Welcome! What I'm thinking about this week: Reducing violence against women and girls.

Welcome to my new Substack! I’ve been posting these missives on LinkedIn for a while, and am making the leap to an official newsletter.

You might recognize the title (Probable Causation) from my long-running podcast, where I discuss new research on crime and the criminal justice system. In this newsletter, I’ll highlight other issues I’m thinking about and what I’m reading. If you’re interested in evidence-based policy related to public safety, this is the place for you!

If anything below sparks an idea about how we might work together, please get in touch.

One thing I’ve been thinking about over the past week:

Violence against women and girls. I spent last week in London, where the UK government is pursuing a “Safer Streets” initiative that includes reducing violence against women and girls (which they more concisely refer to as VAWG - pronounced “vog”). I attended a research conference intended to inform this effort last summer, and it is still striking to me how unusual that gathering was. Researchers and practitioners who focus on street violence (where the victims are typically men) usually meet in completely different spaces than the researchers and practitioners who focus on gender-based violence (where the victims are typically women). The norms, ideologies, and focus on rigorous evidence differ substantially across these groups. Putting them in the same room made the contrast jarring. How many opportunities have we missed because of these siloed discussions?

In the former (street violence), randomized trials and other rigorous evidence are far more common (though, of course, not as common as I’d like — I’m working on it!). As a result, we’re making real progress across both knowledge and policy. We now know that summer jobs, cognitive behavioral therapy, mental health care, and increasing the probability of getting caught all have meaningful impacts — they reduce violence and put would-be perpetrators (and their would-be victims) on a better path. I and others are working hard to turn this knowledge into policy change on the ground, while we continue piloting and iterating upon other promising ideas.

In contrast, conversations about VAWG (including sexual assault and intimate partner violence) quickly become laments about how little we know about what works to make women safer. Stakeholders simply do not expect or demand the same level of serious, scientific rigor when it comes to programs and policies in this space.

It would be easy to assume this is because we invest less in women more broadly. After all, the state of the scientific literature on women (and their unique medical concerns, like the impact of perimenopause and menopause) is also much thinner than we’d like, something that more and more doctors are raising alarms about. But I think there’s something else going on here too.

There is a strong ideological pull in this space to believe survivors of gender-based violence. I understand and support this general call — we have plenty of evidence that survivors’ claims are too readily dismissed, by everyone from friends and family to law enforcement. But somehow that call to believe survivors has unfortunately morphed into an insistence on believing advocates of programs designed to support survivors. Of course, we know that many good ideas don’t work, and some will even backfire. And yet, when someone like me asks the reasonable question, “what evidence do we have that this program is effective?,” we are met with outright hostility and accusations that we don’t believe survivors when they tell us what they need. This makes progress slower, not faster.

(Note, this type of response from advocates is not unique to this space, but I do think it is far more prevalent and effective here than elsewhere because of the sensitivity around believing survivors’ allegations about the violence they suffered.)

Last week, I had the chance to meet with policy experts like those at BIT, the Ending Youth Violence Lab, the Youth Endowment Fund, and British MPs Alex Davies-Jones and Jess Phillips, who are deeply committed to reducing VAWG and who also see the lack of evidence on what works as an urgent crisis. It is motivating to see them and others working to shift this ideological conversation toward something more pragmatic and productive, where we recognize that good intentions aren’t enough to protect women from violence. Women deserve evidence-based solutions. It’s time for a clear-eyed focus on impact and ROI in the VAWG space.

Onward!

Three articles I’m glad I read:

“‘Law & Order: SVU’ Star Mariska Hargitay’s Rape Kit Backlog Campaign Marks Legislative Wins in All 50 States” by Lexi Carson, The Hollywood Reporter.

“St. Paul’s success solving shooting cases leads to statewide push” by Louis Krauss, The Minnesota Star Tribune.

“Closing Ohio’s Justice Gap” by Jillian Snider, R Street Institute.

Want more? Check out my new book, The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice.