The Bail Post
What do we know about criminal justice reforms or bail reform? How do we evaluate whether reforms are helping or making the situation worse? How can we take politics out of criminal justice and focus on public safety? The Bail Post seeks to be a place where legislators and the public can educate themselves on a host of criminal justice/bail reform issues. With various attempts at criminal justice reform from New York to Texas to California, many people are confused as to what is working and what is not. With the passage of time, more and more data is coming to light over what successful reform looks like and what reforms have been found to not be working. The rise in violent crime across the country has been startling and law makers and the public alike are desperate to find legislation that is effective. Some might ask whether some of the reforms making the situation worse? The Bail Post is an on-going discussion that seeks to cut to the core to provide education on the various issues raised and to highlight what successful criminal justice reform looks like and what measures have been disastrous. Join us and educate yourself about the best practices that jurisdictions must implement to keep their communities safe, while ensuring fairness to defendants. As a someone said recently "Public safety is the foundation of a society. Without public safety we do not have a society."
If you would like to listen other episodes of The Bail Post you can find a subject matter index of the different episodes at- https://pbtx.blogspot.com/p/subject-index-to-bail-post-podcasts.html.
The host is Ken W. Good; an attorney in Tyler, Texas who has been licensed for over 30 years. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court of Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Mr. Good has written a book on bail called "Goods On Bail." He has also has had numerous papers published on Criminal Justice Reform issues. Mr. Good is a board member of PBT and serves on the legislative committee. Mr. Good is married and has two daughters.
The Bail Post
Episode No. 74- Study- Defunding the Police Increases Murders Especially Among Minorities With Guest Dr. Ben Hansen
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Dr. Benjamin Hansen is the W.E. Minor Professor of Economics at the University of Oregon. He is also the head of the Economics Department. He Graduated from Birmingham Young University in 2004 with a B.A. in Economics. He received his M.A. in Economics in 2005 and his PhD in Economics in 2009 from UC Santa Barbara.
Dr. Hansen co-authored an article that is the subject of this episode of The Bail Post. The citation for the article is: Chalfin, Hansen, Weisburst and Williams, "Police Force Size and Civilian Race," American Economic Review: Insights 4 (2); 139-58 (2022).
The article addressed defunding the police and its impact on crime. One of the conclusions of the study was that decreasing the size of the police force will increase murder rates and that will disproportionately negatively impact certain minority groups. This means that decreasing the size of police will result in more murders and the number will increase even more for certain minority groups.
While Dr. Hansen agrees that this is one of the conclusions of the report, he also highlights other strategies that were not addressed in the report as possible alternatives to attempt to decrease crime by moving police funds to other strategies. Dr. Hansen admits there would be a time lag for some of these strategies and others might not be an actual replacement for police, but could augment them in certain areas to allow quicker response times.
Join us for this episode of The Bail Post.