Why Biden can’t do much about murder

Hello, Weeds fans!

 

This week, I’m looking at a big problem for President Joe Biden: There’s really not much he can do, on his own or even with Congress, about crime. Separately, I’m breaking down a paper on how birthday parties likely helped accelerate the spread of the coronavirus.

 

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EXPLAINED IN 600 WORDS

Why Biden can’t do much about murder

With Covid-19 fading and the economy recovering, President Joe Biden’s biggest remaining challenge could soon be America’s murder wave. Based on current estimates, the number of murders in the US increased by 25 percent last year. And, while reports are early, so far that increase seems to have continued into 2021.

 

There are many problems here for Biden. For one, we don’t really know what caused the spike in murders — experts hypothesize the Covid-19 pandemic, shrinking trust in police, and the proliferation of guns played a role, but there’s nothing close to a consensus today. 

 

There’s also a dearth of data in this area, with no full, official data for 2020 yet, which makes it even harder to pinpoint the scope and causes of the problem.

 

But perhaps the biggest problem for Biden: There’s really not much he, as president, can do about the murder wave.

 

The vast majority of anti-crime work is done at the local and state levels. Looking solely at law enforcement, there are roughly 18,000 police agencies in the US. At most, several dozen reside at the federal level. That means that well over 99 percent of police agencies are at the state or local level, with state and local officials deciding, ultimately, what they do.

 

That’s not to say the federal government is completely powerless. The president and Congress have a unique advantage in that they have gobs of money that they can throw at just about any problem. That includes murders: If the president and Congress want cities and states to do something about homicides, they can allocate money, with conditions, to cities, counties, and states exclusively for that issue.

 

But even this is a crapshoot. Local and state governments have to accept the money and all the conditions it comes with. Then they have to actually use that money and successfully implement whatever policy vision they have in mind.

 

There’s plenty of room for things to go wrong there. Local and state governments might say no. If a city, county, or state says yes, they might not implement their idea as well as hoped, or may even go against the wishes of federal officials, who may not have the means to even see what’s going wrong. (Remember: We still don’t have full crime statistics for 2020.)

 

These kinds of problems aren’t atypical in criminal justice. Part of the 1994 crime law, which Biden helped write, was supposed to encourage more incarceration, with the feds throwing money at states to build up jails and prisons. Yet later analyses found states didn’t take the money or didn’t use the funds to do anything different from what they had done before.

 

This is just the reality of America’s systems of government and criminal justice. There are 50 states and more than 3,000 counties in America. The US’s federalist structure enables a lot of fragmentation, so just about all of these places have their own unique criminal justice system. That makes it very difficult for the federal government to push all of these entities in a united direction, much less hold them accountable if they stray from that path.

 

That’s all before getting into what it would take for Congress to actually enact an anti-crime bill. That’s a political minefield, with Democrats very divided about the proper role of police. And with Democrats holding the slightest of majorities in Congress, anything that divides the party isn’t likely to pass.

 

So Biden, who’s clearly worried about the rise in gun violence and murders, is forced to resort to executive actions that at best tinker at the margins of the issue.

 

Yet much of the public will ultimately blame Biden for whatever happens. That’s good for Biden during good times, but it’s dangerous during a spike in murders.

 

PAPER OF THE WEEK

Birthday parties helped spread Covid-19

A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine exposes the role birthday parties — and perhaps other private gatherings — played in spreading Covid-19.

 

Researchers Christopher Whaley, Jonathan Cantor, Megan Pera, and Anupam Jena used health insurance data to analyze the spread of the coronavirus two weeks after birthdays, surmising there would be more spread after parties.

 

That’s exactly what happened, particularly in places with a lot of virus already spreading. In the top decile of Covid-19 prevalence, there was an increase in reported cases of 5.8 per 10,000 people after adult birthdays and 15.8 per 10,000 after child birthdays.

 

The findings held up against a bunch of checks, including using randomized days instead of birthdays and examining weeks before birthdays rather than the weeks after.

 

Given the proliferation of the vaccines, the findings are mostly notable in retrospect and for future crises — demonstrating how a virus can spread. But they’re also sadly relevant in areas with low rates of vaccine uptake, where people are likely meeting and gathering anyway. Based on this study, people in those places are at a major risk of continuing to spread Covid-19.