“True Equity Means Everyone’s Life Has Equal Value”: A Conversation with Shani Buggs

By Greg Berman

In 2019, The New York Times discovered a new trend: “Gun Research Is Suddenly Hot,” the paper of record declared. One of the up-and-coming gun researchers featured in the story is Shani Buggs, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Buggs completed her doctorate in health and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. In Baltimore, she studied community-based violence prevention programs and measured public attitudes about guns and the criminal justice system. She also worked with the Baltimore mayor’s office, the police department, and other city agencies to enhance local violence reduction strategies and policies. This work has led to her growing visibility in the field, including a recent call to consult with White House Domestic Policy Advisor Susan Rice and other Biden officials about how to reduce gun violence.

The following conversation took place in late March, not long after violent incidents in Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta returned mass shootings to the front pages of newspapers around the country. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Greg Berman: What is your origin story? How did you get involved in this field?

Shani Buggs: Prior to my current career, I spent a decade in corporate management. I found myself working for a healthcare firm in Atlanta that began to venture into the workplace-wellness space. I was helping individuals with lifestyle change and behavior modification. I decided that public health was absolutely where I wanted to be and that I wanted to obtain a master’s in public health. So, I enrolled in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. This was the summer of 2012.  

I arrived in Baltimore with a heightened awareness of violence in the city, because as I was moving from Atlanta, people expressed concern about my safety based on The Wire. And then, just a couple of weeks into my program, a gunman shot up a movie opening in rural Colorado, and the national media was transfixed by that tragedy. I was very aware that there were regular shootings happening in Baltimore and that it was not even garnering local attention. And so I was really shocked and outraged by the disproportionate attention and response to shootings depending on who was shot, where they were shot, and who the media and policymakers and the general public saw as being deserving of sympathy and attention. 

I happened to be at Johns Hopkins, which at the time was the one academic institution in the country that had a research center devoted to gun violence. And so I shifted my focus to gun-violence prevention. This was 2012, and the conversation about gun violence as a public health issue was still very much a fringe idea. I shifted my graduate studies and ultimately my entire career. I decided to stay at Hopkins beyond my master’s program. I was accepted to the doctoral program and continued to train and work with folks in Baltimore thinking about violence reduction and prevention. For a couple of years, I worked in the mayor’s office, helping the city to coordinate their violent crime reduction strategy.

We know that some types of violence increased in many American cities over the past year. But my sense is that the pattern is not uniform—some places it’s up a lot, some places it’s up a little bit, and in some places it’s flat. Have you taken a step back and looked at the city-by-city numbers? What jumps out at you?

I think the thing of greatest interest is how consistently violence has spiked in cities around the country. Gun violence increased while we started to see lower rates of theft and lower rates of robbery and lower rates of rape. To your point, the data is still coming out, and we know that every city did not experience the same rate of increase, but many cities saw large spikes.

Where we saw spikes in gun violence were places that had previously experienced higher than average rates of gun violence and that had all of the social factors that are associated with gun violence —high rates of unemployment, high rates of poverty, high rates for criminal justice contact, housing insecurity, food insecurity.

There’s a lot to unpack, and it will take months or years for us to really be able to untangle all of the many factors that were associated with last year’s increase. I have some theories and some ideas, but it is going to take some time before we’re able to really understand what was at play.

Don’t make me wait. Give me a theory or two.

So, where we saw spikes in gun violence were places that had previously experienced higher than average rates of gun violence and that had all of the social factors that are associated with gun violence —high rates of unemployment, high rates of poverty, high rates for criminal justice contact, housing insecurity, food insecurity. The pandemic and the shutdown severed social ties and economic ties for many individuals. Different from other economic downturns, the pandemic really hit certain employment sectors and certain subpopulations differently. We’ve seen higher-income positions bounce back better than what we’ve seen for individuals who are at the lowest rung of economic opportunity and financial stability. And you also had social supports that were basically shut down. Violence intervention strategies were curbed. Job training, subsidized employment, mentoring, case management, financial assistance, social assistance—those were all shut down. And then the fear and anxiety and frustration over the coronavirus and the lack of trust in institutions among communities of color—I think all of those things came together in a perfect storm kind of way.

I wonder whether you could talk for a second about what you see as the links between a history of discriminatory policy making and the communities where we see high rates of gun violence?

