Why Accountability and Prevention Don't Have to Be in Conflict with Neera Tanden

Most debates about crime policy are framed as a choice. You’re either tough on crime or you’re not. You focus on enforcement or prevention. And the answers tend to sound simple.

But once you move from talking about crime to actually trying to reduce it, things get more complicated, requiring nuanced solutions to complex problems.

My guest today is Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and a longtime policy advisor who has worked across multiple administrations, including serving as domestic policy advisor in the Biden White House.

In this episode, we talk about what crime policy looks like from inside that system, what we’ve learned from the last few years, and why approaches focused on accountability and prevention don’t have to be in conflict.

Neera Tanden is the president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and the CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Before leading American Progress, Tanden was the Domestic Policy Advisor to President Joe Biden and director of the Domestic Policy Council, overseeing some of the administration’s signature achievements, including its efforts to lower the cost of prescription drugs and expand health insurance coverage. Previously, she was Senior Advisor and Staff Secretary in the White House.

Tanden helped found American Progress, first working as senior vice president for domestic policy and later as chief operating officer. She ran the organization from 2011 to 2021, adding 10 policy teams and growing the budget by two-thirds. Previously, she has served as senior adviser for health reform at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, policy director for Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign, legislative director in then-Sen. Clinton’s (D-NY) office, and a senior policy adviser to the first lady in President Bill Clinton’s White House. Tanden received her Bachelor of Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, and her law degree from Yale Law School.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I'm Jeff Asher, and this is the Jeffalytics Podcast. Most debates about crime policy are framed as a choice. You're either tough on crime or you're not. You focus on enforcement or you focus on prevention. And the answers tend to sound simple. But once you move from talking about crime to actually trying to reduce it, things get more complicated, requiring nuanced solutions to complex problems. My guest today is Nira Tannen, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress and a longtime policy advisor who has worked across multiple administrations, including serving as domestic policy advisor in the Biden White House. In this episode, we talk about what crime policy looks like from inside that system. What we've learned from the last few years, and why approaches focused on accountability and prevention don't have to be in conflict. We also get into the gap between what's politically compelling and what's actually effective, and why solving this problem is harder than the debate makes it sound. Let's get started. My guest today is Neer Tandon. Neera, thank you so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Great to be with you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

So, first question to every guest: What is your background? What brought you here today? And then I'm going to add an addendum to that that I don't normally get to ask every guest is what is it like working at the White House? So uh I I I'm very curious to hear this answer.

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I'll take this in order. I'm currently the CEO and president of the Center for American Progress, which is a multi-issue think tank in Washington. It's uh, you know, we're kind of on the center left. And so but our goal is really to try to solve problems, you know, develop ideas to solve problems. We have policy teams and national security, economic policy, domestic policy, and we have a crime and criminal justice team. And it's that team that really has authored our work on crime. Um before that, I was domestic policy advisor to President Biden, who's also staff secretary, um, which before that role, where which is in charge of informational flow in the White House, is a really interesting job. But the domestic policy council job is one in which you are overseeing domestic policy for the president of the United States, and it was a really amazing job and a great privilege. Before that, I'd worked at CAP uh for about a decade. I was I was also its CEO and president before then. I helped start CAP way back in 2000, and I've served in three White Houses. I I served on the Domestic Policy Council on in the way back in the Clinton, in the second term of the Clinton White House. Um was a lot younger then. Do you want to note that? Uh, and then I worked on healthcare reform for President Obama. So I have a lot of policy experience. And in the late 90s, when I worked for President Clinton, I did a lot of work on, I was on the children and families team and the domestic policy council, and we did a lot of work on school violence and collaborated with the crime team back then on kids and access to guns. I've worked in, as I said, in the White House, but I've also worked on a variety of presidential campaigns, Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, Barack Obama's presidential campaign. I've worked on crime issues in all of those areas.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

So I have a very boring CAP story, which is in 2006 when I was in in grad school at GW, I interned with a group called the National Security Networks that like sort of had one office in CAP. And so I went to CAP's office frequently during for a couple of months back then, and then I got a job with the intelligence community and was off.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

But um yeah, that's pretty cool. Well, we were we're the same building now. We have the bottom four floors instead of being spread out. So it's much better.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

That's that sounds nice. So where do you see CAP fitting in on sort of the criminal justice policy making process?

