This article was originally posted on August 15, 2025, as a weekly editorial on LeftLinks by its editor Carl Davidson and is cross-posted to The Rag Blog.
Whenever I hear politicians, especially those like President Donald Trump and his MAGA wannabes, talk about “war on crime” and “letting the police do their job,” my muscles tighten and fists clench. I’m ready to rumble. They have no idea what they’re talking about, save for dead ends that would make matters worse. In a fair debate, I would mop the floor with them.
I’ll start with a short story. I was chatting with a Beaver County DA a few years back, he was an FDR liberal of sorts, who has since passed on. I asked him one day if he saw a connection between the unemployment rate and the arrest rate here locally. He laughed softly and said he kept two charts on his office wall, with the numbers of each, which he updated regularly. “What did they show?” I asked. ‘They match exactly,” he replied, “But too many lack the will or the ideas to do anything about it.”
My lawyer friend had a point. First, we need the will to name and confront the problem as it’s perceived by those who live it. Using statistics of positive change starts on the wrong foot. Second, we need ideas about what to do, and we need to dump some bad ideas along the way.
Which leads to another story. For five years, I worked in a Chicago jobs program I had designed for “at-risk” youth — computer repair and network installation. I ran it successfully in five tough Chicago public high schools. The principals gave me a big room, and I brought boxes of screwdrivers and truckloads of donated older computers. I told the kids:
“You can’t steal anything here. You wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But if you can get one of these computers to work, it’s yours. You can take it home with you. And I’ll teach you how to do it, and more. The most crucial product in this class is going to be what’s between your ears, the skills you gain. Computers that work and good spare parts are just byproducts.”
It was a solid success, and one special group heard about it and approached me separately. They were all ex-offenders, recently out of prison. “If we found the space and some funds, could you do this for us, for ex-offenders and some inmates on work release?” I agreed and worked with them for five years, too.
We talked about everything during the classes. 0ne day I dropped the phrase, “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” One guy smiled and said, “They don’t get it, not at all.” “What do you mean,” I asked? “Nearly everyone you put in jail will come out some day. It may be five years, seven, or whatever. But nearly all of us come back out. They give us a new suit of clothes, a state I.D. card, a bus ticket to wherever ‘home’ is, and $50. Now think about it. I’m back in the ‘hood’ with less than $50 to buy food. What am I going to do in order to survive?”
“But here’s the next question,” he continued. “What if I were an 18-year-old kid who highjacked a car and got caught, and was sentenced to five years? The reality of most prisons is harsh and stark. This young kid will get nothing in the way of what you’re doing here. First, he’ll be brutalized and hardened. Then he’ll join a prison gang for defense.”
“So he will also learn new skills on how to be a better criminal. Then he gets dumped on the street with his bus ticket. Hardly anyone will hire him for a regular job. Some of his family won’t want to deal with him, either. So he hooks up with the “outside” version of the gang he had joined in prison, and he’ll start at the bottom, finding a corner to sell drugs on the street.
War on crime? In prison, we don’t fight crime. We create schools and conditions to create more and better criminals.
That’s why we laugh at “throwing away the key.” Unless you’re a mass murderer, that key is going to let you out as a new and better criminal in a few years. They want to get tougher, more brutal? They can do that. But what does it produce? A tougher and more brutal criminal.
Not all prisons are simply bleak. Some have decent libraries, where you can study to be a jailhouse lawyer or a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Christian minister. (I know one guy who did all four). In maintaining the physical plant and structure of the prison itself — a much-desired prison job — some will learn carpentry, sheet metal, and plumbing skills.
But prisons can all be judged most of all by one number, the “recidivism rate,” or what percentage of ex-offenders return in a few years. In today’s U.S. prisons, recidivism rates remain high, specifically within three years of release, approximately 66% of state prisoners are rearrested, and within 10 years, that number rises to 82%.
Those in my program did a little better: 33%, or one out of three, were soon back in the joint. I couldn’t teach them everything they needed, especially what was termed “soft skills,” such as how to behave at an interview, what to do if someone insults or assaults you on the job, how to behave with women, and so on.
This is a good place to bring up a touchy problem. Nearly 70% of Black children in the U.S. grow up in single-parent homes, a rate higher than any other racial or ethnic group, although the problem is rising for all groups. When we think about it, we’re a society conducting one of the most radical experiments in human history: raising multiple generations of subaltern youth without fathers. At this point, some will say this is an attack on Black mothers, and a few will carry through with the argument.
But they would be wrong. Given the resources they have, Black mothers, aunts, and grandmothers do incredible jobs at keeping families together, getting kids through school and church, and finding sports coaches, church workers, and other mentors. Nonetheless, no matter how well a mother has instilled productive skills and decent values, there comes a time in the lives of young males when they will look for male heroes and role models. Sports coaches can do amazing jobs, as do hip hop musicians and other artists. All these are powerful forces diverting young men from the “Gangsta path,” the “school-to-prison” pipeline.
