The criminal justice reform movement bases its success on how many criminals it removes from jail, which is proof enough that the movement cares nothing about public safety or justice for victims.
A study from the Common Sense Institute of Colorado analyzed the effects of Colorado’s softening of criminal punishments on prison populations and crime, and the result was unsurprising. The report found that arrests and incarceration rates have declined as Colorado has focused on emptying its prisons, and that the recidivism rate of convicted criminals has also decreased. Of course, if you make fewer arrests, you will have fewer convicted criminals considered to be “reoffending,” because law enforcement does not act on their reoffences.
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But the report also found that Colorado’s violent crime rate had increased by more than 55% over the past decade. Looking at the period from December 2019 to December 2021, Colorado’s prison population declined by more than 20%, but the violent crime rate increased by almost 25%. Again, this is not a great shock. If you let criminals get away with their crimes with practically no real punishment, they are going to continue to commit crimes, and many will become more emboldened to commit greater, more violent crimes.
The real focus here, though, is the reality that the criminal justice reform movement is based on a faulty premise. The biggest focus of the movement is “prison overpopulation” or ending “mass incarceration,” or whatever other terms are used to frame this argument. Reformers consider it a success if the prison population decreases, with no acknowledgment of any other factors, such as the crime rate, the violent crime rate, or whether law-abiding citizens are having their safety put at risk.
The prison population as a number should be utterly irrelevant to criminal justice policymaking. Having 100 people in prison is not better than having 1,000, or vice versa. What matters is that people who are threats to public safety are locked up. Violent criminals must be locked up. People with lengthy criminal records, even if they are “only” for “minor” crimes, have proven themselves unfit to function in society. They, too, should be locked up. The number of people in prison is itself meaningless.
The criminal justice reform movement disagrees with that, which is why it has made major American cities and states less safe with weak sentencing guidelines, weak prosecutors, and left-wing judges who give criminals far more chances than they have ever earned. So long as the reform movement is focused on fighting mass incarceration, it will inevitably let career criminals free to terrorize society, because the prison population has nothing to do with public safety.