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Um, I you know, I think we're really trying to offer ideas of how to, you know, improve public safety, lower crime in the United States. Um and I think this is a debate that's become, like many debates, highly politicized. And our goal was is to offer kind of evidence-based solutions. Crime is an interesting issue because even when it comes down, you know, it's still a bad thing. So you know it's not like, you know, people, you know, if you're a victim of crime, even if it's there's less crime in the neighborhood, you're still a victim. So it is, it is something that you really want to drive down as far as you possibly can from a policy perspective. So, you know, I think sometimes in some circles, you know, uh you'll have a lot of discourse of crime is coming down. Why do we need to do anything? And I think this is a real mistake. For those of us who believe in a government that works for people and strong government, we have to deliver results. And what's really interesting is that we I think we've learned a lot about what works over the last several years. We've had real deep declines in crime. You know, I welcome, you know, your views on why that has happened. But we have seen a lot of policy variation and innovation at the local level. Uh, and what we try to do in our work is look at what's working around the country and then create a guide, essentially a policy guide of best practices where, you know, at the national level, we could drive down crime even more if we kind of got out of our partisan corners and thought about how to actually solve this problem even better than we are right now.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

So I I want to dig deeper on that. You guys have put out a lot of of reports and things like that. Is there a without you know this taking several hours to summarize all of the reports, is there a general guidelines, general thoughts, general direction that you see that Cap sees as far as like how policymakers should approach things in a realistic direction?

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, I'd say first and foremost, we, and this is again all based on evidence, you know, we understand or we believe that the best way to reduce crime is for people would-be criminals, to believe that they will be punished if they commit crime. And I think this is a really important issue because in the 90s, and you know, you still see this in the debates, there's a lot of discussion about the length of sentencing. So if you just expand the length of sentencing for crimes, it, you know, people will argue they're reducing crime. But that's not actually what the evidence dictates. It's the evidence shows that, you know, people don't think about the future so much. It's much more about the certainty of punishment for lawbreakers. And so, you know, and and we learned a lot during COVID, which is that there is some research, and I totally I really would do welcome your views on this, but there's some research that indicates that one of the reasons why we had a spike was because the system of justice kind of slowed down. It was harder to get court cases, everything kind of slowed down, and that impacted people's kind of decision-making about these things. So we believe that you should ensure the system is working to deliver. You want to, you know, we have a bunch of strategies to lower, like increase the clearance rate, ensure crimes are actually punished with strategies that have worked in place in country and cities around the country. We also believe, you know, from data that there are prevention strategies that have been successful. And then there are particular areas where where, you know, we have we've seen some surges in crime and you know, that raise some significant problems that we want to address. But at a very high level, I think thematically we believe it's important to ensure, you know, swift and certain punishments to hold lawbreakers accountable and also invest in strategies, policing strategies, and prevention strategies that work. And, you know, what's interesting about this to me is that you have progressive mayors in places like Baltimore that have increased detectives and increased police officers, and also worked on, you know, kind of innovative crime fighting slash prevention strategies like focused deterrence and have seen great results. And I think that's what you know we're focused on. What would actually work to reduce crime? What are the strategies that are working? And we don't have to relive the kind of bad policy decisions of the 90s or things that had really negative effects, like just expanding sentences for everybody and not giving them a second chance. We strongly believe in second chances, but we also know we should, we should build on what we know it works.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Is there a sort of bipartisan path for achieving this, especially sort of focusing on the swiftness and the certainty and improving clearance rates? It's it feels like that's something that I know Utah just passed a law and signed a law that says that um that was can provide grants to agencies to improve their violent crime clearance rates. Is this something, and have you guys done any work on sort of a taking that as the bipartisan, okay, this is something that across the political spectrum we can all agree on is a thing to do?

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah, so I think this is what's really interesting, because at the local level, this is very bipartisan. You have moderate mayors, progressive mayors, I mean, not every progressive mayor, but a lot of progressive mayors taking on strategies that do work. I just mentioned Baltimore. And, you know, it's interesting, Mayor Mamdani hasn't really repealed any of the strategies, or like at a high level, has not really repealed the strategies that he that were, you know, having a good impact on lowering crime rates. And so I hope at the national level we could actually have bipartisan efforts. I worry that, you know, crime has been basically used a little, you know, and I argue, you know, I don't mean to be partisan here, but Republicans have kind of often used crime as a wedge to attack Democrats. And, you know, there's been some reporting that the president of the White House planned to use crime again in the fall elections. And so, you know, I hope we can get out of this kind of hyperpolarization we're in. But I think as you mentioned, Utah, you know, I mean, places like Illinois have focused on actually trying to address their clearance rate problems. And uh I think they are, you know, they have to live with the consequences of crime. So I think they have a lot of more s a lot more skin in the game in a way. And so we see a lot of bipartisanship there. And I hope that that carries on uh at the national level.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

