Toxic Empathy

Property crime is down 12.3%

Violent crime is down 10.2%

Theft is down 8.9%

Rape is down 8.7%

Aggravated assault is down 7.5%

This trend seems to include cities that have been the poster children. Chicago, Detroit, etc. All crimes listed are down in those jurisdictions as well. The conclusion seems clear: Arresting criminals lowers crime rates. Not sitting them down with a counselor, arresting them. And, if required by law, deporting them, at least, getting them off American streets.

Notice also, please, that all of these figures were wildly increased when Joe Biden took office, which resulted in more illegals coming over the border. Close the border, deport the illegals, and the trend reverses.

Oh, and consider this: Remember all the evidence we’ve seen where various places like the DC Metro were instructed by their respective city governments to downgrade crimes, so the FBI stats didn’t look so bad? Add a fair amount, say, 5%, to the reported reductions, and you’ll likely be closer to the truth.

This trend is no accident, kids. It is the single largest drop in crime rates in American history, since we started recording such statistics. It is the direct result of a shift in policy to actual law enforcement. Trump made promises about this and followed through. Wow. Who’da thunk it? I mean, it’s almost like removing a bunch of criminals from our streets is a good idea after all.

This downturn also speaks of criminal-level incompetence of pols pushing in the other direction. I say criminal level, because the safety of the citizens is the first responsibility of any government. They have failed miserably in that task. 

Meanwhile, out in Gavin Newsom’s California, they’re closing prisons, doing catch and release, and refusing to provide ICE with prisoner immigration status.

 In Ann Arbor, Mich:

There are hundreds of them throughout Ann Arbor and they’ve been around for decades, but “Neighborhood Crime Watch” signs may be a thing of the past soon.

City Council voted 10-0 Monday night, Dec. 15, to direct city staff to remove all neighborhood watch signs in the city by July 15 as the city strives to be more welcoming and inclusive.

The people supposedly representing us haven't gotten the idea, yet. Stephen Green does, and he said it well last month:

Forgive the snark — I'm not at all making fun of City Journal's Tal Fortgang or James Q. Wilson's Thinking About Crime, which remains instructive after five decades — and forms the backbone of Fortgang's new article. I'm making fun of the fact that our friends on the Left must be constantly reminded of this basic truth.

"Violent crime is overwhelmingly the work of a small group of repeat offenders," Fortgang reported, "that is, it is highly concentrated." But even I was shocked by just how concentrated it really is.

In New York City in 2022, just 327 people accounted for a third of all shoplifting, with more than 6,000 arrests between them. In Oakland, 0.1% of the population — that's 400 people — committed a majority of the city's homicides in recent years. "In 2014, data showed that three-quarters of state prisoners...had at least five prior arrests," Fortgang wrote. "Nearly 5 percent had 31 or more, a larger share than those imprisoned after just a single arrest. "

Steve makes a couple of other notes:

Violent crime, they predicted, would continue the slow but long-lasting decline that started in the mid-'90s. And except for a 2020-2023 spike — caused by bad (but likely purposeful) policy decisions related to COVID and BLM — the authors nailed it. What violent crime remained, Rees-Mogg and Davidson argued, would mostly be concentrated among the urban underclass.

Well, no kidding. And guess who such people vote for?

That last part was an easy call, but the other part of their chapter on crime is truly fascinating. The authors argued that despite serious declines, violent crime would continue to concern people because the acts committed would become more random and more spectacular. 

Which brings us to the second group of people in need of incarceration: the mentally ill.

According to research performed by Grok and double-checked by Yours Truly, psychiatric hospitalization rates have plummeted since 1963, and JFK's wildly underfunded Community Mental Health Act resulted in a radical reduction in institutional capacity. By 2025, the U.S. will have fewer than 12 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 population — down from over 300 before Kennedy and Congress shifted the responsibility for mental health care to "communities."

That whole idea of a large percentage of these crimes being committed by recidivist offenders, often with mental issues, seems impossible to defeat. For example, look at the people who tried to take out the president. Not a blessed one of them isn't a few fruits shy of a loop. The mass shootings, similarly.

Stephen rightly points out Decarlos Brown Jr, who killed Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte, N.C., subway last year because she was supposedly reading his mind. Remember that one? The prevalence of trans in that category is of interest in that light also. Steve suggests it was only a matter of time before he killed someone, and I concur.

And why are these troubled people still on the street? Why on earth have we been limiting the police? Why are the leftists trying to stop the president from enforcing our laws? It seems that they really don't want these issues resolved. "For a more welcoming society" seems to be the popular phrase. 

I'd rather call it what it is: toxic empathy.