There’s a direct through-line. We have not invested in communities of color for decades. There’s been research done on the relationship between redlining and the discriminatory housing practices of the 1930s and 1940s and how that relates to gun violence today. We continue to see that relationship, but we have not done enough research into that relationship. Increasingly, there are more people starting to connect historical factors to contemporary phenomena, particularly as they relate to structural racism. The communities that have been the least invested in and the least supported through financial opportunity, through housing stability, through quality educational systems, and through the development of our children—those are the same communities that are experiencing high rates of gun violence today.

I’ve seen some data that suggests that there’s been an increase in gun sales over the past year. Do you think that has any relationship to increases in gun violence around the country?

It’s an important question that we don’t yet know the answer to. We know that gun sales have increased, but the data available do not tell us anything about who’s buying the guns. Researchers are trying to better understand if the increase in gun sales translates to increases in gun violence. I think that’s still to be determined. What we do know is that in the communities that are experiencing high rates of gun violence, firearms are still far too prevalent, including firearms that were illegally possessed, illegally sold, and trafficked into these communities prior to March of 2020. We don’t yet know how many more guns there are in these communities, but it was a problem before last year.

Let’s turn to Baltimore, and let’s start by talking about Cure Violence. This is a violence prevention model that has generated a lot of excitement in recent years. It is also a model that can be challenging to implement. How has the model fared in Baltimore?

The Cure Violence model, and the theory behind it, we don’t know if it actually works in every community and every city. I think what we saw in Baltimore is that there were some communities where the nature of the violence fit that model, but other communities within Baltimore where it did not. 

The Cure Violence model was designed in the 1990s with the understanding that violence is contagious. It was also designed with the understanding that if you can intervene with group leaders, you can then use the social and political capital of those leaders to help curb violence among their followers. 

Violence has evolved in a number of different ways since the 1990s. The Cure Violence model may not fit the times any more. In many cases, you don’t have structured, hierarchical groups with traditional leaders. That’s not what we see today. You have much more loosely formed, smaller groups that may be fighting against each other, even though they’re under the bigger umbrella of a known gang or group. 

Individuals carry today because it's better to be caught with a gun than to be caught without a gun. People carry weapons because they perceive that the system doesn't keep them safe.

On the other hand, there are elements of the model—having credible messengers to mediate conflict and connecting individuals to services and supports to address trauma and help create lifestyle change—that are absolutely important and should be strengthened and used more widely, in my opinion.

I think in many ways, where Cure Violence had success in Baltimore, it was really on the strength of the individuals leading it and doing the frontline work. There was little city investment up until the last couple of years. The program had been supported by grants, which meant that Cure Violence was a program rather than a network of services and support. It was just kind of operating on its own. There has to be greater support, and the city just didn’t provide that for the longest time. That is changing. I’m optimistic and hopeful. Because whether it’s Cure Violence, or focused deterrence, or a hospital-based violence intervention program—none of these programs can really be successful at creating sustained violence reduction without a broader infrastructure of support.

You were part of a team that did some survey research about the underground gun market in Baltimore. One of the findings that stood out for me was how many of the respondents said that they carried guns for protection because they felt vulnerable.

We did not ask for people’s status, but many of these were individuals who were very likely to be legally prohibited from carrying firearms. The fact that so many carry is alarming. They carry because they do not feel safe in their communities. And they carry despite knowing that there are legal risks if they get caught, although some of the research that we’ve done suggests that the legal consequences of carrying in Baltimore are inconsistent. But we have also learned that increased penalties for gun carrying do not necessarily impact day-to-day behavior. The research coming out of Chicago and coming out of the Center for Court Innovation in New York has been consistent: Individuals carry today because it’s better to be caught with a gun than to be caught without a gun. People carry weapons because they perceive that the system doesn’t keep them safe. That’s the real story.

You’ve expressed some skepticism about the deterrent effect of policing. You’ve also talked in other forums about the harms that over-policing can do. I’m wondering whether you think that there is a role for police to play in attempting to respond to the recent increase in gun violence.

I believe that people should be held accountable for their actions. I believe individuals who do harm must be held accountable. There needs to be deterrent effects for risky behaviors, such as carrying a firearm. I also have healthy skepticism that policing, as structured today, is the appropriate deterrent for what I’ve just described.  

We have handed over the idea of public safety to police. All the police can do is respond after something happens. Or they can occupy a neighborhood and be visible to deter crime. But that’s not what keeps a community safe. I live in Sacramento. The police aren’t keeping my community safe. My community is safe because homes are stable, the environment is healthy, and there are opportunities for youth and for families. I’m not trying to paint this rosy, idyllic picture, but it’s true. 

We also need to be investing in researchers who are engaging in community-based, participatory research that is not just extracting information from the community or studying individuals in the community as subjects.

