There are areas of Baltimore that you just don’t go if you have a choice.
Areas with boarded up windows and different dealers running every corner. Areas with families living off food stamps whose sons and dads are either in jail or just out.
Regardless of the various motivations for Baltimore’s high crime rate one thing remains undeniable: one of the main reasons for the violent crime in the city, prostitution and other problems is the sale of illegal drugs.
The solution to the soaring crime and drugs that Baltimore’s State Attorney Marilyn Mosby came up with is in line with a growing progressive push to pardon crime and put the burden on victims and communities. It’s a solution that’s as shocking as it is ignorant:
Just stop enforcing the law.
Won’t Someone Think of the Poor Criminals?
Mosby started decriminalizing drug possession, prostitution and other offences last March, saying that it was too dangerous to put people behind bars where COVID spreads more rapidly.
Now one year later Mosby is taking her bows in the liberal media and claiming that ignoring the law has made everyone safer. Other city prosecutors also followed suit, keen to tap into benefits of reducing crime by simply…stopping prosecuting much of it.
While praising her strategy, Mosby referred to Baltimore as “a case study in criminal justice reform” which would be news to anyone who actually lives there.
Ironically, Mosby and her husband are in serious danger of an investigation for various things including tax fraud, conflicts of interest in running side businesses and buying new homes in Florida while declaring herself poor in Maryland. If she hustles hard maybe Mosby can get herself as one of those “decriminalized” people.
Empty the jails might make progressives feel nice, and it might give the opportunity to use words like “systemic racism” or “structural injustice,” “economic oppression” and so on. But when you’re living in a city like Baltimore with the highest per capita murder rate in the United States you shouldn’t be bragging about it being a “case study” in anything except why the Second Amendment is so vital for self-protection.
When prosecutors say they won’t be bothering to put small time dealers and escorts and traffic offenders behind jail, police stop arresting them and people stop bothering to even call the police. You create statistics that look good for low level crime while the reality on the ground is far different.
Non-prosecution of low-level offenses has not just improved public health during the pandemic by keeping people out of jail, but new evidence out of Baltimore and Boston confirms that these policies are also consistent with public safety. Read more: https://t.co/WLWZ0NchEZ pic.twitter.com/EsnHHXhjCG
— Fair and Just Prosecution (@fjp_org) March 29, 2021
‘Address the Systemic Inequality of Mass Incarceration’
According to Mosby’s press release celebrating the one year success of ignoring the law, going lax on low level crimes has “resulted in a decrease in arrests, no adverse impact on the crime rate, and address the systemic inequity of mass incarceration.”
From now on they’ll stick with it permanently. No more war on drugs, just a blind eye as communities continue to suffer.
“We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalize mostly people of color for addiction. We will develop sustainable solutions and allow our public health partners to do their part to address mental health and substance use disorder,” Mosby said.
Mosby and progressives can keep talking about all the things that are wrong and how racism or economic injustice and other things lead to crime, but the truth is that low-level crimes lead directly – and are often part of – higher level crimes.
Decriminalizing doesn’t make people more safe, it just leaves them vulnerable to the extended consequences of crime.
