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Highlights

Everyone believes they have the moral high ground when it comes to crime and justice issues.

But the end result is that we mislead the public to score political points. It’s time to stop.

Author

Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.

Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of award-winning public relations for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of criminology and public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Aspiring drummer.

Introduction

Is there room for civility, compromise or reasonable discussions when debating crime or criminal justice issues?

Are there any nonpartisan sites or organizations where one can get objective information?

Do we purposefully mislead the public? Is everyone an advocate?

Disagreement Hurts Cities

In previous decades, crime prevention specialists wanted to focus on the mundane but effective methods of citizen involvement. Critics wanted a root causes approach (i.e., eliminating poverty, job creation).

But there is no universal agreement as to which root causes affect crime. Citizen involvement and targeting hardening worked to reduce property crime, fear of crime, improve police-community relations and kept nervous urban dwellers in their communities.

But critics didn’t care about anything beyond fundamental societal change. Traditional crime prevention efforts stalled until they were advanced by the private sector.

Ring doorbells, security systems, cameras, better doors, windows, and locks plus citizens sharing information may be responsible for dramatic reductions in property crime, Crime Prevention. FBI data shows that the property crime rate fell by 54% between 1993 and 2018, while BJS reports a decline of 69% during that span, Pew. This is happening concurrently with a 28 percent increase in violent crime.

The War With Ourselves

Anyone in the justice system experiences ideological battles daily. I’ve been banned from both right and left-wing social media sites just for offering credible research from the US Department of Justice or other reputable sources.

Are cops racist pigs or people dedicated to protecting the public? Is incarceration an attack on groups or a proven method of lowering the social costs of crime? Are programs to assist offenders humanitarian or merely efforts to appear that we care regardless of their effectiveness? Does proactive (self-initiated) policing reduce crime or do cops target people based on their appearance? Are liberal prosecutors long overdue or violators of basic tenants of executive, legislative or judicial power?

Liberal Prosecutors

From PhillyMag (mostly direct quotes)

As a career defense attorney who’d never prosecuted a case in his life, Larry Krasner did promise a radical reworking of the DA’s office — an end to what he called the “crisis of mass incarceration.” He won, improbably, in part because of major campaign spending by liberal billionaire George Soros. Now, nearly two years into his first term, he’s shown he can deliver on what he promised, diverting nonviolent offenders from prison and eliminating cash bail for some charges. But the victories have come with controversy — including, most spectacularly, some dramatic skirmishes with his fellow top law enforcement officers.

In the year and a half since their one face-to-face meeting, for instance, US Attorney Bill McSwain has publicly and repeatedly trashed Philly’s DA, proclaiming that he’s made the city unsafe. “He has an interest in sort of cramming down his radical pro-defendant ideology on everyone else,” McSwain told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson this past June. Two months later, in the wake of last summer’s dramatic police hostage situation in North Philly — in which six cops were shot in a standoff that lasted for almost eight hours — McSwain upped the ante even more, releasing a startling written statement claiming that the gunman displayed a disrespect for law enforcement “promoted and championed” by Krasner. “It started with chants at the DA’s victory party — chants of ‘F— the police’ and ‘No good cops in a racist system,’” he wrote. “We’ve now endured over a year and a half of the worst kinds of slander against law enforcement — the DA routinely calls police and prosecutors corrupt and racist, ”PhillyMag

Compromised Sources

Critic One: Leonard, there is a war on cops and if you can’t see that, your either stupid or just another left-wing asshole.

Critic Two: Your articles are spam, your sources cherry-picked and your pro-police opinions woefully outdated.

Ideology means that we often end up bullshi…. the public.

To my question as to whether there are any truly nonpartisan sites or organizations where one can get objective information on crime and the justice system, the answer is mostly no. There are sites calling themselves nonpartisan where I know the leaders and their ideology. They are as philosophically pure as last months’ unmelted snow.

The US Department of Justice tries to be nonpartisan but presidential politics will always influence decision making. Having said that, their methodologies remain largely consistent and untainted from year to year.

Criminology leans left. Many criminologists are advocates rather than purveyors of objective data. Want to get a desired result? Pick an ideological researcher.

The overwhelming majority of sources addressing crime are biased. Some hide it. Some don’t.

So An Objective Discussion Is Impossible?

In today’s polarizing political climate, it’s becoming almost impossible to have an objective conversation about crime and justice.

Much of what I see, hear and read is factually incorrect or leaves out data that supports critical points.