I think the conversation needs to focus on the fact that policing is not serving communities equally. What we have seen, over and over again, is the harm done by unethical policing. We need to be thinking about how to invest in the kinds of supports that allow for communities to stay together and stay safe and healthy. But it can’t be an either/or conversation, because we still have harm being done today. And we don’t have alternate systems right now other than law enforcement. If someone is harmed right now, the only number that I can call is 911. I can’t access a credible messenger. I can’t access a community paramedic. I can’t access non-traditional mental health workers who can deescalate or support someone who’s having a mental health crisis. So we have to talk about the systems that we have today, but we also need to recognize that police don’t prevent violence, police respond to violence.

So we’ve talked about the need to reform the criminal justice system. I’d like to pivot and talk about the ways that your field needs to reform going forward. How do researchers need to change in order to stay relevant and to pursue an agenda that’s truly responsive to the problems on the ground?

I’ll start with policing because that’s where we just left off. There are communities of color that have for decades said the police do not keep us safe. We have ignored that. And even today in the conversations around what we do about policing, we’re continuing to ignore a non-trivial percentage of the population that are saying these people that you keep sending my way don’t help me feel safe and they actually cause more harm. Ignoring those voices is effectively saying we don’t value you in the same way that we value these other voices that say keep sending the police. That has to change. True equity means everyone’s life has equal value. We need to recognize that we have not valued a large number of people in our community. There are a number of researchers who have been centering community voices, but the field overall has not. And there are a number of reasons why that may be true. The ivory tower is a barrier in and of itself. There is also the fact that we have focused on criminal justice outcomes, as they relate to violence prevention, rather than on health and wellbeing. If all we’re doing is looking at whether the homicide numbers went up or down, then we’re not thinking about the societal costs of the interventions.  

There’s also a problem with one- or two-year grant cycles. Some of the problems we are dealing with are decades in the making. We’re not going to solve these problems with some quick studies and some quick intervention. So we need to have long-term investments in longitudinal studies that allow for community-based, community-driven strategies to gain footing, to have growing pains, and to really support the community in ways that are healing and transformative. We also need to be investing in researchers who are engaging in community-based, participatory research that is not just extracting information from the community or studying individuals in the community as subjects.

One of the things I have learned from doing community-based work is that communities don’t speak with one voice. Within any given community, you’ve got people who hate the police. And you’ve got people who want more police. So engaging the community is not a simple matter because the community is not going to speak uniformly about issues like safety and policing that are incredibly complicated. In the desire to listen to the folks who say “The police aren’t making me safe,” we shouldn’t compound the error by ignoring those who say, “The police do make me safe.”

Absolutely. It’s messy like democracy is messy. But we have to give equal voice and equal attention to the many different voices in our community and the values that they’re expressing, presuming that these are anti-racist and equitable values that they’re expressing. As it relates to research, it takes time to do community-based participatory research.

I’m hopeful that for the first time, we will have large-scale investments at the federal level into communities, specifically for violence prevention that doesn't look like more law enforcement, more punishment, more oppression.

It takes time to engage communities in a meaningful way. If people are saying, “I absolutely want the police,” we need to be asking them what they are getting from that safety and have an honest conversation about that, but we cannot ignore the people who say, “The police don’t keep me safe.”

Are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic as you look to the next year or two in terms of gun violence? You started off by saying that you were attracted to this field, at least in part, because you saw that some victims got more attention than others. Arguably we’re seeing that dynamic play out right now with a lot of attention to recent shootings in Boulder and Atlanta and not so much attention to the more quotidian victims of violence in places like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.

Unfortunately, it feels like we haven’t learned lessons from last year. If you look at Atlanta and Boulder, I already know more about the victims in Boulder than I know about the victims in Atlanta.

Why is that? I don’t hear the media talking about that. I don’t hear them talking about the 15 people shot at a pop-up party in Chicago last weekend, or the five people shot in Philadelphia over this weekend. The mass shooting conversation that’s happening right now is maddening to me because the definition that is being used—four or more killed when the shooter is perceived to be a stranger—erases the trauma that is experienced from shootings that don’t meet this criteria. When multiple people are shot in any given experience, regardless if four or more die, the experience of everybody involved is not trivial. It matters. There needs to be attention and resources placed there. I’ve been disheartened by the way the last couple of weeks have played out in the media. The shootings in Atlanta and Boulder have just dwarfed the conversation about community violence. 

But there are glimmers of hope. There are conversations happening at the federal level with both the White House and Congress around investing in community violence prevention. I’m hopeful that for the first time, we will have large-scale investments at the federal level into communities, specifically for violence prevention that doesn’t look like more law enforcement, more punishment, more oppression.

