The New York City Police Department announced last week that “index” crimes (murder, rape, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, robbery and auto theft) will decrease by 0.4% compared to 2023. period 2022
That’s good news if you’re happy with the 47.5% increase in crimes on the same index since the same time in 2019, the year before criminal justice reform.
It was only a matter of time before the mayor realized that, based on the previous year, he could make progress in the fight against crime.
You see, from 1993 to 2019, the total number of crimes in New York has decreased almost every year.
In fact, while crime has increased in Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore and many other major US cities, crime in the city has decreased from 2015 to 2019.
Then, in 2019, the New York State Legislature passed bail reform and other progressive criminal justice reforms, almost all of which took effect on January 1, 2020.
After these new laws, between November and January 2019. On January 1, 2020, more than 2,000 career criminals were released from city jails.
As of 15 March 2020, before any COVID restrictions, crime in the city was up 20% compared to the same period in 2019, reversing a 27-year streak of declining crime.
The city now wants to show “progress” in fighting crime by using the high crime rate of 2022 as a baseline, rather than the much lower crime rate before the 2019 “reforms.”
But that only defines a new normal.
Individual NYPD statistics for the first six weeks of 2023 (the latest Compstat numbers available) compared to the first six weeks of 2019 (before the “reform”) show (below):
I have the utmost respect for NYPD Commissioner Kichant Sewell and continue to believe that Mayor Adams can lead the fight to restore sanity in our criminal justice system.
In fact, I voted for him. I understand that they are both under a lot of pressure to deliver.
But it is difficult to consider a 0.4% decrease in crime in one month, compared to 2019, a 47.5% increase in major crimes.
The worst part about this 0.4% reduction statistic is that it provides yet another misleading argument to progressive “reform” advocates and lawmakers about how irrational the fear of crime is.
After all, they say that crime has decreased.
Unfortunately, progressive lawmakers have decided that increased crime on our streets is an acceptable price to pay for their criminal justice reforms.
But they cannot and will not admit it in public.
Instead, they deny that the rise in crime that coincided with reform is a result of reform, and they demand still more data, denying that the tens of thousands of additional victims (mostly black and brown) every year after reform prove anything. .
It would be nice if the commissioner and mayor continued to compare today’s crime numbers to pre-reform numbers in 2019, rather than throwing out quick and supportive but misleading headlines.
Otherwise, they will lose not only the debate, but also any real chance of undoing the damage caused by these reforms.
Jim Quinn was the executive prosecutor in the Queens DA’s office.
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