New York City heading wrong direction on crime

Photo by Matthew Ansley on Unsplash

Any major city is going to have at least its fair share of crime, if not more. You just can’t put that many people in that small of a space and not have some issues. Some people are going to lose their tempers. Others are going to think they can take what isn’t theirs.

There’s going to be crime.

The trick is to minimize it.

In New York City, they’ve done some weird things over the years in the name of combatting crime. Some of them actually seemed to work, while others didn’t.

But there’s an issue. It seems the jails are crowded and the powers that be there think that’s a problem.

To be fair, it is.

Their proposed solutions, though, are absolutely stupid.

There's trouble ahead for New Yorkers distressed about crime levels.

New York City's Democratic establishment, including leading mayoral candidates and the City Council majority, are determined to downsize or eliminate the city's jails altogether. They've drunk the decarceration Kool-Aid -- and they're convinced that jails do more harm than good. But the facts prove them wrong.

Prisons keep the rest of us safe, because criminals behind bars can't commit more crimes.

A City Council hearing last week on criminal justice was straight out of fantasy land. Council member Lincoln Restler said he was "deeply concerned about the number of people incarcerated." Several members urged the Department of Corrections executives to resume the release program started during COVID-19. Never mind evidence that half of those released soon committed more crimes.

It's time for the Police Benevolent Association, the Corrections Officers' Benevolent Association and other public safety advocates to oppose the city's wacky plan to close Rikers Island, the city's jail complex, and replace it with four borough-based mini jails that, in total, could house only half of Riker's current prisoner count.

It doesn’t take much to figure out why they’d oppose it.

Less room for inmates means you can keep fewer people locked up. The PBA is going to want to keep criminals in jail, not out on the streets. As noted above, when inmates were released due to COVID-19, they quite often went on to offend again in short order. I suspect on a longer time line, the recidivism rate would increase significantly.

Police groups aren’t exactly interested in making more work for themselves, especially considering the kind of work they do.

The CBA might well be more motivated by just keeping their membership numbers up, so I can figure a few things about why they might object beyond the potential impact on public safety. It doesn’t mean they’re wrong, though.

This is, in fact, a terrible idea, especially when you’re complaining about the number of people incarcerated.

What’s happening here is that NYC officials are looking at the problem superficially. They see there are a lot of people in jail, so they figure the answer is to just let them out of jail. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Except that it doesn’t change the fact that these are, in fact, criminals in many cases. They haven’t been reformed suddenly. All releasing them does is put them back on the streets sooner, which means many will simply go back to their old ways.

There are better ways to address this, and New York City has the clout to make it happen at a state level, should officials there so desire.

One should probably start at a hard look at what makes people go down a criminal path to begin with. If you can stop people from becoming criminals, you can reduce your prison population pretty readily right there. It takes a little time, but it works.

You can also reduce some of the penalties for at least some victimless crimes so they’re not taking up jail space better used for an armed robber or rapist.

Then we have some grounds for reform in the legal system.

See, we’ve given the entire criminal justice system some rather perverse incentives. Arrests are the gauge of a good police officer. Convictions are the marker of a good prosecutor.

Yet these incentives also mean some people might be willing to bend the rules. While this particular case isn’t in New York, it’s the kind of thing that happens all over the place.

A 14-year-old boy, prosecuted for murder after stabbing a man threatening him with a gun - but was he prosecuted fairly?

A 2News investigation discovered dozens of pieces of evidence were not disclosed to the defense, and that's not all.

Chief Investigative Reporter Wendy Halloran has been looking into claims of prosecutorial misconduct at the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office.

This case was previously declined because the evidence demonstrated the boy was defending himself against the attacker. I'm going to show you how this case progressed and ultimately ended.

Authorities originally declined to prosecute the kid because he used a knife to defend his life. Hell, after essentially bullying the kid into a manslaughter charge, the “victim’s” mother acknowledged he acted in self-defense.

This was a clear-cut case of self-defense. It doesn’t get much clearer.

But the fact is that some of the evidence was hidden. It also seems that an undisclosed relationship between the prosecutor and the investigator may have played a factor because, well, it would look bad on the cop if charges weren’t brought and bad on the prosecutor if a conviction wasn’t made.

Hopefully, the kid will be out very soon, but let’s also understand that this happens more than once in a blue moon. Part of the reason it happens is because of those incentives I mentioned before.

Addressing these might well keep innocent people out of prison in the first place, so you won’t have them taking up space that someone who deserves to be there takes up. Make the incentives at least include getting it right versus just getting it done.

Look, I get overcrowding is a concern in the Big Apple.

But turning cell doors into revolving doors ain’t the way to handle it. Unfortunately, leftists are notoriously softheaded when it comes to crime and criminals. They think any punishment is too much unless you’re jailed for some thoughtcrime or another. Then, nothing is enough.

I’d like to see them get this right. I just know that they won’t because they don’t want to look any deeper.

Then again, could they even if they wanted to?

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