Bad Policies & Progressive DAs Driving Increased Crime

After roughly two years of record-setting homicide rates in many large U.S. cities, progressive politicians and prosecutors are still denying that this is a crises.  As Hans Bader notes in Liberty Unyielding, days after progressive Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner told reporters there was not crisis in his city “Democratic Congressman May Gay Scanlon was carjacked in broad daylight in Philadelphia’s FDR Park….Philadelphia’s murder record was broken in the same week that Indianapolis, Columbus, and Louisville exceeded their records for murders.”

“People like While House Press Secretary Jen Psaki have sought to defuse a public backlash against soft-on-crime officials in murder-plagued Democratic-run-cities by claiming that rising violence is due to the pandemic, not soft-on-crime policies.  In reality, the pandemic wasn’t the reason.  The murder rate fell in the nations hardest hit by the pandemic, such as Peru, which had a COVID-19 death rate over twice as high as America’s…..Other countries with bigger jumps in mortality during the pandemic—such as Mexico,  whose unofficial death rate was almost twice America’s — also had falling murder rates.”  Bader points to South American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador, all hard hit by the pandemic with serious economic depressions yet their murder rates fell, while murders rose by the highest rate on record in the U.S.

In the name of social justice politicians in Democrat-controlled states have enacted laws that reduce the consequences for crime while progressive District Attorneys in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Milwaukee, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco have been releasing arrested habitual offenders on little or no bail,  refusing to charge many offenders, and declining to use sentencing enhancements to assure longer confinement for even violent criminals.

Fox News reports that a 17-year-old criminal convicted of the shooting murder of a 6-year-old boy on July  4, 2020, faces a maximum sentence of 8 years in prison and will go free at age 25 under California’s soft-on-crime sentencing laws.  Another suspect in the murder, has yet to even stand trial although he was arrested a year ago.  The victim’s father told reporters “Let’s talk about the fact that the guilty verdict is only going to do maybe five years,” expressing his concern that the killer could be released early.  “My son barley lived that long….To be a victim of crime in San Francisco, under this district attorney?  It’s a complete joke.”   The murdered little boy and his killer are both black.

To progressives this is an unfortunate but acceptable price society must pay in the pursuit of social justice.