The violent crime rate in the United States has dropped to record lows. It is wonderful news, but people shouldn’t become complacent and shouldn’t accept the weakening of the justice system at the hands of criminal justice reform activists and Democratic politicians.
According to FBI data, the violent crime rate in the U.S. in 2024 is the lowest it has been since 1969, and the preliminary data for 2025 through October show another drop of 10%. The property crime rate is expected to be the lowest ever recorded. The homicide rate could also come back as the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1900, and even substantial revisions to the data would leave it among the lowest rates in recorded history.
FLORIDA ARRESTS FELON RELEASED THROUGH BIDEN AUTOPEN COMMUTATION
That’s all good news, and yet whatever momentum is being built on battling crime nationwide is being blunted by continued reforms from people who wish to see more violent and career criminals go free. Take California, for example, with its “elderly parole” law. California has made it so that, if you serve 20 years of a prison sentence and are over the age of 50, you immediately become eligible for parole. This means that people such as Roy Waller, who committed nine different rapes over a 15-year span, are eligible for parole in 14 years, which would be just 20 years after he was given a life sentence for his crimes.
This also includes David Funston, 64, who is serving more than three life sentences for kidnapping and raping multiple children, as young as 4 years old. His parole was approved last week, while California Democrats who voted in favor of the law, a former state legislator who is running for governor, pretend they had nothing to do with breaking the system and getting Funston released.
Judges are also using their power to release criminals, even obviously unrepentant monsters such as Christopher Thompson, a rapist who threatened the woman who prosecuted his case and constantly interrupted the judge with declarations of how unrepentant he was in the middle of her insisting he could contribute to society.
SAN FRANCISCO JUDGE CONSIDERS NO JAIL TIME FOR KILLING A FAMILY OF FOUR
The “insanity” defense is also being wielded as a weapon against justice. In Kentucky, Ronald Exantus broke into a home and slaughtered a 6-year-old child, stabbing him in the head multiple times. He was adjudicated to be too “insane” to know that murder was wrong, sentenced to a pathetic 20 years, and released by the state’s parole board after just eight years. Exantus is too insane to be expected not to stab children in the head, but not insane enough to keep away from the rest of society.
These are the kind of things that rot the criminal justice system and make crime more rampant, as we saw when progressive “prosecutors” weakened the criminal justice system in the lead-up to the 2020 crime surge. These “reform” policies and ideologues are making the country less safe, and they will undo all the progress that has been made on crime in recent years.