(This opinion essay was first published for The Brennan Center for Justice on September 27, 2021.)

Excessive punishment is the wrong response to rises in homicide rates.

Over the past year and a half, as the United States struggled to address Covid-19, homicides in major American cities have increased sharply, and aggravated assaults appear to have increased, too. The numbers have been frightening: a 30 percent jump in killings in 2020, and a further increase of 16 percent in the first half of 2021. Over an 18-month period, about 33,000 lives were lost to violence in the United States — 8,400 more than would have been killed had homicide rates stayed the same as in 2019. These numbers pale, of course, beside the more than 600,000 American deaths from the coronavirus over the same period.

(Continue reading the opinion essay on the The Brennan Center for Justice’s page here.)