black men and produce in those men a fully justified resentment toward cops who are constantly harassing them. What’s more they don’t even work: New York’s stop-and frisk program was mostly stopped between 2011 and 2013, and the only thing that happened is that the city’s violent crime rate continued to decline[.]
The entire lead poisoning link to crime will, of course, fly in the face of the barroom blowhards in charge of the Republican Party, because it’s subtle and discards human bigotry in favor of science. Worse yet, rather than changing police behavior, it suggests that changing commercial behavior will be necessary, in the future, for achieving other improvements.
And regulating business is anathema to them.
But this is becoming another iconic example of why regulation is, when properly implemented, a good thing.
