The Briefing Room
General Category => Crime And Punishment => Topic started by: rangerrebew on January 25, 2023, 02:57:46 pm
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Embracing Failure. Despite recent crime spikes, decarceration advocates are unrepentant.
Rafael A. Mangual
Winter 2023 Public safetyPolitics and law
The 2022 midterm election cycle was the first real test of the police and criminal-justice “reform” movements’ political viability amid resurgent violent crime. The crime issue loomed larger than usual over some of the nation’s most heated political contests. Republicans took up the cause of those who were worried about public safety and open to a tougher approach to crime, while Democrats defended the recent leftward lurch on the criminal-justice policy front. The Democrats’ defensive strategy involved downplaying (if not outright denying) recent crime increases or dismissing any suggestion that such upticks in crime were related to depolicing efforts.
Whether this strategy worked is unclear. Democrats held off what many predicted would be a “red wave” election, but the GOP enjoyed a massive advantage among the 11 percent of voters who told exit pollsters that crime was the biggest issue. Absent any clear political price imposed on the party, at least judging by the midterm results, there remains in office a critical mass of Democrats unwilling to roll back the most misguided reforms passed to date, or to resist newer efforts to go even further.
In November, for example, the Democratic city council in Washington, D.C., voted to move forward with a plan to rewrite the city’s criminal code—all but doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, extending the right to a jury trial to misdemeanor cases, expanding the rights of convicts to petition judges for sentence reductions, and lowering the maximum penalties for various serious offenses such as burglary, robbery, and carjacking (on the rise for some time in the nation’s capital). While the proposed rewrite is not yet a done deal, the public should be disconcerted that things have gone this far.
https://www.city-journal.org/despite-recent-crime-spikes-decarceration-advocates-are-unrepentant
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Just give it time. American voters, by and large, are stupid (or, at the least, politically naive), and easily bamboozled by leftists with shiny objects. Eventually, however, just as happened in the late '70s and early '80s, the evidence will become so blatant that the results can no longer be denied. At that point, watch for a counter-swing of the pendulum to a strict-on-crime approach.
In the meantime, word to the wise: protect yourself.