Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last two years, you’ve noticed that crime in America has exploded. We can blame Covid or gun laws or poverty, but what if this spike in crime was altogether predictable and preventable? Let me explain.

Back in 2020 when you and I were trying to find toilet paper and Chardonnay, America’s major cities turned into something out of a Marvel comic book. A recent study suggests a perfect storm occurred. As Covid forced many cities into lockdown, our politicians moved quickly to change public policy around incarceration. At the same time, calls for defunding the police reverberated across the US.

The immediate result was a shortage of police officers on the street. As a result, arrests in 2020 fell by 25%. This dramatic reduction in enforcement caused criminals to become more brazen. See, the bad guys are dumb but they aren’t stoopid. They quickly figure out that the rules have changed and they can get away with murder…literally. During a twelve month period in 2020, American jails reported 1.6 million fewer admissions.