You uh you talked about sort of the Republican approach to to crime and this kind of instinctual, I guess, you know, we have to be tough on crime, we have to increase sentences, which it felt like for about a decade was going away and is kind of making its way back into the national discourse. Taking on the other side of that, is there a way for Democrats to uh we saw this a lot in 2020, and then in the reaction of the last few years, it felt like, and maybe I'm wrong and you feel differently, but it felt like the responses were either ignoring when things were getting worse, which they were in the sort of that 2020 to 2022 period, or when it the the only response was, well, we gotta get tough on crime. Is there a way for Democrats to sort of ignore that false dichotomy of either it has to be going down or we our response has to be we have to be tough on crime? I'm sorry, that's a little counseling.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

That's a great question. And I think we are trying to offer ideas right in that space. Okay. So if someone is punished, you know, for shooting someone and not killing them, you know, we know from the data that people who get away with certain crimes, you know, could tend to commit more crimes. So, you know, my view of this is I think like people are kind of in the middle on this topic. You know, the vast majority of the public is kind of you know in the middle. They think we should invest in prevention, they think it's better to prevent crime. So it's not just soft to prevent crime, it actually reduces crime when you prevent it. You just have to have strategies that do work to do that. You know, you it's good to have an evidence base for that. But also, you know, but they also think that people should be held accountable for crime. And I think to be totally like, you know, to be very honest about this, I think one of the challenges for some Democrats from 2020, 2021, 2022 was that it sounded like to a lot of people, we didn't think crime was a problem. And if you don't think crime is a problem, people are going to think you are not likely to do much about it. Okay. And my one of my singular experiences from working in policy making and for three presidents is, you know, this is just like how I see the world. If people really think something is a problem and it is a high priority problem for them, they will choose a bad answer over a no answer. Now, I still believe people will choose a good answer over a bad answer. Sometimes that is kind of tested in the political process, but I still believe in that. But I think one of the reasons why CAP put forward this plan is because we believe it's important for everyone who believes in like safety and security to offer ideas of how you can reduce crime. And as I said earlier, you don't have to go to really, you know, kind of the failed policies of the past or this like tough on crime rhetoric, which is really just about extending extending sentences to actually reduce crime in a way that's very effective. But Democrats should acknowledge that the broad public believes lawbreakers should be held accountable. This is not a radical statement to me. I think it's not this shouldn't be a radical statement for people. I do think if you believe in making sure lawbreakers are accountable, when they do their time and they're done with their time, you want to encourage them to get into a pathway, a job, or be a productive citizen and not use their prior sentence as like a life scarlet letter A, which limits their opportunities to do anything other than crime. So like I think we should just be smart about this. And you people could meet in the middle and in the localities, they kind of have met in the middle.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Is there like a phrase that we can use that's not I I hate tough on crime? I wish it was like, you know, shot into the sun and never heard from again. I feel like it used to be smart on crime was like a thing that people could say that was this, you know, we're gonna this middle ground. Is there a phrase that can replace that as the, you know, the one that you you sort of acknowledge crime as an issue that's important that we take care of, but not take care of by repeating the mistakes of the 90s? Is there work? What's the chigo here?

SPEAKER_01 15:18

I believe, like, we talk about, you know, accountability for crime and and and stopping crime. You know, like just we're we we kind of think like you could do both of those prevention and accountability. But accountability isn't, you know, lock people away and throw away the key. And we should acknowledge that, and we acknowledge in our in our plans that this criminal justice system has been one that where punishments have been disproportionate for people of color. That fact that we have in the United States made going to prison a kind of lifetime sentence in a way, you know, it's been really counterproductive. It's hurt those people individually, not giving them a second chance. But also it's it's it drives poverty. It makes us much less productive as a country if you basically take people who have ever had uh essentially a criminal sentence and kind of move them out of the kind of productive economy. That that is also kind of stupid. So I think there's a smarter way to go forward. I'll think about a better expression. Smart on crime was a good one. Um certain vice president uh came up with it when she was an attorney general, wrote a whole book about it. Very complicated field uh here. So I think you're right. It like trying to connote the idea that crime is a problem, but we don't have to engage in the failures of the past. Uh that is a that is what we're trying to do, and I'll I'll work on an expression, but welcome your ideas as well.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

