More reform or more crackdowns on crime?

Before he took office, Mayor Adams, the former Brooklyn borough president, had made it his mission to stop the rise in crime throughout the city.

On Jan. 24, he released a “Blueprint to End Gun Violence” that proposed rolling back criminal justice reforms that state Democrats fought for over the last few years, which many in law enforcement contend are responsible for the blight of violence.

The crime wave that started toward the end of former Mayor de Blasio’s tenure, continued well on into Adams’ first month as mayor.

“In my three weeks as your mayor, I have been with an officer who was shot in the head as he slept in his own car,” Adams said earlier this year. “I have met with the mother of a 19-year-old girl who was killed as she worked the night shift in East Harlem. I have been at the bedside of a police officer who was shot by a 16-year-old as they struggled for a gun.”

Adams’ blueprint included restoring an anti-gun police unit, a tougher stance on prosecuting youths for gun possession and permitting judges to grant less bail based on the perceived “dangerousness” of a suspect.

Adams anti-crime agenda runs antithetical to calls from some of the Democratic Party to defund the police, eliminate cash bail for low-level criminal offenses and to “Raise the Age” of criminal responsibility to 18, which allowed 16 to 17-year-olds who commit nonviolent crimes to receive rehabilitative services instead of being charged as an adult.

The mayor said that the anti-gun unit will be relegated to targeted areas where guns are most prevalent, that cash bail changes need to be amended because repeat offenders are committing the same crimes without consequence and that there needs to be harsher punishments for teens involved in crime due to older criminal offenders using “Raise the Age” as a loophole to pressure youths into committing crimes for them.

“We must also look at ‘Raise the Age’ legislation, which is being used as a loophole for gang members to demand young people under 18 take the fall for guns that are not theirs,” said Adams. “My Administration is not seeking to punish young people – but when it comes to guns, we must make sure there are consequences.”

Throughout his first 100 days as mayor, Adams had lobbied Gov. Hochul about the rolling back the criminal justice reforms and she has adopted some of his measures in the $220 billion state budget.

The Fortune Society, a criminal justice advocacy group that was founded in 1967, believes that the reforms, which were hard fought, should not be modified or eliminated when there is no hard proof that there is a correlation between the changes and the uptick in crime.

“Rolling back critical reforms made to our bail laws, which were enacted to ensure that justice did not depend on ability to pay, simply will not make us safer,” The Long Island City-based Fortune Society said in a statement. “To the contrary, pre-trial detention for any amount of time has been proven to increase someone’s likelihood of continued criminal legal system involvement.”

The Fortune Society believes that the measures found in the state budget will criminalize poverty and sweep countless people charged with nonviolent offenses and low-level misdemeanors back into jail.

“Rolling back bail reform will also exacerbate existing racial disparities in our criminal legal system,” said the organization. “The long-term impact on Black and Brown communities will continue to carry generational consequences.”

Minority detainees are overrepresented compared to the rest of the share of the total U.S. population by nearly seven in 10, according to prisonpolicy.org.

The Fortune Society says that ensuring people have access to stable housing, mental health and behavioral health service, as well as employment and educational connections are a better deterrent for crime or recidivism.

The Fortune Society does appreciate measures in the budget that reduce barriers to obtaining government-issued identification and eliminating fees for parole supervision, but believes the spurious connections to bail reform and the increase in crime is not based in fact.

“Bail reform did not make us less safe as numerous recent studies confirmed,” The Fortune Society told the Queens Chronicle via email. “Furthermore, the rollbacks to these laws will have an outsized impact on poor people of color and will bring us back to a system that provides different measures of justice depending on ability to pay.”

The mayor does have initiatives that does not rely on rolling back criminal justice reforms in his blueprint, such as expanding the Summer Youth Employment and Youth Engagement Program for Summer to keep kids off the street while working or being mentored and the Fair Futures initiatives for people 26 under, which provides life coaches to help people stick to a criminal-free path. Adams has also lobbied Albany to pass the Community Hiring legislation to require businesses in New York to hire people in struggling communities so residents have access to good jobs and apprenticeships.