Background: Local governments increasingly rely on sales taxes to raise revenue, often justifying the need for a local sales tax increase with a specific programmatic goal, such as better education or transportation. In Washington State, the legislature explained that a local sales tax increase was necessary to support criminal justice because criminal justice requires more police, courts, and jails. Objective: Informed by decades of literature questioning the efficacy of fighting crime through police, courts, and jails, the objective of this study seeks to use empirical evidence to explain whether the social fabric offers indicators that can better define criminal justice and thus inform local tax policy so that local sales tax revenue may be used to prevent crime rather than fight it. Method: The study compiled a 29-year history of 36 social variables across all 39 Washington counties to determine whether crime is predictable and what is most predictive of crime. Pearson coefficients of determination were calculated to identify cross-sectional associations between social variables and crime variables. An ARIMAX predictive model was then constructed to test the predictive power of the multivariate time series. Results: The study finds that crime is predictable and social observations specific to how a child grows up are consistently predictive explanatory variables of crime. There is reason to believe that the most effective action state and local governments can take to promote criminal justice and prevent crime is to leverage their taxing power to ensure that every child (a) has access to food and basic necessities, (b) is raised in a safe and stable home, and (c) graduates from college.