Different cities around the country are thinking about how to do safety differently. How do we actually invest in people’s safety rather than invest in their failure? It gives me hope. I’m hopeful that we can continue to think more broadly about what safety looks like, who deserves to be safe, and how we hold everyone accountable for wrongdoing, including those who were supposed to be in charge of making policy that keeps us safe.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.

“We’re Losing a Sense of Accountability”: A Conversation with Richard Aborn

By Greg Berman

Richard M. Aborn has been a player in the New York City criminal justice world since 1979, when he began his legal career as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. In the 1990s, Aborn served as president of Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) and the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, using these platforms to advance gun control legislation. In 2009, he ran unsuccessfully for Manhattan District Attorney.

Aborn currently serves as the president of the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization that works with law enforcement, government agencies, community-based organizations, and academia to improve public safety through innovation. He is a managing partner of the law firm Constantine Cannon.

Much of Aborn’s work over the years has focused on reforming the New York City Police Department. In 1999, he was commissioned to conduct an investigation of the NYPD’s disciplinary system, as well as its response to civilian complaints of misconduct. He was also commissioned to investigate the NYPD’s disciplinary decisions concerning the officers involved in the 1999 fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo. 

As he surveys the current landscape, Aborn is deeply concerned about the rising levels of violence in New York City—and the negative impact of the movement to defund the police.

This At the Crossroads conversation between Aborn and Greg Berman, the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, is framed around two inter-related crises now facing New York City: the urgent need to improve both public safety and police legitimacy. The discussion, which took place in mid-April, has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Greg Berman: We’ve gotten to a point where no one really denies that there is a problem of increased violence in New York. But we’re now dealing with a war of competing narratives about how to explain the increase in violence. I’m hoping that you can help me parse the conflicting stories. You’ve got Mayor Bill de Blasio blaming the courts. You’ve got the NYPD pinning it on too much criminal justice reform. You’ve got the advocacy community saying, “Don’t even suggest that bail legislation was responsible.” You’ve got everyone pointing the finger at COVID. What’s your sense of what’s really going on out there?

The expression that we have a ‘problem’ with violence is really an understatement. I think we are now getting close to a crisis of violence. It is obviously well past a blip.

Richard Aborn: Nothing like starting out with an easy question. First of all, I think the expression that we have a “problem” with violence is really an understatement. I think we are now getting close to a crisis of violence. It is obviously well past a blip. The current trend is exceeding the trend from last year, which was already a sharp reversal of the declines from previous periods. So I think we’re in a crisis moment, and I’m very worried about it.

The truth of the matter is that no one knows what the real cause of the rise in violence is. It probably has multiple causes. In thinking about the rise in crime, one needs to go back to mid-2019, so that’s pre-pandemic. And we begin to see some uptick in serious crimes. Not a sharp rise, but a definite rise. That uptick comes down when we go into lockdown and then goes right back up as we start to come out of lockdown in mid-2020. And then we get these terrible shootings that start, which continue unabated, and in fact are increasing to this day.

The bulk of the conversation about criminal justice in New York City in recent years has been about much-needed reforms—what laws are we getting rid of, how are we reining in police behavior, what cases shouldn’t be prosecuted, where is jail no longer being imposed? All of these reforms are geared towards de-emphasizing the involvement of the criminal justice system. Now a lot of that is very healthy, but what I’m concerned about is whether this de-emphasis on accountability has signaled that we’re taking our foot off the gas on violent crime. If you commit violent crimes, the system should respond.

We have lost some of that, both in reality and in the narrative. And I think that’s one of the things that’s leading to the rise in crime. This goes back to 2018 when we started decriminalizing marijuana, de-emphasizing quality-of-life enforcement, talking about bail reform, closing Rikers…. We did all of these things which sent a message of decreased accountability. If one believes in deterrence theory, in essence, it means you believe that people engage in a risk analysis before they commit crime: “Is there a high likelihood that I’m going to be apprehended and punished if I engage in criminality?”

Two of the people that I’ve talked to so far for this series, Jeffrey Butts and Marlon Peterson, are very dismissive of the idea that people on the street are making the kind of nuanced calculation that you just described. Are people really saying to themselves, “Oh, I wasn’t going to carry a gun, but I just read in the New York Times that bail reform passed, so now I’m going to carry a gun”?

