Earlier, we highlighted Zohran Mamdani’s eyebrow-raising staffing choices for his incoming administration. He’s tapped Janos Marton — a man whose big idea is cutting New York’s jail and prison population by 80 percent — and Alex Vitale, a full-blown police abolitionist, to shape the city’s crime policies. In other words, Mamdani is putting the safety of 8 million New Yorkers in the hands of activists who think law enforcement is the problem rather than the solution.
But New York isn’t the only city drowning in crime while its leaders champion criminals and attack law enforcement. Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson is once again pushing the absurd notion that “we can’t jail our way out” of the violent chaos plaguing his city (and y’all thought Lori Lightfoot was bad):
“We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence,” Johnson said. “We’ve already tried that and we’ve ended up with the largest prison population in the world without solving the problems of crime and violence. The addiction on jails and incarceration in this country? We have moved past that. It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and it is not the way to drive violence down.”
The crowd, naturally, applauded.
It was yet another quiet admission that many offenders come from minority communities — a textbook example of the left’s soft bigotry of low expectations. Nothing is preventing Johnson or any other Democrat from demanding that minority communities stop committing crimes, or from holding criminals fully accountable when they do. They simply refuse to do it.
The numbers speak for themselves.
As I noted earlier, Democrats don’t actually want to enforce any of the “social services” or “mental health” treatments they constantly claim are the answer to crime. They don’t require medication compliance, consistent therapy, or mandatory housing for homeless or mentally ill individuals.
And that’s entirely intentional. The disorder and instability that come with unchecked crime are features, not bugs, for the Democratic Party. The perpetual crises justify endless government spending on programs that never deliver results — but always reward the political machine doling out the cash.
The conservative Heritage Foundation took Johnson to task:
You can, in fact, incarcerate your way out of violence. The data actually show that we have a mass under-incarceration problem.
We need to incarcerate many more criminals and for much longer. https://heritage.org/crime-and-justice/report/the-myth-mass-incarceration
Or we can keep entertaining the stupidity of leftists like Mayor Johnson who oversee cities with crime rates that resemble war zones.
Despite the mental gymnastics Mayor Johnson wants you to perform, locking violent criminals in cells keeps them off the streets and therefore unable to hurt you.
Here’s more from Heritage’s report on the issue:
The idea that the United States is an overly carceral country infected with the scourge of “mass incarceration” is deeply embedded into the mainstream media, academia, and pop culture. But it is just not true, especially taking into account what the phrase actually means in practice and comparing the number of people in prison to the scope and scale of crimes committed. Only a fraction of people who commit crimes are imprisoned—even those who commit violent crimes. Those who support a radical decarceration agenda have gained some headway in their goals by pushing out through various channels the myth that the United States locks up too many people. In reality, the United States likely locks up too few.
Mass incarceration is a myth—and a harmful one at that. Those who push it seek to divide the country on racial lines, all the while ignoring the reality of the scope of violent crime, and what should be done about it. And, ultimately, everyone pays the price.
If you actually lock up repeat offenders — and keep them there — crime rates would plummet almost overnight.
