Build a Fence and Crime Will … Do Nothing

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You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

Apparently President Trump has decreed that the new Republican slogan is “Build a wall and crime will fall.” As we all know, what he really means by “wall” is a steel bollard fence, just like the one we finished building in 2010 over about 600 miles of the southern border. So how did that turn out? Did crime fall after the fence went up?

It looks to me like violent crime was falling in the border states pretty nicely, but then then it stopped falling when the fence went up. So much for that theory.