The common refrain of pro-criminal, pro-criminal justice reform advocates is that no one can “prosecute or arrest our way” out of crime. The more you think about it, the less that “logic” makes sense.
The latest to parrot this line was Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb, who said on Tuesday, “We as a city and a community need to be much more focused on prevention and surrounding young people and their families with resources if we want to be safer in the long run. We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.”
Sure, the first part of that statement is true. Cities and communities need to focus on young people, particularly at-risk youth, to keep them on the right path in life. But saying we “cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of” crime is an excuse. No one is asking you to solve all crime by throwing a bunch of people in jail. They are asking you to keep career criminals behind bars so that they do not keep committing crimes, which will, of course, reduce crime.
Take, for just one example, Artell Cunningham, who killed one person and shot another during a carjacking spree in the city on Monday. He was ultimately shot and killed by police. In January 2021, Cunningham was arrested on felony threats after saying he was going to shoot several police officers and “I will kill each and every one of you.” This felony is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Instead, Cunningham’s charges were reduced to a misdemeanor and dropped entirely.
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If Cunningham had been actually prosecuted and sentenced to, say, five years (for threatening to shoot and kill multiple police officers), that is two fewer shootings and carjackings that would not have happened. They would not have happened because Cunningham wouldn’t have been out on the streets to commit them. And this is the story of every repeat criminal, including juvenile criminals committing violent carjackings, that Washington, D.C., and every bleeding-heart liberal city have let out on the streets in the name of “reform.”
Repeat criminals cannot continue to repeat their crimes if they are locked up. No, crime will not magically disappear, but it borders on delusion to believe that there is no effect on crime when officials fail to prosecute unrepentant career criminals or violent criminals who are likely to re-offend. Any “solution” to the district’s crime crisis that does not include locking up career criminals is not a solution at all, in the short term or the long term.