Hidden Brain - Making the World a Safer Place

All of us want to feel safe in our daily lives. Yet when we think about crime, our first response is often a blanket approach: find the bad guys, and punish them. But what if there were another way? This week on the show, researchers Sara Heller and Chris Blattman explore how technology and psychology can be used to radically transform our approach to crime.

Duration: 54m
Broadcast on: 05 Sep 2022
Audio Format: other

Don't forget to check out the episodes in this year's You 2.0 series, including last week's conversation with Adam Grant about how to open your mind and question your own assumptions. And if you like our work, please consider supporting it! See how you can help at support.hiddenbrain.org.

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This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. One of the first television crime dramas in the United States, debuted in 1958. Naked City told stories of detectives in New York's 65th precinct. Each episode was a new case. The premise of the show, there are good guys, and there are bad guys. At the end of every episode, the narrator declared, "There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them." 60 years later, crime dramas haven't changed much. There are still good guys and bad guys, but the bad guys are now savage, remorseless, beyond redemption. The way we think about crime dramas is very similar to the way we think about crime. Homicide, robberies, and other kinds of violent crime have been spiking in many big cities in the United States in recent years. Coming after a long period of declining crime rates, this has caused people in many areas to demand solutions. To demand that the good guys catch the bad guys. But it turns out, there are some profound mistakes we are making in thinking about crime, both in police dramas and in actual policing. Why are people in this situation, why are they making these choices, and importantly, what can we do as a society to make things better? This week on Hidden Brain is subtle insight that could radically transform our approach to crime. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Liberty Mutual Insurance. Making smart decisions includes considering how to protect your car and home and how much you are paying to ensure them. Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance to save you money because when you've worked hard for something, choosing insurance should be easy. Start your quote at libertymutual.com Support for Hidden Brain comes from Southern New Hampshire University. The brain is in fixed. It's flexible. That means we're always capable of transformation. A master's degree from SNHU can help you build the skills to become whoever you want. A leader, career changer, dream chaser. With no set class times and low online tuition, SNHU makes grad school possible because it's never too late to learn something new. Get started at snhu.edu/brain. Support for Hidden Brain comes from Land Rover. Even the boldest journey starts small with a single decision to go somewhere new. Purpose-built and courage-driven, the Defender 110 combines on-road presence with off-road capability. It looks tough because it is with a raised hood and an exterior engineered for durability. Inside, capability meets comfort with seating for five and the option for seven plus refined finishes and thoughtful design. The Defender event is on now. Explore enhanced offers at landroverusa.com In 2016, Sara Heller began teaching a class on criminology. She was looking for a way to teach her students about the economics of crime. She turned to a respected source. There's the boy string. The angel of such a mill. It was the hit HBO series, The Wire.

The Wire is the story of Baltimore street crime and the drug gangs were working there and the police were trying to stop them and the way that it affects the citizenry of Baltimore. If you haven't seen the show, we are going to have spoilers. Season 3 of The Wire features growing tensions between two leaders of a drug gang. One wants to run the business like a business. The other says, "You don't get it. You're not a businessman. You're a criminal. Embrace it." For even three seasons, you've gotten to know Stringerville, who's one of the heads of the gang. He's also interested in trying to have some legal businesses and trying to develop a real estate career and balancing those two things. There's been sort of growing and growing disagreement between him and the other person who leads the gang with him, Avon Barksdale. You know what? I look at you these days. You know what I see? I see a man without a country. Avon wants to think about gangs and territory and building up as a gang leader and he disagrees with Stringers' desire to be more of a legal player and to minimize the violence. Because I don't shoot up a block in this criminal. I ain't hard enough. In a climactic scene, Avon Barksdale betrays his friend and partner. Stringerville finds himself in a building unarmed and alone with an exceptionally violent criminal who holds a grudge against him. Stringer tries to reason his way out of the trap, but it doesn't work. It would seem like I can't say nothing to change your own minds. Well get on with it. What was your students' reactions when you showed them this season? I mean, it must have been an engaging way to start a class that looked at the economics of crime and drug markets. So I think in some respects it blows their mind partly because it was the 90s and they don't know what the 90s looked like. So that's a learning experience too. But I think they learn to think about things not through the lens of politics or their prior beliefs about what they think crime is like or what they think policing is like. But they learn to think about why are people in this situation? Why are they making these choices? And how can we shape policy to improve the situation? Part of its use is that it helps students become social scientists and think about why do things work the way that they do and importantly, why do people participate in crime? Why are they willing to put themselves at sometimes moral risk for this kind of lifestyle and how does policing work and what are police trying to do and how well do they do it and what's effective and what's not effective?

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