At the bottom of this situation is something everyone knows, but not much is done about. The attorney mentioned in my opening got part of it. There is a reason that crime rates are highest in and around the poorest and least resourced neighborhoods in our inner cities. Poverty is a major factor causing crime, and a lack of adequate schools and community services makes it challenging to do what’s needed to reverse it.
Here’s also something nearly everyone knows, even if they are afraid to say it out loud. Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military in major cities and taking over their police departments will do next to nothing to change the underlying causes of both poverty and crime. Trump has let everyone know, at many of his rallies, what he thinks will end crime: suspend everyone’s rights, take restrictions off police, and let them crack heads open and fill the jails. We have already exposed that as fascist folly.
Now, Trump wants the National Guard to instill greater fear along the same lines. U.S. police are at least somewhat trained in de-escalating street problems, even if they are lax in using these skills. But at every boot camp, it’s drilled into soldiers that they are being trained to do two things: kill people and break things. Our soldiers, at least many of them, have better sense regarding how to avoid such situations. In Los Angeles, they became good at “standing around” until their superiors saw the light and sent them back home or took them to their bases.
Trump’s current effort to “solve the city’s problems with homeless camps” gets to the heart of what’s happening. D.C. has around 6,000 homeless individuals, but not enough beds or other facilities to help many of them. It should be obvious that what they need most is housing and work. But Trump won’t even come close to that. He’ll have his Guards and the police destroy their tent camps, round them up, and move them outside the District or put them in jail. Then he’ll brag about how he “solved” homelessness — and too few will call out how ridiculous the claim is.
Here’s the bottom line: what Trump is doing in D.C. is spectacle. It’s nasty political theater designed to get us warmed up for all-around fascism. Young people in D.C. are already gathering on sidewalks to denounce it. We should join them. It’s a decadent show coming to your town soon.
[All LeftLinks editorials, unless otherwise designated, express the views of its editor, Carl Davidson, and not necessarily any organizations he is connected with. Davidson is a long-time left-wing activist and was a pioneer of the Sixties New Left.He is an occasional guest on Rag Radio.]
CARL DAVIDSON / COMMENTARY / Trump as big-city crimefighter?
Cartoon courtesy of LeftLinks.
By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / August 15, 2025
This article was originally posted on August 15, 2025, as a weekly editorial on LeftLinks by its editor Carl Davidson and is cross-posted to The Rag Blog.
Whenever I hear politicians, especially those like President Donald Trump and his MAGA wannabes, talk about “war on crime” and “letting the police do their job,” my muscles tighten and fists clench. I’m ready to rumble. They have no idea what they’re talking about, save for dead ends that would make matters worse. In a fair debate, I would mop the floor with them.
I’ll start with a short story. I was chatting with a Beaver County DA a few years back, he was an FDR liberal of sorts, who has since passed on. I asked him one day if he saw a connection between the unemployment rate and the arrest rate here locally. He laughed softly and said he kept two charts on his office wall, with the numbers of each, which he updated regularly. “What did they show?” I asked. ‘They match exactly,” he replied, “But too many lack the will or the ideas to do anything about it.”
My lawyer friend had a point. First, we need the will to name and confront the problem as it’s perceived by those who live it. Using statistics of positive change starts on the wrong foot. Second, we need ideas about what to do, and we need to dump some bad ideas along the way.
Which leads to another story. For five years, I worked in a Chicago jobs program I had designed for “at-risk” youth — computer repair and network installation. I ran it successfully in five tough Chicago public high schools. The principals gave me a big room, and I brought boxes of screwdrivers and truckloads of donated older computers. I told the kids:
“You can’t steal anything here. You wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But if you can get one of these computers to work, it’s yours. You can take it home with you. And I’ll teach you how to do it, and more. The most crucial product in this class is going to be what’s between your ears, the skills you gain. Computers that work and good spare parts are just byproducts.”
It was a solid success, and one special group heard about it and approached me separately. They were all ex-offenders, recently out of prison. “If we found the space and some funds, could you do this for us, for ex-offenders and some inmates on work release?” I agreed and worked with them for five years, too.
We talked about everything during the classes. 0ne day I dropped the phrase, “Lock ‘em up and throw away the key.” One guy smiled and said, “They don’t get it, not at all.” “What do you mean,” I asked? “Nearly everyone you put in jail will come out some day. It may be five years, seven, or whatever. But nearly all of us come back out. They give us a new suit of clothes, a state I.D. card, a bus ticket to wherever ‘home’ is, and $50. Now think about it. I’m back in the ‘hood’ with less than $50 to buy food. What am I going to do in order to survive?”
