Speaker 1: What explains most of the variation and crime rates are
Speaker 1: law enforcement, higher rest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences,
Speaker 1: the death penalty explain over half of the variation that
Speaker 1: you see in crime rates over time and across places.
Speaker 1: And so if you want to go and deal with this,
Speaker 1: you want to make it risk here for criminals to
Speaker 1: go and commit crimes. And I agree with you that
Speaker 1: that's going to be the result. Now, there are some
Speaker 1: things that Trump's already done that's helped reduce crime across
Speaker 1: the country. One of them has been deporting illegal aliens,
Speaker 1: particularly emphasizing those who have criminal records.
Speaker 2: You are listening to Carrie. Let'sa's Financial Survival Network where
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Speaker 4: And welcome.
Speaker 3: You are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network.
Speaker 4: I'm your host, Kerrie Lutzon.
Speaker 3: Today we're joined by doctor John Lott Junior, one of
Speaker 3: the most respected and controversial voices in the gun policy debate.
Speaker 3: His seminal work I read I highly recommend more guns,
Speaker 3: less crime, and he's also a founder of the Crime
Speaker 3: Prevention Research Center. Really thrilled to have you back on here. John,
Speaker 3: I saw you at Freedom Fest this summer. It was
Speaker 3: great to bump into you, I should say, last summer,
Speaker 3: and well, we got some things going on here. It
Speaker 3: looks like even the left doesn't believe that if more guns,
Speaker 3: if they belong to the National Guard, and more policemen,
Speaker 3: that that's going to bring down crime. What we're talking about, obviously,
Speaker 3: is President Trump federalizing the DC Police Department, which you
Speaker 3: can do by the nineteen seventy three Home Rule Act
Speaker 3: that gave a DC limited ability to rule its own affairs,
Speaker 3: which we see how wonderful that has worked out. And
Speaker 3: he's called an eight hundred guardsmen and roving bands of
Speaker 3: FBI DEA agents.
Speaker 4: Like I got a.
Speaker 3: I can't even picture John like an FBI agent doing
Speaker 3: a traffic stop.
Speaker 4: They don't know how to do that.
Speaker 3: But just their presence probably is making a big difference,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 4: I think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not rocket science about what's going on.
Speaker 1: If you want a lower crime, you have to make
Speaker 1: it more costly riskier for criminals to go and commit crimes.
Speaker 1: You can do that with higher rest rates, which putting
Speaker 1: more people on the street is surely going to help
Speaker 1: with that, more prosecutions and actually punishing people, and maybe
Speaker 1: one can also add letting victims be able to go
Speaker 1: and defend themselves. But you know, you look at what
Speaker 1: the situation was just before Trump got involved. You have
Speaker 1: about four hundred or so patrol officers on duty at
Speaker 1: most at any point in time in DC. That's four
Speaker 1: hundred people to go and protect seven hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: one thousand people out there. That's asking a lot. And
Speaker 1: I think the police unions were right there saying that
Speaker 1: they were stretched incredibly thin. Plus there were all sorts
Speaker 1: of other restrictions.
Speaker 4: That are there.
Speaker 1: So the first night that Trump rolled out his new
Speaker 1: policy there they added another eight hundred and twenty officers
Speaker 1: on the street, law enforcement people on the street. That's
Speaker 1: you know, essentially no trouble the enforcement effort that they
Speaker 1: had before. That's a huge change that's there. And you know,
Speaker 1: with regard to prosecutions, prosecutions of adults are handled by
Speaker 1: the US Attorney for DC, and during Biden the person
Speaker 1: that was there was just refusing to prosecute cases of
Speaker 1: the arrests. In twenty twenty two, the guy refused to
Speaker 1: actually prosecute sixty seven percent of the arrests. In twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, he still refused to prosecute fifty five percent
Speaker 1: of the arrests that were there, and even the ones
Speaker 1: that they prosecuted, it was often for very reduced penalties.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you're not arresting people. The people
Speaker 1: that you are arresting, you're not prosecuting, you know, just crazy.
Speaker 1: And of course there's the police union has been pushing
Speaker 1: hard on the scandal, saying that the city has been
Speaker 1: kind of corrupting the crime data there, kind of reclassifying
Speaker 1: what would have been a felony as a misdemeanor in
Speaker 1: order for it not to be rooted in the FBI data.