I think that the would-be offending population is actually quite aware of what’s going on. We do know from the research that visible policing can act as a deterrent to crime. If visible policing does act as a deterrent, that reinforces the notion that if people perceive the risk of apprehension, they’re not going to engage in criminality. Why do they perceive the risk of apprehension? Because they see cops out there doing their job. My worry now is that we’re focused strictly on reforms, plenty of which I’ve supported and many of which are very necessary, but some of which go too far. I think we’re losing a sense of accountability.

Is the 2019 bail legislation an example of a reform that goes too far?

Some of the problems with that particular piece of legislation have already been fixed, but I think one of the big mistakes we made was not giving judges discretion to consider dangerousness to the community, as is done in the federal system. I think that part of the bail statute needs to be amended. The bail reform discussion is a classic example of what I’m talking about. Because I think a lot of people perceive that there’s no longer bail for any offense, that you just get arrested and you get released. I think that’s a common understanding.

Violent crime is now reaching a crisis level. I’m using the word “crisis” with precision. People are becoming very alarmed about the rise in violence.

One of the narratives out there is that what we’re seeing is the consequence of police retreating from proactive policing. Do you think that’s a factor in the rise in violence?

Virtually every time we’ve seen an uptick in crime, we hear this argument. And the true answer is that, I don’t know. I don’t know if the cops are pulling back or not. But let’s be honest, the police have been the target of an enormous campaign against them. The New York City Council is trying to make their job harder to do. There’s been a big effort to undermine their funding. Whether that is right or wrong, the police are going to personalize that. They’re human beings. We see record numbers of senior officers leaving the NYPD in droves. That’s a big problem. The experience is going out the door. It’s happening because cops are getting fed up with the amount of abuse they’re taking. 

Parenthetically, I should say that the cops have brought some of this on themselves. The cops need to change their behavior. I have no doubt about that. But at some point, the cops are going to say, “Enough is enough.” I mean, how much abuse can they take? Does that result in a slow down? It could.

You ran for Manhattan District Attorney a few years ago. I’m sure that you are following the current race for DA closely. I’m curious whether you share my sense that crime has not been a major issue in either the DA race or in the mayoral race thus far.

I think that would have been a fair characterization at the beginning of these races. But I think there is a shift taking place.Violent crime is now reaching a crisis level. I’m using the word “crisis” with precision. People are becoming very alarmed about the rise in violence. As we are having this discussion, we are now into our fifth week of a mass shooting having occurred in each of the preceding five weeks. And we’re doing this on the 14th anniversary of the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where some 32 people were killed. So the violence is very much in the air now, and I think you see a shift taking place among some of the candidates, both at the mayoral level and at the DA level, because people are getting very worried. 

I speak with a lot of the mayoral candidates and their staff and a lot of the DA candidates. Not all, but a lot of them. And I do detect a change in their attitude. I get more and more questions about how to respond to the sharp rise in violence. People are asking whether we have gone too far with reforms, whether we’ve gone too far with cutting back on cops. I’m getting many more of those questions now than I was getting three or four months ago.

Some of the criminal justice system’s most vocal critics don’t believe that we should be turning to police to help curb violence. Do you think that there is a role for the police to play in addressing violence?

One hundred percent. I think they’re the first line of defense. They absolutely have a role. If we’re talking about responding to violent incidents and trying to deter violence, of course they have a role. Do they have the sole role? No. I think the responsibility for curbing violence is a city function and that all of the relevant city agencies need to be involved with that, not just the police. But I do think the police will continue to have the primary role for the foreseeable future. I think we need to think about how we structure the police. I think that needs to undergo significant reform. But I really don’t see the police being taken out of this role.

My read of the research is that the evidence is pretty strong that proactive policing makes a difference. Do you have a different take on the research?

Neighborhoods want cops, they understand the safety that comes from having cops, but they want much more respectful policing to address things like bias and over-aggressiveness.

Not at all. I think the research around visible policing, hot-spot policing, and precision policing all show effectiveness. But I think the second layer to the conversation has to be asking the question: How much harm is done in the execution of what the police do? And I think that’s where we’ve gone astray. The NYPD generally gets pretty high marks for helping with violence, but very low marks on bias questions. And I think that’s the problem we need to address. As I move around different communities, I don’t hear a big cry to get police out of neighborhoods. What I hear is that neighborhoods want cops, they understand the safety that comes from having cops, but they want much more respectful policing to address things like bias and over-aggressiveness.

So let’s pivot and talk a little bit about the challenges of police legitimacy. What are the signs that indicate to you that there is a crisis of legitimacy for police right now?

