No correlation between violent crime and criminal justice reform

 Radley Balko writes in The Watch:

There is very little evidence that criminal justice reforms or progressive prosecutors are responsible for the spike in violent crime. Multiple studies have found no correlation between reform and crime rates at all, and as far as I know just one study claimed to find a correlation between progressive prosecutors and a slight uptick property crime — but no link to violent crime.

But the more obvious reason to doubt any link is that between 2020 and roughly 2022 violent crime also went up everywhere, including in jurisdictions with traditional, law-and-order prosecutors. It then went on a steep, nationwide decline in 2022. That, too, has been a nationwide trend, including in jurisdictions that passed and sustained reforms, as well as those that retained progressive prosecutors.

But the narrative appears to be immune to data. The most high-profile loss last week in Los Angeles, where voters ousted district attorney George Gascón, one of the more well-known names in the progressive prosecutor movement. Gascón faced a revolt the moment he took office, as the prosecutors’ union went to court to get an injunction barring him from implementing reforms — reforms clearly supported by voters at the time — by arguing that they violated the rights of prosecutors. (That’s a hell of a sentence to write.) And they won.

Gascón then faced over two dozen more lawsuits from holdover prosecutors. They accused him of retaliation for publicly criticizing him, and of interfering with their cases by imposing the policies he was elected to implement. I can’t speak to the merit of specific accusations, but as someone who has been watching this stuff for 20 years, I can say that a reform-minded line prosecutor who publicly criticized a traditional DA the way these prosecutors went after Gascón would be fired in a heartbeat. L.A. prosecutors seem to think their “right” to implement carceral policies supersedes the will of the people they serve. And unfortunately, the courts seemed to agree, as some of these prosecutors won six and seven-figure awards. Still, Gascón survived two recall attempts before finally losing last week.

California voters also passed a ballot initiative to increase penalties for some drug crimes, and to allow felony charges for repeat low level theft offenders — a response to the widely-distributed myth that a 2014 initiative had effectively “legalized” shoplifting in the state. The state’s voters even rejected a ban on forced labor of incarcerated people.

To read more CLICK HERE