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President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14300 on May 23, 2025, aiming to reform the red tape–wrapped Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which has long stood in the way of the development and deployment of nuclear power. That order noted:

The NRC utilizes safety models that posit there is no safe threshold of radiation exposure and that harm is directly proportional to the amount of exposure. Those models lack sound scientific basis and produce irrational results, such as requiring that nuclear plants protect against radiation below naturally occurring levels. A myopic policy of minimizing even trivial risks ignores the reality that substitute forms of energy production also carry risk, such as pollution with potentially deleterious health effects.

In place of this “myopic policy,” the agency was ordered to “adopt science-based radiation limits.” In particular, the order noted, “the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the ‘as low as reasonably achievable’ standard, which is predicated on LNT.” The agency was told that it “shall specifically consider adopting determinate radiation limits.”

LNT assumes that there is no level of exposure to nuclear radiation that does not increase the risk of cancer. Regulators use “ALARA” as shorthand for “as low as reasonably achievable.” In practice, instead of reasonably achievable, ALARA has amounted to requiring power plants to reduce radiation exposures to workers and the public to as low as possible.

On July 1, the NRC basically ignored the requirements of the executive order when it finally got around to proposing its new radiation exposure safety rules. While purporting to get rid of ALARA, the NRC’s proposed regulations do nothing of the sort. The NRC’s new proposals recognize that “there are limitations to the accuracy of the LNT model at very low doses, however, the NRC has also not identified a suitable alternative model.” So the agency merely proposes to excise the pesky term ALARA from its regulations while still endorsing the continued use of LNT to justify its radiation dose limits.

Recall that the executive order required the NRC to consider determinate radiation limits instead of LNT. The NRC’s analysis outright rejected this instruction. The agency asserted that “establishing a determinate regulatory dose limit” is “not currently supported by scientific evidence.”

Is that so? Just a year earlier, a team of nuclear radiation researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory issued a comprehensive report that came to the opposite conclusion. Overall, they concluded that “studies have generally not demonstrated statistically significant adverse health effects at doses below 10,000 millirems delivered at low dose rates, despite decades of research.” The Health Physics Society agrees that “below levels of about 100 mSv [10,000 millirems] above background from all sources combined, the observed radiation effects in people are not statistically different from zero.” For comparison, a chest X-ray is about 2 millirems, and an abdomen and pelvis C.T. scan is about 770 millirems.

The Idaho researchers recommend scrapping the current approach in favor of annual determinate exposure limits of 5,000 millirems for occupational workers and 500 millirems for the public. Easing overly strict limits, they argue, “could dramatically improve the cost-competitiveness of nuclear energy, expand access to nuclear-medicine procedures, enhance industrial applications of nuclear technologies, benefit environmental remediation of former nuclear sites, and improve management and disposal of commercial nuclear wastes.”

In contrast, the NRC calculates that its timid revisions would save the nuclear power industry a piddling $9.53 million annually.

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Two prominent Democrats visited the Holy Land over the past few days. Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and the son of an Israeli independence fighter, gave a speech to Tel Aviv University about how the U.S. can “stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel on the long journey toward peace.” Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) was visiting a Palestinian village in the West Bank when his car was held up by an Israeli settler militia. The Israeli army says it dispersed the militia to let Khanna through; Khanna says that the army is “lying” and that the soldiers took the settlers’ side.

Both Emanuel and Khanna embraced the idea of U.S. sanctions on Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories. Khanna told socialist talk show host Hasan Piker that a categorical “arms embargo” on Israel would be “probably too far,” and presented sanctions on companies and officials dealing with settlements as a more moderate option. But Emanuel made it clear to The Jerusalem Post that sanctions on settlements were intended to be an all-out attack on the Israeli economy. “You want to pursue a greater Israel?” he said, referring to a term for the Israeli maximalist vision. “You pay full price for it. Everything. That’s a choice you make.”

Sanctions are one of the most powerful but misunderstood tools of U.S. power. And in their rush to realign the U.S.-Israeli relationship, Democrats (and some Republicans) risk getting ahead of their skis. The ambiguity over the word embargo is one example. An arms embargo means that the U.S. government would decline to provide the Israeli government with any weapons. A trade embargo, on the other hand, would involve the U.S. government using its enforcement powers to target private, civilian business in Israel as a form of indirect pressure on the government. These sanctions have a spotty track record in other countries, and even in theory, they only work by causing huge collateral damage.

