Ep 807 ｜ 'Loving the Foreigner' Means Opposing Illegal Immigration ｜ Guest： Barry Latzer
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 8 minutes
Words per Minute
151.97253
Summary
The immigration crisis and crime crisis in our country is creating a unstable, chaotic situation that most Americans really want to fix. So what is going on? What are the policies that are causing all of this and what can we do to fix it? We re going to go through everything that s happened in the past week or so since Title 42 has gone away, resulting in a surge of migrants at the southern border. But I m also going to talk to a crime expert, Barry Latzer, who has written several books on the criminal justice system in America. And he and I will also discuss the terrible story of Jordan Neely and now Daniel Penny, who is being charged with manslaughter for that whole subway debacle that we talked about a couple of weeks ago.
Transcript
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The immigration crisis and the crime crisis in our country is creating an unstable, chaotic
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situation that most Americans really want to fix.
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What are the policies that are causing all of this?
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We're going to go through everything that's happened in the past week or so since Title
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42 has gone away, resulting in a surge of migrants at the southern border, all the problems
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But I'm also going to talk to a crime expert, Barry Latzer.
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He's written several books on the criminal justice system in America.
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And we're going to take a look at that, a really fascinating look at that.
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And he's going to propose some very real, very viable solutions for how we can actually
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And he and I will also discuss this terrible story of Jordan Neely and now Daniel Penny,
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who is being charged with manslaughter for that whole subway debacle that we talked about
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So really important, really good episode that I think that you're going to learn a lot from.
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It's brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers, which is American meat delivered right
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Make sure you go back and listen to yesterday's episode, my interview with Holly Simon about
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the terrible tragedy that they had to endure at their family farm in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
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It might seem like a random local story that I'm telling you, but it really has bigger implications.
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We're talking about people's lives, so make sure that you contact the people that we gave
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you the contact information for to make sure that we ensure the resignation of Rita Watkins.
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It's just a way that we can share arrows with someone who shares our values and is seeking
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justice, not just for her family, but also seeking protection for her community.
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All right, today we are going to talk about this migrant crisis that is happening, much
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thanks to Biden's border policies or lack of border policies, and we're also going to
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talk about the problems within our criminal justice system with our guest.
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We're going to discuss the Jordan Neely situation, the former Marine, Daniel Penny, putting him in
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a headlock, accidentally killing him because Penny was, or because Neely was harassing the people
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So what led to then this former Marine being charged with manslaughter, facing 15 years
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of prison, while this guy who never should have been out of jail was free to harass people
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We're going to talk about the entire system that led to something like that and what the
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Then we'll get his insight a little bit on the history of immigration.
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But before we get into the criminal justice so-called conversation and the immigration conversation
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with Mr. Latzer, I did just want to give you an update, some stats, some recent stories
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about what is going on at our border, why this actually matters, and why this is one of
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those topics where the weaponization of toxic empathy can be really effective, I think, especially
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for Christian women who are just kind of, they decontextualize that verse that Christians should
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care for the, or that we should care for the foreigners, that we should care for the sojourners
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That, of course, is what Israel is told in the Old Testament by the Lord, but that is
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completely decontextualized from the rest of the policies that centered on migrants and
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foreigners and sojourners in ancient Israel, and also just ignores the truth of the dangers
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of illegal immigration and also just mass migration in general.
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It is not compassionate to be for liberal border policy.
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It is not compassionate to just say, yes, you should come to our country to have a better
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Because if you care about the cohesiveness, the stability of your country, which I believe
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that we are called to care about as people who love our neighbors, as people who have
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been providentially, purposely placed in the city, in the state, in the country in which
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we dwell, if we care about the stability of a country, we have to care about the sovereignty
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Because without sovereignty of a country, there is no legitimate basis for law enforcement.
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There's no legitimate basis for unique rights that are afforded to people because they are
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And if you don't have a nation, you have no entity that can actually keep you collectively
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No one looking out for the best interest of their constituents, of the people that they
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We read in Romans 13 that governments were actually put in place to be tools for good,
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There is a goodness and a righteousness in that, in these systems called governments and
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nations, which have to be held together by borders and sovereignty.
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So when you ignore that, when you let that fly out the window, you're not only lacking compassion
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for the people that you're incentivizing to come here in a very dangerous way and putting
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the people at the border, the American citizens at risk there.
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You are also forsaking God's good idea of nations and borders and people groups.
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So let's talk a little bit about what's going on.
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I think we covered it a little bit last week at the end of last week, that last Thursday,
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May 11th was the final day that Title 42 would be in effect.
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In effect, Title 42 was a holdover from President Trump's immigration policy that allowed officials
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to turn away migrants on public health emergency grounds during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Biden tried to end Title 42 last year, but Republicans sued him, arguing that the restrictions
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were necessary for border security and the courts ruled to keep it in place.
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But now that Biden has announced the end of national COVID-19 emergencies three years later,
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And I do wonder if that was actually why they got rid of the national COVID emergency policies,
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simply so they could have a basis for getting rid of Title 42 and allowing the surge of migrants.
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The AP reports that now there will be strict consequences for trying to cross illegally.
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They will not be allowed to return for five years.
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There are some reporters that have gotten some footage from the border,
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and they see these migrants coming in, and they are processed, and they're given these
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kind of court dates to say, yeah, you have to come back, and we'll process your request
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You're not an asylum seeker or refugee just because you're coming here for a better life.
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That could be a reason to try to legally migrate somewhere, but that's not a justification for
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being able to illegally cross into a place to try to seek some kind of refuge.
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Having a hard life is not a good enough reason to be able to come here just because you want to.
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So reporter Taylor Hanson, he has seen some of these documented, some of these court dates,
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these documents that these migrants are getting.
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They're also given a government-issued cell phone, and apparently it is pre-programmed
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with some kind of app that keeps track of them.
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I'm not sure how effective that is, but some of these court dates apparently are as late as 2027.
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And most of these people don't show up for their court dates, and there's no consequences,
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really, if you don't show up for your court dates.
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There's no guaranteed consequences, and so it's all just a joke.
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So here's a video of some of these migrants who just crossed the border saying that they
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need to be here for whatever reason, given these government-issued phones.
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This is also leading, as you can imagine, to an overcrowding of these migrant facilities.