I'll I'll think about that as well, and maybe I'll bring it up to my kids and have them come up with something. Um so let's, you know, let's fast forward. It's let's say it's 2028 and right now we're seeing historic drops. Let's say that those drops don't continue. You know, we're at this really low level, but we're not seeing crime continue to fall. At some point, crime is gonna stop falling. We're not gonna reach zero murders, unfortunately. I don't think so. How would you advise sort of that political message to both Democrats or Republicans if crime is the the declines have stopped, we're at this low level, maybe we're starting to see slight increases relative to where we were before. But how can we how would you advise sort of politically not denying that reality of hey, it's not going down anymore, while also then not leaning into bad policies and not requiring people to take the toughest on crime approaches as possible?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

You know, I think people would have more credibility when if they see a crime spike, if they deal with crime, you know, whenever whenever like in their in their basic job as governors or mayors or or leaders. And I think that because as you know, crime is declining now, it has been declining, and yet people still think crime is a pretty significant problem. And I think this is a big disconnect for people, which is crime is not like other issues. Okay. So, you know, whether people have health care or they have energy tax credits, like more of it is a good thing, less of it is a bad thing. I think crime is a very different kind of event in people's lives. You know, people, it all it's very shocking, you know, even getting mugged is very shocking. It creates a sense of greater fear and instability. So crime is really an issue, and I know I'm saying like a very basic thing, but any of it is bad. Okay, so if you're a mayor and your crime comes down, you know, like you have your crime went up 25% and it came down 25%. It's not like you're like, okay, we just don't need the police anymore. You know, like you want everybody wants, no one wants to be victimized by crime, so your job is to always lower it. And what's really interesting about the debate today is we seem so trapped in the debates of the 90s. Because what's interesting is we have a big social experiment over the last five years, right? We saw a big crime spike at the same time. The federal government sent a lot of money to states and localities. Those states and localities did all kinds of different things to drive lower crime rates. I mean, we don't we don't have we don't know for sure any answer, but we do know that localities innovated in different ways and they did see like really sharp declines. And there are a th there are things that a lot of localities did. They hired or retained police officers with those funds, they invested in prevention programs, they also adopted particular strategies like real-time crime centers and focused deterrence and even hotspot policing. You know, there's a bunch of strategies that localities chose adopted, and we saw great reductions. So, from our perspective, I would advise someone in 2028, if we're seeing a crime spike, to have ideas that and and base them on what's effective and what's worked at the local level and how you can make a compelling case that Baltimore did this thing and it its crime rates came down. But I also think you'll have a lot more credibility on these issues if you talk about them before you're facing the voters as a mayor or as a governor or as even a senator or a house member. Because I think the truth is it's not like you can lower crime too much in most people's minds. Like you don't, you could lower, you know, we could all live in a police state and have no crime, you know, like that's not what anyone wants. But there's a big area for not violating people's civil rights, having smart strategies, and lowering crime rates.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

To that uh point, is there a way to convince people that that crime is falling? I mean, that it's it's the the bane of my existence is that no matter what's happening, uh, you know, in especially in like 2023, 2024, when I was, I felt like a lonely voice talking about the degree to which crime was falling. Is is there out there in the wild at least, is is there a way to get people to believe good news on crime?

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah, I mean, I think this really is much more of an issue around local news coverage and kind of the orientation of the media, which is that if it bleeds, it leads. And there is a lot of interest in crimes, and I think it takes much more. Uh, police chiefs and prosecutors to talk about lower crime rates than politicians. And I mean, I d I'm very I had a particular experience. I was president's domestic policy advisor. We saw crime come down dramatically. We religiously read all your material that was much faster. You know, you uh what was really what's really great about you is that you're able to track crime rates a lot faster than the FBI. So you actually can, you know, you can see what's happening much, much closely, much, much faster. And that's crucial as a policymaker because addressing trends that are two years old, not that helpful and uh helpful these days. So we saw crime rates coming down, and I think the real, I think a real issue that we had was perhaps because people have kind of preconceived notions that Democrats don't take crime seriously enough. The president, you know, would say went into the State of the Union and said, crime is coming down and we've done these things to help crime come down. And I think a lot of people heard that, given their sense that crime is still a problem, as we didn't, we didn't get it, that crime is still a problem. And so I think when a political leader, this is just, you know, my experience here was trying to tell people it's a little bit about like the economy. If people feel like the economy is bad, if you try to tell them over and over again that the economy is great, they're going to, they're not gonna think my lived experience is wrong. They're going to think the politician is lying. So the people who can best deliver the news, the good news on crime, are people with credibility on crime. I think that's police chiefs. I think it's like members, like the police, it could be the prosecutors, it could be judges, like people who don't have a stake in trying to convince you. But I also think, you know, crime is not as salient an issue. People still think crime is like a big problem. It's going up, but it's it has changed in salience to people, at least in the polling we've seen from 2022, 2023. There was like top five issue, top four or five issue to one of the top four or five issues to the public. Maybe the top six issues. Now it's dropped to like the top 10, maybe the top 12. Yeah. But to me, I believe that it's really crucial for leaders to have a plan that they can communicate. And, you know, there's no, like again, we're not create recreating the problems of the past. So we don't see the downside in actually offering ideas that can help even lower your crime rate more.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Is there a way? I feel like I asked this to every guest, but I think that it's such a critical question, which is is there a way for the media to cover sort of cover the planes that land to cover the fact that, hey, robbery's down 30%? We're seeing this big decline in these crimes. It's hard to write a story that's there were no crimes last week. It's easy to write a story of there were six crimes last week and they were terrible. How is this something that at a very local level can be covered better?

