““For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other law-giver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.”

—Thomas Paine, Common Sense

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“The highest exercise of judicial duty is to subordinate one’s personal pulls and one’s private views to the law.”

-Justice Felix Frankfurter

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“It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error.”

-Justice Robert Jackson

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“The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market...”

-Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

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“The government can’t do anything for you, except in proportion as it can do something to you.”

-William F. Buckley, Jr.

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“The Justices were not appointed to roam at large in the realm of public policy.”

-William Rehnquist

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“Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due.”

-Ulpian, Roman Jurist

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“Man is condemned to be free because once he is thrown into the world he is responsible for everything he does.”

-Jean-Paul Sartre

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“Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must undertake to support it.”

-Patrick Henry

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“Conservatism starts from a sentiment that all mature people can readily share: the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”

-Roger Scruton

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This law applies to physics, but also, in a sense, to cities. Some recent events in and near Indiana’s capital city, Indianapolis, situated in Marion County, have sparked a debate about crime, but, in my view, a more fundamental discussion about entropy.

The first incident happened a couple of weeks ago in Carmel, Indiana, Indianapolis’s northern neighbor. An Indianapolis man was arrested for allegedly carjacking a father and daughter. Following the incident, the Carmel Mayor publicly criticized the Marion County justice system, saying, “We have residents in Central Indiana committing crimes, and Marion County can’t put them in jail and keep them in jail. It’s unacceptable.”

In response, the Marion County Prosecutor said, “We need to make sure that we’re being accurate and honest about what’s actually taking place.” He noted that the Carmel suspect’s most recent theft case in Indianapolis was for stealing $6 from a tip jar. He went on, “The maximum punishment is the maximum punishment, and there’s only so much judges and prosecutors can do when they’re dealing with individuals who are charged with those low-level crimes.”

The second incident happened a few days later in an Indianapolis parking garage where a young man was shot and killed on his way to an Indianapolis Indians baseball game. Again, criticism of the Marion County justice system erupted. The Marion County Prosecutor responded to this criticism by pointing out that the suspect arrested in the shooting is only fourteen years old and has no history with the justice system.

Following these events, others have chimed in. The Greenwood Mayor, whose city is in Johnson County just south of Indianapolis, said “67% of our arrests are Marion County residents.” Similarly, The Hendricks County Prosecutor, to the west of Indy, said, “You cannot argue that it is not true that Marion County criminals come into neighboring communities and commit violent crime there. That is a fact.”

Throughout this, the crime debate has gotten mired in the details of specific violent cases. That is not the only level of analysis, though. In a broad sense, what the criticism is really about is the level of entropy in Indianapolis. The critics are concerned that, governed by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy is spreading throughout Indianapolis and surrounding communities. With their criticisms they are intentionally applying energy to overcome that entropy.

Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow, Charles Fain Lehman, recently spoke at the University of Austin, Texas where he discussed the link between disorder, what I’m calling entropy, and crime. Lehman argues that “small acts of disorder create a feedback loop where people in a neighborhood are driven out by disorder and the ratio of law-abiding citizens on the street to law-breaking citizens on the street shifts in a self-reinforcing cycle that leads inevitably to the collapse of a community.” The corollary is that “the remediation of disorder reduces crime, and policing focused on reducing disorder also reduces major crime.”

Lehman goes on to say that in recent times, our urban society has become reluctant to deal with disorder. He says, “The wish to decriminalize disreputable behavior that harms no one, and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order, is a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community.” Lehman adds, “there is a public campaign that is asking you not to care about what happens to our cities. It is asking you not to care that people sleep in public, that people sell sex, that people do drugs. It is saying that you should not notice those things... And my argument is that actually you as a member of the community with an equal right to enjoyment of the public space have every legitimate and objective reason to say, no, I don’t need to put up with that. And I don’t need to vote for people. I don’t need to endorse political projects that hold that as a legitimate view.”

In our capital city the visible signs of disorder are not hard to find. On a visit to the city, you are likely to encounter homelessness, tent cities, the mentally ill, open-air drug use, trash, and graffiti. Also, retail theft, vacant storefronts, and pot-hole riddled streets. So far, the response to the fallout has not included a focus on such disorder. Rather, leaders have organized a “Regional Mayors Public Safety Partnership Summit,” designed to “address multi-jurisdictional crime, share intelligence, and tackle the movement of repeat offenders across central Indiana.” Also, the FBI has announced a summer crackdown on violent crime in Indianapolis. This is all great, but regional summits and summer crackdowns are temporary patches.

The heart of the problem is the city’s disorder. Countering this disorder will not, of course, eliminate all violent crime, but the research and evidence suggest it will reduce it. And aside from the tremendous benefit of reducing violent crime, it will also make the city a nicer place to visit and live. The citizens, in addition to being safe, are entitled to cleanliness and unobstructed use of the public spaces they fund.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics is unrelenting. Left alone, systems do not stabilize. They decay. The disorder in Indianapolis is not an anomaly; it is entropy doing exactly what physics predicts it will do. Order is an achievement, hard won and easily lost. Every clean street, every safe parking garage, every drug offense and petty theft addressed is a victory against entropy. The regional leaders, in their discussions and work ahead, must include fighting entropy as a top priority. Physics, and recent experience, tells us what happens when they don’t.