I’ve been saying now for close to a year that we’re experiencing twin crises. We have a crisis of rising violence and a crisis of legitimacy. That’s a toxic mix. The political manifestation of the crisis of legitimacy is when the New York City Council starts to defund the NYPD. They’re doing that because the police have lost their legitimacy with the public—

Let me just interrupt you there. The political class in our city has shifted to the left, and the movement to reduce the budget of the police is one indication of that. But I have some questions about how much the opinions of the general public have actually shifted on this issue. 

Well, one can only know the answer to that question at the next election—or by very astute polling. But what we do know is that elected officials generally engage in conduct that they believe is reflective of the desires of their constituencies. So at the very least, I think [the Council’s move to reduce the budget of the police] is reflective of where some people are.

Biden coming into office has created space, because the president's been saying ... that we have to engage in reforms, but we're not throwing out the cops while doing it.

I think the position of the public keeps shifting because of the rise in violence. I don’t think that the public dislikes or rejects the police as much as the actions of the City Council would indicate. But I do think there’s deep concern within communities about police legitimacy, and that’s being reflected. Political leadership will respond to the loudest voices. And the loudest voices right now are all about denigrating the ability of the police department to do the work that it needs to do. 

There’s no question that until relatively recently, there’s been a bit of a binary in the public dialogue: Either you’re pro-cop or you’re anti-cop. There hasn’t been the room to say that there are reforms that are very needed while still arguing that there’s a legitimate role for police. I think that window is now opening up, which is healthy. I find reporters asking more balanced questions. And I notice more and more of what they’re printing tends to be a little more balanced. I also think, frankly, that Biden coming into office has created space, because the president’s been saying what many of us have been saying, which is that we have to engage in reforms, but we’re not throwing out the cops while doing it.

One of things that the NYPD is famous for is CompStat, their computerized system that uses data to identify problem areas and promote precinct-level accountability. Is CompStat part of the solution or part of the problem when it comes to the crisis of police legitimacy?

When it was first introduced, CompStat really was a game-changer. When Commissioner [William] Bratton came in, he understood that centralizing power at police headquarters was not an effective way to control crime in the streets. Instead, he sought to empower precinct captains who knew their own crime patterns best and give them control over the deployment of their own resources. CompStat became the way to recognize crime patterns but also to hold police leaders accountable for the extra authority they had been given. So yes, they had been given much more authority, but they were then held accountable for getting results. CompStat became a way of creating a results-driven organization.

CompStat is one of the best ways to drive change, but it’s got to be measuring actual activity that’s taking place. CompStat can be a way of articulating the values of a police agency by articulating what it’s going to measure. In policing, the famous mantra, “inspect what you expect,” reigns supreme.

I've long been a proponent of expanding the metrics so that the police department measures the things that we really want police to do to build legitimacy … And I don't believe that's being done, at least not in any systematic way.

So would your argument be that we need to change what the NYPD is counting?

I’ve been saying that for years. Metrics are very important in policing. Policing agencies are quasi-military organizations. The cops are going to do what you ask them to do. If you measure the number of summonses, arrests, et cetera, that’s what you’re going to get. I’ve long been a proponent of expanding the metrics so that the police department measures the things that we really want police to do to build legitimacy. Things such as positive interactions with the public, the ability to de-escalate conflicts, and the ability to engage in developing joint remedial plans with neighborhood leadership, et cetera, et cetera. We need to develop metrics that allow the department to take into account those sorts of police activities in addition to measuring the more traditional things that the department looks at. And I don’t believe that’s being done, at least not in any systematic way.

You’ve written recently about the differences between having a police force and a police service. If the NYPD were to become a police service, what would the implications be out on the street?

I think it could be huge. At the core of converting from a police force to a police service lie two notions. One, that policing agencies should be much more service-oriented, and secondly, that we need to change the composition of who we are recruiting into the agency. In a police service, in addition to looking for enforcers, we would also recruit people that have a variety of skills that are very relevant to urban policing. We would look to bring in people that understand conflict resolution, that have training in de-escalation, that understand family dynamics. We would bring in people that have mental health backgrounds. We would bring in people that understand urban architecture. We would bring people that have social work backgrounds. We would bring in skills that are much more people-centric, much more focused around resolving issues rather than strictly enforcement. 

The reason that I think that would have a beneficial impact is that we know from data that training around police bias can impact the knowledge that police have towards bias, but that it doesn’t necessarily change behavior. What does change behavior is facilitating positive interaction between different groups, in this case, the police and communities of color. In the model that I’m proposing, you’d have much more interaction in a much more positive way. We know the same thing about aggressiveness: The more you interact with a given group, the less likely you are to be aggressive with that group.