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah, you know, I think that's a really great question. And I think localities, uh, local press would be the best. And I I do want to say, I mean, I'm happy to beat up on local media, but I think another real problem in the country is that we just have less local media than we used to have. I mean, there's just fewer local there's just fewer outlets covering local news in the same way. But I also I do think, you know, we have all these moments where we kind of nationally look at data. There's a monthly unemployment rate. There's nothing that stops localities from looking at their sort of monthly year-over-year homicide rate or even doing that quarterly or in their violent crime rates and really trying to track for their readers that, you know, violent crime has come down. Again, any violent crime is bad. You know, this is like a thing where it's like it's a shocking event to anybody. We would like less of it, you know, we like less cancer. We'd like, it's like cancer can come down, you'd like to get to zero. So, you know, I think that, but I do think you could have a lot more just check-ins, like once a month or once every quarter or once every six months, just where crime is and to write a, I mean, you know, like I know it doesn't catch as many eyeballs, but writing a story about about lower crime rates, you know, would be important. And I think the thing that you can remember about this is, you know, people don't translate it this way, but when you have lower crime rates, you know, that means people are alive today that might not have been alive, you know, when you had really high crime rates, right? I mean, the thing that reducing crime and reducing murders and homicides for for sure is that like, you know, these are again kind of transformative events. Like being shot is a pretty psychologically damaging and health-damaging idea, even if you're like even if you survive it. So when you have reduced reduced crime, like this is a huge improvement in people's lives and their lived experience. So it should be a good story.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

It should be, yeah. And you're looking at probably 5,000 fewer murder victims per year than that.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, but that's what I tried to. The president, I I talked about this with the private president Biden. We did an event with major chiefs like almost two years ago, probably two years ago now. I mean, you know, we had major chiefs from at the White House, from you know, from Detroit and Miami, you know, two places that have just like 50-year lows and homicides, and we had a bunch of from all across the country, Los Angeles, Charlotte, big and small, so Philadelphia. And, you know, he talked a little bit about this, but you know, when you have 5,000 fewer homicides, I mean, a way to think about that is like this for a variety of reasons, but I do think policy is important. You're having hot spot policing and more police, et cetera, as well as prevention programs, when you do those things, I mean, you have people walking around and like alive that may have been killed in some, you know, at some prior point. So it's a big difference. It makes a big difference in communities and it makes a big difference in how people feel about like living in cities and being close to other people. You know, I mean, these are these are really profound effects to lower crime rates.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

There's obviously a lot going on in the world right now. Not sure if you're aware.

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Uh, it's very cracking. There's a lot going on in the world today.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Um, is there a way that this issue, not just crime, but sort of criminal justice and it improving the system and in ensuring clearance rates is a top priority and reducing crime. How can all of this stay at the forefront of policymaker attention given, you know, waving hands all about everything that's happening?