Speaker 1: So like take aggravate assaults and reclassifying them there's simple assaults,
Speaker 1: and so you know, there are lots of problems over there,
Speaker 1: but you know, one thing, it's more difficult to hide
Speaker 1: as murder data. In twenty twenty three, of the sixty
Speaker 1: most populous cities in the United States, d C ranked
Speaker 1: fifth in terms of murder rates.
Speaker 3: They weren't try hard enough, you know, right, except number
Speaker 3: one at one time?
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, well they were at one time.
Speaker 3: It sounds like the prosecutor went to the George Soros
Speaker 3: School of Crime prevention.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not too shocking, I mean, given that he
Speaker 1: was a Biden appointee there, you know, But you're right.
Speaker 1: They make the similar types of things in other places
Speaker 1: where you have George Soros prosecutors Alvin Bragg in New
Speaker 1: York City in Manhattan. One of the things that he's
Speaker 1: been known for has been refusing to prosecute criminals for
Speaker 1: firearms offenses. What makes it, for example, what makes the
Speaker 1: difference between something being aggravated assault, which is a felony
Speaker 1: and simple assault, which is a misdemeanor, as whether or
Speaker 1: not a weapon was involved. And so if they're refusing
Speaker 1: to prosecute these individuals as firearms offenses, they lower these
Speaker 1: cases from felonies to misdemeanors. And then they put pressure
Speaker 1: on the police not to initially record whether a firearm
Speaker 1: was used in the offense because prosecutors don't want to
Speaker 1: take the full blame for kind of reducing the penalties
Speaker 1: for these cases. And So what happens is is that
Speaker 1: Manhattan then under records the number of violent crimes that
Speaker 1: are there, and it kind of messes up the FBI
Speaker 1: data because the FBI relies on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, during Giuliani, I remember there was a commander that
Speaker 3: fudged the numbers at one of the precincts and they
Speaker 3: fired that guy almost instantaneously, who might have been an
Speaker 3: inspector whatever, whoever they have at the major precincts, they
Speaker 3: have a high ranking police official running. He lied, They
Speaker 3: fired him on the spot. Bratton went there and took
Speaker 3: his badge. And where is Bratton when you need him?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, because the police unions in DC made
Speaker 1: such a stink about it in July, the person was
Speaker 1: suspended there, but he hasn't been fired yet. But you know,
Speaker 1: something needs to.
Speaker 4: Be done, and.
Speaker 1: It's just the media bias in terms of discussing all
Speaker 1: this has been just kind of outrageous. They'll go and
Speaker 1: mention that these official crime numbers have gone down the
Speaker 1: last few years, but in many cases they're still very
Speaker 1: high compared to what they were prior to COVID. You
Speaker 1: look at carjackings, which is one of the things that
Speaker 1: kind of got this going. When the Dodge former Dodge
Speaker 1: official was attacked in twenty twenty three, there were nine
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty nine of these carjackings that had occurred,
Speaker 1: or twenty four it was down to like four hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety five. But that's still you know, so they say, look,
Speaker 1: it's falling, but that's still five times higher than what
Speaker 1: it was in twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen before COVID,
Speaker 1: and so you know, then it was kind of in
Speaker 1: the nineties that you had these numbers. And so you know,
Speaker 1: the fact checkers in the media say, well, Trump's wrong
Speaker 1: about it being up compared to five years ago. They
Speaker 1: don't mention the five years. They just go and say,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's fallen, and just look at the
Speaker 1: last two years.
Speaker 3: It's like inflation numbers. You know, if we checked inflation
Speaker 3: the way we did in the eighties, it would be
Speaker 3: double the rate that it is now. But when you
Speaker 3: don't like the results, you just use it different to
Speaker 3: a ruler. I remember there were some shady personal injury
Speaker 3: lawyers in New York and they would take pictures of
Speaker 3: holes in the ground that supposedly their clients tripped over
Speaker 3: and they had a custom made ruler that said it
Speaker 3: was twelve inches long, but it was only eight inches long. Fine,
Speaker 3: you know this is the kind of thing when you
Speaker 3: when you go changing everything around, you know this what happens.