There are long-term issues that the police can't address. They can't fix housing. They can’t fix the schools. But there are short-term issues which the police can be trained to identify and then act as a coordinating agency to bring in the other agencies of government.

The third piece, which is premature to move forward at the moment because there is so much concern about the cops, is that I would also get the police more focused on prevention. Of all the agencies of city government, the police probably have the most consistent and in-depth look at the issues that are driving crime. Why? Because they’re responding to them day in and day out. And they are interfacing with individuals that commit crimes and with the families that those individuals come from, on a daily basis. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched a notion for police to begin exploring the short-term drivers of crime. The causes of crime are embedded in deep, long-term social issues: homelessness, food insecurity—

Pause there for a second. I hear versions of this argument a lot—that what causes crime is poverty. But we’ve just undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 30 years in New York. Public safety has improved dramatically during those years, but we haven’t made significant progress in reducing poverty. Does that complicate the idea that what’s driving criminal behavior is poverty?

I think if you look at where crime is coming from in New York, it tends to be the more impoverished areas. So I believe there’s absolutely some connection [between crime and poverty]. You have youth that have suffered deep trauma because of the violence they have seen. You have schools where there is violence and instability. You have acute joblessness and an acute lack of hope.

I don’t disagree with any of that. But I guess I am skeptical about the notion that we can’t make a meaningful dent in crime unless and until we somehow magically transform society and end racism and poverty and a host of other ills.

That’s good, because if you did believe that, you’d be wrong. Over the last 20 years, we have sustained reductions in crime through some very tough economic conditions in New York. What I’m suggesting is that there are two levels. There are long-term issues that the police can’t address. They can’t fix housing. They can’t fix the schools. But there are short-term issues which the police can be trained to identify and then act as a coordinating agency to bring in the other agencies of government.

Do you worry that the vision you’re articulating can be read as essentially expanding the remit of the police at a moment when many people want to defund the agency?

That’s exactly why I say it’s premature right now. But what we have failed to wrestle with is that no matter how many reforms we do, the cops are still going to be there. We’re not going to disband the police department. I’m sorry, that’s just not going to happen. So we really better focus on how police agencies are structured, because if we don’t do that, I promise you, ten years from now, we’ll be having this exact same conversation.

I’m somewhat optimistic that in the next few years we will see a bunch of criminal justice reforms put in place. I think that we’ll see significant movement toward improving police practice and shrinking the negative footprint of the police. But I guess my concern is that many people will look at this as a failure, because it will read as incremental reform rather than transformative change.

I think there’s another factor that will be part of the calculus about whether we succeed or not and whether your optimism is warranted.It is not happenstance that all the efforts that we’re currently experiencing around police reform have occurred at a moment when crime was at a record low.It’s not a coincidence. What I’m concerned about is that many of the good reforms that we’re putting into place will be lost if violent crime continues unabated. I think you will then see a backlash and we could see many of the reforms reversed. Already the number of people that are getting bail instead of being released on violent offenses is going up.

But given your concern that bail reform went too far, wouldn’t your argument be that this increase is appropriate?

I’m not knocking the increase. If people are getting bail in appropriate violent offenses, I don’t have a problem with that. But people are saying we should get as few people at Rikers as possible. What I’m saying is that you can’t achieve that if violent crime continues to go up. What happens with violent crime over the next three or four years will have a lot to do with setting the pathway forward. 

What’s been lost in the public debate, because we have very short memories, is that, because of the good work of groups like the one you used to lead [the Center for Court Innovation], and numerous other nonprofit organizations, going into 2019, we had record low numbers of arrests in the city of New York, record low numbers of people at Rikers, and record low numbers of state prisoners. All of the data was trending in the right direction. Cooperation between the cops and the community was going up. The neighborhood policing program was catching on. Contrary to all expectations, cops were applying to be in that program. Things were really going in the right direction, and then it just blew up. We’re now a full year into rapidly rising violent crime. Right now, violent crime is up 20% over last year, and last year was up 50% over the previous year.

[Do] people perceive that the criminal justice system writ large—police, prosecution, courts—is responding in the way it should. Or has accountability been lost?

What do you think is the biggest misconception that the public or the media has about the uptick in violence in New York City?

