Highlights
My “progressive” thought? Americans should live in peace and prosperity. You do that by holding criminal offenders accountable.
Doubt that? Just ask the #MeToo movement.
Author
Opinion
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Proverb.
Throughout the last three years, readers mostly asked about police tactics and the use of force. They asked for an explanation or context after the latest police brutality stories surfaced in endless media reports.
However, use of force questions have disappeared. Now, most address progressive politics and whether those espousing similar ideologies are being foolish.
Readers: So they’re really not prosecuting anything beyond violent crimes? Do they truly want to defund law enforcement? Do they actually believe that violence is going down? Do they unquestionably support letting most people out of prison? Why are thousands of cops leaving law enforcement? Why are domestic violence offenders being quickly released with no bail only to return to beating their spouses? Am I going to be safe? What the hell is going on?
When I suggest that President Biden promised to reduce the prison population by half, during the campaign, many don’t believe me on the basis that no one could be that stupid. There are national advocacy groups supported by major organizations advocating the same thing.
After the election, the president-elect suggested that it was the Democrat’s criticism of law enforcement that hurt them in local and state and Congressional races; “That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country…”.
About 36% of Americans support Biden’s handling of crimes, according to a ABC/Ipsos poll released Sunday. The percentage is down from an October ABC/Ipsos poll, which found 43% of people approved of Biden’s handling of crime.
Regardless of the President’s observations or plummeting poll numbers on crime, there are national organizations pumping millions of dollars into progressive crime policies.
But things are changing rapidly. If I had a dollar for every recent national article predicting that progressive crime policies will hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, I “might” be able to fill my truck with gas.
What Progressives Want
First, I embraced many progressive thoughts up to the point where they simply became dysfunctional. Progressives want what we all want, an unbiased justice system free of prejudice and cops who are service-oriented and less hostile to minorities and others.
They want incarceration to only be used for truly dangerous offenders. They want rehabilitation programs. They want universal mental health care and substance abuse treatment. They want economic progress for all struggling communities. They want to make sure that African Americans and all minorities are treated respectfully by the system.
In short, they want what many want.
However, at what point did the American public come to understand that progressives are the problem, not the solution?
If you read all the national publications I’m exposed to weekly, you come to understand that 80 percent of what’s written about crime espouses a progressive point of view. Progressives control the narrative. They have national Pulitzer prize-winning publications that get millions of dollars in funding that openly hate cops. Most of the criminological community is unabashedly progressive. Most reporters lean left. With all this power, you would think that alternative points of view would be buried.
Progressives describe crime as an epidemic of gun violence as if firearms grow legs and fingers and go out and shoot people on their own. There are more than 390 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States. Even if you banned the private ownership of firearms (impossible because of Constitutional protections), it would take generations before it would have any impact on crime.
Progressives believe that anyone who doesn’t support their point of view are guilty of regressive, racist politics. How do I know that? Because I spent a career working with them. A Reddit criminology commentator called me racist because I quoted US Department of Justice research saying that violent crime was increasing. The moderators did nothing.
Progressives believe that the heart of their movement embraces fairness and justice plus economic enhancements for minorities. But based on their policies, violence is destroying cities and the very groups they seek to protect.
The Black Exodus From Cities (rearranged quotes)
Per Politico, Chicago’s power struggle shows what’s at stake when a city loses its Black population. And they’re not alone: Nine of 10 of the cities with the largest Black populations are on the verge of the same exodus.
But there were signs of change, even then. It seemed that just as soon as Black people made the neighborhood their own, its fortunes turned. Houses started falling into disrepair, thanks to disinvestment. Stores closed up shop — including the massive Sears store that left the neighborhood in 1976.
Now that trickle is a flood. Englewood, one of Chicago’s 77 community areas, boasted nearly 100,000 people in 1960 but is now home to about 22,000. Like a tide going out, it has left relics of decades of decline: more abandoned buildings, shuttered schools and boarded-up storefronts. Its remaining residents face a seemingly intractable level of street violence (emphasis added).
Violent crime is a constant reference point in the article along with other factors.
More Data
We have the largest increase in homicides in 100 years per the Center For Disease Control, Record Rise in Homicides.
News reports suggest that the cities where protests and or riots have occurred are being hit the hardest, Governing.Com.
It’s African American communities that are bearing the brunt of the violence, NBC News.
The rise in violent crime across the U.S. has been concentrated in “low-income communities of color” which have disproportionately experienced the impact of school closures and reductions in basic services during the pandemic, according to a study by the University of California-Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, The Crime Report.
There are articles linking police defunding and lack of proactive policing to increased homicides and violence, Washington Times.
There were 722 more homicides in nine U.S. cities last year, according to police data. More than 85% of the increase was in predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, The Marshall Project.
But the exodus from cities is not solely a Black or minority issue. Where I live in a community in the Applachanin mountains, houses sat unsold for years. Now, we have a waiting list of people from urban areas trying to escape crime, grime and fear.
The Impact of Crime
Crime simply destroys everything in its path. Economic development is dead. Stores leave; residents suffer through an inability to purchase everyday goods that most of us take for granted. Education suffers. Residents live in fear. The mental health toll on residents is uncalculatable. Crime, especially violent crime, is like COVID or cancer on steroids.
Progressive Solutions?
