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Feb 15 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
So, first, it's important to always note that mental illness is much more a predictor of being the a than a victimizer.

And I do fear that our (often legitimate--I'll come back to that) cries of "mental illness" after a shocking murder can jeopardize the mentally ill.

BUT.
First, the reason we tend to react with "mental health" to shocking murders THAT GETS WIDESPREAD ATTENTION is bc... those murders likely often involve mental illness.

They're a small subset of murders vs. gang violence, domestic violence, etc.

But those don't get the coverage.
So some--much?--of the blame rests with our still-deeply problematic media coverage of crime, which highlights the shocking and rare, and is prone to try to wedge it all into crude (often moralistic) narratives.

Not reformers, rightly pointing out the issue.
Second, this is a transposed conditional.

It's true that most ppl with mental health problems don't commit murder: p(m|mh) ~ 0.

But still can be true that most media-getting shocking murders are committed by ppl with serious issues: p(mh|m) != p(m|mh).

Third, this isn't true. Last night I pointed to NY's Assisted Outpatient Treatment as how we should think about this.

It's not a new "thoughts and prayers." It's real policy. Tho policy that needs money: AOT has a budget of $25M, vs $2.5B for NYC jails.

The idea that those saying "think about treatment" are doing so bc they are afraid to say "lock them up" is a total strawman take on reform efforts, which consistently argue that locking people up generally makes things worse.

It's not posturing. Or some sort of groupthink fear.
Anyway, multiple things can be true at the same time:

1. The way we talk abt mental health post-violence surely DOES stigmatize mental health in bad ways.

2. Many cases actually DO implicate mental health issues, and should be addressed accordingly.
Just because it is a tough frame, and one that carries with it inescapable risks of error (as does a policy of NOT talking about mental health issues) does not mean it is not the right path forward.
I mean, exactly!

Ppl yell "mental health" bc... our failure to treat serious mental health issues was clearly a HUGE PART of what happened.

This isn't some sort of mindless anti-prison stance. It's strange to argue it is.

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More from @JohnFPfaff

John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 15
This, right here, is the opportunity cost issue of policing laid bare.

The best cost-benefit estimate of policing is ~1.6 to 1 ($1 in budget cuts crime costs by $1.60).

These behavioral interventions? 5-to-1 to 30-to-1.

Policing DOES work. But other stuff often works BETTER.
It's both bad on the facts and bad on the politics, I think, to yell "policing doesn't work!" It does, and everything thinks it does.

But might the extra dollar, especially now, do even more good if spent on something else? Almost certainly true.
Moreover, most of these interventions have unaddressed positive spillovers (slowing down thinking not only reduces crime, but likely makes all sorts of other decisions better).

And fewer downside risks (Becoming a Man can't execute no-knock warrants).
Read 10 tweets
John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 14
I'm always fascinated by the fact that private prisons--which hold ~8% of all people in prison--get SO much attention, while private policing gets comparatively almost none... even though we have MORE total private security (from mall cop to guys with guns) than public police.
Genuinely intrigued by the sorts of legal privatization that bother us vs those that don't.

And here?

Private security are likely MUCH more likely to create an entryway into the criminal legal system than private prisons (which just pop up at the end of public process).
I would also add that this throws a lot of our macro-level empirical research on policing into question. Private security are not randomly distributed, so omitting them from the measure of policing (which ~all models do) is... not at trivial issue.
Read 6 tweets
John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 14
Lopez was born in 1969, Affleck in 1972.

They are solidly, unequivocally Xers.

“Millennial” is NOT A SYNONYM FOR “NOT A BOOMER.”
Look, I know. I know. But there really was a cohort known as the Xers. I assure you, we actually exist.
I mean, EVERYONE is getting this wrong.
Read 8 tweets
John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 4
Many papers rely on how we randomly assign defendants to ADAs or judges who are systematically harsher or more lenient.

A troubling q.

If we randomly assign you to judges known to be harsher or less so, it’s ok.

If a judge flips a coin to be harsher, it violates due process.
But … why?

Why is one sort of randomness okay but another not?

In one case, a coin toss sends you to the consistently harsher judge.

In the other, a single judge’s harshness is determined by a coin toss.

What is the real difference?
There are superficial distinctions, sure. One is a judge consistently applying their ideology, the other is noise.

But, to the defendant? The one with the due process right? The result is basically the same.
Read 4 tweets
John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 3
Every now and then I just get this giant burst of frustrated amazement that SO much of law school, esp the 1L year, is still built almost exclusively around cases.

It's really bad, for a lot of reasons.
If nothing else, SO much of law these days is statutes and regulations.

And even the way more and more schools react to this is... not great. "Leg Reg"? It's a great idea (we have it), but... the framing.

It's its own special thing. Off to the side. One class.
We don't have a class on "Common Law." We call that Torts. And Property. And Contracts.

So it makes statutes and regulations seem like a speciality issue, not--as they actually are--the heart of the modern regulatory state's law.
Read 8 tweets
John Pfaff Profile picture
Feb 3
The London-Tokyo shift here is a great example of the sort of data change that can come abt for only two reasons:

1. Definitions change (Tokyo absorbs something, something secedes from London).

2. Something's wrong with the data.

Pop sizes can't jump like this "naturally."
In this case, something is wrong. Tokyo (and we'll come back in a second to what "Tokyo" and "London" even are) has been bigger than London before 2000.

At least based off these graphs, which track the numbers in the chart fairly closely. ImageImage
But any comparison between cities is hard, bc what do we count? As this Guardian piece shows, defining a "major city" is actually really hard: theguardian.com/cities/2015/fe…

What is included, what is excluded? It can really shape how we see things. ImageImage
Read 8 tweets

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