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We saw that terrible story in Brownsville, Texas, a couple weeks ago, where there was someone who
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looked like a migrant himself. He was definitely Hispanic. I don't know what country he was a
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citizen of, but he took his car and he rammed through a group of migrants outside this migrant
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facility, killing several of them, including children. And part of this is because these
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places are just overwhelmed. I mean, they have so many migrants because these migrants are
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incentivized to come. They know that it's pretty easy to get over our border just because border
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security isn't well-funded and Biden isn't doing his part. So it's basically just Texas that's trying
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to hold the line here. And so this leads to all kinds of dangers. This leads to all kinds of poor
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health outcomes for these migrants who are here. So here's a video of a very overcrowded facility in
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El Paso. What do you notice about that, by the way? Those are all men, all grown men. Now, maybe this
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was just a, this is just a shot of where the men are. Maybe the men and women are separated. All of a
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difference between male and female when it comes to migrant facilities, but these are all grown men.
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They're not starving, clearly. They've got their clothes on. They've got their shoes on. They're
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ready to come into America because they claim that they need to be here. This also just, this picture
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alone just signifies one of the issues with mass migration is that these countries that they are
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fleeing from experience something called brain drain. And that is when all of the people with any means
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or any just kind of like mental coherence leave those countries to go to another country, making the
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countries that they leave even worse. I understand that El Salvador and Colombia aren't great places
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to live for a variety of reasons. El Salvador is trying to clean itself up right now with some tough
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crime policies. But I mean, that doesn't mean that these people have a right to come here. It also
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doesn't mean that it's actually beneficial for America or for the places that they're leaving. So
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it's just bad all around. Agents were told to begin releases in any areas holding facilities that were
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at 125% capacity. This is according to the AP or the average time in custody exceeded 60 hours. So they
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just have to be released. They were also told to start releasing these men, mostly men,
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of 7,000 migrants were taken into custody across the entire border in any one day. Like so you see that
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a Secretary Mayorkas who claims by the way that the border is totally secure, who claims that everything is
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fine. Like you see that they might have, they might have some kind of policies in place ostensibly, but
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they're all being any kind of security is being broken if these quotas are reached, which they are. These
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people, they hear about the policies in the United States and they come here based on how easy they
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think it's going to be to get across. And that's why we've seen such a surge since Biden became
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president because they don't care. They actually want this. They like this. They like the chaos. They
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like the reorganizing of cities. They like the change in demographics because they think that it's going
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to help them win more elections, either with integrity or not, and that it's going to help them
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achieve the agenda that they have. That's what it is. And so it's in part of it is because I, like I said,
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this kind of toxic, warped, dumb, fake empathy that makes people think that it's our responsibility
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to accept every single person in the world who wants to come here. No other country thinks that
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like you don't have a right to go to Zambia and to say, I'm just going to be here and take your
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resources and take your jobs. You don't have a right to go to other countries and do that. And
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like, we're okay with African countries, you know, kicking an American out who says that they're
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entitled to be there, but we're not okay with saying it when it comes to protecting our own sovereignty.
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So the memo that is calling for the release of these migrants, if these facilities, you know,
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reach the seven or reach the 125% capacity or whatever, it's called the parole with conditions
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practice. It's a process that's typically reserved for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public
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benefit. Um, but that is not really the justification that's going on here. That's not really
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applicable. And Stephen Miller is a senior advisor to president Trump. He's founder of America first
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legal. He was talking about this on Fox business last week, and he's big immigration hawk. He talks
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about this a lot. He, um, he talks about the Fox news report that they don't get an alien registration
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number. These people who were released in the name of parole, and they don't receive a court date.
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And he says, we are living through the Democrats in game. They have been systemically stripping away
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every last piece of the Trump immigration policies for the last two years. And they're replacing it
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with something called the parole scheme. And it's a scheme whereby an illegal alien, he says,
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is paroled into the country, given a two year immunity from deportation and the chance to apply
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for a work permit. The Biden administration is trying to push as many illegal aliens into the
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parole system. It's a DACA like benefit to try to legalize illegal immigration. That is what they
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have been working towards for two years. And now we are seeing people from around the world trying
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to get their amnesty benefits. And that's true. Like I've seen the pictures, the videos of the
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Chinese, all grown men, again, Chinese migrants trying to get in through the Southern border because
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of Biden's policies. Um, the Florida attorney general, there's been some legal pushback sued the
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secretary of Homeland security, uh, uh, Alejandro Mayorkas and the Biden administration. Um,
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uh, over this, I mean, basically, you know, because this is causing a lack of security,
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it's a dereliction of duty from the federal government. And, um, uh, there is a big fear
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of the security risk of this. And this is a legitimate fear. There was an Afghan national
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that is on the FBI's terror watch list that was arrested this week as he was crossing the border
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near San Diego with a group of migrants. Of course, guys, like think through this a little
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bit like push past the superficial definitions of empathy that are being used to simply emotionally
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extort you and manipulate you. And think about this. If you are letting through surges of people
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without any background checks, without any kind of accountability whatsoever, you are going to get
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terrorists. Yes, you are going to get very dangerous people that are not only a terror to
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immigrants in this country. It's a terrorist to citizens in this country. It's a terror to
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everyone. There's no compassion in allowing these people unchecked to surge into our country. It is
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a recipe for chaos. It's immoral. The New York post reported that a previous order to let migrants go
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with notices to report to ice had been tried in 2021. It was unsuccessful as thousands of those
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migrants simply didn't ever check in. It is an absolute mess. Secretary Mayorkas, though, for his
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part, he's saying that everything is going absolutely swimmingly, loves it. He says that the border is
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totally secure. Recently said, I think it was in his testimony before Congress that, well, you know,
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a million people were deported last year. It doesn't really matter how many people were deported.
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It doesn't really matter. It matters how many people actually got in. So you can't say that the
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border is secure just because a certain number of people got deported. What really tells us whether
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the border is porous or secure is how many people were actually able to get in. And the stats say
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that 1.5 million gotaways. There are 1.5 million gotaways at the border under the Biden administration.
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Wow. These are illegal immigrants who are known to have entered the country but had not
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been caught. So we're going to see, of course, even more of this. Fox News is also reporting that in
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the past two days, in the past two days, there were six arrests, six arrests of people on the FBI's
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terror watch list. Awesome. 2023, 88. I'm glad the FBI is doing their job when it comes to this.
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But how many of them were in that group of 1.5 million gotaways? This is something that we
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should care about, right? Biden himself doesn't seem to know what's going on or where he is or
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what his job title is. He says that things are great. Here he is.
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Okay, so you probably couldn't hear what he said because it was, there were press in there yelling,
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but someone asked him, what do you think about the border? He said, it's getting much better.
