When Prosecutors are Soft on Crime...

You get more crime. Hot Air: The increase in the murder rate nationwide could set a record this year.

Today the founder of a data analytics company posted his own spreadsheet showing the murder rate was up in 51 of the 57 cities for which data was available. And in most cases the change wasn’t a slight increase. In about 2/3 of those cities, the rate was up more than 30 percent over 2019:

While Hot Air seems to be confused about the situation, Liberty Unyielding knows why this is the case. Murder rate rose by 37% in U.S. cities in 2020.

In the last few years, voters in many areas have elected left-wing prosecutors who refuse to “prosecute entire categories of crimes” and thus “enable crime to explode under their watch,” notes the Heritage Foundation. For example, in 2019, Steve Descano was elected as Commonwealth’s Attorney in Virginia’s Fairfax County. He defeated the incumbent, a moderate Democrat, in a close Democratic primary election by massively outspending him. His campaign was funded mostly by a PAC bankrolled by left-wing billionare George Soros, which gave Descano over $600,000.

As the Heritage Foundation notes, “Descano promised not to seek the death penalty in any case, even though Virginia law authorizes” it for certain aggravated murders. “He refused to seek the death penalty” in even the most outrageous cases, such as the gruesome murder and rape committed against Genevieve Orange. Killer Mark Lawlor entered Orange’s apartment, “struck her 47 times with either a claw hammer or a frying pan, fractured her skull multiple times, and raped her as she lay dying on the floor of her apartment, where she choked on her own blood.”

When you make things cheaper, you see more of it. And from the criminals point of view, there is little cost to crime.