Speaker 3: So hopefully we're going to see a major, a major
Speaker 3: drop in crime. I can't see how we can't see it.
Speaker 3: And if Trump really does turn DC into a showcase,
Speaker 3: what does does that say to all the other blue
Speaker 3: cities that are failing, like your Detroit's Detroit's better than
Speaker 3: it was, but it's still unacceptable, like New York, like Philly,
Speaker 3: Baltimore especially. You know, that's going to make them look
Speaker 3: really bad.
Speaker 4: Just like that.
Speaker 3: The Libs said that couldn't stop the the people coming
Speaker 3: over the border, the invasion over the boarder, and Trump
Speaker 3: did it in a week. Can't stop the crime because
Speaker 3: you got to get to the basis of crime, because
Speaker 3: you know, he had a tough toilet training, Johnny, and
Speaker 3: therefore he became a serial killer.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's insane. And yet we're going to see.
Speaker 3: A historic drop in crime, I almost guarantee you, because
Speaker 3: he will feed as many people into that inferno as
Speaker 3: he needs to stop it.
Speaker 4: And then when he stops it, what do they say, then, Well, it.
Speaker 3: Really wasn't that bad, John, You know, like murders were
Speaker 3: already down thirty percent.
Speaker 4: He already he only did he only fix what was
Speaker 4: already being fixed.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Look, I mean you're exactly right on all
Speaker 1: the points that you raise. I was going to raise,
Speaker 1: in fact, also the point that I think this could
Speaker 1: have an impact across the country. Constituencies are going to say, look,
Speaker 1: this worked here, why don't we do the same things.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of academic work. I've done
Speaker 1: some of this myself. When you look at things like
Speaker 1: income and poverty and unemployment, does only explain one to
Speaker 1: two percent of the variation in crime rate. What explains
Speaker 1: most of the variation and crime rates are law enforcement,
Speaker 1: higher rest rates, higher conviction rates, longer prison sentences, the
Speaker 1: death penalty explain over half of the variation that you
Speaker 1: see in crime rates over time and across places. And
Speaker 1: so if you want to go and deal with this,
Speaker 1: you know you want to make it riskier for criminals
Speaker 1: to go and commit crimes. And I agree with you
Speaker 1: that that's going to be the result. Now, there are
Speaker 1: some things that Trump's already done that's helped reduce crime
Speaker 1: across the country. One of them has been deporting illegal aliens,
Speaker 1: particularly emphasizing those who have criminal records, and that does
Speaker 1: it in two ways. One is it's removed some of
Speaker 1: these criminals from the country, but even the ones that
Speaker 1: they haven't caught, it's affected because they know that if
Speaker 1: they get arrested, they'll be deported. And one way to
Speaker 1: reduce the probability of being arrested is to try to
Speaker 1: stay off police radars. And the way you stay off
Speaker 1: police radars is not to commit crimes right now. And
Speaker 1: so I think it's had an impact both in terms
Speaker 1: of removing criminals and also causing other criminals to kind
Speaker 1: of keep their heads down right now. So I think
Speaker 1: they've already had some beneficial impact. But hopefully this will
Speaker 1: educate people, just as you say it's correctly educating people
Speaker 1: about the border.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know, I'm sure it's having a big impact
Speaker 3: on home depot parking lots for sure.
Speaker 1: Easier to pull in there, I guess.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: So one thing, John, let's go back to Juliani, because
Speaker 3: he was really the test case that proved that through
Speaker 3: effective policing, enforcing minor laws, the so called broken windows
Speaker 3: theory of policing, that you can effectuate huge declines, generational
Speaker 3: declines in crime. And what did they say. They said, well,
Speaker 3: it was demographic because the number of lawbreakers that sixteen
Speaker 3: or fifteen to twenty four demographic. The number of them
Speaker 3: had gone down dramatically. As somebody who was in New
Speaker 3: York City during the term of David Dinkin seeing crime
Speaker 3: exploding and watching it go all but disappear in many
Speaker 3: parts of the city, I know that to be a lie.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well, I mean you're exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 1: famously proved the point, and he educated people around the
Speaker 1: country and you had a number of police departments kind
Speaker 1: of go and follow the rule. I mean, it's an
Speaker 1: idea that James Q. Wilson, for the famous criminologists unfortunately
Speaker 1: who's no longer with us, put out there that you know,
Speaker 1: if you make it so that a place is more livable,
Speaker 1: people will be outside more, you'll have more witnesses, you'll
Speaker 1: make it more difficult for criminals to go and commit crime.