I don’t think they have a misconception. I think they are perceiving the uptick quite accurately. We see crime rising on the subways. We see numerous more cases of shots being fired. The murder rate is rising. People are also correctly perceiving that we’re seeing a record number of illegal guns being seized in the city. Now does that mean there are a record number of illegal guns in the city, or is it just that more guns are being seized? We don’t know. But we do know that 2020 was a record year for gun sales nationwide, and generally as gun sales go up, we see more illegal guns in New York. And 2021 is continuing to see that record rise in the sale of guns. So that’s a big issue. I think people are correctly perceiving all of that. I think the question around correct perception is whether or not people perceive that the criminal justice system writ large—police, prosecution, courts—is responding in the way it should. Or has accountability been lost? I think you’re seeing a rise in the sense that people can act with impunity in New York. And that’s problematic, but that’s something that can be reversed.

I think there’s a social justice analysis, which I largely buy into, that argues that the criminal justice system has been a tool of oppression against Black people in this country, that it has been the sharp end of the stick enforcing an unjust social order. I also think there’s a lot of truth to the argument that there are conditions in the world—poverty, racism, mental illness and such—that contribute to criminal behavior. And then there’s the reality of the criminal justice system, which operates on a case-by-case basis, having to assess the criminal responsibility of each individual defendant. And I feel like those two things are in tension with each other. We are asking those within the criminal justice system to hold individuals to account, but also keep in the back of their mind these larger systemic issues. How should the history of racism in this country—or the fact that, through no fault of their own, some people are poorly educated or come from dysfunctional families—how should that influence the individual cop’s behavior on the street, the individual prosecutor’s decision whether to bring a case, and the individual judge’s decision about whether to detain a defendant?

You know, I actually don’t think they’re in tension. I believe that a system that is perceived as being just, transparent, and legitimate is a system that will be more highly respected and will encourage greater compliance with the law. I think when the system is perceived as being unfair and unjust, you see increased levels of criminality.

The more we can filter out racism in policing and the criminal justice system, the fairer the system will be both in reality and in perception. The more we can inject legitimacy and transparency into the system, the more the system will be accepted.

You’ve talked about the need for people to understand that they can’t act with impunity. But there are many who believe that any administration of punishment is essentially racist. Maybe I’m caricaturing this argument slightly. But only slightly. I do think there are many people who feel that if the system administers a punishment, that it’s doing a moral wrong.

If that’s what they’re really saying, then I sharply disagree. I understand the notion that a history of racism and injustice undermines the moral integrity of the system. The challenge is to address racism and restore justice. I think it’s very important for people to understand that bad acts have consequences; accountability is important. I think that’s a fundamental precept in keeping order in a society. Consequences must be proportional, swift, evenly applied, and hopefully remedial. Prison should be a very last resort, reserved only for those where necessary. Consequences must be administered in a fair and just manner, without regard to race. The more we can filter out racism in policing and the criminal justice system, the fairer the system will be both in reality and in perception. The more we can inject legitimacy and transparency into the system, the more the system will be accepted. That in turn makes the individual administration of justice easier to do. I think the effort to instill justice, legitimacy, and transparency into the system reinforces the ability to treat individual cases individually and fairly. The justice system really should be about individual rights and individual responsibility. Decisions should be made on an individual basis. If we’re starting to make those decisions because of fear of political repercussions or out of a desire to be politically correct, then we’re undermining fundamental justice.

Does how government discusses public safety impact public safety?

One last question: Are there areas where you think we need more information, more data, more research? If you had an army of criminologists at your disposal, where would you point them?

We started this conversation by talking about competing narratives. I’m fascinated with the intersection between narrative and crime. I think one of the interesting areas for someone to do some really good research is to start exploring more precisely the connections between narrative and rises or falls in crime. Put slightly differently, does how government discusses public safety impact public safety? For instance, in a time of heightened focus on reform and curtailing police activity, if government rhetoric is exclusively around reform and the ills being addressed by the reforms, and neglects to also discuss that, simultaneously, government is keeping a sharp focus on violent crime, does this negatively impact public safety? In my view, we’ve lost some of the foundations of deterrence, but the research around deterrence is mixed. Deterrence is based on a high likelihood of apprehension, i.e., the police doing their job, the certainty of prosecution, the administration of firm and swift justice. Not an emphasis on severity, but an emphasis on swiftness and certainty. We’ve lost some of that. What impact does that have on crime? I’d like to know the answer. If the way we narrate criminal justice policy has an impact on criminal behavior, we really need to understand that, and we need to make sure that we create narratives that have the highest likelihood of both serving justice and increasing public safety.

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Greg Berman is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. He previously served as the executive director of the Center for Court Innovation for 18 years. His most recent book is Start Here: A Road Map to Reducing Mass Incarceration (The New Press).

Views expressed are the participants’ own and not necessarily those of The Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.