The main Israeli-Palestinian lightning rod in U.S. politics used to be aid; Israel was the largest foreign recipient of American taxpayer money since World War II. That debate is more or less over, as the Israeli government itself is asking to end direct U.S. subsidies. The pro-Palestinian movement has moved toward demanding a full arms embargo—stopping the U.S. government from sending weapons, whether they are paid for by American or Israeli taxpayers. Indeed, polling shows that most Americans oppose sending weapons in general to Israel.

A New Policy, a pro-Palestinian lobby group founded by two officials who resigned from the Biden administration, argues that the U.S. should use arms sales as “leverage” to change Israeli policy. The Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, another pro-Palestinian lobby group, claims that any weapon sale to Israel would violate U.S. arms control law, which forbids arming militaries involved in large-scale torture or wars of aggression.

These critics are right that the U.S. government has a lot of leverage in this regard. The international arms trade is not really a free market. U.S. weapons sales are either done by the Pentagon itself or are carried out under the direct control of the State Department. They often come with long-term U.S. commitments. Saudi Arabia, the largest customer for American weapons, gets U.S. training and support (including American maintenance technicians on the ground) with its purchases. To replace direct U.S. aid, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing to fully integrate U.S. and Israeli supply chains, and a bill to that effect is about to pass Congress, despite attempts by Khanna and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) to stop it.

Some Democratic proponents of continued U.S. arms sales to Israel, such as Slow Boring editor Matt Yglesias, argue that cutting those sales would hurt American manufacturing jobs. That’s not an entirely honest argument. There is, in fact, an excess of demand for American weapons around the world. In many ways, Israel has been allowed to push ahead of the line. The U.S. government guarantees that the Israeli military can receive preferential access to American ammunition (the War Reserves Stockpile Allies-Israel) and better weapons than its neighbors (the qualitative military edge mandate) while other countries are stuck in a backlog. If Israel doesn’t buy those weapons, someone else will.

There is more to the argument that U.S. leverage is overrated. Comparing Saudi Arabia to other cases, former Pentagon officials Elizabeth Dent and Grant Rumley wrote in 2024 that cutting off arms sales has proven to be “a fickle tool” of coercion. Although Israel could not wage its foreign wars without various types of U.S. support, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is a much older and lower-tech form of ethnic conflict. The people who stopped Khanna’s car, after all, were a ragtag militia. Still, perhaps that’s an argument for getting the U.S. out of the mix, if only to wash Americans’ hands of an intractable problem.

Economic sanctions are a different creature altogether. Some sanctions involve seizing the assets of specific foreign officials. Other sanctions are comprehensive bureaucratic attacks on a country’s economy. Over the past few decades, the U.S. Treasury has developed increasingly sophisticated ways to impede other nations’ ability to trade. There is an active, extensive effort to stop oil from flowing into Russia, natural gas from flowing into North Korea, dollars from passing through Iran, or tourists from visiting Cuba.

For all the efficiency of sanctions enforcement, the theory behind comprehensive sanctions is quite crude: Throw a country into economic chaos and its government will be forced to give in to your demands, or better yet, it will be overthrown. In other words, the plan is to use ordinary people’s suffering as leverage. It’s dubious whether that suffering even “works.” Instead of achieving U.S. goals without war, sanctions campaigns have often been the prelude to war. The Trump administration escalated from sanctions on Venezuela to a blockade and then a direct regime change operation. Then it did the same in Iran, much less successfully.

Emanuel and Khanna’s proposal for settlement sanctions is supposed to be a smarter, more precise form of economic pressure. The two Democrats have named a specific target set (officials, construction companies, and banks) and a specific behavior (dealing with settlers in the West Bank) that the targets can cease in order to escape punishment. In theory, the plan is well-tailored to its goals, especially since the settlement movement relies so much on American money, and the issue with settlements is a property dispute at heart.

But the campaign could easily escalate into sanctions on the entire Israeli financial sector because of how many banks deal with settlement real estate. Emanuel at least admitted that this risk existed, perhaps as a way to rattle his right-wing interviewer. Khanna, on the other hand, portrayed economic sanctions as a less extreme measure than an arms embargo. He either did not fully understand the implications of his proposal, or wasn’t completely honest about them, neither of which is a good sign for how it would be implemented.