Speaker 1: And that's the policy that they did, and they moved
Speaker 1: One of the other things they did is they moved
Speaker 1: the police to places where crime was. Every morning they
Speaker 1: would go and see where were the crimes occurring last night,
Speaker 1: and they would go then and move the police there.
Speaker 1: You know, the criminals can move someplace else, but they'd
Speaker 1: follow them, and they just make life very difficult for
Speaker 1: the for the criminals, and they had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on the crime rate.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the current leader and the mayor's race in DC,
Speaker 1: the Democrat nominee, wants to continue undoing the work that
Speaker 1: was done.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And there was another program that he had that
Speaker 3: I think it was a cop who once told me
Speaker 3: it was called life in Jail a day at a time,
Speaker 3: and that meant that they knew you were going to
Speaker 3: get kicked out of jail for these minor quality of
Speaker 3: life offenses like you know, public relieving, urination, that type
Speaker 3: of thing. But nonetheless, they still arrested you smoking in
Speaker 3: the subway. You'd get arrested, you'd spend the day in jail,
Speaker 3: you'd get out, and then you'd do it again and
Speaker 3: they'd arrest you again, or dealing marijuana on the street.
Speaker 3: And an amazing thing happened. They stopped doing it after
Speaker 3: a while. After spending you know, day after day after
Speaker 3: day in jail.
Speaker 4: They stopped doing it.
Speaker 3: And the whole thing of disincentives, carrot and stick, it
Speaker 3: made a huge difference. And the other thing, John that
Speaker 3: happened during that whole Giuliani period economic expansion because people
Speaker 3: felt safe to go outside even in poorer areas, and
Speaker 3: more people working as a result of that economic expansion,
Speaker 3: and less of them turning to crime.
Speaker 4: I saw it with my own eyes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Gerry me, you're exactly right. People don't appre You know,
Speaker 1: obviously you have the direct victims of crime, but you
Speaker 1: also have all these other indirect effects that are there.
Speaker 1: So if I have more crime in an area, I'm
Speaker 1: going to have businesses closed down. The ones that stay
Speaker 1: in business are going to have higher costs. That hurts
Speaker 1: so many different people. People who lost their would lose
Speaker 1: their jobs. People who would have gone shopping in those
Speaker 1: areas now have to go farther away to be able
Speaker 1: to go and shop. People who own businesses lost money.
Speaker 1: People who own home in those areas. What do you
Speaker 1: think happened to the property values for those homes when
Speaker 1: crime rates went up in those areas? You make those
Speaker 1: people poor as a result of that, You make them
Speaker 1: lose their jobs. So, you know, people are harmed in
Speaker 1: many different ways from crime that I don't think is
Speaker 1: properly appreciated.
Speaker 3: It's disgusting that the Liberals won't give Juliani credit for
Speaker 3: what he did there.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: And Juliani, we didn't know it at the time because
Speaker 3: the only thing he had ever run was the US
Speaker 3: Attorney's office. But he turned out to be an incredibly
Speaker 3: effective manager of the city's workforce. And look, he had
Speaker 3: the Democrat council going against him, and yet he managed
Speaker 3: to make deals and get things done.
Speaker 4: Hopefully we'll see that again.
Speaker 3: Hey, we're going to cover tariffs real briefly, tariff seemed
Speaker 3: to be working. They don't seem to be causing inflation,
Speaker 3: at least according to the measurable numbers China. That deal
Speaker 3: keeps getting put off ninety days, ninety days. I think
Speaker 3: the reason why that isn't really publicized. China's having an
Speaker 3: economic collapse, and the United States cannot be afford afford
Speaker 3: to be seen as literally piling on and basically enhancing
Speaker 3: that collapse, even though it might.
Speaker 4: Be in our best interest for it to be occurring.
Speaker 1: Right, So, yeah, I just had a piece just so
Speaker 1: people know. I've been to I have a PhD in economics.
