Last week, former President Joe Biden disclosed his inexplicably “undetected” aggressive cancer as bombshell revelations detailed how the White House covered up his crumbling health — enabled by a media establishment that hid the uncomfortable truth.
Americans are outraged that supposedly trustworthy institutions lied about facts we needed to choose a president.
We should be equally furious at the lies that officials and the progressive press have told us about public safety and “justice reform” laws built on false narratives.
“Our criminal justice system must be focused on redemption and rehabilitation,” Biden asserted during his 2020 presidential campaign.
He pledged to “reduce the number of people incarcerated” and, fantastically, to “root out the racial, gender, and income-based disparities in the system” — ideals that New York Democrats also followed.
The words are as empty as the assurances of Biden’s fitness were.
In truth, about 35% of serious offenders are re-arrested within a year of prison release, with 85% re-arrested over a decade.
No wonder reforms that replaced criminal consequences with social services boosted crime and reduced accountability.
Tragically, when our government hides such truths, innocent people get hurt.
In 2023, for example, when Tyresse Minter was paroled early to the Bronx home of his wife Karen, the family was not warned that even while incarcerated (for pistol-whipping a man and then shooting him three times in the back), Minter had been disciplined for violent conduct and possessing a weapon.
Karen was further lulled by the parenting and anger-management classes mandated for Minter by Family Court, led to believe that enrollment equaled rehabilitation.
One month after she took Minter in, he fatally strangled Karen’s 15-year-old son, Corde Scott.
“He was paroled to my home,” Karen told me.
“So, they thought it was safe . . . Safe for who? He killed Corde.”
New York’s 2019 bail “reform” law similarly refused to grapple with dangerousness — based on narratives about “mass incarceration” and “systemic racism.”
Judges now are barred from setting bail for hundreds of offenses, forcing them to release even defendants who pose a clear threat to public safety.
No wonder New Yorkers continue to feel unsafe in the subways, despite increased police presence: They no longer trust a criminal justice system that literally can’t detain a violent psycho after he’s committed an assault and swears to commit more.
New York’s discovery “reform,” also built on baloney narratives about over-incarceration and race, forced prosecutors to simply decline or dismiss tens of thousands of cases rather than convict guilty criminals.
Of course Gotham’s pharmacies are locking up more and more products: They rightly don’t trust the justice system to keep recidivists out of their shampoo aisles.
Statewide “Raise the Age” is perhaps the most appallingly deceitful “reform” of all, because it endangers kids.
By removing criminal consequences for 16- and 17-year-olds, even when they commit repeated acts of violence, the law forces NYC teens to live in fear of their peers — a reality only worsened by “Raise the Lower Age,” which prevents officers from taking kids under age 12 into custody at all.
Juvenile probation and youth officers lament that more kids are bringing knives and guns to school because they correctly do not trust the system to protect them from dangerous classmates.
By continually forgiving teen violence and burying case records, the laws have actually empowered violent youths to be more violent.
In the last half-decade, NYC youth arrests surged up 68%, and youth victimization jumped 71%.
Nor can the city’s vulnerable children trust the Administration for Children’s Services to keep dangerous parents from harming them.
Fallacious narratives about racial disparity and the stigma of criminal investigations lead ACS to channel 70% of neglect and abuse cases toward social service responses — not actual investigations.
At least seven children have died in the past year under caseworkers’ unserious “supervision.”
ACS has shown itself to be so untrustworthy that the city Department of Investigations is pushing for license to review at least a dozen recent child-harm cases.
Clearly, DOI doesn’t trust the agency to decide which abuse claims are “unfounded.”
To regain trust in our institutions, New Yorkers must bring back mechanisms that force agencies to “show us the receipts” when it comes to dangerous criminals.
That means revising the bail law to permit judges to consider dangerousness in detaining offenders pre-trial, and amending the discovery law (beyond the recent tweaks) to ensure all cases with merit can be robustly prosecuted.
We must fix “Raise the Age” and “Raise the Lower Age” to re-establish real criminal consequences for youth violence — and to disclose statistics on young offenders.
And ACS should return to actually investigating abusive parents.
It’s up to citizens to demand institutional honesty by pushing for policies based on truth, not pretty lies about redemption and race.
Hannah E. Meyers is a fellow and the director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.