There is no independent empirical evidence that any of the progressive proposals to address root causes of crime have any evidence that they work. The only modality that has a research base as to lowering crime is proactive policing, the very modality that prompted massive demonstrations-riots (resulting in over two billion dollars in insurance claims) addressing over-policing or police use of force.
The research on proactive police strategies via the US Department of Justice and the National Academies of Sciences means that officers will take their own initiative to approach someone when they have the legal right to question or search. Proactive policing embraces a variety of tactics. But proactivity has major challenges with critics arguing that they target minorities where proponents suggest that they rightly focus on high crime neighborhoods. Based on data from Pew (focusing on police officer opinions) and other sources, proactive policing is currently on hold because of endless negative publicity.
The National Institute of Justice recently offered an overview titled “The Fight Against Rampant Gun Violence: Data-Driven Scientific Research Will Light the Way.” NIJ’s only data-based evidence for reducing violent gun-related crime? Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is a law enforcement-led endeavor targeting high-risk offenders.
Per research, people suffering from crime, regardless of demographics, aren’t particularly happy about defunding law enforcement or losing police officers. They are aghast that progressive prosecutors won’t charge people for theft when their stores are closing. When told that, per US Department of Justice research, that violent criminals serve, on average, less than three years, when advised that no bail (and no restrictions) will be granted in most arrests regardless as to the severity of crimes, when they see that accountability for crime is becoming nonexistent, they believe that their only solution is to move.
Conclusions
I didn’t want my writings to delve into politics. I dislike political discourse because few on either side embrace facts and data. I have advised progressive Governors and politicians (and one presidential campaign) throughout my decades in the justice system. I admired many of them when they pushed for a fairer and more equitable system of justice.
I have always said that liberals don’t want me because I’m too conservative and conservatives don’t want me because I’m too liberal. I’m a pragmatist advocating for proper police behavior and a color-blind system. I want programs for offenders because of religious ethics while simultaneously understanding that they don’t work to reduce recidivism. I want residents of communities to have a say as to their policing (why we have elected sheriffs). I’m in favor of legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana on the basis that cops can’t be all things to all people.
But progressives have become insufferable. Most (all?) don’t live in affected high-crime communities. Most (all?) have never spent a day in their lives in patroling as a cop or any other aspect of the justice system. They simply don’t know the realities of crime control or how criminal justice bureaucracies operate. Virtually all progressives embrace “fairness” for criminal offenders as their reason for being while the rest of us who have seen victimization firsthand embrace justice for the victims of crime.
Advocates on both sides lie or stretch the truth. Progressives (and their endless publications) seem to be the worst offenders. They get Pulitizer prizes while shredding any sense of journalistic ethics as to unbiased reporting or predetermined conclusions. They say that proactive cops (or police officers in general) aren’t necessary and are possibly harmful. They claim that releasing hundreds of thousands of violent criminals from prison won’t increase crime. They say that no bail (without quality supervision) is equitable and doesn’t result in harm.
Yea, I want a justice system that’s fair and just. Cops take an oath to obey their state and US Constitutions. Yes, the justice system is guilty of racist behavior in the past. We have made mistakes. African Americans and others have been abused. That MUST stop. The overwhelming majority of us in the justice system hate bigots and the harm they have inflicted.
But if we acknowledge that crime and violence destroys everything in its path, then we need to understand that accountability for criminals is our only way out. Cops need to enforce laws while exercising discretion. Prosecutors need to charge when appropriate. Judges need to convict when there is sufficient evidence. Prisons do a wonderful job of incapacitating which means that as long as they are in the rest of us are safer. Per Pew, only a small percentage of Americans (including all demographics) believe that offenders spend too much time in prison.
Progressives state that you can’t arrest or incarcerate your way out of crime when the overwhelming percentage of released violent offenders are rearrested and incarcerated once again. The US Sentencing Commission offers evidence that longer prison sentences reduce crime.
Progressives are constantly sending messages to criminals that they will not be held responsible for their actions thus the disabled, women, children and vulnerable populations are abused incessantly. Their messages are morally and fundamentally wrong.
Sorry progressives. You remain convinced that the justice system is hopelessly discriminatory and dysfunctional and you are right in some of your observations (principally due to budget restrictions) but badly misguided as to remedies.
Living in a safe society (rather than the current massive violence and fear that pervades) is the right of every American. What you propose is in opposition to a just and fair and safe society. Doubt that? Just ask the #MeToo movement.
Gun sales are exploding. If citizens feel that they are not being protected or that their offenders are not held accountable, they will start taking the law into their own hands, which is happening now in cities. This is a wildly dangerous precedent.
No one should live in fear. Children have a right to play safely. Women have a right to walk down the street undisturbed. The disabled should not have four times the rate of violent victimization. The elderly have a right to live in peace rather than the high rates of burglaries or fraud they suffer.
My “progressive” thought? Americans should live in peace and prosperity. You do that by holding criminal offenders accountable. If you don’t, you are responsible for the suffering of millions of our fellow citizens.
See More
See more articles on crime and justice at Crime in America.
Most Dangerous Cities/States/Countries at Most Dangerous Cities.
US Crime Rates at Nationwide Crime Rates.
National Offender Recidivism Rates at Offender Recidivism.
An Overview Of Data On Mental Health at Mental Health And Crime.
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