Crime and Punishment 2022

The Criminal Courts Building and district attorney's office in New York on July 1, 2021. Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

The eruption of mass violent crime over the past weeks—shooters in Uvalde, Texas, in Laguna Woods, California, in Buffalo, New York—evidences a predictable escalation, an inexorable incremental evolution, of an environment, an atmosphere that fails to discourage criminal activity, developed in large part by a new breed of privately financed progressive prosecutors, entrenched in major urban centers from coast to coast.

It’s an atmosphere aggravated by a president who, two days after the May 28 massacre in Uvalde, issued an executive order, not directed at the perpetrators of crime, but rather limiting police access to military equipment, and otherwise implementing limitations on the effectiveness of the police. Hardly an appropriate response for a nation in crisis, desperately in need of more effective police protection, and of a White House cognizant of the magnitude of domestic insecurity from upsurging crime.

The warning signs have been appearing for a considerable time, and a review of the dissolution of the criminal justice establishment in New York provides the framework—although examination of Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and virtually any major blue-managed city will evidence a near-identical pattern of regression.

New York state passed a criminal justice “reform” bill in 2019 that includes strict limitations on the authority previously granted to judges for the setting of bail in criminal cases. In a March 22 evaluation of the reforms, The Brenan Center for Justice conceded that “it is true that New York City saw a sudden increase in crime from 2019 to 2020, with an espe­cially stark increase in murders, which rose from the 319 in 2019 to more than 450 in 2020.”

While the Brenan Center, a progressive think-tank, argues that there’s no direct evidence that the revisions in the law were the principal cause, it would defy credulity to argue that actively enhancing the number of active criminals on the streets of a large city doesn’t contribute to the growing level of criminal activity. Particularly when accompanied by mayors who have antipathy for law enforcement authorities, as was the case with Bill de Blasio in New York, and continues with mayors such as Lori Lightfoot, Eric Garcetti, et al.

Compounding the negative effects of the 2019 legislation, Mayor de Blasio cut the budget of the New York Police Department dramatically, while simultaneously disbanding the police’s highly successful plain-clothes anti-crime units. This defunding of the police became a nationwide phenomenon, an illogical reaction to the increase in rioting and looting following the in-custody death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

As crime rates soared, the search for explanations was initially limited in scope to the usual suspects, to the logical, oft-repeated “root causes” such as social unrest, disparity of income, family structure, and drug use. It wasn’t until the Jussie Smollett and McCloskeys cases made national headlines that the true, new, root cause came to light, the exponential multiplier effect on criminal activity in all forms.

Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx in Chicago and Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in St. Louis inappropriately dismissing and mishandling the cases, respectively, brought attention to a new phenomenon: prosecutors who are sympathetic to those arrested for committing violent crimes, and not to their victims; prosecutors who have formal policies that discourage lodging felony charges and who support de-incarceration of violent felons.

The driving force isn’t difficult to identify. As reported by Scott Bland in Politico as early as Aug. 30, 2016, “Democratic mega-donor George Soros has directed his wealth into an under-the-radar 2016 campaign to advance one of the progressive movement’s core goals. ... The billionaire financier has channeled more than $3 million into seven local district-attorney campaigns in six states over the past year,” a sum that has increased in the ensuing years, as a result of the stunning success this campaign has enjoyed in eroding public safety and the quality of life in major urban centers.

His most recent success:

The New York County District Attorney’s office has historically been one of the most prestigious and respected prosecutorial offices in the country. From the time of the legendary Frank Hogan (served 1942–1974) to the equally extended tenure of Robert Morgenthau (1975–2009), the New York DA’s office was reputed for gang busting and for sophisticated investigations in prosecutions of crime at all levels, from complex white-collar criminal investigations on Wall Street to violent crime in all its manifestations.

For assistant district attorneys, working in the New York DA’s office was a step above the other New York City counties, virtually the equivalent of the federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District. How rapidly that has changed. Nearly overnight, following the replacement of Cyrus Vance by Soros-backed Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA’s office has been transformed, from one feared by evildoers to one mocked by evildoers.

Alvin Bragg speaks during a Get Out the Vote rally at A. Philip Randolph Square in Harlem in New York City, on Nov. 1, 2021. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

It has traditionally been part of the responsibility of young assistant district attorneys to rapidly evaluate recent arrests and to determine how best to prosecute them. The decision is made just before or at arraignment, and many factors must be taken into consideration: the nature of the crime, the degree of violence used, the harm caused, the arrestee’s criminal record—number of convictions and time served in prison. These and other factors are—or rather, used to be—weighed and a decision made as to whether to proceed with the case as a felony or reduce the case to a misdemeanor charge.

Additionally, a snap decision had to be made as to how much bail was to be requested for the judge to set. Historically, use of a weapon in the course of a violent crime would virtually automatically lead to felony prosecution, unless the case was so riddled with problems, poor police work, and unreliable witnesses that a felony conviction would be unlikely to result. Guidelines were generally unwritten and focused on seeking a just outcome for the defendant and—significantly—for the victims, and for society at large.

Now there has been a sea change, and the new New York County District Attorney’s Office has established a presumption that virtually all cases will be prosecuted as misdemeanors, if they’re to be prosecuted at all, including egregious cases involving the use of weapons and physical injuries. The office’s new prosecutorial guidelines detail with great specificity how the DA’s office will proceed with all variety of criminal activity.

The question arises, by whom was this statement of policy drafted? Are these guidelines, originally published in the New York Post, based on a template, drafted by those seeking to reinvent prosecution in the United States, disseminated with minor tweaks to all Soros-backed district attorneys?

If their purpose is to sow discord by creating an environment where criminal activity soars, then they have indeed been successful. While this district attorney clearly has no “street sense” or any apparent appreciation for the consequences of under-prosecution of violent crime, there must be other forces at work, empowering and institutionalizing such self-destructive procedures.

Misdemeanor charges, while potentially leading to up to one year in prison, in reality rarely conclude with a sentence longer than 90 days, and more often than not, probation with no prison time. By charging serious felony cases as misdemeanors, the deterrent effect of a criminal prosecution evaporates, criminals are incentivized to continue their criminal activity, and police officers are disincentivized from making arrests, knowing the futility of their efforts.

Bragg was apparently the recipient of $500,000 in campaign contributions (originally intended to be $1 million) from a Soros-funded PAC. (Are there no limits on campaign contributions to district attorney campaigns?) One can only speculate as to the motivations for making disproportionately large contributions to the campaigns of candidates who have either no criminal justice experience or are committed to a criminal defense philosophy inconsistent with the office they seek, a philosophy that goes well beyond the right to an effective defense for all accused of crime to hostility toward any criminal prosecution and hostility toward all victims of crime—victims, it should be noted, who share the same socioeconomic environment as the criminals by whom they are terrorized.

The inevitable result is the dissolution of the “invisible web”—described by the jurist Learned Hand—that allows for the functioning of a civil society, such that the entire range of criminal activity becomes commonplace, from the murder of police officers to brazen shoplifting by delinquents filling up bags with unpaid for goods and strolling out of retail stores, sneering at security guards as they pass unchallenged through the exit doors.

And ultimately, tragically, to mass shootings in churches, schools, parking lots, and other public venues, such as those that have wreaked such terrible havoc in recent days and times.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.