Monthly Archive: July 2022

Bail reform has been a major element of the criminal justice reform movement advanced by progressive politicians, activist groups and much of the media, for at least a decade.  The narrative is that reducing or eliminating bail, even for violent arrestees, is necessary to address racial bias in the criminal justice system, because a disproportionate cohort of black and Hispanic suspects are held in jail on bail awaiting trial.  The fact that blacks and Hispanics commit a disproportionate amount of crime is ignored in this narrative.  Toward the end of the last decade several liberal state legislatures adopted no-bail laws, and during the pandemic, several others eliminated or reduced bail via executive orders.  In more than a few big cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and New York progressive district attorneys announced their own zero bail policies.   New York City had all of these elements.  The state adopted a bail reform law that took effect in 2020, and both the city’s mayor and district attorney enthusiastically enforced it.   In a recently-released study, Manhattan Institute scholar Jim Quinn takes a hard look at the effect that progressive bail reform has had on crime in the Big Apple.

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After a decade of supporting reduced sentences for even the most violent criminals, zero bail, abandoning pro-active policing, and endlessly lecturing Americans that police and prosecutors are racists,  democrats from the President on down are now declaring themselves to be the party of law and order.  This pivot is based on the assumption that the public is so stupid it can’t recall that democrat political leaders had justified the summer riots of 2020 sparked by the killing of George Floyd.  Those riots were followed by unprecedented and continuing increases in crime in most large American cities.  Manhattan Institute scholar Heather MacDonald penned this piece in the New York Post discussing the President’s new Safer America Plan announced last Thursday.  The plan promises to fund the hiring of 100,000 additional police officers, presumably to make up for the thousands of cops who have taken early retirement or just quit due to their treatment in cities where democrat political leaders have labeled them racists.  In many parts of the country it has become open season for attacking police officers, usually by black criminals left on the streets by laws and policies adopted by democrats to advance “racial justice.”  As MacDonald notes;

As recently as May 2022, Biden released an executive order alleging that the police disproportionately kill “Black and Brown people” and that there is “systemic racism in our criminal justice system.” The May 2022 order called for “ending discriminatory pretextual stops” — code for ending all remaining proactive stop activity. It called for increased investigations of police departments for civil rights violations.

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A lawyer who serves on the board of Just Communities Arizona (JCA), a radical “abolitionist organization,”  has been nominated to serve of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.  Houston Keene of Fox News reports that nominee Roopali Desai also serves on the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union, and has worked with teachers unions to indoctrinate children with critical race theory, promoting the narrative that American was founded on racism and that all U.S. institutions are racist.

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Much attention has been given to the dramatic spike in crime in large California cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles and the focus is often on the pro-criminal policies of local politicians and progressive district attorneys.  But crime in rural California has also increased, even though local political and law enforcement leaders often oppose soft-on-crime policies.  As reported by Fox News,  the CHP pulled over a suspicious vehicle in rural Tulare County on June 24, and found 150,000 Fentanyl pills and two kilos of cocaine.  The two men in the vehicle, both from Washington state, were arrested and charged with crimes which carry a prison sentence of up to fourteen years upon conviction.   Within twenty-four hours a county judge had released the traffickers without bail and instructed them to show up for a July 21st hearing.   Is anybody surprised that they left town?

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Reversing a decades old policy, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office will no longer let crime victims and their families know that the criminal who assaulted them or murdered their loved one is receiving a parole hearing.  Jason McGahan of Los Angeles Magazine reports that an email distributed to deputies on Tuesday announced that DA George Gascón feels that it is “not appropriate” for prosecutors to notify victims and next of kin of upcoming parole hearings.  This comes as Gascón also informed deputies that he will be closing down the “lifer unit,”  which argued on behalf of victims to oppose the parole of murderers sentenced to life in prison.   A spokesman for Gascón explained that informing victims or their surviving relatives can be traumatic, and that victims have a right not to be notified of their assailant’s parole hearing.

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Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, boasts about the drop in prosecutions under his leadership while his city is setting records on homicides.  Last year, Philly, with a population of 1.6 million, had 562 homicides.  For perspective,  Los Angeles has population of 3.9 million and suffered 397 homicides in 2021.  Attorney Hans Bader, writing in Liberty Unyielding notes that the press seems to give Krasner, and other Soros-bankrolled progressive (read pro-criminal) district attorneys a pass.  In addition to implementing policies that have his office declining to prosecute criminals at two-and-one-half times the rate of his predecessor,  Krasner “owes the city $83,406.50 in back taxes, a story Big Trail published back on April 26th.  For more than two months now, the D.A. has held weekly press conferences typically on Mondays.  And not once has any reporter in  town had the guts to ask the D.A. when he was going to pay up.”

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