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You see it? It's getting much better. Probably didn't know. He's probably talking about, I don't
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know, the border of the construction paper craft that his handlers had him do that morning as a
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brain exercise. So in New York City, they are sending migrants to public school gyms.
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The parents of the kids who attend those schools are like, um, I'm sorry. What, what exactly is
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happening here? There was this horrible story. And this just goes to show again, no compassion for
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anyone involved when we allow these kinds of policies to flourish. This is according to the
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Tampa Bay Times that a teen died after a seizure at a migrant shelter. A 17-year-old from Honduras,
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Angel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinosa, died during his sleep, likely due to having an epileptic seizure in
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his sleep and becoming unconscious. The teen had been transferred by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement
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to the Safety Harbor Migrant Shelter run by Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Children's Services in
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Florida. He was in the process of being placed with his cousin in Tampa, his sponsor in the U.S. But
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look, because they don't have the resources, we've got too many people there. And so we're
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incentivizing these very, very dangerous tracks. We do not have the resources to be able to care for
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these people. In a lot of cases, we're handing them off to nonprofits who are willing to do good
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service and to help, but we can't handle it. And so we're putting people at risk, not to mention
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we're incentivizing, enabling the cartels, trafficking the guns, trafficking the drugs,
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trafficking the human beings, raping and assaulting and impregnating these young girls. You're encouraging
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all of that when you take away strict border policy that encourages these people to come in. And so it's
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all very, very sad. It is a complete dereliction of duty. Even the most libertarian person among you
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should be able to recognize that it is at the very least the government's job to protect the
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border. It is at the very least the government's job to care for the safety and the security of his
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country first. First, before you even consider the well-being of people from other countries,
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before you even consider the interests of people of other countries, you should be prioritizing
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relentlessly and unabashedly the safety, security and interests of your country first. That doesn't
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mean that you hate other countries. It doesn't mean that you think that you're inherently better than
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other countries. It just means that you're responsible, that you are actually taking the
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job that God has given you, according to Romans 13, seriously and righteously. I just, I, as you can
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tell, I just have like such an impatience and intolerance towards Christians who think they're being
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loving by being for liberal border policy and thinking it's hateful and it's unchristian to not
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be or to be America first or whatever. Look, you feed your family, even though you don't feed everyone
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else's family, right? You lock your doors. You live with walls up. You don't let just anyone into your
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house that wants to come in there just because they're having a difficult night, just because they
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might be hungry. Sure, you do other things to help those who are in need, but you don't let people into
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your house who just want to be there and sleep in your kid's bed, right? Does that mean you're a
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bigot? Does that mean you hate your neighbors? Does that mean that you aren't caring for the least of
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these? No, it just means that you are doing what you are called to do, which is steward the needs and
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the well-being and the safety of your family first. That's what God has called you to. And on a bigger
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level, because nations are like families, that's what the government is called to do. So this dereliction
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of duty is wicked. It's wicked. And not just when it comes to immigration, but when it comes to crime
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in general. The failure of our officials to actually care for and protect the safety of the
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citizenry is wicked. And we're going to talk about why that is today with our guest, and he's going to
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get into all of the ins and outs and the history of all this, which is very interesting and what we can
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actually do to fix it. Mr. Latzer, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Before we get
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started, could you tell us who you are and what you do? I'm Barry Latzer. I'm an emeritus professor of
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criminal justice. I taught for over three and a half decades at John Jay College of Criminal Justice,
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which is a part of the City University of New York. I'm retired, but very active writing.
00:23:23.240
And my latest book is called The Myth of Overpunishment. It's about imprisonment. And it's
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really a response to some of the progressive or woke claims about mass incarceration.
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I want to talk about that before we even talk about what we're really here to discuss, which is
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Title 42 and the immigration crisis. But I'm very interested in the subject of your book, because
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we hear a lot, even from those who consider themselves maybe on the right, libertarian,
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center right, that we do have a mass incarceration problem. And because we have a mass incarceration
00:24:04.000
problem, that the solution to any of our crime issues in any of the cities is not to put people
00:24:12.380
in jail. It shouldn't be what they refer to as punitive justice. It should be restorative justice,
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social justice, all these kind of fluffy words. So you're saying that we don't have an over
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incarceration problem in the United States. Well, let me throw some numbers at you. And I'll
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be gentle on this now. It's hard for people to follow numbers. I know that. The Census Bureau,
00:24:38.120
the federal government does a crime victim survey every year. And it's an enormous survey as surveys go.
00:24:45.760
They interview, last time they did it, 249,000 people. And by way of contrast, you may notice
00:24:58.200
that these political surveys done by the Gallup poll, for instance, always involve something less
00:25:05.520
than a thousand people. So the result is their survey is, that is the Census Bureau survey,
00:25:12.280
is much more accurate. Well, based on this survey, each year, we have 5.8 million violent attacks,
00:25:22.440
12.8 million property offenses, such as burglary or theft, for a total of over 18 million victimizations,
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criminal victimizations nationwide. Now, a lot of these attacks or victimizations are not reported.
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Fewer than half are reported to the police. Nevertheless, the police arrest millions of people,
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as you'd expect, big country, a lot of criminals. In fact, they arrested 10 million people in 2019.
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My data is pre-pandemic because the pandemic threw things off, as you might imagine, and also because
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there's a lag in the reporting of the data. So in 2019, there were 10 million arrests made of criminal
00:26:21.560
suspects. Of the 10 million, and here's the key point, you end up with 1.4 million put into jail.
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Jail is where you go after you're arrested, and you stay there usually just a few days until you are brought
00:26:38.640
before a judge. That's called an arraignment. And when you're arraigned, usually you're released.
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So you only spend a few days in jail. Jails are short-term institutions.
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What about the really serious offenders for whom there is a great deal of evidence that they committed
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a crime? 577,000 of them went into prison in 2019. So we have 18.6 million crimes, 10 million arrests,
00:27:13.120
and only 577,000 people actually going into prison. So just on the face of it, you have to say, I think,
00:27:26.500
it's not clear that there's mass incarceration here. In fact, only murderers stand a pretty good chance
00:27:35.060
of being incarcerated. They have about a 49% imprisonment rate, those who commit murder.
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Only 49%? 49% of people who are charged with murder end up in prison?
