In his younger and more vulnerable years, Jonah had a minor obsession with criminology (for no reason in particular, he says). Today, he rekindles that old passion by talking to Shawn Bushway, a scholar at the University at Albany and the RAND Corporation, about the history of crime in America. The pair begins by exploring whether crime is currently on the rise, before launching into a supremely wonky discussion of cities, statistics, and the root causes of criminal behavior. Is the broken windows theory on its way out? Has America made any real progress on race? And why are Democrats still talking about defunding the police?

Show Notes:

- Shawn’s page at RAND

- Racial disparities in criminal justice

- Is racial progress a myth?

- Trends and patterns in interracial marriage

- Marvin Wolfgang

- LBJ’s crime commission

- “The Racist Roots of Campus Policing”

- Only 25 percent of Americans favor decreased police spending

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