At Atlantic Alec MacGillis makes a point I’ve made here from time to time. The failure of our legal system to identify, arrest, prosecute, try, and convict criminals in a timely manner is undermining the rule of law:
Criminologists have offered several explanations for the increase, including the rise in gun sales early in the pandemic, changes in police behavior following the protests over the murder of George Floyd, and the social disruptions caused by closures of schools and interruptions in social services. But many people who work in criminal justice are zeroing in on another possible factor—the extended shutdown of so much of the court system, the institution at the heart of public order.
This could have led to more violence in a number of ways. Prosecutors confronted with a growing volume of cases decided not to take action against certain suspects, who went on to commit other crimes. Victims or witnesses became less willing to testify as time passed and their memories of events grew foggy, weakening cases against perpetrators. Suspects were denied substance-abuse treatment or other services that they would normally have accessed through the criminal-justice system, with dangerous consequences.
Above all, experts say, the shutdowns undermined the promise that crimes would be promptly punished. The theory that “swift, certain, and fair†consequences deter crimes is credited to the late criminologist Mark Kleiman. The idea is that it’s the speed of repercussions, rather than their severity, that matters most. By putting the justice system on hold for so long, many jurisdictions weakened that effect. In some cases, people were left to seek street justice in the absence of institutional justice. As Reygan Cunningham, a senior partner at the California Partnership for Safe Communities, put it, closing courts sent “a message that there are no consequences, and there is no help.â€
Where I differ from Mr. MacGillis is that I think that COVID-19 has practically nothing to do with the problem since the problem existed long before January 2020. I think our laws, law enforcement officers, judges, and states attorneys offices all need fundamental reform, starting with having laws that can be enforced and a commitment to enforcing the law.
Just to cite one example Kim Foxx assumed the office of Cook County States Attorney in December 2016, one of a group of states attorneys who are not committed to prosecuting crimes. Chesa Boudin, just removed as San Francisco District Attorney, assumed office in January 2020. He ran on a platform of decarceration and reduced prosecution so blaming the reduction in prosecutions during his tenure on COVID-19 is a stretch. He was doing what he promised to do.
I agree COVID has had little to do with how justice is processed. Basically, laws have increasingly been bent to benefit many perpetrators of a crime through low to no monetary bail, light sentencing, disrespect of law enforcement. However, it’s the politicization of who gets punished for a crime and who doesn’t that is the real culprit in perpetuating a growing
sense of injustice in the public arena.
We now have trials governed by politically correct pubic opinion, rather than genuine evidence, such as the one dealing with George Floyd. Under LA’s DA, George Gascon, felons are in and out of jail with impunity. Crime victims are helplessly left in limbo, and police are simply frustrated by the lack of follow through in their arrest efforts. In Washington DC, you have the J6 trial where defendants are brought up on charges that didn’t used to even be tried – like refusing to answer a subpoena (such as Eric Holder), and then disallowed privileges such as cross-examination or having the testimony of their own witnesses entered into the legal record!
Then you have the many people indefinitely incarcerated (some for over a year in solitary confinement), in gulag-like conditions, who have had all their rights of a fair and speedy trial stripped away. In one case, a domestic terrorist enhancement is being sought for someone caught parading outside the Capitol with supposedly a holstered firearm. Because he refused to take a plea deal, instead wanting a jury trial, prosecutors are trying to tack on 15 years to his sentence. In the meantime, an unarmed woman veteran (Ashli Babbitt), trying to intercede in an interior Capitol building fruckus, was shot and killed, without warning, by a Capitol police officer. He was immediately exonerated of his reckless action.
As many see it, equal justice is being denied to those not identifying with the party line of those currently having political power.
The criminologists, driven by rigid ideology, as usual get cause and effect backwards. (Confusion of cause and effect is THE distinguishing characteristic of all the social sciences.) The great increase in gun sales is driven by the collapse of the justice system, and in cities like Minneapolis, its actual deliberate perversion. The increases in sales are especially evident among women. Go into any gun store and you will see women, usually accompanied by men, but often alone. They know that if they are attacked they are on their own.
The egregious, criminal failure of the school police at Uvalde, and a few years ago in the Florida school shooting, and the recent shootings in the Indiana mall (stopped by an armed civilian, not the police), are all strong arguments that everyone should go about armed. Millions of people accept the argument, and that is why gun sales set new records each month.
I personally do not carry a gun when I go out, but I live in a small rural town, and I feel no need. If I did feel the need to be armed, I would move somewhere else.