ALBANY DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN TURNING A BLIND EYE TO THE MESS THEY MADE BY THEIR CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORMS

New York’s crunch time to finally fix criminal justice

Post Editorial Board

 

New York Post 

March 30, 2022 

 

Paramedics carry a gunshot victim outside 380 E. 143rd St. in the Bronx on March 18, 2022

 

It’s crunch time for state budget negotiations, with all manner of nonsense obscuring the No. 1 issue: the urgent need for major fixes to the no-bail law and other botched criminal-justice “reforms.” As we’ve said before, a late budget — even weeks late — is better than one that doesn’t do the job.

If they don’t do the right fixes now, after two previous tries, it’ll take a voter revolution to force their hand.

Even Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 10-point criminal-justice plan may not do enough. As former Queens prosecutor Jim Quinn noted for The Post, it overfocuses on gun-related crimes, ignoring violent perps who use knives or other weapons.

New York judges must get the power the other 49 states allow: to order jail for perps they deem dangerous or at high risk of reoffending, all the way down to serial shoplifters. Unless a gun is involved, Hochul’s “fix” doesn’t allow jail pending trial for those charged with attempted murder, rape, robbery, burglary, first-, second- and third-degree assault, grand larceny, stalking or drug sales, among hundreds of other offenses.

Part of the problem, clearly, is that the gov doesn’t want to offend lawmakers by saying they botched it big-time. Thus, she “defended” her plan with a Daily News column that pretends it was purely the pandemic that caused the two-year crime wave.

Bull: While progressive “anti-law-enforcement” has pushed up crime all across the country, New York needs to focus on the mistakes that did the damage here.

 

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s crime plan doesn’t even address career criminals, serial assaulters and stabbing suspects

Even her analysis (which we don’t agree with) shows a 2% rise in perps arraigned and released on gun charges, only to be rearrested for another crime, from 2019 to 2021, and a 4% rise when the perp already had open felony charges. That translates to thousands of added crime victims who didn’t have to be hurt, killed or otherwise victimized — but for the no-bail law.

Ironically, Hochul cites increased gang violence as a driver of the crime surge — while denying New York’s “reforms” have anything to do with it. In fact, for just one example: Gang leaders have exploited Raise the Age reform to recruit baby gangstas to carry guns and carry out crimes, because youths can almost never be tried in Criminal Court.

But the Legislature’s leaders don’t want to admit their guilt. They keep citing bogus studies, when Quinn has also shown that, under no-bail, 43% of perps who had a prior conviction or pending case when arrested for a felony were rearrested while that new case was pending.

 

Albany Democrats refuse to acknowledge the deadly consequences of criminal-justice “reforms.”

 

Folks like city Comptroller Brad Lander play statistical games to pretend the figure’s only 4%. Yet even Lander’s study shows that the number of times where city judges set bail fell from 24,657 in 2019 to 14,545 cases in 2021.

“Reformers” pretend those 10,000 “extra” releases were all innocents. In fact, they’re overwhelmingly dangerous recidivists.

The public understands this: The latest Siena poll found that 56% of voters statewide believe the 2019 bail reform has been bad for New York, vs. just 30% who call it good policy.

And a commanding 82% said judges should be given more authority to post bail for more defendants, against just 11% opposed.

Hochul and the Legislature can play games with the crime stats, but the public opinion ones will — and should — burn them badly this November if they don’t do their job and truly fix these insane laws.