Crime is killing New Orleans.  A Bravo TV show cut the number of episodes produced in the city because its crew repeatedly fell victim to carjackers.  A large beer maker, Faubourg Brewery, couldn’t find anyone to work the night shift because potential workers feared the high-crime area where the brewery was located.  Because of this, the company moved all of its production out of state, costing dozens of jobs.  An offshore oil service company, Harvey Gulf International Marine, almost moved its HQ from the city to the suburbs because too many of its employees were victimized.

There is no way of counting the thousands of individual economic decisions driven by fear of crime that don’t make the news.  How many people have moved out of the city because of this fear?  How many small businesses closed or moved because of this fear?  How many tourists avoided spending their vacation dollars there because of this fear?

Many deep blue American cities are in a similar situation.  These news stories will sound familiar to anyone in Memphis, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Memphis, Jackson, or Birmingham.

The ultimate tragedy is that we know how to fix this: incarceration.  Violent crime is committed by a small number of young men.  Two characteristics that make some certain young men more prone to criminality are having a low I.Q. and having a high level of testosterone.  Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to effectively increase someone’s I.Q.  However, there is something that reduces testosterone: age.

Removing criminals from the population with long prison sentences is a sure way of reducing crime.  If a career violent criminal is incarcerated in his 20s, then released in his 60s, he will certainly be a much more docile man because of the toll age takes on his testosterone level.

We know that incarceration works because federal, state, and local governments recently implemented pro-incarceration policies, and they were stunningly successful.  The implementation of three-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentencing, building more prison cells, and electing “tough on crime” officials resulted in incarceration rates going up from the early 1990s until mid-2010s.  During this same period, crime rates dropped in tandem.  For much of the last ten years, there has been a widespread effort to reverse these “tough on crime” policies despite their impressive correlation with lower crime rates.

Some balk at incarceration because it is costly.  It averages nearly $46,000 a year per prisoner annually.  The nation spends $80 billion a year on incarceration, but crime has been estimated to cost almost $6 trillion.  Therefore, a large increase in incarceration expenditure would be economically justified if it would result in even a slight reduction in crime.  Also, the non-economic benefits of one less murder, rape, or assault are incalculable.  Reversing the decline of American cities because of fear of crime is also immense.

In the coming years, red America and blue America will likely conduct a powerful public policy experiment.  As conservative governors reinstate time-tested policies like high bail for arrestees with long rap sheets, increased minimum sentencing, and enhanced sentencing for repeat offenders, we’ll likely see very different trends in crime rates between blue and red states.  Another way “tough on crime” elected officials can affect crime is to bring municipalities with progressive criminal justice systems to heel.  Florida governor Ron DeSantis has already done this by removing two progressive prosecutors, citing their leniency as the reason.  Last year in Missouri, Republican attorney general Andrew Bailey attempted to remove Soros-backed St. Louis prosecutor Kim Gardner, who resigned before her removal.  In Louisiana, newly inaugurated Gov. Jeff Landry is starting his administration by calling a special legislative session to address out-of-control crime in the state’s cities, particularly New Orleans.

We shouldn’t let partisans distract from the success of “tough on crime” policies.  They do this by accurately pointing out that red states have higher murder rates than blue states.  That’s true only because many blue states have uniquely dangerous cities teeming with violent criminals: Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Jackson, Birmingham, Little Rock, Cleveland, Gary, and St. Louis.  To dispel the “high crime red state” argument, one merely has to go deeper and look at crime rates at the county level.  Steve Sailer has done this analysis.  He demonstrated that while states with larger non-black populations had the lowest homicide rates regardless of partisan bent, the most violent counties have large black populations, which always vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

Some problems are intractable.  Our current crime epidemic does not have to be.  The cure for this plague is available and simply requires short-term memory.

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