There is a pervasive idea among the progressives who run American cities that there is no difference between a society that keeps career criminals behind bars and one that allows those career criminals to run free throughout their cities. It defies all logic.
Washington, D.C., is in a crime crisis of its own making, and it goes back to this same mistaken view of crime and human nature. Washington, D.C., Attorney General Brian Schwalb summarized this view back in January, when he said the following: “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.”
Of course, “prevention” and “resources” are an important part of any criminal justice program, and no one is arguing to the contrary. Schwalb and like-minded progressives simply make it a false choice between “long run” safety and arresting criminals. This is then used as a justification for why cities such as Washington, D.C., refuse to prosecute and jail career criminals.
The results are most obvious when it comes to the city’s plague of carjackings, where juvenile criminals are swarming and stealing cars from the city’s residents while they are in or near the vehicle. There have been over 1,000 carjackings in the city in the past two years. Washington, D.C., does not like to prosecute these juvenile criminals, and so they remain out on the streets even after their violent crimes.
WHY TRUMP IS RIGHT ON DC CRIME
Ask yourself this: Is carjacking the kind of one-and-done crime that someone commits to just cross off their bucket list, or are people who commit one carjacking likely to commit others if they are given the opportunity? And, if someone who is already willing to commit one carjacking is not punished by the justice system, are they likely to consider themselves lucky and stop committing crimes? Or are they going to be emboldened to commit crimes more frequently, with more violence, than before?
You can use whatever criminal justice-speak you like, but the fact remains that violent criminals are likely to reoffend, and that keeping career criminals behind bars means they won’t be able to commit the crimes they are committing out on the streets. No, you can’t “prosecute your way out” of crime existing, but you can prosecute your way out of being victimized by someone with multiple prior violent crimes on their record, which progressives in the district refuse to do.