The Left’s Advances Toward a Soft-On-Crime Justice System

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“What exactly is ‘progressing’ in our cities under progressivism?” former Attorney General Bill Barr asked rhetorically. “Public safety and quality of life are certainly not progressing: Crime, disorder and squalor are. It is time to stop the degeneration of our great cities, and this can be done only by rejecting the progressive politicians and their destructive policies.”

The American people did just that on November 5th, soundly rejecting the progressives’ destructive policies, including their war on the criminal justice system. But the progressive Left remains steadfast in pressing on with its extremist agenda.

The progressives’ battle plan has featured the election of soft-on-crime state and local prosecutors who put criminals first and victims last. Their next move is trying to install more soft-on-crime state and local judges.

Progressives have seized on the fact that prosecutors largely control which criminal cases make it to the courthouse and, when they do, what charges end up being decided by the judgeand jury. The prosecutors’ decisions at the outset of a case are often outcome determinative.

Progressive prosecutors have won elections across the country with millions of dollars of funding pumped into their district attorney campaigns by left-wing George Soros-affiliated organizations and other leftist donors. These prosecutors tookover DA offices in major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Instead of fulfilling the traditional prosecutor’s role of protecting public safety by representing the people against criminal defendants, progressive prosecutors often take the side of the accused, acting as if they were public defenders themselves.

Progressive, pro-criminal prosecutors have leveraged so-called criminal justice “reforms” such as cashless bail that progressive legislatures in states such as New York have passed. These prosecutors often decide not to pursue criminal charges even for violent offenses or they reduce a felony charge to a misdemeanor. Undercharging serious offenses and letting loose repeat offenders with past patterns of dangerous behavior have led to more violent crimes being committed against innocent people going about their business. But the Left has decided that this is the price which society must pay to achieve “social justice” reform in law enforcement and the courts.

As former Attorney General Barr noted, “Progressive ‘social justice’ prosecutors — like Alvin Bragg in New York City, George Gascon in Los Angeles and Kim Foxx in Chicago — are blindly pursuing the same soft-on-crime policies of the 1960s and ’70s that previously produced the biggest crime wave in US history.”

Fortunately, pro-criminal Gascon lost his reelection bid to a former federal prosecutor who has called himself a “hard middle” candidate. Gascon will no longer be in a position to endanger the safety of Los Angelenos. And a more moderate Democrat has been elected to replace Kim Foxx as Cook County’s top prosecutor following her decision not to seek another term. But other progressive district attorneys remain in office, including Bragg and Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner.

Some tough-on-crime judges have had enough. Take, for example, a no-nonsense judge who presided over the arraignment of a teenager accused of taking part in a violent gunpoint robbery. Criminal Court Judge Melissa Jacksonrebuffed a prosecutor from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office who had urged that the teen be released with nobail. Monitoring and a curfew were not enough, this judge decided. She sent the teen to jail instead. “I can’t understand why you are not asking for some form of monetary bail in a case as serious as this,” she told the prosecutor.

The following Monday, the teenage defendant appeared before another no-nonsense judge. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Antignani was no more sympathetic to the teen than Judge Jackson had been during the arraignment. He berated theprosecutor appearing in his court from Manhattan District Attorney Bragg’s office for not seeking monetary bail. When the assistant district attorney tried to push back, Justice Antignani sternly reminded him that “this is my courtroom. I make the determination. Not you. Not the DA’s office. I do.” The teen remained in jail until Acting Supreme Court Justice Antignani granted him a $75,000 bail.

Conscientious judges like Jackson and Antignani know the difference between right and wrong and are not willing to coddle accused criminals. But there are other judges who are all too willing to join the progressives’ soft-on-crime cause.

For example, as reported in October 2023 by the New York Post, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Valentina Morales “has sprung at least three violent criminals in the past two years.” This included the release of “a Venezuelan migrant without bail after he allegedly stabbed a man in Times Square.” Even the prosecutors in this case had requested “more than $5,000 cash bail or $7,500 bond” for the defendant but Judge Morales opted for supervised release with no required bail.

In Illinois, the election in 2022 of two additional Democrats to the Illinois Supreme Court tilted this state court further to the Left. In 2023, these two newly elected justices joined in a 5-2 decision upholding the constitutionality of a sweeping law thateliminated Illinois’ monetary bail system. It established instead a default rule that all individuals charged with an offense shall be eligible for pretrial release on personal recognizance with exceptions for pretrial detention in limited circumstances.

The expanded leftist majority gave short shrift to victims’ and their families’ rights embedded in Illinois’ constitution. These constitutional rights include having “the safety of the victim and the victim’s family considered in denying or fixing the amount of bail, determining whether to release the defendant, and setting conditions of release after arrest and conviction.” A default rule by the legislature favoring pretrial release in most instances and eliminating monetary bail altogether effectively nullifies these constitutional protections for victims and their families. But the rights of victims and their families make no difference to soft-on-crime progressives who would like nothing better than to empty Illinois’ jails.

Indeed, the Left is looking to elect more left-leaning judges, replicating their victories for progressive prosecutors across the country. As a 2021 article in Politico put it, “Progressive activists are challenging ‘tough on crime’ judges in a place they have long avoided: the voting booth.”

A left-wing organization called the Abolitionist Law Center states on its website that “We challenge every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt including policing, courts, jails and prisons, and various forms of legal supervision, as well as other aspects of the carceral machine.”(Emphasis in the original)

Abolitionist Law Center’s executive director, Robert Saleem Holbrook, was motivated to radically shake up the judicial system by his own lengthy incarceration on a murder charge.His conviction and sentence had stemmed from a crime in whichhe participated as a juvenile.

Mr. Holbrook declared: “What I saw in the courtroom, and what many other people like me saw — we don’t see justice in courtrooms. We see politics being expressed in the courtroom.”Beginning in Pennsylvania where Mr. Holbrook is based, this ex-convict has been helping to set in motion a movement to “flip the bench” by electing progressive judges.

It is too early to say how this movement will fare in comparisonwith the Left’s success in electing progressive prosecutors. But there is reason to hope that the results of the 2024 elections will help turn the tide against the progressive soft-on-crime movement.

Donald Trump sent San Francisco liberal Kamala Harris packing with his astounding victory. A Republican turned Independent,who has promised to get tough on crime, defeated Los AngelesDA Gascon by a landslide margin. Even George Soros, who contributed $2.45 million into Gascon’s campaign in 2020, saw Gascon’s campaign for reelection as a lost cause and declined to throw his money after bad this time.

Californians overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, which reverses incredibly lax progressive polices towards criminals. It does so, for example, by turning some misdemeanors into felonies, including the theft of items worth $950 or less for a person with two or more past convictions for such theft crimes as shoplifting, burglary, and carjacking. Proposition 36 also allows for lengthening the sentences for some drug-related felonies such as the sale of fentanyl or heroin and requires that these sentences be served in state prison.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” Albert Einstein once said. The red vote tidal wave that swept across America should have sent a strong signal to the Democrats’ progressive base that most Americans have rejected the same progressive soft-on-crime thinking that has wreaked havoc on America’s cities and towns.

However, these left-wing ideologues remain stuck in their same extremist mindset and echo chamber. They are already actively planning what they call Resistance 2.0.