SPEAKER_01 28:51

Yeah, you know, in our research, I think that what was most interesting is that probably the best thing a locality can do. Again, I kind of, you know, you you have a lot of wisdom on these topics, so I welcome your view. But is it just speeding up the entire criminal justice justice system? So people are getting punishment. Like, you know, they know what they're putting, they're they feel like if I'm caught, I will likely be punished quickly. It doesn't, again, you don't have to be give people lots of sentences, but if they are guilty of a crime, they should be punished quickly. And it and in our view, given second chances when they're out, et cetera. You know, but that's an interesting thing, you know, because it's not like there's any single group responsible for that. That's often the state, sometimes it's a locality. It's very opaque, kind of controls the wheels of the justice system. And we try to address that by, in our plan, kind of encouraging funding to beef up that in those institutions, essentially, and allow them to move a lot faster. But that's an area where I think it's just like I it's easier for a politician to a local mayor to say, I've added police or I've invested in prevention programs. And it's a little bit harder for them to communicate how investing in their local criminal justice system, having more public defenders and prosecutors, but public defenders too, helps actually ensure a better system that keeps all of us safe. I mean, it takes kind of a few paragraphs to explain that, not just a few sentences. And often one of the challenges in public policy is things that take longer to explain get adapted a little less, just because people see less value in doing it. But here, that's you know, it's really important to actually do the right thing to save people's lives. You know, so hopefully they'll do it.

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Well, I I see that in my newsletter every week that the uh the more interesting, detailed, you know, in-depth of investigations, you get nothing, and then you're like, well, crime is down, and then that's those are the ones that get shared, and everyone hears that. So certainly uh I know we just have a few minutes left. I wanted to ask real quick, uh, this is something I've I've been asking every guest. I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this, given your experience. How do you think AI is going to change sort of the approach to all of this or the policymaker approach in the near future? And do you have any sort of suggestions on changing perceptions of AI adoption? I know this is sort of out in the left field, but I'm I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

So so I I feel like I I was very fortunate. I sat on the president's AI council. There was an AI council in the White House, and sort of had I was on it, and obviously National Security Council was on it, and um, various policy councils uh sat on it. And you know, what's what's really interesting is one of the big problems in the criminal justice system, and one of the real drivers of unfairness in the criminal justice system is human bias, right? I mean, there's been lots and lots and lots of data that eyewitnesses are less reliable, they will bring in sort of unconscious bias towards racial groups that also could infect policing. A lot of cases of, you know, police involve shootings are ones where, you know, you're in a moment and you're just making hasty decisions, though can this can also involve human bias. I mean, the truth is the jury system has a lot of human biases. So I I am not actually arguing that we should replace juries with AI or um or other, you know, kind of take out the human of the process. But I think if we had AI systems that were better at correcting biases instead of amplifying those biases, it's a little hard because AI AIs are programmed by people. But a system, and you know, like it's criminal justice, but it could be like who you're giving a mortgage to. You know, I mean, we have lots of data, and essentially black families are chart charged higher interest rates with the same income and then the same history because there are biases that they experience in the system. And a lot of them can be sort of unconscious. People aren't really thinking. I have this thing in my mind about what a woman versus a man or a Latino versus a white person or a black person versus an Asian. I mean, there are a lot of biases in the system. So if there are ways to think about, I tried to encourage this, it was a little hard and very nascent, but if there are ways to think about how AI could fight against those biases and not entrench them, I actually think we'd have a lot more justice than we do. And you'd have like some of the areas where you see these gigantic differentials between crack cocaine and cocaine, or you know, uh, some of these conversations in the past are, I think, a function of just biases kind of running up against each other and like kind of like building on top of each other in the criminal justice system.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah, we we definitely see that in the like the research into the algorithm shows that the algorithm is unbiased, but taking that a step further is is is biased, excuse me, not other bias. Um, but it's less biased than that human judge. Um, I've been new words, and there's there's research into cases in Louisiana where if LSU loses in football, judges have harsher penalties the next day in court. And so, like, how do you remove all that? Well, an algorithm that's not perfect. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yes, exactly. I mean, and you know, like with anything, I think, you know, we never get to nirvana, but like you always have to kind of try to get better and better. And like I I definitely am open to thinking about ways that AI can be helpful. It shouldn't replace humans, particularly in life and death decisions like this. That's obviously kind of out of a sci-fi murder or sci-fi movie, you know, to have like AI replacing humans. Um, but I think I think we should be genuinely honest that we over-index for human judgment being unbiased than it is. And it is a big reason for inequality in a lot of systems that humans are are bringing their bias to decision making.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Absolutely. Nira, I I really appreciate you coming on. This has been a fascinating and fantastic conversation. So thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

And I hope people will check out our cap plan on American and our American Progress website.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

I was just gonna say, where can people find it? So, CAP, American Progress website, go check it out. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

Thanks for listening to the Jeffalytics Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and to learn more, head on over to ahdatalytics.com for more information and previous episodes. If you like what you heard, please leave a glowing review, which will help others to discover the show. Till next time, I'm Jeff Asher.