It’s interesting that we never consider the status quo to ever be an extreme. Perhaps part of why these root-to-branch efforts seem so extreme is because the Overton window has been shifted so far to the right wrt Criminal Justice we’ve lost perspective.

American policing is not exactly a shining beacon of civil achievement. It has a long history of being both problematic and largely ineffectual at establishing law & order within the confines of the US constitution.

When violent crime started dropping precipitously in the 90s researchers scrambled to figure out the recipe so it could be repeated and amplified. Ultimately they came up empty handed. Interestingly, the Environmental Lead Hypothesis emerged as a likely cause (especially because the pattern can be seen across different countries, cultures, and criminal justice systems) but does have its own share of detractors.

But regardless, we don’t actually have solid evidence our current approach to law & order is even effective. It’s largely a faith-based system. And it’s performance is abysmal... So we should be open to “radical” change as micro-optimizations aren’t going to help us here.