Are Liberals Having Second Thoughts on “Decarceration”?

Since even before the George Floyd riots, liberal state and local officials in the U.S. have espoused support for “depolicing” and “decarceration.” But now the resultant (and predictable) nationwide crime surge from those policies has some liberal politicians backtracking – even as others plow forward.

Depolicing and decarceration mean, respectively, reducing the size of police forces and restricting the tactics that police may employ (e.g. using “stop and frisk” policies to search individuals suspected of carrying illegal firearms), and similarly reducing the prison population by limiting criminal sentences, to the point of even eliminating the requirement that arrestees post bail for all but the most serious offenses. Not surprisingly, this approach, part of a broader liberal push for so-called “criminal justice reform,” has emboldened criminals, especially in cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco.

One form of crime that has experienced an extraordinary upsurge is violent shoplifting, often organized by criminal gangs. In New York City alone, according to Nelson Eusebio, head of the National Supermarket Association, 93 percent of store owners report being victimized by shoplifters, with 60 percent saying they are victimized every day.

The result is that local stores have lost $300 million in revenue, despite having had to spend more on security. Frequently, the “boosters” (as they call themselves) also launch violent attacks on store employees. As a byproduct, businesses like CVS find themselves compelled to lock up many ordinary items on their shelves, with customers needing employee assistance to purchase the items.

So bad has the situation become that New York Governor Kathy Hochul, typically a reliably liberal politician, has launched a program to combat retail theft. The program will include (as the New York Post reports) building criminal cases against retail theft rings, funding district attorneys to prosecute property crimes, and setting up a “State Police smash-and-grab unit.”

Hochul, in justification of her crackdown, estimated that shoplifting is currently costing retailers $4.4 billion annually. Many of the stores most victimized by New York City’s lifters, it should be noted, are small, minority-owned businesses.

However, one critical element of Hochul’s program has been blocked by New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie: her plan to strengthen criminal penalties for violent shoplifters.

Given the two-thirds majority Democrats hold in the New York State Assembly, accompanied by a strong majority in the Senate, Heastie is basically assured of having his way. By way of explanation, Heastie professed to “care very deeply” about “what’s happened to retail workers,” but to have “other [unspecified] ideas of how” to address their situation. As he put it, “If you just keep dealing with the penalties, what happens after people get arrested? You’re still only worrying about what happens after something has already happened.”

Heastie’s explanation makes no sense. Along with taking offenders off the street, a chief function of criminal penalties is to deter crimes before they happen. But he inexplicably denied believing that “raising penalties is ever a deterrent to crime.”

Heastie’s position represents the extremes to which urban liberalism has gone: pitying the criminals who may face incarceration, rather than their victims, in this case, store workers, store owners, and consumers who must pay higher prices for their purchases given the stores’ need to cover their losses.

But a different story from America’s “Left Coast” perhaps offers a ray of hope.

In an article titled “The Lessons Learned about Decriminalization” on April 2, The New York Times reported the decision of Oregon Governor Tina Kotek to sign into law “a measure to restore criminal penalties” for the possession of “hard” drugs. Oregon had eliminated such penalties only three years ago.

Following what the Times describes as “a deluge of overdose deaths and frequent chaos in the streets of Portland,” the restoration of penalties earned the support of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler. After initially favoring cuts to his city’s police department, only to face “a series of crises,” including what the Times reports as “surging unsheltered homelessness, turbulent street protests, an exodus of downtown business, a record number of homicides, the rapid spread of fentanyl, and soaring overdose deaths,” Wheeler had a change of heart.

“People are exhausted from feeling that they’re under siege. They want order restored to their environment,” Wheeler explained in response to the Times interviewer’s observation that “across the country, there’s been a shift toward more conservative policies on policing and crime and drug policy.”

In the “very uncertain times” we face, Wheeler added, people have “a minimum expectation that where they live is an orderly, safe, secure, prosperous place to be. And if they don’t see it, that is unsettling. They need to have that.”

Wheeler’s remarks are not only sensible but particularly striking, emanating from the chief executive (since 2016) of the city that witnessed violent Antifa riots of 2020 (which included actions like hurling Molotov cocktails at the police and beating reporter Andy Ngo within an inch of his life for describing what he had seen). Those riots became a model for emulation in cities across the country – and few participants in them suffered any serious penalties. If anything, the lasting effect of the unrest (so far) has been to fortify the anti-policing, anti-punishment approach to crime.

But if the public leaders of Oregon and the Governor of New York are showing signs of coming to their senses on these matters, perhaps there is hope for a more widespread return to reasonable policies that will restore a sense of order to our communities, as the policies of New York City Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg did starting three decades ago. Somehow, in the face of recurrent liberal fantasies, often fortified by misguided racial demagoguery, the lessons of reality need continually to be relearned.

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science College of the Holy Cross.