Crime & Punishment Of Poor In NYC

Riley writes “It Doesn’t Make Sense to Blame Crime on Poverty,” since NY’s murder rated dropped sharply after 1990 as poor population rose so nuts to the lib mantra connecting crime & poverty … it’s discriminatory.

WSJ’s Jason Riley is a black columnist who knows the Big Apple’s history inside & out so there’s no argument with his column’s premise that the 1990’s movement to “get tough on rampant crime” there was a good thing and that modern day liberalism that’s “soft on crime” hurts the victimized poor the most. He pointedly cited NY Mayor Adam’s recent testimony rejecting those popular woke beliefs that “arresting & prosecuting lawbreaker is tantamount to criminalizing the poor … we cannot forget the people who are the victims of crimes … and we cannot let repeat offenders make a mockery of the criminal justice system.”

Riley continues: “For starters, most poor people aren’t criminals. In a previous era, when Americans were significantly poorer than they are today, crime rates were significantly lower. Crime during the Great Depression was lower than during the 1960s, a decade of tremendous economic growth and prosperity. In 1960 the black male homicide rate was 45 per 100K. By 1990 it had climbed by more than 200% to 140 per 100K, even though black average incomes by then were much higher and the black poverty rate much lower, than 30 years earlier.” Riley couldn’t have explained it better. Here’s a case of still more liberal policy nonsense, if well-intentioned, that creates more problems than it’s supposed to solve.

Davd Soul