Democratic critics are right that U.S. involvement, especially military aid and arms dealing, has enabled violence and tyranny across the Middle East. Even if ending that meddling isn’t sufficient to solve all the region’s problems, it is a necessary step toward lowering the temperature. They’re also right to notice that the exceptional U.S. support for Israel has unleashed an exceptional domestic backlash among Americans. But that backlash has grown so quickly that it seems politicians don’t quite know how to translate it into policy changes.

The U.S. government can passively withhold support from its Israeli counterpart before moving on to active coercive measures. Weapon sales are one major example. Another is the direct defensive support from U.S. troops stationed in Israel, or the U.S. intelligence sharing that enables Israeli operations. U.S. diplomats have also put in a lot of effort into rewarding Israel’s friends and punishing its opponents. And there are scores of smaller pro-Israeli exemptions in U.S. law and policy. Ending these measures would make the environment less favorable to the kinds of Israeli actions that progressives oppose, while also reducing the overall U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

In summer 2023, before the current series of wars, I wrote that financial aid “should not be the beginning and end of the conversation” about Israel, because “America is tied and obligated to Jerusalem in ways that go far beyond just $3.8 billion a year.” (That number nearly tripled over the next couple of years.) Indeed, the current U.S.-Israeli entanglement was created through a lot of thoughtlessly passed or seemingly inconsequential laws. That’s why politicians trying to disentangle the relationship have to think carefully and understand exactly what they’re doing.

The post The Push for an Embargo on Israel Is Vague and Confused appeared first on Reason.com.

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Today law professor Richard Epstein published an intriguing blog post, entitled “FIFA’s Flawed Rulebook.” Epstein urges that we should reexamine some of the “rot” in soccer’s current rules, which leads to unfair outcomes. He makes three recommendations for  improving the great game: (1) revising yellow-card accumulation and automatic suspensions following red cards; (2) awarding two points for a run-of-play goal and only one point for a penalty-kick goal; and (3) changing overtime by gradually reducing the number of players on the field. As an avid soccer fan, I endorse Epstein’s call for reviewing the rules and improving them where possible. But on the merits of his particular proposals, I like only the first but not the last two.

Revising the yellow card and red card next-game-consequences rules

Epstein proposes reconsidering how yellow cards and red cards currently operate. They both carry consequences over from one game to the next. A yellow card carries little immediate consequence in the first game where it is given. Indeed, because there is no real penalty, players often resort to “tactical fouls” to stop breakaways and other scoring opportunities. It is only when a player receives a second yellow card—even in the next game—that a serious consequence results: expulsion. Red cards also typically carry over to the next game: almost invariably, the player is suspended.

The problem with these next-game repercussions, as Epstein nicely explains, is that “they violate a fundamental principle of justice … by refusing to keep the pluses and minuses of each game self-contained, which could matter any time a red or yellow card is given.” Thus, they carry “the sins of one game over to the next.”

Epstein proposes that, instead of the current yellow card accumulation rule, a better approach is to track hockey by making the offending player sit out for a few minutes—an approach that can be further tweaked by extending the time a player is required to sit for a “major” foul. Similarly, for a red card in one game, the issue of a next-game suspension could be carefully reviewed during the several days leading up to the next game, with a focus on the intent of the offending player. For example, Balogun’s red card suspension (which I discussed at length here and here) could have been reviewed under a predetermined set of principles and overturned.

Epstein’s main point—generally keeping consequences of fouls contained to a single game—makes considerable sense. And, putting in place a more articulated set of principles for reviewing red card suspensions also makes sense, particularly in the wake of the way Balogun’s suspension was reviewed under (seemingly) vague principles. Epstein’s ideas should be given a test run in organized play to see how they work.

Awarding two points for a run-of-play goal and one point for a penalty kick goal.

Epstein’s next proposal is much more controversial. Epstein argues that “it is imperative that scoring rules change so that a penalty shot is worth only one point and a goal from the field is worth two.”

Epstein draws inspiration from fouls in basketball, where a foul shot is worth only one point while field goals are worth two (or three, if taken from long range). Epstein argues that the penalty calls by officials inside the box “are very hard to make.” Given that a penalty kick (PK) has a roughly 70% chance of their success, the “likelihood that any foul in the field disrupts a 70% chance of scoring is highly unlikely.” Accordingly, Epstein concludes, the penalty-kick goal should count for less, just as in basketball.

