Nonagenarian left-wing billionaire George Soros has poured millions of dollars into local District Attorney races across the country in recent years, backing "reform"-minded "progressives" accused by critics of adopting soft-on-crime – or even effectively pro-criminal – policies. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published over the weekend, Soros fires back at the detractors, professing to be "concerned" about crime, and claiming that his preferred approach to law enforcement works well.
An excerpt:
Like most of us, I’m concerned about crime. One of government’s most important roles is to ensure public safety. I have been involved in efforts to reform the criminal-justice system for the more than 30 years I have been a philanthropist. Yet our system is rife with injustices that make us all less safe. The idea that we need to choose between justice and safety is false. They reinforce each other: If people trust the justice system, it will work. And if the system works, public safety will improve...We spend $81 billion every year keeping around two million people in prisons and jails. We need to invest more in preventing crime with strategies that work...In recent years, reform-minded prosecutors and other law-enforcement officials around the country have been coalescing around an agenda that promises to be more effective and just. This agenda includes prioritizing the resources of the criminal-justice system to protect people against violent crime. It urges that we treat drug addiction as a disease, not a crime. And it seeks to end the criminalization of poverty and mental illness...This agenda, aiming at both safety and justice, is based on both common sense and evidence. It’s popular. It’s effective......This is why I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform. I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping. The funds I provide enable sensible reform-minded candidates to receive a hearing from the public. Judging by the results, the public likes what it’s hearing.
Here's the full piece. Where to begin? His overall theory of law enforcement has been tested in recent years, and despite his repeated assertions, it's not proving to be popular. He says he's "concerned about crime," which he may be, in theory – but I'd posit he's less urgently concerned than the many people stuck in dangerous neighborhoods, without the resources to employ a small private army of bodyguards and personal security. He insists that people must trust the justice system, but many Americans increasingly do not trust the system because of the myriad ("effective and just") "reforms" he supports – which too often lead to less robust policing, and the coddling of criminals. He claims that research shows that crime spikes are not linked to the policies of the soft-on-crime prosecutors he's proudly financed, blaming rising murder rates on "some Republican states led by tough-on-crime politicians." Even if this is partially true (note the "some" qualifier), much of that crime is coming in blue jurisdictions within Republican-led states (see Houston, Atlanta, etc.), a reality he deliberately elides. This passage is also interesting:
Serious scholars researching causes behind the recent increase in crime have pointed to other factors: a disturbing rise in mental illness among young people due to the isolation imposed by Covid lockdowns, a pullback in policing in the wake of public criminal-justice reform protests, and increases in gun trafficking. Many of the same people who call for more-punitive criminal-justice policies also support looser gun laws.
There is no doubt that these points are true, but they cut against Soros' worldview. COVID lockdown-imposed isolation among young people is the result of restrictionist policies favored by the political party Soros has funded for years. The "pullback in policing" after "criminal-justice reform protests" (i.e. riots, in many cases) is directly tied to Soros' ideology. Police have backed off because Soros-aligned political leaders have refused to have officers' backs, and Soros-financed prosecutors routinely and almost immediately release criminals under some of the "reforms" Soros champions. These factors demoralize police, which empowers criminals and incentivizes crime. It's astonishing that Soros proactively chose to highlight this phenomenon, for which he is partially and personally responsible.
As for gun laws, perhaps Soros should urge the Democrats he funds to prosecute certain gun-related crimes more robustly. This article, for example, notes that convictions for illegal gun possession have fallen dramatically in Philadelphia under the Soros-backed District Attorney. Soros writes that the lax prosecutors' overall approach is "popular" with the public. It's quite a claim. Here are some stats and vignettes demonstrating what is happening in New York City under the new DA, whose campaign was backed by the billionaire, in the wake of a so-called progressive "reform" passed by the state's Democratic government:
Roughly one in every five crooks busted for burglary or theft in New York last year got re-arrested on a felony charge within 60 days after being put back on the streets, NYPD figures obtained by The Post show. The alarming statistics reveal increases in alleged recidivism as high as three times what they were in 2017 — before New York’s controversial bail-reform law took effect in 2020. “We went from a revolving-door justice system to an E-ZPass system,” fumed one frustrated Manhattan cop. The numbers also show that suspects arrested last year for misdemeanor petit larceny amid the city’s ongoing shoplifting spree went on to quickly commit more serious crimes, with 21.6% charged with felonies less than two months later. That rate is more than 2.5 times the 8.1% recorded in 2017...The NYPD’s five-year comparisons show 23.7% of last year’s burglary suspects were re-arrested within 60 days, up from 7.7% in 2017 — an increase of 208%...An NYPD detective with more than 20 years on the job said, “They’re letting everybody out.” “We see it every single day: ROR’d, ROR’d, ROR’d,” the detective said, using slang for “released on recognizance.”
Then he was released again, after viciously beating and trying to choke a police officer https://t.co/FbhsMpKTEv
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) July 27, 2022
And here's a new development out of crime-riddled Chicago, where the top prosecutor's coffers were filled by Soros:
NEW: Fox obtains scathing resignation of one of Kim Foxx’s top ASA’s — Jim Murphy- writing in part:
— Matt Finn (@MattFinnFNC) July 29, 2022
“how many mass shootings does there have to be before something is done? This administration is more concerned with political narratives….” pic.twitter.com/T7uHNzGUWf
The Soros approach has been so "popular" and successful that voters in deep-blue San Francisco recalled Soros poster child Chesa Boudin in a lopsided vote (Boudin risibly lashed out at right-wingers after getting crushed in the election, which is his version of Soros' blame-Republicans spin on rising crime). In Los Angeles, another Soros-supported District Attorney is now facing a recall effort, which appears to have garnered a sufficient number of signatures to get on the ballot. It seems quite clear that the overwhelming majority of people in charge of holding criminals accountable in that county do not agree with the "effective and just" sloganeering, based on the results:
More than 9 of 10 Los Angeles prosecutors are supporting an effort to recall District Attorney (DA) George Gascon, according to the Los Angeles Association of Deputy District Attorneys (LAADDA), which released the results of a vote among county prosecutors Tuesday. The LA County Registrar approved the recall, which is now seeking between 800,000 and 900,000 petition signatures, last year in the midst of the county's violent crime spike that began in 2020. "It's been one year of Gascon's social experiment," Eric Siddall, vice president of LAADDA, told Fox News Digital. "I think after that one year, people have had time to evaluate whether this is working or not working. I think most people who actually live in Los Angeles [and] understand what's going on in Los Angeles, including the political leadership here in LA, feel that this has been a miserable failure."
Consider the list of US cities from which residents are fleeing in the largest numbers, and cross-reference it with the roster of locations in which Starbucks recently announced it was targeting profitable stores for closure, due to crime problems. The overlap of Soros-endorsed prosecutors' jurisdictions is striking. Evidently, Soros surveys this situation and concludes that his model for "justice" is a popular success. In his own mind, this hardcore ideologue must be right, and all the cops, line prosecutors, and endangered citizens must be wrong. It must be nice to be that rich and that insulated.