Speaker 1: I've been an academic most of my life. I've had
Speaker 1: positions at Stanford, University of Chicago, the Wharton Business School, Yale, UCLA,
Speaker 1: and I've written about one hundred and twenty peer reviewed articles,
Speaker 1: including issues like trades. I've some background in this area,
Speaker 1: and what I didn't even appreciate until recently myself is that,
Speaker 1: you know, the arguments against tariffs are that they're going
Speaker 1: to distort trade, you know, hurt consumers, reduce production. All
Speaker 1: those things are true, but that's true of all taxes.
Speaker 1: Sales taxes reduce trade.
Speaker 4: They're not lationary.
Speaker 1: Taxes are deflation area. You know, income taxes make it
Speaker 1: so that people don't work as much, they're not selling
Speaker 1: their labor as much as they would have otherwise. It
Speaker 1: reduces investment. Corporate taxes reduce output, reduce investment. So all
Speaker 1: taxes are distortionary. And one thing that's important to understand
Speaker 1: is that the size of the distortion increases at an
Speaker 1: increasing rate with the level of taxes. So a twenty
Speaker 1: percent tax produces more than twice the distortion that a
Speaker 1: ten percent tax does. And so what you need to
Speaker 1: do as an economists, because we're going to have taxes.
Speaker 1: You know, we may want to cut the federal budget,
Speaker 1: but even if we succeed in cutting it a lot,
Speaker 1: it's still going to be have to have taxes to
Speaker 1: pay for things. You have a situation where you know
Speaker 1: you're going to want to try to make it so
Speaker 1: that the distortions are minimized. And so if I have
Speaker 1: a tariff of two point five percent, that's there, and
Speaker 1: the income taxes, when you add this average state tax
Speaker 1: there goes up to forty three percent, and for corporate
Speaker 1: taxes federal and stature, it's twenty seven percent on average.
Speaker 1: You know you have much bigger distortions in those other areas,
Speaker 1: and so you know it may make sense to increase
Speaker 1: to some extent the sale the tariff at the same
Speaker 1: time you're reducing those other taxes. And what Trump has done,
Speaker 1: combined with the budget Reconciliation bill, kind of accomplishes that
Speaker 1: to some extent. Now what the write about is, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Now, just as a quick comment on the
Speaker 1: on the inflation, I guess I'm a Milton Friedman type
Speaker 1: monetary theory type guy, and that is basically inflation is
Speaker 1: a monetary phenomenon. If you're not changing the money supply
Speaker 1: in velocity, then if some prices go up, other prices
Speaker 1: are going to have to go down, so that on average,
Speaker 1: the tolls amount spen it's going to be the same.
Speaker 1: So I may have taxes on particular items that causes
Speaker 1: those prices to go up a little bit, but it's
Speaker 1: not inflationary. It's not going to change the overall price
Speaker 1: level as long as you know, as long as the
Speaker 1: money supply is not changing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. And I am
Speaker 3: a free trade person through and through, but free trade
Speaker 3: has been weaponized against the United States post World War Two.
Speaker 3: Maybe in the beginning initial phases there was reasons there
Speaker 3: was no reason to allow China to weaponize trade.
Speaker 4: That's what they've done. Tariffs are the great equalizer.
Speaker 3: Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve and the
Speaker 3: income tax, the government financed all of its operations through
Speaker 3: tariffs and excise taxes on alcohol and I guess some
Speaker 3: on tobacco perhaps, But you know, part of the problem
Speaker 3: with prohibition was it took away that revenue source from
Speaker 3: the government and it became the justification for the income tax,
Speaker 3: so you know you're looking at it. You know it's
Speaker 3: a tax, yes, but like you said, all taxes are
Speaker 3: deflationary because they they have the crowding out effect. They
Speaker 3: take from those who produce and give to those who
Speaker 3: don't produce. And that's the whole mess that we're in now. John,
Speaker 3: where's the best place to find you these days and
Speaker 3: connect with you on the web.
Speaker 1: Well, our website is crimeresearch dot org. Crimeresearch dot org.
Speaker 3: G all right, and the link is in the show
Speaker 3: notes to this interview. If you got a question for
Speaker 3: John myself, shoot me an email kl at Carrie dot com. John,
Speaker 3: We will talk to you again soon. Thanks for that
Speaker 3: great article. Be well, it's been great talking to you.
Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial
Speaker 2: Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest,
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