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Of the crimes reported to the victim survey. So of course, murder victims obviously don't report to the
00:28:00.060
survey, but we have the most accurate data for murders because you have dead bodies. So we know,
00:28:08.140
the police know, and we know how many murders there are every year. Of course, for people who die from
00:28:17.820
natural causes, there's a death certificate prepared by a physician, and we know that they're not murder
00:28:24.680
victims. But we know how many murder victims there are every year. And the data on that, we have multiple
00:28:33.460
sources, the police, the Centers for Disease Control in Washington also keep those records. So we know
00:28:40.900
pretty well how many murders there are. And 49% of the murders are solved with people actually going to
00:28:52.020
prison. For rape and robbery and aggravated assault, the other serious violent crimes,
00:29:00.100
less than 6% of the incidents reported by victims lead to imprisonment. So these are extremely low
00:29:09.620
figures. So when they talk about mass incarceration, one has to ask, well, really, compared to the number
00:29:19.040
of crimes, this doesn't look like excessive incarceration. And that's because it isn't.
00:29:27.100
Right. And you've written a lot about why we have the crime problems that we do. In your estimation,
00:29:32.860
is it because we don't incarcerate enough people that we continue to have high crime? And especially
00:29:38.920
in these kind of progressive cities with the progressive DAs and the progressive judges, you just
00:29:43.660
see these serial criminals let out on the street. I mean, is that what motivates people to continue
00:29:49.440
to commit crimes? Because there's just very little punishment?
00:29:55.240
We haven't been doing this long enough to know yet, Alan, to be perfectly honest. There are some
00:30:02.820
preliminary studies that indicate that in cities where you have prosecutors who are excessively lenient,
00:30:10.980
that it is a cause of increased crime. But these are preliminary, it's provisional data. So to be
00:30:20.360
perfectly candid, to be perfectly honest about these things, we're not sure yet. However,
00:30:27.880
I do know from my work on the history of crime, that when in the late 1960s, the system was very lenient,
00:30:37.660
police made relatively fewer arrests. Sentences were much shorter. Time served in prison was much
00:30:46.940
reduced. When that happened, it was apparently a big spur, a big incentive to more crime. So we know
00:30:57.620
from history that when the criminal justice system is weakened substantially, when they don't arrest or
00:31:05.780
punishes many people who are committing crimes, that is an incentive to more criminality. So that's not,
00:31:13.620
you know, a shocking assertion or shocking claim, that's what we'd expect. So I would think if we continue
00:31:22.040
with a lot of lenient prosecutors, especially in big cities where there's a great deal of crime,
00:31:28.740
crime, if we continue to release people who commit crimes, I think that will serve to incentivize more
00:31:38.860
crime. Because we do know that people who are in prison and are released do recidivate in very high
00:31:46.980
numbers. In fact, Allie, 83% of those who are released from prison commit an additional crime,
00:31:56.320
at least one, and are rearrested. 83%. That's a scary number.
00:32:03.220
Yeah, there was, of course, that subway situation with a guy named Jordan Neely,
00:32:08.080
who he ended up being killed by the Marine, put in a chokehold because he was harassing people,
00:32:13.820
threatening violence and things like that. But I mean, he had been arrested apparently 42 times,
00:32:18.820
one of them for assaulting an elderly woman. And so it's a disservice, not just to Jordan Neely,
00:32:24.980
but also to the community around you when you don't have any mechanisms in place to apparently,
00:32:31.260
or you're not willing to put the mechanisms in place to really protect people in the name of
00:32:37.480
social justice, I guess. Yeah. Absolutely. These so-called low-level crimes
00:32:43.840
can be serious, as was certainly the case with the woman who was assaulted.
00:32:49.900
And even if it's not that bad, if people on the street sense that there's no punishment at all,
00:32:58.580
really, for doing these crimes, and you know, the police are not going to keep arresting people
00:33:03.420
if there's no prosecution. So if a prosecutor like this Alvin Bragg in Manhattan, if he says,
00:33:12.060
well, I'm not going to prosecute these, quote, low-level crimes anymore, I don't want to fill
00:33:17.780
up the jails and prisons, what will happen is the police won't arrest people who commit these
00:33:23.780
offenses. Well, of course, that in and of itself causes more disorder in the streets,
00:33:30.300
and probably, we don't know yet, probably incentivizes more serious offenses.
00:33:36.380
So it's very disturbing. And by the way, the communities most affected by this
00:33:42.360
are communities where you have high crime and high disorder. And those are often minority
00:33:48.840
and poor minority communities. So who's really paying the price for this? Not the more affluent
00:33:56.600
people who have gates around their communities, who have security guards, who have a means for
00:34:05.700
self-protection, but rather the poorer people who don't. So, yeah, I think these are terrible
00:34:15.060
policies, very misguided. And in fact, not even necessary. It's just silliness. The really serious
00:34:23.260
offenses, the ones filling up the prisons, they have to be prosecuted anyway. And even these woke
00:34:30.220
prosecutors will say, well, of course, I'm going to go after the serious offenders.
00:34:35.580
Yeah. And you know, you know, it's strange, because you see, though, that it's not just
00:34:41.620
about keeping people out of prison, because this Marine who put Jordan Neely in a chokehold,
00:34:48.320
he is he's charged with manslaughter. He's facing 15 years with prison. His name is Daniel Penny.
00:34:54.560
So obviously, if it was just about not prosecuting crime, if it was just about not putting people
00:35:00.620
in prison, you wouldn't be criminalizing what a lot of people are calling self-defense. There was
00:35:05.940
another, I think, a bodega owner who killed someone who was he was actually being attacked with a knife.
00:35:11.380
And this bodega owner killed the person who was trying to attack him. And Alvin Bragg ended up
00:35:17.480
dropping the charges of murder. But I'm pretty sure that he was charged with murder. And so it's about
00:35:22.300
criminalizing, I think, self-defense in a lot of cases and not criminalizing things like assault.