Epstein’s proposal contains a fundamental flaw: it would encourage defenders to commit penalty-kick fouls in close games. Consider, for example, a situation where Team A has scored in the run of play—earning (under Epstein’s plan) two points. Then, with time running down to the last minute, Team B desperately throws players forward, launching a long ball into the penalty box. Miraculously, the ball finds Team B’s striker, who lines up the potentially tying shot from close range. But …

Just before Team B’s striker can shoot, a defender throws both hands around him and pulls him down—a “tackle” in the American football style. The defender can be confident that this is the right tactical move, because the striker will then be awarded a penalty kick that, under Epstein’s scheme, cannot tie the game. The striker will, at most, gain one point from the PK. And, of course, during the time it takes to do the penalty kick, return the ball to the middle of the field, and then finish the game, time will have expired—meaning that Team A has protected its two-point lead by deliberately surrendering only a one-point PK opportunity.

Thus, Epstein’s rule change creates incentives for the ultimate “tactical foul”—defenders deliberately giving up one-point penalty kicks rather than the possibility of a two-point, run-of-play goal. I see no way around this basic problem, which is presumably why Epstein’s idea (long advanced) has not gained any traction.

Deciding tied games

Epstein also takes a crack at changing soccer’s overtime rules. Right now, a tied game is resolved by a thirty-minute overtime period (with no “golden goal”). If the game remains tied after those thirty minutes, then the game is decided through PKs, five per side, continuing if necessary until one team is ahead.

Epstein’s proposal is to change how the thirty-minute overtime period operates. He would allow additional substitute players and require that, every ten minutes of the overtime period, a team would remove one player from the field. According to Epstein, this drop-off plan would “translate into more goals and an increase in the number of tactical choices.”

I understand Epstein’s intuition that fewer players on the field should mean more goals. But that assumes a static model of defensive tactics. Perhaps teams would adapt to the “drop-off” situation by organizing into tighter, more defensively oriented schemes, holding players in more defensive positions.

A more defensive posture was the result of the “golden goal” rule that FIFA followed for a short time. The rule was “widely perceived as [a] failed experiment[].” The rule did not bring about more active and attacking play as originally intended, but instead led to more cautious play. I suspect that Epstein’s drop-off proposal might similarly lead to more defensive responses.

But even if Epstein were correct that the drop-off rule is an improvement over the current thirty-minute overtime period, there remains the question of whether a thirty-minute overtime period is good for soccer. The overtime period is clearly bad for television schedules, since it extends the length of the game in an unpredictable way. And, in turn, this is bad for TV viewers, who likewise can’t count on knowing when a game will end.

A way to mitigate this problem is to bring a game that is tied at the end of ninety minutes to a rapid conclusion. If the game is tied at the end of regulation time, a PK shootout could be immediately held. But, in my view, a better approach would be to eliminate static PKs entirely and move to something like the old NASL/early MLS 35-yard shootout rule. This involved an attacker starting 35 yards out and having five seconds to score on the goalkeeper.

This general format has been tweaked by Tim Farrell into a more sophisticated proposal, known as ADG (attacker-defender-goalkeeper). The idea is that a single attacker would take on both a defender and a goalkeeper from 32 yards out, with  fifteen seconds to score. Computer simulations suggest this creates about a 30% chance of scoring. And to help improve player safety, a short rest period (ten minutes is the suggestion) is given to players before the shootout. Farrell has urged that his proposal be given a trial in organized play. And it seems like a good idea to me, either immediately at the end of 90 minutes or at the end of an overtime period.

More broadly, it is great that Epstein, Farrell, and others are thinking about tweaks to the beautiful game. If experience reveals ways to improve the game, they ought to be adopted.

HT: Thanks to Josh Blackman for calling Epstein’s Civitas article to my attention.

The post Some Thoughts on Law Professor Richard Epstein's Ideas for Fixing FIFA's Flawed Rulebook appeared first on Reason.com.

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If you’re an entrepreneur, you might want to consider relocating to the Rust Belt. 

CNBC recently released its 20th annual America’s Top States for Business rankings, which rated Ohio as the most business-friendly state in the country. North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota rounded out the top five. 

