National Review's Rich Lowry Advocates For Increased Incarceration In “Dangerous” Black Neighborhoods

Written by Libby Watson

Published

National Review editor Rich Lowry advocated for mass incarceration and “disproportionate police attention” toward “dangerous, overwhelmingly black neighborhoods” in response to a spike in murders in Baltimore.

In an opinion piece for Politico Magazine headlined "#SomeBlackLivesDontMatter," Lowry called the “Black Lives Matter” slogan used by protesters “a lie,” citing the lack of attention paid to a spike in murders in Baltimore in the last month. Lowry claimed: “Let's be honest: Some black lives really don't matter. If you are a young black man shot in the head by another young black man, almost certainly no one will know your name.”

As a solution to the increase in shootings in Baltimore, Lowry recommended more policing and more incarceration (emphasis added):

The Baltimore Sun ran a headline (since changed) that had the air of a conundrum, although it isn't very puzzling, “With arrests down in Baltimore, mayor 'examining' increase in killings.” According to the paper, arrests have dropped by about half in May. The predictable result is that violent crime is spiking.

The implication is clear: More people need to be arrested in Baltimore, not fewer. And more need to be jailed. If black lives truly matter, Baltimore needs more and better policing and incarceration to impose order on communities where a lawless few spread mayhem and death.

Lowry also called for “disproportionate police attention, even if that attention is easily mischaracterized as racism,” in “dangerous, overwhelmingly black neighborhoods.” 

Lowry used the comments of “anonymous police officers” as evidence that the city of Baltimore does not support its law enforcement personnel:

Meanwhile, anonymous police officers say they feel that city authorities don't have their back, understandably enough when city leaders are loath to call rioters “thugs” and Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby rushed to announce charges against the Freddy Gray officers to placate the mob.

A recent CNN article about the crime increase reported that while officers have “lost faith in the chain of command,” they have also “coordinated a work slowdown by not talking to community members and showing less initiative” --  context Lowry failed to include.

Lowry finally claimed that Rudy Giuliani “saved more black lives than any of his critics ever will... by getting the police to establish and maintain basic order in New York's neighborhoods and defending the cops when the likes of Al Sharpton maligned them.” A 2014 report by the New York Civil Liberties Union found the stop-and-frisk policy put in place by Giuliani was ineffective at reducing violent crime. 

Calls for the black community and its leaders to focus more on “black on black crime” is a move frequently made by right-wing media figures as a response to the calls for criminal justice reform that have grown louder since the shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown by Ferguson, MO police made national headlines. Last year, Slate's Jamelle Bouie explained why this argument is so flawed:

First, a little context: In the last 20 years, we've seen a sharp drop in homicide among blacks, from a victimization rate of 39.4 homicides per 100,000 in 1991 to a rate of roughly 20 homicides per 100,000 in 2008. Likewise, the offending rate for blacks has dropped from 51.1 offenders per 100,000 in 1991 to 24.7 offenders per 100,000 in 2008. This decrease has continued through the 2010s and is part of a larger--and largely unexplained--national drop in crime.

But while black neighborhoods are far less dangerous than they were a generation ago, black people are still concerned with victimization. Take this 2014 report from the Sentencing Project on perceptions of crime and support for punitive policies. Using data from the University of Albany's Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, the Sentencing Project found that--as a group--racial minorities are more likely than whites to report an “area within a mile of their home where they would be afraid to walk alone at night” (41 percent to 30 percent) and more likely to say there are certain neighborhoods they avoid, which they otherwise might want to go to (54 percent to 46 percent). And among black Americans in particular--circa 2003--“43 percent said they were 'very satisfied' about their physical safety in contrast to 59 percent of Hispanics, and 63 percent of whites.”

[...]

Beyond the data, there's the anecdotal evidence. And in short, it's easy to find examples of marches and demonstrations against crime. In the last four years, blacks have held community protests against violence in Chicago; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Pittsburgh; Saginaw, Michigan; and Gary, Indiana. Indeed, there's a whole catalog of movies, albums, and sermons from a generation of directors, musicians, and religious leaders, each urging peace and order. You may not have noticed black protests against crime and violence, but that doesn't mean they haven't happened. Black Americans--like everyone else--are concerned with what happens in their communities, and at a certain point, pundits who insist otherwise are either lying or willfully ignorant.