00:35:28.160
So I don't know, there's some racial quotas behind it, but it's very strange. It's not just about
00:35:34.780
No, absolutely. Because you could see this prosecutor's judgment. And, you know, most of us,
00:35:41.660
and I think most of the public will think this judgment is warped. When you have this case with
00:35:47.200
Neely, I think most people will consider Mr. Penny to be a hero rather than a criminal. We'll have to
00:35:54.400
see if the grand jury, which of course is a Manhattan grand jury, and Manhattanites are known
00:36:00.020
for being very liberal and very pro-democratic, which is why they elected Mr. Bragg in the first
00:36:07.380
place. We'll have to see what the grand jury does. And of course, even if the grand jury were to indict
00:36:14.660
him, that's formal accusation is what it amounts to, formal accusation of a felony. Even if they
00:36:21.700
indict him, I suspect that Mr. Penny is not going to take a plea and will go to trial. And if he does,
00:36:31.260
then the public, speaking through a jury, will have another chance to acquit him. And I certainly
00:36:39.840
hope they do, because I think that he is something of a hero. Most people on the subway, if they see
00:36:48.980
a person with obviously some sort of mental disorder acting out, well, they go the other way. You walk to
00:36:58.220
the other end of the car so that you don't have to sit near him and you get out perhaps in the next
00:37:04.600
subway stop and move to a different car altogether. This fellow Penny took initiative and protected his
00:37:14.960
fellow riders. So I think most people are going to view him as a hero, but we'll see. We'll see what
00:37:21.480
happen. So I agree with you. Yeah, go ahead. It's not just about, you know, emptying the jails. He's
00:37:29.020
making a judgment here, too, that this sort of behavior, which, as I say, can be really seen as
00:37:36.940
heroic behavior, should be instead criminalized. So he's making judgments here. And at some point,
00:37:44.580
I think the public will make a judgment on him when he has to stand for election and we'll see what happens.
00:37:51.480
People wonder why, you know, there's always those videos that go viral a lot of times on the New
00:38:07.400
York subway, but other times it's at like a Walmart or something like that, where someone is clearly
00:38:12.060
harming someone else. They're attacking someone else. I saw this video not too long ago of a woman
00:38:17.520
on a subway and this guy, he seemed really erratic. I don't know if he was homeless or whatever, but he
00:38:23.780
he was sitting next to this woman by herself and grabbed her by the back of the head and just held
00:38:30.300
on to her hair. And she was looking around and she was saying, help me, help me. No one did anything.
00:38:36.040
The person filming didn't do anything. No one around. And OK, so we can all criticize them and say,
00:38:42.920
you know, why wouldn't you do something? And then we look at what happened with Penny and we're like,
00:38:47.260
well, that's why, because it's not worth it to a lot of people to risk their jobs, risk their lives
00:38:53.240
and go to jail because now self-defense or defending someone else is being criminalized. And that's a
00:38:59.280
really dangerous place to be. Yes. Well put. Well put. And by the way, in the criminal law, just to be
00:39:05.560
technical about it legally, there is such a thing called defense of others. And the theory of the
00:39:13.600
criminal law is if you come to the rescue of someone else, you're in the shoes, so to speak,
00:39:19.840
of the person being victimized. You have the same rights that they do to defend themselves. Those rights
00:39:26.900
are in effect transferred to you when you're acting to protect them. So yeah, you're right. It makes
00:39:34.680
people say, well, gee, look what happened to this guy, Penny. He tried to help out and they branded him
00:39:41.920
a criminal and prosecuted him for it. So sure, it discourages people from being good Samaritans
00:39:52.280
and trying to help their fellow human beings. And Lord knows we need more of that kind of behavior,
00:39:59.240
especially in the big city where everything is anonymous and you have no friends to help you.
00:40:05.440
You have to rely often on strangers. And I'm wondering what your kind of solution to this
00:40:12.480
recidivism thing is, because you talk about even in the title of your book, you said a proposal to
00:40:17.320
reduce incarceration while protecting the public. Because sometimes I think about this, okay,
00:40:21.200
someone like Jordan Neely, he had all these past arrests, but we don't believe in, you know,
00:40:26.400
putting someone in jail for the rest of their lives for theft or even assault. We don't believe
00:40:31.100
that that should be a life sentence. And so what is the solution besides just keeping someone in jail
00:40:37.100
forever? If this man and others like him has serious mental disorder, then we have civil
00:40:46.960
provisions, as they're called, non-criminal provisions, where we can hospitalize and institutionalize,
00:40:54.400
except that 30, 40 years ago, they closed all the mental hospitals. They closed all the hospitals
00:41:03.360
that provided psychiatric care. Not all of them, I'm exaggerating, but many of them. Well, this, I think,
00:41:11.440
is a big policy error because there are many people who need continuing care. Probably this Mr. Neely
00:41:22.400
needed continuing care. That's why he was arrested over 40 times. So I think it would certainly be a help
00:41:30.160
to the criminal justice system if people received mental health care instead of being left to their
00:41:39.320
own devices, left on the streets, where if they don't take their meds, they may be acting out,
00:41:47.180
they may have psychotic episodes, and they may harm themselves or others. So this is a very bad policy.
00:41:55.260
Set aside the criminal justice policies that we were talking about, the lenient prosecutors. This notion
00:42:03.980
that people who really need medical care should be left to their own devices, should be left free to do
00:42:11.820
what they want, is really a dangerous policy, a very unwise policy. People who are a risk to themselves or
00:42:24.620
others, serious risk, as a result of mental disease, they need to be placed in an institution for people
00:42:35.820
to get help, to get psychiatric help. And these institutions need to be reopened, revitalized,
00:42:46.540
and rebuilt so that we can get a handle on this problem, which is, as I say, plays into the criminal
00:42:54.860
justice issue because many of the people arrested, many of the people jailed, and even imprisoned are there,
00:43:03.500
in part because of mental disorders. So it would help us in terms of aiding the people who have the issues,
00:43:15.580
helping clear the streets of people who are mentally disabled, which is a large percentage of the so-called
00:43:23.340
homeless population, and also reducing the crime problem. Because when they commit crimes, the police,
00:43:32.060
of course, are called in. So I think it's win-win-win, and we need to reopen the psychiatric hospitals.
00:43:41.340
Yes. And obviously, there would have to be a lot of oversight when it comes to civil liberties and
00:43:47.020
things like that. It's especially difficult for those who don't have family advocating for them,
00:43:51.260
making sure that their best interests are being sought after. I do wonder even about this whole Jordan
00:43:56.380
Neely thing. I figured, you know, the guy probably doesn't have family. He's obviously homeless. He's on
00:44:02.220
the subway. He's harassing people. And then the family pops up when there is a television camera in
00:44:10.540
front of them and when there is money to be sought after. And I just wonder, where were you? Where were
00:44:16.060
you when this person was harassing and assaulting people on the subway and was arrested 44 times and
00:44:21.980
needed your support then? I mean, who knows? I can't completely judge them because I don't know
00:44:26.780
the entire situation. But now they've been able to hire lawyers and all of that. These people really
00:44:32.380
need, more than anything, some kind of familial support, someone who loves them enough to say,
00:44:36.940
no, I'm not going to let you live that way. I think the lack of support, lack of family structure
00:44:41.020
is also just a huge problem that exacerbates crime, it seems.