CNBC scores states on seven categories—infrastructure, economy, workforce, cost of doing business, tech and innovation, quality of life, and business friendliness—that businesses prioritize when deciding where to plant their flag. The scores are then weighted by how frequently states use those categories as selling points. With a nationwide focus on energy, water access, and the return of onshore manufacturing, CNBC chose infrastructure as its top-weighted category, factoring in grid reliability, energy capacity, and ease of permitting for the first time in its rankings.

It should come as no surprise that Ohio and other states that eschew red tape are near or at the top of the rankings. Since 2012, lawmakers in the Buckeye State have made it a priority to attract new business by easing regulations. Last year, Ohio passed House Bill 15 to reform its permitting process for new infrastructure projects. The bill set a 150-day deadline for the Ohio Power Siting Board to review complete applications, reduced the property tax rate on new energy generation and conversion equipment to 7 percent (from 25 percent), and set the tax rate on new transmission, distribution, and pipeline infrastructure to 25 percent (instead of the 85 percent–88 percent charged for existing assets). 

Under this law, utilities and transmission operators must publish public-facing transmission capacity heat maps that show where developers can plug in and where the grid is maxed out. It also lets data centers, factories, and other large electric-load customers plug directly into their own power plants rather than tapping the existing grid, meaning projects can get up and running faster without raising rates for other consumers. 

It’s a similar story in North Carolina. After finishing first in the CNBC rankings in 2025—its third top-place finish in four years—the Tar Heel State came in second this year. Since 2015, North Carolina has transformed itself, much like Ohio, by prioritizing permitting and land-use reforms that have made the state a haven for entrepreneurs. 

In 2015, the state passed House Bill 795, which reduced the number of projects subject to its State Environmental Policy Act by raising the monetary threshold for review and expanding the list of exempt projects. The state’s Permit Toolbox guides prospective applicants through its regulatory process and includes an Express Permitting Program that provides projects with an expedited review, albeit at a higher cost. In 2023, the state passed Senate Bill 677, which set strict time limits for municipal governments to review infrastructure projects and allowed developers to use third-party reviewers instead of local permitting offices. 

North Carolina also has the lowest corporate tax rate in the nation—a flat 2 percent rate—which will be fully phased out by 2030. 

Recognizing that businesses need abundant energy to thrive, Virginia, Texas, and Minnesota have all undergone substantial changes to their permitting process for energy projects. 

In 2024, Minnesota simplified its environmental review process, which was expected at the time to cut permitting times for energy projects by “nine months to a year” and reduce the timeline for project approval by at least 50 percent, according to Utility Dive. However, a year later, there’s no data on the policy’s effects. Virginia’s success is more apparent. Reforms signed into law in 2022 by former Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin have led to a 66 percent reduction in permit processing times in the commonwealth. Texas, meanwhile, allows power generators to connect to the grid with fewer permits than are needed in other states.

Of course, there’s still room for improvement. The top five states have also made a habit of pairing permitting reform with grants, subsidies, and tax credits that unnecessarily prop up one industry over another, casting lawmakers as the arbiters of who wins and loses in business. 

Ohio, for instance, uses revenue from its liquor monopoly to fund JobsOhio. This private nonprofit helps companies navigate the permit process and find incentives and tax breaks to set up shop in Ohio. North Carolina offers several grants and tax incentives to attract high-value companies, such as sales and use tax exemptions for data centers, software publishers, manufacturers, fulfillment facilities, warehouses, and research and development activities.

Luckily, this favoritism is beginning to receive pushback from the general public. In Ohio, the backlash against tax breaks offered to data centers and other priority businesses prompted Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to pause the state’s tax exemptions, a sentiment Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott echoed in a letter to state regulators. Virginia, which has the most data centers in the country, recently passed a first-of-its-kind electricity consumption tax on data centers instead of eliminating its tax incentives.

Permitting reform and deregulation aren’t sexy policy ideas, but they are effective in driving job creation and making people better off. As these states take the lead, hopefully other states and the federal government will soon follow suit.

The post Ohio Cut Red Tape. Now Its Business Sector Is Thriving. appeared first on Reason.com.

