John Updike famously defined the “true New Yorker” as someone harboring a “secret belief that people living anywhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding.” This hometown chauvinism once rang true in the hearts of Americans who resided in other great cities, from Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. to Seattle and Los Angeles.

But America’s great metropolises risk sliding into violence, disorder, and decline. The chief cause is the progressive belief that social-justice priorities can and should be addressed through the manipulation of law enforcement policies. Social-justice concerns are animated by an impulse to address undesirable outcomes in economics, politics, education, race, sex, and even health care. These matters are more properly understood as complex social processes. The criminal law’s purpose, however, is more straightforward: to prevent crime, preserve public order, and protect law-abiding citizens.