00:44:43.980
Yeah, I think, Ali, these people are so difficult to help and manage and care for,
00:44:54.220
you'd have to devote your life and your time. And, you know, people have their own families,
00:45:00.780
they have jobs. And if a loved one is in this terrible situation, it can be extremely difficult
00:45:09.340
on the family to care for them. And so you're right, of course, they just popped up at the last
00:45:16.060
minute. Maybe the lawyers encouraged them and said, you can make money off this. But the truth is,
00:45:23.900
these people need professional care. They can't be cared for by their families often. And, you know,
00:45:31.260
they're grownups. And if they say, I'm not staying here, I don't want to have anything to do with you,
00:45:37.260
I'd rather be out on my own. Well, what can you do about that? Not much.
00:45:41.820
Yeah. So, you know, I'm sympathetic to the families, too. But I take your point that there
00:45:49.260
should have been earlier interventions, but there's no place for them. If they put them in a halfway
00:45:55.340
house, they can leave on their own, at their own, you know, free will, they can leave. And then they
00:46:03.660
don't take their meds. And then we have psychotic episodes, crime and, you know, horrible situations.
00:46:10.860
You know, it's true access to real mental health services, especially where you can go live
00:46:16.220
somewhere. It seems like that's really only accessible for people who have just tens of
00:46:21.100
thousands of dollars to be able to spend. I mean, I know people who have had to get real help,
00:46:27.740
you know, rehabilitation and things like that. And I know how much it costs to go to a nice place
00:46:34.300
that is going to really take care of you and to really help you. I mean, it's true. Most of most
00:46:40.540
families, even if they want to help and can help, they can't, they just can't afford the help. And so
00:46:45.500
I agree. That's a huge, huge problem. Yeah, we really need to rethink our views. I mean,
00:46:52.780
I remember, I'm old enough to remember when they closed so many of these hospitals, Ali,
00:46:58.540
and the argument was, you know, they're abusive, they're mistreating people. And there were some
00:47:03.740
horror stories. There were. But of course, they were exaggerated. And the whole movement
00:47:10.620
to deinstitutionalize, as they called it, it snowballed. It gained a lot of traction,
00:47:19.260
in part because of these incidents that occurred. And then, of course, you even had the culture in
00:47:29.100
general, supporting this. I can recall the movie, maybe you've seen it on video, One Flew Over the
00:47:35.500
Cuckoo's Nest. Yes. Yeah, it's a classic, right? And I remember when it came out. And of course,
00:47:41.660
it, it, it, I'm not blaming the movie, obviously, but the movie presented what was then the prevailing
00:47:49.420
view, which is that these places restrain people and keep them from freely living their own lives,
00:47:58.140
living the way they want to live. But of course, you know, that was one side of the story. And it was not
00:48:04.380
the only side to the story. So yeah, so this turned out to be a very, a very bad policy choice. Yes.
00:48:13.980
And it's especially bad for big cities, as we see now with San Francisco, and cities where the weather
00:48:20.780
is warm, people are out in the streets all the time, camp, they camp in the streets. And what about
00:48:27.980
the public's right to use these public spaces, parks and streets? No consideration is even given to that
00:48:38.860
sometimes. Now, it's an awful policy, a big mistake, big mistake, but not too late. We were wealthy
00:48:46.060
enough, we could reverse this and start down a different road. Yeah. And hopefully, I think that
00:48:51.580
there is growing bipartisan support for that, because you don't have to be a Republican to say, I want to be
00:48:56.460
able to take my kid to the park in San Francisco without stepping over needles or getting my car
00:49:02.700
hijacked. I saw some viral threat on Twitter of someone, he took his kid to the park, he was gone
00:49:08.860
for 45 minutes, he knew that you can't leave anything in your car in San Francisco. But someone broke into
00:49:13.980
his car, glass all over the car seat. And then he, you know, calls the police, and he knows the police
00:49:19.660
aren't going to do anything. But just for the statistics, he just wanted to file the report. Well, even that is a
00:49:25.180
complicated process that takes hours to do. And so but then San Francisco will say things like, well,
00:49:30.940
crime is down. But that's probably because they don't even have the system in place to properly
00:49:35.660
report the crime. So that's a whole problem in itself. But I did just want to say something about
00:49:41.560
the psychiatric hospitals, because most of the things that we're talking about are the failure of
00:49:46.020
progressive policies. But it was Ronald Reagan, he was one of the people who really,
00:49:50.860
in California, in California, and then continued to push for the closing down of these psychiatric
00:49:56.620
hospitals. And that was 1980 was the, the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980. And then I just wanted
00:50:06.860
to see the, if there was any like coinciding timeline, I don't know if you know, it was inspired by this at
00:50:13.700
all. But one flew over the cuckoo's nest, which is a great film, by the way, that was 1975. So I'm sure
00:50:19.860
they were kind of happening simultaneously, as maybe I don't know, society in general had less
00:50:25.160
tolerance for these mental health institutions. But Reagan's policies in California, and then
00:50:30.780
nationally, and one flew over the cuckoo's nest, they do kind of overlap. So it's interesting.
00:50:37.220
Look, I mean, you know, you probe any politician's position, and if he's been around long enough,
00:50:43.320
you're going to find him that he's taken some positions that may be embarrassing later on.
00:50:47.800
Joe Biden was the one who shepherded through the US Senate, the Crime Control Act of 1994.
00:50:55.540
Of course, he doesn't want to remind his progressive supporters about that, right? That was pretty strong
00:51:01.980
criminal justice bill. And he was the one of the leaders who got it through the Senate. So, you know,
00:51:09.700
if a politician has been around long enough, he probably has taken positions that embarrass them
00:51:15.300
nowadays. But yeah, hindsight is, you know, so what? It doesn't matter. We need to pick the right path
00:51:22.260
and stay on it, whether it's Republicans or Democrats. Right.
00:51:26.380
Okay, I want to talk about this migrant crisis. That's actually what we originally we saw your opinion piece
00:51:45.540
in the Wall Street Journal titled, This Isn't the First Migrant Crisis. That's why we wanted to have
00:51:51.380
you on. But then we just got into this interesting conversation, but they're not disconnected. I mean,
00:51:56.040
these things are connected in some way, just the systems in America and how they're failing and
00:52:00.540
things. But your main argument is that this is not the first migrant crisis. You're referring to the
00:52:06.020
end of Title 42, the expected surge of migrants. Of course, we've seen this over the past few years,
00:52:12.260
but especially concerned right now with Title 42, which was the remain in Mexico policy. Trump,
00:52:19.160
because of COVID, was able to say, okay, if you come here, you got to remain in Mexico until we
00:52:23.840
decide what to do with you, basically. So a lot of people are concerned that the migrant crisis is
00:52:28.380
going to get even worse. We're not securing our border. Mayorkas doesn't seem to care. What's your
00:52:33.480
take on all that? Let me preface this by saying I'm not really an expert on immigration, notwithstanding
00:52:42.220
that op-ed. And also, the Biden administration has come up with a new policy. It's very complicated,
00:52:50.020
actually. I read through it. I don't know it in detail, but it's a very complicated policy.