Reporters not schooled in justice issues get bamboozled by sources all the time. Reputable news organizations are becoming meaningless as to objectivity because they don’t know the system. Respondents in multiple polls rate journalists harshly based on a perceived lack of objectivity. Many sources with impeccable academic and professional credentials advocate rather than inform. Journalists no longer know the difference because knowledgeable crime reporters are almost extinct due to budget cuts.

Objectivity

Objectivity needs to be our moral compass as to crime and justice discussions.

To state that cops are part of a broken system gets us nowhere. To blindly advocate for police officers is equally dysfunctional. There are two sides to every coin but the data tells us that recruitment and retention of cops is significantly down, PTSD and suicides are up and proactivity (self-initiated stops) is significantly diminished, Crime in America.

Not recognizing that cops are leaving or refusing to be proactive implies a real problem for community safety. Yet when the Attorney General addresses this issue, he’s condemned in the harshest possible terms, CBS News.

There is a long history of brutal and racist behavior on the part of the justice system. It’s impossible to deny that legacy and many suggest that it continues today. Yet I worked for mostly African American directors with mostly black management and workforces where the day to day statistics were no different from the larger justice system. Many metropolitan areas are minority controlled via mayors or chiefs of police or directors of correctional agencies yet the issues remain the same. Are they purposely ignoring institutional racism?

US Department of Justice offers data as to the lack of success of offender rehabilitation programs and outrageously high rates of recidivism (returns to crime). The data seems crystal clear yet most of the discussion is directed to more of the same rather than to admit failure and reinvigorate research. Is embracing failure morally defensible?

Criminal justice reform is a necessary exercise. No one wants the wrong people to go to prison or be unnecessarily entangled in the justice system. But limited or no consequences seem to encourage crime. In a day of #MeToo where everyone justifiably wants accountability for men who destroy the lives of women and girls, why doesn’t the same apply to violent or multi-repeat offenders?

Classes of people are overrepresented in the justice system, often based on similar crimes. But is that based on bias or an individual’s cumulative criminal history? It’s an easy question to answer via research, but to date, I’m unaware of anyone providing guidance.

Conclusions

I’m told that aggressively taking a side and becoming a staunch advocate will get me more page views for my articles.

No thanks.

No group wants me. I’m too liberal for conservatives and I’m too conservative for liberals. I’ve been called a police apologist and I’ve been labeled as an anti-cop, pro-media, left-wing nut case.

But the truth is that there are no issues better served by blind advocacy.

The justice system is filled with endless pitfalls. You can’t have 40 million yearly police-citizen contacts without disturbing incidents. Much of what passes for a crisis is based on inadequate funding or training. Is police use of force based on bad cops or the lack of alternatives currently available but not provided? Social workers skilled in crisis intervention are better at handling mental health issues. Are they available in all communities at all times?

So we take non-college educated people, give them several months of training, and send them out as cops to handle our most pressing social problems without mistakes? Even when the data states that most citizens believe that cops act fairly in nine out of ten cases, limit the use of force and are held in high regard by everyone, we still have the problem of cops leaving and impossible recruitment problems. Why?

We preach an evidence-based approach but rarely follow our own dictates. Winning an ideological point supersedes citizen safety.

I tend to look at things through the eyes of victims more than those of offenders but that doesn’t mean that I can’t support criminal justice reform or opportunities for offenders to improve themselves and lessen their risk of reoffending. Yes, I believe that most cops are taking an unfair beating but concurrently, I (along with most cops) hate brutal officers who unjustifiably use force.

“Let the people on both sides keep their self-possession, and just as other clouds have cleared away in due time, so will this, and this great nation shall continue to prosper as before,” Abraham Lincoln.

There will come a point where truth prevails and advocacy recedes. Only then can we can make society safer and more just.

There is no grand national criminological strategy. Most of what we do in the justice system is guesswork.

We have to listen to each other, respect different points of view and be willing to compromise.

Do I really believe that any of this will happen? As Lincoln stated, everything has a cycle. With a 28 percent increase in violent crime per the US Department of Justice, fundamental change may be around the corner.

Not that long ago, everyone advocated for aggressive police tactics and increased incarceration, including current presidential candidates. Joe Biden begged for the tough on crime issue (“Give me the crime issue … and you’ll never have trouble with it in an election,”). Now they can’t apologize quick enough while asking for forgiveness for actions everyone wanted.

Every ideology has its day. What shouldn’t be subject to compromise is an honest discussion with the public.

You can yell and point fingers to your heart’s content but bombastic behavior won’t convince anyone. “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would rather have talked,” Mark Twain.

See More

See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.

Contact

Contact us at leonardsipes@gmail.com.

My book: A “Best Business Book,” Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization available at Amazon

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