Public Prosecutors Meet Heavy Resistance

Liberals often claim that the cure for crime is to expand social-welfare programs. 

They say we must first address economic exploitation, male and white supremacy, and homophobia in order to reduce violent crime. 

Other culprits for ‘mass incarceration’ include a biased legal system, early childhood mistreatment, and draconian drug enforcement. 

 However — in the 1960’s, Chinese immigrants had the lowest average incomes in California…about $4,000 a year. At that time, the total number of Chinese in state prisons was five. No one proposed that we “ramp up social spending”,  or “provide affordable housing” to the Chinese, in effect to keep them from crime.  No one in Los Angeles proposed that we create 15,000 jobs and paid internships for youth and 350 jobs for community-based peacebuilders and interventionists, just to discourage crime.

Asians and Indians here today don’t produce music that is violent; they don’t drop out of school; they don’t impregnate their single women, and then leave them to go impregnate another; they don’t do smash-and-grab robberies; they don’t do drive-by shootings. Likewise, the huge waves of German, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigrants arriving at the end of the nineteenth century did not carry with them violent subcultures.  

This is a cultural issue, not a racial issue. There are Jamaican, Kenyan, and Nigerian immigrants in the U.S. with strong families and a focus on education. Of the ten most prosperous ethnic minorities in America, seven of them are non-white. Also consider the Haitian immigrants of the 1980s: a brutal national history, extreme poverty…but their crime rates in America are also very low. Black Muslims and black churchgoers have very little crime….in fact, a Black Muslim group was allowed to help police a rough section of Washington D.C., and the crime rate went down dramatically.

 Mass incarceration is caused by mass criminality

Whenever the police hold community meetings about crime, the loudest demands for ‘more policing’ come from middle-class black people – who want safety for themselves and their children, and someone to remove the monsters from their cities.

 The principal problem facing African-Americans in criminal justice is not over-enforcement but under-enforcement of the laws. The most lethal danger in their day-to-day lives is not white, racist officials– but private, violent criminals (typically black), who attack those most vulnerable to them without regard to racial identity.

 Donald Trump and his supporters are angriest at “the De-carcerationists” – authors Michelle Alexander, Elizabeth Hinton, Angela Davis, and Emily Bazelon; The Brennan Center, the Marshall Project, and the Vera Institute; Chase Boudin,(since recalled),George Gascon, Larry Krasner, Rachel Rollins, Mary Moriarty, Kim Ogg, Jose Garza, Kimberly Gardner, (now out of office), Sarah George, Aramis Ayala, and other progressive prosecutors.  

This group encouraged the state of New York to pass a law (since amended) that a judge could not consider the dangerousness of an arrestee when setting bail. 

 The state of California passed a law that allows any prisoner to demand a new trial if they can demonstrate that in the past, criminal suspects of their race were prosecuted more than white Americans. Alameda County’s Pamela Price has already banned almost all sentencing enhancements on grounds of disparate racial impact.

 According to her own staff, she wants to see probation rather than jail time for most crimes, including violent felonies. 

No surprise, then:  Oakland, the county’s principal city, had a 21% increase in violent crime last year, a 45% increase in car theft, and a 23% increase in carjackings and burglaries.  

Trump’s Plans For Law & Order

Trump has become a crude symbol of resistance to the therapeutic, ‘pro-victimhood’ culture. He considers progressive prosecutors as too gentle for the ‘real world’ of actual thugs and murderers. He sees reformers as nothing more than “appeasers”— who are too naive, incompetent, and weak to do what is necessary to defend the nation against menacing enemies. 

 He believes they are sacrificing public safety, in their zeal to reduce racial inequities. The decision by Chesa Boudin in 2022 that he would not persecute drug dealers because “They might get deported back to Honduras” is utterly stupid  and incomprehensible to Trump partisans.

Trump stands for more public cruelty. He would sooner tell the homeless to “move on down the line”, rather than spend a dime of public money to support them. If homeless men committed violent crimes, there would be no mercy.  

• He would not give ten seconds of thought to racial reparations, or to the percentage of prisoners who are minorities.

Trump would emphatically agree with Dave Grossman, the well-known police trainer:

Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.  

 “But then there are the wolves….and the wolves will feed on the sheep every time.

Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. There is no safety in denial…..”

  Trump claimed in his book, The America We Deserve, “Tough crime policies are the most important form of national defense.” He also stated, “Clearly we don’t have too many people in prison. Quite the contrary.”

George Wallace once said, “Hell, we got too much dignity in government now. What we need is some meanness.”