00:52:56.920
So they are trying to address the situation. But whether they can actually implement this policy,
00:53:05.360
part of which involves people staying in Mexico and applying for asylum when they are asylum applicants.
00:53:16.760
So part of this is borrowing from the Trump-era policies. Whether this will work or not
00:53:25.100
is a whole other question. Now, first, on the issue of whether illegal immigrants, let's call them
00:53:32.720
people who come here illegally, are committing crimes or contributing to the crime rise.
00:53:40.260
The answer is we don't know yet. And I know that sounds like a cop-out alley, but that's the fact.
00:53:46.400
It's very hard to get data on this sort of thing. It's hard because we don't separately track,
00:53:55.100
people who enter the United States illegally and offenders who may be of Hispanic heritage and
00:54:04.600
may have come here perfectly legally. We don't make those distinctions. And so it's very difficult
00:54:10.760
to say for sure whether illegal entrants have raised the crime rates in the United States.
00:54:19.700
Of course, one response to that is, well, it shouldn't really matter if they're here illegally. We don't
00:54:26.740
want them to be free to move about to the country. And I agree with that. But whether that contributes to
00:54:34.840
a crime increase, we don't know. Now, one of the things that I'm proposing for the criminal justice system,
00:54:42.040
and this has application to the immigration system as well, is to use electronic monitoring much more
00:54:50.520
than we've been doing. I think it would have an application to people who are released from prison
00:54:58.640
and are put on parole. They have a very high recidivism rate. Over 80% are rearrested after they're released.
00:55:08.000
And a tracking system, an electronic monitoring system, would be very useful for this cohort.
00:55:15.920
But also, immigrants who are released into the United States who are asking for asylum and who are
00:55:25.040
released into the United States pending their hearing, they should also be tracked. And there
00:55:30.320
was something in the Biden administration's proposal providing for this. And I'm in favor of this. This is
00:55:37.920
an expanded use of electronic monitoring as well. And we should be able to track them because otherwise
00:55:44.400
they don't show up for their hearings. And they just skip and get lost into the vast United States.
00:55:52.960
And then, of course, we don't find them again. Or we only find them again if they're arrested and
00:56:00.080
have committed a crime. So I think tracking ex-prisoners, tracking migrants who are asking for asylum,
00:56:10.080
most of which, by the way, are really bogus claims, they are unable to get asylum, at least
00:56:16.880
not the way the law is written. These people, it seems to me, would be perfect subjects of electronic
00:56:26.240
monitoring. So I think it would be useful in the criminal justice system, and it would be useful in
00:56:33.040
the immigration system. Very useful, very helpful. Right. Yeah, I think that that's a really good
00:56:40.240
point. So we don't quite know if there is a direct causal relationship between the surge of migrants
00:56:47.360
and crime. Now, I mean, we could probably deduce that like any surge of new, like a new crowd of
00:56:56.720
people. Anytime something, a place is more densely packed, especially with people we don't know their
00:57:03.520
background, they're not familiar with the laws. It tends to be just kind of common sense that yes,
00:57:09.680
this is going to cause more crime, more chaos, fewer resources. But you're saying that the data
00:57:16.560
doesn't necessarily prove that yet. It's early days. That's what I'm saying. It's early times. We don't
00:57:23.440
know. By the way, what you're saying is historically absolutely correct. When there are migrations into
00:57:30.560
the cities of the United States, and the group entering, the migrant group, has high crime rate
00:57:38.880
backgrounds, it does contribute to higher crime rates in the destination area. So you're absolutely
00:57:47.440
right about that. And it also overtaxes the criminal justice and other systems in the destination
00:57:55.920
location. So we've seen this throughout history, throughout American history. We just don't know
00:58:02.240
if this migrant group from South America, Latin America, Central America falls into that category.
00:58:10.560
Many of them are really just economic migrants. They're here because they think they
00:58:17.360
can earn more money and get better jobs, which they undoubtedly could. And some are also here
00:58:24.480
because they think they could stay long enough for their children to have better opportunities for
00:58:29.840
advancement, which they could as well. Of course, that doesn't make their entry lawful, and it doesn't
00:58:38.560
really meet the requirements for asylum. Asylum is supposed to be granted for people who are being
00:58:44.720
persecuted, politically persecuted, for instance. So that's not really applicable. But yes, you're
00:58:52.720
absolutely right to say that when you have a migration of sizable proportion, and the migrant group has high
00:59:03.680
crime rates, or had high crime rates in its country of origin, or its locale of origin, then they will raise the
00:59:11.680
crime rates in the destination locale. That is historically correct.
00:59:16.720
Right. And a lot of people on the progressive side will say, well, you know, citizens commit
00:59:22.000
crimes too. We shouldn't highlight illegal immigrants. But of course, the difference in a crime committed
00:59:28.080
by an illegal immigrant and a crime committed by a citizen is that the crime committed by an illegal
00:59:32.960
immigrant was, I mean, theoretically completely preventable by another law that should have
00:59:39.680
prevented them from even being here in the first place. So it's just an even bigger failure of the
00:59:44.320
system, which is why I think it matters even more when those crimes do actually occur.
00:59:50.160
Yes, you're so right. That's absolutely correct. Obviously, it's preventable because they should
00:59:54.560
never have been here in the first place if they've entered illegally. Now, by the way, there are other
00:59:59.680
policies we should start seriously thinking about to arrest this issue. And that is, for instance, if
01:00:08.240
really they're economic migrants looking for work. Now that we have a situation where there's very
01:00:15.600
little unemployment in the United States, it's around 4.3% or something like that, there are many jobs
01:00:23.440
that are open and unfilled. And here we have people who do want to come here and work. So, wow, why not match
01:00:32.960
up the people who want to immigrate to the United States for work and the job openings? It seems like a
01:00:40.960
no-brainer to me. It's time to really beef up our legal entries with visas that enable people to stay
01:00:52.000
here for short times, a few years perhaps, and work in the United States, work in fields where we need
01:01:01.040
the labor. We can use them. By the way, the Europeans are doing this. In the Wall Street Journal just today,
01:01:08.000
there was an article to that effect. Why can't we do it too? If we find we need people to work in certain
01:01:16.000
fields, why not give people who want to be in the United States and have these skills or don't have
01:01:24.160
skills, as the case may be, why not give them an opportunity to get these jobs and hold these jobs?