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In 2020, major cities across the country suffered dramatic spikes in homicides and shootings. One hypothesis for explaining these spikes is de-policing: the idea that anti-police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis led police across the nation to pull back from some forms of proactive policing. The basic idea is that anti-police protests in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis led police across the nation to pull back from some forms of proactive policing. The possible consequence, according to this hypothesis, was an increase in homicides and gun violence. This thesis, which I have called the “Minneapolis Effect,” continues to warrant research and investigation. It remains a strong candidate for explaining a significant part of the nation’s homicide and shooting spikes in major cities in 2020.

My chapter in a forthcoming book on violent crime argues that more research should be conducted to specifically examine the relationship between de-policing and firearms offenses. As I explain in the chapter, it is well known that, in 2020, many major cities across the country suffered from dramatic spikes in homicides and shootings. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, the homicide rate in the U.S. increased from 6.0 homicides in 2019 to 7.8 per 100,000 in 2020. This was the largest one-year increase in homicide rates ever recorded. Similarly, a major analysis of a sample of 34 cities by Professor Richard Rosenfeld et al. for the Council on Criminal Justice reported that homicides in 2020 were 30% higher than in 2019. The study also found that a structural break occurred in the homicide trends in June of that year, indicating large, statistically significant increases in homicide rates after adjusting for seasonality and long-term trends. Nationally, nearly 5,000 more Americans died that year due to the increase in homicides. And much of the increase in homicides was concentrated in the nation’s major cities, apparently in impoverished areas.

While explaining trends in homicide rates in general is a long-debated topic, explaining why thousands of additional victims were killed in a recent year remains a discrete issue that would seem to be within the ken of modern social science.

Early in 2021, I presented my “Minneapolis Effect” thesis in an article published in Federal Sentencing Reporter. My analysis launched from the structural break identified by the Rosenfeld report, which identified June 2020 as the beginning point (the break point)  in the homicide trendline. I described this phenomenon as the “Minneapolis Effect,” drawing a parallel to the earlier “Ferguson Effect” that was offered to explain certain increases in homicides following the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014.

My analysis relied on what appeared to be almost simultaneous increases in homicides and declines in proactive policing—that is, declines in self-initiated policing tactics designed to reduce crime through preventive strategies, such as street stops or anti-gun patrols. Looking at Rosenfeld’s national data, as well as data from five specific cities—Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and New York—I noted that homicides appeared to have spiked above normal trendlines around the beginning of June 2020. I then observed that, just as homicides were spiking, various forms of policing were declining. In particular, some data indicated that after the anti-police protests surrounding George Floyd’s death, some forms of proactive policing declined. For example, police were redeployed to manage the protests, diverting them from directed anti-gun patrols, vehicle and pedestrian stops, frisks for firearms, and other activities that deter the  carrying of illegal firearms. And even after protests began to wane, police pulled back (for various reasons) from aggressive efforts to combat gun crimes. My thesis was that the consequence of reducing law enforcement activity directed against gun violence was, perhaps unsurprisingly, an increase in gun violence. (In America, the vast majority of homicides are committed with firearms.) I found support for this thesis in the data from the cities mentioned above.

My Minneapolis Effect thesis fits within a larger body of research, which tends to support the idea that proactive policing may be particularly effective in reducing gun crimes. I collected the then-existing research in my 2020 article. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death and subsequent calls for police reform, scholars have discussed de-policing, where officers reduce proactive law enforcement activity in response to heightened scrutiny, police reforms, or negative public sentiment. Now, the empirical literature on de-policing is growing, with several recent studies investigating whether and how police disengagement contributes to broader changes in crime rates, particularly following high-profile police killings.

You can read the details in my chapter. It reviews recent literature on de-policing that has been published since May 2020. In general, this literature provides evidence that some de-policing has occurred in some cities, particularly reductions in discretionary police activities, such as vehicle and pedestrian stops. These studies then analyze whether those reductions have produced increases in certain crime categories. In particular, this chapter summarizes nine new contributions to the de-policing debate, highlighting areas of emerging consensus as well as areas where further research is needed.

My chapter concludes that the emerging empirical evidence, while not conclusive on causation, generally supports the hypothesis that de-policing increases firearms-related crime. Given the magnitude of the crime spikes that may be attributable to de-policing, further research on this firearms-specific hypothesis should be a high priority.

 

The post Did a "Minneapolis Effect" and Later De-Policing Cause Firearms Crimes to Spike in 2020? appeared first on Reason.com.

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