Washington state’s pro-criminal reforms bring record murders
Zachary Faria
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Washington was one of the liberal states that helped accelerate criminal justice reform in 2020. Now, three years later, the state is suffering a police staffing shortage and the most murders in its recorded history.
In 2022, Washington had the lowest police staffing rate of any state in the country. While Washington has held that position for the last 13 years in a row, its rate of 1.36 police officers per 1,000 people is the lowest the state has seen since the 1980s. That can, in part, be chalked up to the cratering of morale in Democratic-run cities and states because Democratic leaders demonized police officers and made it clear they would not stand with officers if the media and activist mobs came after them.
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Meanwhile, Washington reported 394 murders across the state last year, a 16% increase from 2021 and the most murders the state has seen since it began using its current reporting system in 1908. Overall crime is up 8.5%, violent crime is up 8.9%, and hate crimes are at their highest number in two decades.
Seattle has been at the forefront of the “defund the police,” pro-criminal reform movement among liberal cities, allowing rioters to run free and even take over property in an “autonomous zone.” Democrats have finally begun reckoning with the lawlessness promoted in Seattle and in Washington statewide, as Gov. Jay Inslee has already signed multiple rollbacks of police reform provisions on pursuits that had benefited criminals.
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As several cities and states that have embraced pro-criminal reforms have learned, though, it is far harder to get out of a culture of lawlessness than it is to create one. Washington Democrats dug themselves into a hole by giving criminals several greenlights and tying the arms of what few police officers the state has behind their backs. The state can’t get a handle on murders and can’t recruit police officers to bolster law enforcement. At least several criminals got out of prison early because of COVID.
This is the inevitable conclusion of criminal justice reform as Democrats have pursued it. Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City have all been reckoning with the consequences of the pro-criminal reforms they embraced. Seattle and Washington state now must do the same, whether their Democratic leaders want to admit this was a failure or not.