01:01:30.560
They won't be taking jobs away from Native American citizens because they're not taking those jobs.
01:01:37.520
That's why there are job openings. So this is another missed opportunity as far as I'm concerned.
01:01:45.440
Of course, we both know the reason for all of these really errors in policy. And that is because
01:01:54.400
the country's polarized, the politicians are polarized, and they can't seem to reach any
01:02:00.320
compromises. And in the immigration field, this has been going on for years and it's a disaster.
01:02:06.400
Yeah. And there's a big debate on the right about even legal immigration. How much legal immigration
01:02:12.640
should we actually support? Republicans don't even necessarily agree on that. So I just want
01:02:17.440
to acknowledge the debate. We won't even get into all of that. But I do think that everyone can agree
01:02:22.560
that Florida, for example, they just have decided to require all employers to use E-Verify, which checks
01:02:30.880
the immigration status of all the people that they're hiring. And that, in addition to what you're
01:02:35.120
talking about, electronic monitoring for people who are in the country awaiting all of that,
01:02:39.440
I think that that could be really good. There are things to be put in place in states and on
01:02:45.760
the national level that could actually help. But you're right. There's very little motivation.
01:02:50.560
I think especially on the Democrat side, I actually saw that 71%, I believe, of illegal migrants end up
01:02:57.440
in Republican areas, which is just interesting. I don't know if there's anything behind that. It's just
01:03:02.320
an interesting thing to note. So it's chaos. And you know what, it does kind of relate to the whole
01:03:08.080
like New York City subway thing, all of these feeling like you are not being taken care of,
01:03:14.640
feeling like no one really cares, the people in charge who are supposed to care about
01:03:18.640
the general welfare and security and stability of the country. They don't seem to care. And they seem
01:03:24.160
to be inducing chaos. It leads to a sense of distrust and restlessness and angst in the public that can
01:03:32.400
only lead, I think, to further violence, further polarization when you don't feel like the government,
01:03:39.200
your own government has your back just for the general safety of the border or crime. I mean,
01:03:44.960
bare minimum government responsibilities. Then you're looking at a very unstable future, in my opinion.
01:03:52.320
Yeah. Yeah, I think it is alienating to use a word that political scientists often use. It's very
01:04:03.200
alienating when people have a sense, right or wrong, but in this case, I think it's right,
01:04:09.520
that the governments are just not doing their job. I mean, if they can't control people entering
01:04:18.400
into the country illegally, you have to wonder, right? If they can't punish the criminals on the
01:04:26.640
streets, it doesn't give you a lot of confidence in the local system. I think that this explains why
01:04:36.160
a lot of people are really alienated from the system, probably don't vote at all, think that the
01:04:44.240
system is really run by a cabal, by some people who are engaged in a conspiracy.
01:04:54.320
You get these kinds of theories, which are kind of wacky, in my opinion, because people are so alienated,
01:05:02.560
because people are so convinced that the government is just ineffective. And I don't mean just the
01:05:11.760
federal government. So yeah, I think it really is dispiriting. It's a kind of malaise situation,
01:05:20.000
to use a word that some previous president got in trouble for using it. That was Jimmy Carter,
01:05:25.200
by the way. I'm not even sure he used that word. Anyway, it is a dispiriting and disheartening
01:05:32.880
situation. And the answers are, we do need to compromise. And I think there probably is a
01:05:42.400
pretty substantial group, I hope so, of Democrats and Republicans, of ideologically conservative and
01:05:50.720
ideologically left Americans, who would like to see the government compromise and come up with
01:05:58.800
proper policies. Well, crime is a different story, because that's really locally run. That's state and
01:06:06.320
municipally run. But certainly the border issue, they ought to be able to reach a compromise. But look,
01:06:12.800
they're going to push this debt ceiling issue right to the last days, probably. They are having a hard time
01:06:19.280
compromising even on that, even on meeting the debts of the United States. I mean, that's really scary,
01:06:27.280
isn't it? Yeah. But here they are, working up to the very last minute. And of course, they won't go
01:06:34.480
over the cliff, because I think each side, the Republicans and the Democrats are afraid of being
01:06:40.320
blamed for it if they do. Yeah. So I think they'll come up with something. But it's sort of disheartening
01:06:48.320
to see them having, you know, an inability to agree even on that, even on those fundamental things.
01:06:56.640
Yeah. Good point. You're right. Good point. Oh, yeah, go ahead. No, no, I was just gonna say,
01:07:01.520
good point. I think you put your finger on it. People, it really is disheartening. And as I said,
01:07:09.360
it's alienating when people expect these basics to be satisfied, and they're not.
01:07:18.240
Yeah. You know, I think when it comes to maybe a local level, but national level too,
01:07:23.680
because things seem just so chaotic, it seems like everyone kind of feels that, especially in these
01:07:29.680
cities. But, and then, you know, the right and the left feel that for different reasons. I think the
01:07:34.480
right is a special, they feel the moral chaos that we see going on. The left might feel it for,
01:07:40.240
you know, whatever reason. But I think in the end, the anti-chaos, whoever is perceived as the
01:07:47.160
anti-chaos candidate, especially when it comes to the president in the next year, is going to be the
01:07:52.960
one who wins. Last time, Trump was not seen as the anti-chaos president, even though I think that
01:07:58.380
Biden's policies are very chaotic. But he presented himself as a vessel of normalcy, as a vessel of
01:08:07.160
unity, and just calming the waters after the turbulent Trump years. And I think in the end,
01:08:14.400
that's what people are vying for. Give us some normalcy. Calm the waters. I think even Democrats
01:08:19.300
would say, yeah, lock these people up in jail. I'm tired of not being able to walk in downtown San
01:08:24.800
Francisco. So we'll see. But thank you so much, Mr. Latzer, for taking the time to come on. I do
01:08:30.300
encourage everyone to get your most recent book. You've written several, but The Myth of Overpunishment,
01:08:35.000
a Defense of the American Justice System, and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting
01:08:40.260
the Public. Very, very fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to come on.
01:08:45.840
Well, it was a pleasure. It was really an interesting conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you.