Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most

Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice. His first book, Criminal (In)Justice, was released in July 2022. He has authored and co-authored a number of MI reports and op-eds on issues ranging from urban crime and jail violence to broader matters of criminal and civil justice reform. His work has been featured and mentioned in a wide array of publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, New York Post, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and City Journal. Mangual also regularly appears on Fox News and has made a number of national and local television and radio appearances on outlets such as C-SPAN and Bloomberg Radio. In 2020, he was appointed to serve a four-year term as a member of the New York State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Prior to joining MI in 2015, Rafael worked in corporate communications for the International Trademark Association. He holds a B.A. in corporate communications from the City University of New York’s Baruch College and a J.D. from DePaul University in Chicago, where he was president of the Federalist Society and vice president of the Appellate Moot Court team. After graduating from law school, Mangual was inducted into the Order of the Barristers, a national honor society for excellence in oral and written advocacy.

Franklin Zimring

Franklin Zimring was a member of the University of Chicago law faculty as Llewellyn Professor of Law and director of the Center for Studies in Criminal Justice. He joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 1985 as director of the Earl Warren Legal Institute. He was appointed the first Wolfen Distinguished Scholar in 2006 and served in that capacity until 2013.

Zimring’s major fields of interest are criminal justice and family law, with special emphasis on the use of empirical research to inform legal policy. He is best known for his studies of the determinants of the death rate from violent attacks; the impact of pretrial diversion from the criminal justice system; and the effects of criminal sanctions.

He has been a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Sciences. He is a fellow of the American Society of Criminology and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2005 until 2011, he was the principal investigator for the Center on Culture, Immigration and Youth Violence Prevention (opens in a new tab), supported by the Centers for Disease Control.

Zimring is the author or co-author of many books on topics including deterrence, the changing legal world of adolescence, capital punishment, the scale of imprisonment, and drug control. Recent books include The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment (2003), The Great American Crime Decline (2007), and The City That Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control (2012).