Incentives And Messages

Editor’s Note: I penned today’s piece before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, which I discussed here. Check in tomorrow for more commentary on the Kirk matter.

My local paper, the New York Post, is true to its tabloid nature by routinely publishing anecdotes of recidivist criminals, arrested literally dozens of times but still freely walking the streets and committing more of the same sorts of crimes. While some of these perpetrators have committed major offenses, many others stick to low level theft and run-of-the-mill street violence.

I write "run-of-the-mill" not to condone it but to highlight the ho-hum response of the justice system in New York City. Decades of progressive pursuit of criminal justice "reform," scare-quotes deliberate, have created a class of career criminals who have learned what they can get away with.

This poses a serious question: what is the goal of the starry-eyed progressive who supported and still supports the "reforms" that have essentially decriminalized these behaviors? I'm not referring to the cynics and the destroyers. They're easy to understand - they want society to collapse so that they can create a socialistic utopia from its ashes. With them running things and taking Other People's Money, of course. I'm referring to the folks who actually believe that not punishing lower-impact criminal behaviors makes for a better society, the people who think that burglars are merely good people desperate to feed their families, and that shoplifting is OK because only the truly needy stoop to such behavior.