Are there are any other issues confronting our fractious republic that matter if Americans themselves are too scared to walk outside, lest they be mugged by a "bail reform"-freed perp or shot by a gangbanger in a drive-by shooting? As we get ready to close the chapter on this bloody year of 2021, that is the question all policymakers and all public-minded citizens ought to be asking themselves.
Fortunately, if there is a silver lining to be found amid the unprecedented urban looting, the horrific anecdotes of children shot while playing outside and the historic overall homicide rates afflicting so many of America's biggest cities, it is that many seem to be arriving at a long-overdue and much-welcomed consensus: The era of "criminal justice reform" is finally over.
The national murder rate in 2020 rose over 30 percent on a year-by-year basis, as the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis soon unleashed a hellish summer of riotous mayhem. But murder rates in 2021 have only further spiked, even compared to that harrowing baseline of one year prior. The Manhattan Institute's Rafael Mangual broke it down in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed: "Philadelphia just shattered its all-time annual homicide record with a full month remaining in 2021, as have Louisville, Ky.; Indianapolis; Columbus, Ohio; Austin, Texas; Tucson, Ariz.; St. Paul, Minn.; Portland, Ore.; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Fayetteville, N.C. Other cities, like Cincinnati; Trenton, N.J.; Memphis, Tenn.; Milwaukee; Kansas City, Mo.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Denver; Cleveland; Jackson, Miss.; Wichita, Kan.; Greensboro, N.C.; Lansing, Mich.; and Colorado Springs, Colo., saw their highest homicide tallies since 1990 last year."
To drive that point home, earlier this year, the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice concluded that the post-Floyd 2020 crime surge represented a "large and troubling increase" with "no modern precedent" in U.S. history. And the data now clearly show that 2021 has been even worse than 2020 was. Perhaps this bloody status quo is OK for a third-world banana republic, but it is decidedly not OK for the would-be greatest country in the world.
Thankfully, some recent trend lines finally seem to point in the right direction—that is, away from decarceral anarchy, and toward civilizational sanity.
In July, Eric Adams won New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, paving the way for his eventual and now-impending mayoralty. While Adams is hardly an ideal choice, his campaigning as a no-nonsense retired police officer does suggest at least a mild rebuke to the anti-cop lawlessness that characterized Mayor Bill de Blasio's destructive tenure.
Other optimistic data points abound. Last month in Minneapolis, where Floyd himself was killed, voters overwhelmingly rejected a noxious "defund" initiative that would have replaced the municipal police department with an amorphous mix of social workers. It is not difficult to understand why: Through September 2021, gunshots fired in Minneapolis had risen in volume 380 percent over the same period in 2019.
Also last month, in Seattle, a notorious haven of radical-left progressive lunacy—does anyone even remember the so-called "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" of 2020?—a Republican who campaigned on a law-and-order message prevailed in the city's district attorney election. For context as to how far-left Seattle normally is, the Emerald City's nine city council members include eight Democrats and one member from the "Socialist Alternative" party, which self-describes as an overtly Marxist outfit.
Most recently, the Democratic mayor of the most iconic far-left city in America, San Francisco, pulled no punches in her condemnation of anarchy. In the aftermath of numerous well-publicized instances of looting and vandalizing in downtown San Francisco and its surrounding needle-bestrewn and feces-bespeckled environs, Mayor London Breed unloaded: "The reign of criminals in our city, it is time for it to come to an end. And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policy and less tolerant of all the bulls*** that has destroyed our city." Hear, hear.
In recent decades, progressives and libertarians, from far-left activist George Soros to the right-of-center Texas Public Policy Foundation, have often made common cause on a cancerous "criminal justice reform" agenda. That agenda usually prioritizes minimizing or eliminating bail, reducing criminal sentences, abolishing qualified immunity, electing anti-prosecution district attorneys, downsizing police departments and other decivilizational measures.
God willing, it seems like the jig may finally be up. Republicans have by-and-large moved back toward their traditional law-and-order posture, and even many Democrats seem fed up with our roiling national bedlam. "Criminal justice reform," it seems, may have finally met its death sentence.
Josh Hammer is Newsweek opinion editor, a syndicated columnist and a research fellow with the Edmund Burke Foundation. Twitter: @josh_hammer.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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