[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
There are too many criminals in prison and Mamdani wants to let half of them out.
Mamdani complained that the Adams administration had increased the number of criminals in Rikers Island by a thousand and claimed that “we can reduce that jail population to less than four thousand”. The infamous New York City prison has around 7,000 criminals on average and Mamdani cited a pro-crime proposal to reduce the number in there to only 3,700 criminals.
That would mean freeing some 3,300 or 47%, nearly half, of the criminals there.
Pro-crime policies such as eliminating bail already put most criminals back on the street almost as soon as they’re arrested. The limited number of criminals still being remanded are the worst of the worst. After years of being fed sob stories about shoplifters going to Rikers, Mamdani and the pro-crime activists trying to free half the criminals from Rikers aren’t even pretending.
Mamdani cited an article by an activist from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, once a fine institution that produced capable people, but that has become an academic hub for pro-crime activism.
Its proposals for cutting the Rikers population in half include no bail for first arrests “even in serious violent felony cases”, freeing three-quarters of criminals “facing violent felony charges”, exempting from prison those charged with a list of sentences that covers sexual misconduct, forcible touching, as well as sexual abuse in the second and third degrees, mandatory pre-trial release of criminals after a certain period, more early release for a variety of offenders including those who have committed assault and sexual abuse, and releasing criminals “who really do pose a flight risk” but offering them “employment assistance” to keep them from running away.
What is abundantly clear is that there is no way to significantly reduce the violent criminal population at Rikers without freeing violent criminals including some of the worst ones.
46% of the criminals at Rikers Island were charged with a violent felony.
After a decade of pro-crime policies and the mass jailbreaks of the COVID and BLM era, the only ones still in Rikers are the truly dangerous. The prison is full of repeat offenders, criminals who have committed horrifying acts against the public and the violently disturbed madmen.
And those are the ones whom Mamdani is proposing to set loose.
Past pro-crime proposals pretended that the only ones who would be released would be the misleadingly named “non-violent offenders” (in reality, the so-called non-violent offenders are often violent criminals who are being ‘charged down’ and have had violent crimes defined down to manufacture the illusion that crime is lower than it really is), but that’s no longer on the table.
Mamdani’s cited proposal has two separate sections that explicitly mention freeing violent criminals and several others that implicitly require mass releases of dangerous criminals.
The proposal endorsed by Mamdani as a strategy for clearing out the prisons complains that judges released only a quarter of criminals facing violent felony charges (murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault) while keeping around half in custody. It sneers at the “people’s perceived (and often misperceived) risk to public safety” when it comes to letting violent criminals loose.
What’s the actual risk?
Over the last 28 day period in New York City, murder is up 19%, rape is up 38.9%, the number of shooting victims is up 36%.
Crime, despite all the political pro-crime narratives, is getting worse. And people know it.
A majority of New Yorkers say that crime has gotten worse since 2020 and BLM riots. 70% want more police officers and most want an end to revolving door arrests and to see bail come back because “too many people are being arrested and immediately released into the streets where they commit violent crimes”. 61% oppose the general plan to close Rikers Island that was championed in the report cited by Mamdani and by the pro-crime lobby in general.
No polling has been done on the specifics of freeing half the criminals in Rikers, including many violent felons, but the public is unlikely to be in favor of such a mass jailbreak.
Even though a majority fear being the victim of a crime, Mamdani laughs at the idea of restoring public safety and bringing back a functional criminal justice system to New York City. “What purpose” does prison serve, Mamdani asked in one conversation, suggesting that people defend what the pro-crime lobby calls ‘the carceral state’ or the prison system “because of the way it makes them feel.”
The purpose served by the prison system is keeping criminals off the street. Earlier this year, a monster with 70 prior arrests, including smashing a 2-year-old girl in the face with a suitcase, smashed a woman’s head against a pole in the subway. The NYPD commissioner revealed that the crime wave was driven by repeat offenders arrested three or more times for the same crime.
What will those numbers look like if Mamdani frees a prison half full of violent criminals?
Murders and rapes are already up over the summer. Some lower category offenses appear to be down, but that’s only because they’re no longer being reported or charged. But the real crime wave is still coming. Every previous mass release of criminals has made New York City more dangerous and less safe. But the release of the worst of the worst may soon be coming.
And the price will be paid by children playing in parks, by tourists stopping to see the sights, by random people crossing the streets and by the most vulnerable, women, children and the elderly, being terrorized by the worst monsters who used to be kept locked away in prison.
Closing Rikers Island and freeing violent criminals will make New York City into Rikers as the city becomes one big prison in which the criminals are free and everyone else is locked up.