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“Many of the most devastating social policies are often judged by the warmth of their intentions rather than the cold reality of their consequences.”

-Friedrich Hayek

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“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

-Richard Feynman

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Do you know what group of people are the most violent?

Young children.

According to a study by Richard Tremblay published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development, entitled, The Development of Aggressive Behavior During Childhood, physical aggression is an innate trait that peaks between ages 2 and 4. The researchers observed that approximately 25% of two-year-olds’ social interaction involved some degree of physical aggression, such as pushing or hitting another child. The authors conclude that most kids grow out of this. Some don’t.

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Crime

Baltimore has long been one of the most violent cities in the country. Starting about a decade ago, Baltimore became even more violent. In 2020, homicide rates in Baltimore were eight times higher than the national average. In 2022, however, murder rates began to drop. Between 2022 and 2025, there was a sixty percent drop in murders. Last year, Baltimore had the fewest murders since 1965. So far in 2026, the city is on pace to have even fewer murders. What happened?

Manhattan Institute fellow, Charles Fain Lehman, recently published an article in The Free Press arguing that two primary factors have contributed to the reduction in violence in Baltimore: one is what is called the Group Violence Intervention Program, and the other is the election of an aggressive prosecutor.

The GVI program involves targeting the small number of people or gangs that commit the overwhelming majority of violent crime. Special groups within police agencies are organized to go after these offenders and their circle of associates. In addition to serious police attention, community organizations partner with police to contact would-be offenders. The community organizations offer people help with jobs, treatment, or legal work, but they also warn them that if they do not take the off-ramp provided, they will be held accountable by the legal system.

The new prosecutor has helped, as well. The previous prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, was a “progressive prosecutor” who refused to prosecute whole categories of crime such as drug possession, prostitution, retail theft, and trespassing. Mosby lost the 2022 election following the surge in crime and her own indictment for mortgage fraud. Ivan Bates replaced Mosby as prosecutor, running a tough-on-crime campaign. Bates began by identifying 6,000 frequent, violent offenders in the city. He has sent approximately half of those people to prison so far. Of his success, Bates has said, “It’s not a big mystery. The previous state’s attorney didn’t prosecute.”

It is, indeed, not a big mystery. When you hold criminals accountable, crime goes down. You can read the full article below:

The Free Press

Why Did the Murders Stop in Baltimore?

Say “Baltimore,” and people think of crime. Shows like The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Street depicted the city as gritty, gun-ridden, and plagued by gang violence. These fictional representations weren’t far off what statistics show about the city’s reality. Since the turn of the millennium, young black men have been three to four times more likely to die by homicide in Baltimore than in the nation as a whole…

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3 months ago · 289 likes · 264 comments · Charles Fain Lehman

Crime

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a grant to an organization called Mike Puma Associates to study a program in New York that provided services to adult male parolees. The program, called the Center for Employment Opportunities Program, gave four to six months of life skills, job training, transition services, job placement services and counselling to people released from prison. The hope was that this program would reduce rates of reoffending.

Using randomized controlled trials, the study found no effect on reincarceration over a nearly two-year tracking period. That is, the male parolees who received services were no less likely to re-offend than the male parolees who did not receive services. This is the outcome for pretty much every study on programs like this.

Crime

A new word from the criminal justice reform movement just dropped: “microlooting.” They define microlooting as “the act of casually shoplifting small, low-cost items from large, highly profitable corporations.” The person did not steal from you, he just microlooted. He did not commit theft. Rather, his behavior constitutes a acceptable form of anti-capitalist protest. Or something like that.

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“The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many…What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body…”

-Thomas Jefferson

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For instance, there has been a proliferation of problem-solving courts in Indiana over the last decade. What started out as Drug Courts, now includes Mental Health Courts, Veterans Treatment Courts, Family Recovery Courts, Reentry Courts, Domestic Violence Courts, OVWI Courts, Community Courts, and others. In a recent legislative session, the Indiana General Assembly passed House Bill 1101 creating Safe Baby Courts. According to the bill digest, a safe baby court is “a problem-solving court focused on addressing the needs of families who have a child in need of services who is three years of age or younger by surrounding families with supportive services…”

That’s a lot of problem-solving courts. And they are not the only ways in which the legal system has been pushed in the direction of social work. In 2016, the Indiana Supreme Court adopted a bail reform rule, and followed with a model for pre-trial release services. We also have extensive probation services for post-conviction. And most recently, there has been an increased emphasis on mental health services, with judges encouraged to take an active role in identifying and meeting the needs of litigants with mental health issues.

