Obama and Crime
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008I have an article up at Slate today explaining why Obama and Biden’s criminal justice proposals are misguided.
In particular, Obama is proposing to resurrect the COPS and Byrne grant programs, which shows an unfortunate, uncritical throw-federal-money-at-the-problem approach to crime.
Regular readers of this site know that Byrne and COPS have created all sorts of problems, including the further militarization of local police departments, statistics-driven drug policing, multi-jurisdictional task forces that lack accountability, and the disproportionate targeting of minorities, particularly blacks.
Obama has expressed some encourage sentiments on many of these issues. It’s too bad that he’s embracing policies that are going to make them worse.