“But here’s the next question,” he continued. “What if I were an 18-year-old kid who highjacked a car and got caught, and was sentenced to five years? The reality of most prisons is harsh and stark. This young kid will get nothing in the way of what you’re doing here. First, he’ll be brutalized and hardened. Then he’ll join a prison gang for defense.”
“So he will also learn new skills on how to be a better criminal. Then he gets dumped on the street with his bus ticket. Hardly anyone will hire him for a regular job. Some of his family won’t want to deal with him, either. So he hooks up with the “outside” version of the gang he had joined in prison, and he’ll start at the bottom, finding a corner to sell drugs on the street.
War on crime? In prison, we don’t fight crime. We create schools and conditions to create more and better criminals.
That’s why we laugh at “throwing away the key.” Unless you’re a mass murderer, that key is going to let you out as a new and better criminal in a few years. They want to get tougher, more brutal? They can do that. But what does it produce? A tougher and more brutal criminal.
Not all prisons are simply bleak. Some have decent libraries, where you can study to be a jailhouse lawyer or a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Christian minister. (I know one guy who did all four). In maintaining the physical plant and structure of the prison itself — a much-desired prison job — some will learn carpentry, sheet metal, and plumbing skills.
But prisons can all be judged most of all by one number, the “recidivism rate,” or what percentage of ex-offenders return in a few years. In today’s U.S. prisons, recidivism rates remain high, specifically within three years of release, approximately 66% of state prisoners are rearrested, and within 10 years, that number rises to 82%.
Those in my program did a little better: 33%, or one out of three, were soon back in the joint. I couldn’t teach them everything they needed, especially what was termed “soft skills,” such as how to behave at an interview, what to do if someone insults or assaults you on the job, how to behave with women, and so on.
This is a good place to bring up a touchy problem. Nearly 70% of Black children in the U.S. grow up in single-parent homes, a rate higher than any other racial or ethnic group, although the problem is rising for all groups. When we think about it, we’re a society conducting one of the most radical experiments in human history: raising multiple generations of subaltern youth without fathers. At this point, some will say this is an attack on Black mothers, and a few will carry through with the argument.
But they would be wrong. Given the resources they have, Black mothers, aunts, and grandmothers do incredible jobs at keeping families together, getting kids through school and church, and finding sports coaches, church workers, and other mentors. Nonetheless, no matter how well a mother has instilled productive skills and decent values, there comes a time in the lives of young males when they will look for male heroes and role models. Sports coaches can do amazing jobs, as do hip hop musicians and other artists. All these are powerful forces diverting young men from the “Gangsta path,” the “school-to-prison” pipeline.
At the bottom of this situation is something everyone knows, but not much is done about. The attorney mentioned in my opening got part of it. There is a reason that crime rates are highest in and around the poorest and least resourced neighborhoods in our inner cities. Poverty is a major factor causing crime, and a lack of adequate schools and community services makes it challenging to do what’s needed to reverse it.
Here’s also something nearly everyone knows, even if they are afraid to say it out loud. Trump’s deployment of the U.S. military in major cities and taking over their police departments will do next to nothing to change the underlying causes of both poverty and crime. Trump has let everyone know, at many of his rallies, what he thinks will end crime: suspend everyone’s rights, take restrictions off police, and let them crack heads open and fill the jails. We have already exposed that as fascist folly.
Now, Trump wants the National Guard to instill greater fear along the same lines. U.S. police are at least somewhat trained in de-escalating street problems, even if they are lax in using these skills. But at every boot camp, it’s drilled into soldiers that they are being trained to do two things: kill people and break things. Our soldiers, at least many of them, have better sense regarding how to avoid such situations. In Los Angeles, they became good at “standing around” until their superiors saw the light and sent them back home or took them to their bases.
Trump’s current effort to “solve the city’s problems with homeless camps” gets to the heart of what’s happening. D.C. has around 6,000 homeless individuals, but not enough beds or other facilities to help many of them. It should be obvious that what they need most is housing and work. But Trump won’t even come close to that. He’ll have his Guards and the police destroy their tent camps, round them up, and move them outside the District or put them in jail. Then he’ll brag about how he “solved” homelessness — and too few will call out how ridiculous the claim is.
Here’s the bottom line: what Trump is doing in D.C. is spectacle. It’s nasty political theater designed to get us warmed up for all-around fascism. Young people in D.C. are already gathering on sidewalks to denounce it. We should join them. It’s a decadent show coming to your town soon.
[All LeftLinks editorials, unless otherwise designated, express the views of its editor, Carl Davidson, and not necessarily any organizations he is connected with. Davidson is a long-time left-wing activist and was a pioneer of the Sixties New Left. He is an occasional guest on Rag Radio.]