Legal briefs

Free speech

The State of Oregon has had, since 2020, what they call a “bias-response hotline.” This hotline is operated by the Oregon Department of Justice. It is staffed by “trauma-informed operators,” of course. This is not for reporting crimes, however. It is for other things, according to the website, such as “bias incidents,” “imitation of someone’s cultural norms” or “offensive jokes.” Really.

The Washington Free Beacon recently reported on this hotline, which you can read here. They tested the hotline by calling in a fictitious report. The Beacon reporter called and claimed he was offended by his neighbor’s Israeli flag. The trauma-informed operator advised that he was logging the incident in the state database, flagging it as a warning sign, and suggested installing security cameras. He also told the reporter that “as a victim of a bias incident” he could apply for taxpayer-funded therapy through the state’s crime victim compensation fund.

I mean, this crazy program could be a woke parody of itself. Also, it’s pretty clearly a violation of the First Amendment.

Originalism

According to Ilya Shapiro in his new book, Lawless, a 2018 survey of ten thousand law professors found that over two-thirds reject originalism. This is where my son would say, “Bruh.”

Instead, the overwhelming majority of law professors support living constitutionalism, a philosophy suggesting that the constitution’s meaning changes over time. Thankfully for conservatives, two-thirds of the U.S. Supreme Court favors originalism.

Crime

Last year, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in New York filed 63% fewer cases than the office did ten years ago. That equals 62,435 fewer prosecutions. Worse still, ten years ago, Manhattan prosecutors obtained convictions in nearly two-thirds of filed cases. Now, they are not only filing substantially fewer cases, they are only getting convictions in less than one-third of those cases.

For every 1,000 reported felonies in New York City, there were only 300 arrests. Of those 300 arrests, prosecutors did not file 33. Of the cases filed, 100 were dismissed. Another 100 were pled down to misdemeanors. Of the remaining 70 or so where a felony conviction was obtained, only 18 resulted in a sentence to prison. So, in NYC in 2023, for every 1,000 reported felonies, only 18 people went to prison.

Similarly, just 25% of misdemeanor filings result in convictions. Infractions are even worse. While not major offenses, infraction prosecutions impact quality of life. In 2013, there were 7,500 infraction convictions. Last year there were just 47.

The percent of assaults committed by a stranger in New York City has increased from 22% in 2015 to 40% today. The largest part of the increase occurred in 2019, prior to the pandemic which has served as a scapegoat for rising crime.

Only 37% of New Yorkers rate public safety in their neighborhood as excellent or good. New Yorkers feel as unsafe riding the subway during the day now as they did at night in 2017.

Soft-on-crime criminal justice reform policies are responsible for all of this. And the damage these policies do is not confined to NYC. That just happens to be the place where the best data is kept. The reform movement spread all across the nation, and so has the negative fallout. You can read more about it all here.

More crime

Speaking of The Big Apple, a New York City Council member, Oswald Feliz (D), recently filed a bill that would require NYC health department workers to clean up used needles around the city’s “needle exchange” cites. I put “needle exchange” in quotes because these things do not actually require the exchange of used drug needles for clean ones. Instead what happens is that drug users get free needles, use them right there in the nearby park, then throw the dirty needles on the ground. One young mother who spoke in favor of the bill said, “Do you think when the drug addicts are out of their mind they are going to drop the needles in some box? Wherever they use it, they are going to drop it right there. I see the needles in the park all the time. My children and other children in the neighborhood play in the park. Keep them safe. Pick up your garbage. If you’re going to give them needles, you should be responsible for cleaning up after them!”

The City Health Department is opposed to the bill. They did respond that they do provide “syringe disposal education,” though, so, there’s that. Read more here.

A little more crime

Rob Henderson’s Substack post this week presented a study done in 2020 showing that the richer someone was, the more likely they were to support defunding the police. I suppose it’s easier to think police officers are unnecessary when there is a locked and manned gate around your community. For the most part, though, we poors appreciate the value of law enforcement.

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