A recent piece in The Economist warned that a reversal of incarceration trends would render George Floyd’s legacy “a return to mass incarceration and more thuggish policing,” which “would be to pile one tragedy on another.” After raising concerns about a local prison reform initiative, the Washington Post’s editorial board was accused of calling “for continued state-sanctioned cruelty driven by fear and misinformation.” It is now commonplace for vocal supporters of “reform” — particularly those on the left — to equate the voicing of concerns about law and order with racist dog-whistles, and to accuse those who point to cases that illustrate the downside risks associated with certain reform efforts of playing “Willie Horton” politics. So, just as reforms have raised the transaction costs of policing, it seems that reformers also have raised the social costs of expressing skepticism, which, in turn, clears the way for the more radical elements of the reform movement to proceed with their project. But who suffers? The public must not allow itself to be bullied out of expressing genuine concerns about an incredibly troubling violent crime spike — one whose negative impact is likely as, if not more, unevenly distributed across racial groups as the enforcement statistics often latched onto by police critics. Unless we see a more widespread willingness to consider the possibility that the criminal justice system, in some ways, has gone from being too tough to not tough enough, I think we can expect the recent deterioration of public safety to last.