I am not suggesting that the needs highlighted by problem-solving courts, pre-trial services, enhanced probation services and mental health awareness do not exist. I am also not arguing that there is anything wrong with social work. I am simply suggesting here that the judiciary should not become primarily therapeutic or case-management oriented at the expense of the adversarial process. There are many reasons for this.

First, social workers cost far less than lawyers. If we want to have a social work focused criminal justice system, then it should not be primarily staffed by lawyers. It should be staffed mostly by social workers. The average pay for social workers in Indiana is around $50,000.00. The average salary for lawyers is around $150,000.00. You can hire three social workers for the cost of one lawyer. A social work heavy criminal justice legal system is a misallocation of resources.

Next, social workers are not generally suited to legal work and vice versa. People tend to self-select into jobs that match their skill set and personality. Social work requires patience, understanding, and compassion. Social workers tend to score high on the big five personality test for agreeableness. Social work training emphasizes supportive services. Legal work, on the other hand, requires high analytical ability. Lawyers, and especially judges, must be dispassionate. They must be disagreeable to an extent. Lawyers tend to score high on the big five personality test for conscientiousness and score lower on agreeableness. Legal training emphasizes evidentiary rigor and adversarial processes. While there can certainly be overlaps, these are different professional cultures, made up of different kinds of people, with different success metrics.

Finally, when judges and lawyers are nudged toward social work, it distorts our criminal justice system. Over the last thirty years, and dramatically over the last ten years, the reform movement has reoriented the traditional system. In the social work-style system of justice, accountability can become enabling, neutrality can become advocacy, dispassion can become compassion, and lawyering can become social work. Our traditional system developed over hundreds of years and has worked remarkably well. The adversarial process with judges as neutral, detached arbiters has deep evolutionary and historical roots. We should be wary of adjusting these time-tested processes so much and so quickly.

If, by democratic means in Indiana, we come to prefer a social work model for our criminal justice system, then I suggest it should be part of the executive branch. It should be staffed primarily by social workers, not lawyers. And we should leave the judiciary to perform the tasks it performs well based on its history, culture and disposition.

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“Fiat justicia, ruat caelum”

- Latin legal maxim meaning, “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.”

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Recently, Paul Heaton, the Academic Director for the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice, successfully used the REID interviewing technique to induce the Large Language Model, ChatGPT, into confessing to a crime.

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The REID interrogation technique is commonly used by law enforcement to question criminal suspects. It involves offering themes that justify or minimize the crime to encourage suspects to come clean. Heaton accused ChatGPT of hacking his emails and sending unauthorized messages. The AI had not done this, but Heaton told it he had uncovered evidence of guilt. Ultimately, ChatGPT falsely confessed to the crime and apologized. You can read more about it here.

Crime

I recently read the book The Science of Second Chances by Jennifer Doleac. I was going to write a review of it, but Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, beat me to it, and undoubtedly did a better job than I would have. I recommend you read Rafael’s review, which you can find here.

Other

I believe a major problem in our society is that institutions try to take on too much. For instance, the core mission of our judicial system is to simply decide discreet cases and controversies. In the modern era, that mission has expanded to the point where we are trying to reshape society and remake the litigants before us. We don’t want to just decide the case before us, we want to transform the people before us so they never have problems again. These expansive missions are unreasonable and, ultimately, fail.

There are signs this trend is waning, however. Beginning in April this year, Yale University unveiled a new mission statement. The old mission had Yale “improving the world,” “creating aspiring leaders,” and “ensuring community diversity.” The new mission statement is much simpler. It is: “Yale’s core mission is to create, disseminate, and preserve knowledge through research and teaching.” This change was recommended by the Yale Committee on Trust in Higher Education who advised that Yale needed to focus on their primary function of academic rather than social goals to restore public trust in the organization.

Yale is a leading cultural institution in our country. Hopefully, this positive move will inspire others to take a hard look at their own missions, including our judiciary. You can read more here.

Other

This summer Pizza Hut’s BOOK IT! program returns. If you came of age in the late 80s and 90s, you know what I am talking about. When we were kids, Pizza Hut partnered with schools to provide an incentive for kids to read more. If you were lucky enough to be at a school that participated, your teacher set reading goals associated with the program. When you hit the goals, you got a certificate for a free personal pan pizza at Pizza Hut. There was absolutely nothing in the world better than getting that free pizza.

Starting June 1, kids will be able to participate in the relaunched program, this time through an app, of course. They can earn up to one free personal pan pizza per month by hitting reading goals in the app. The only problem I can see is that there aren’t that many Pizza Huts still around, which is evidence of the decline of western civilization. Nevertheless, if you have a child or grandchild, sign them up, encourage them to read, then take them to an old school Pizza Hut, even if you have to drive hundreds of miles find one. It’ll be great.

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“When a man tells me, in explanation of his anti-social behavior, that he is easily led, I ask him whether he was ever easily led to study mathematics.”

-Theodore Dalrymple

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