Testimony Before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight

 Rafael A. Mangual testified in a hearing titled An Overview of the Problem and Policy Solutions.

Watch the full testimony here.

Chairman Van Drew, Ranking Member Crockett, and all other members of this distinguished body: Thank you for the opportunity to offer remarks on the all-important topic of public safety in America’s cities—an issue I have spent the last decade working on. It is always an honor and a privilege to be called upon to contribute to Congress’s deliberations about such matters.

I’d like to begin by suggesting that in public debates over questions of public safety, far too much weight is put on aggregate crime measures that often fail to fully capture or accurately describe the risk of criminal victimization faced by America’s urban residents.

We often talk about crime in national, statewide, or citywide terms. It’s an understandable colloquialism that I’m sure I’ve been guilty of. But whether a city’s crime levels are up or down, while important, can mask some important realities.

Click here to read the full testimony.

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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.