Legal briefs
Crime
Chicago now has a new prosecutor. Her name is Eileen O’Neill Burke, and she replaces disastrous progressive prosecutor, Kim Foxx. Burke, elected amid a backlash against Foxx’s soft-on-crime policies, immediately announced changes to the way the office will handle crime.
Burke first announced changes to the office’s treatment of pre-trial detention. Under Chicago’s exquisitely Orwellian-named SAFE-T act, no criminal can be held in jail pre-trial unless a prosecutor affirmatively requests detention from a judge and proves at a hearing that detention is necessary. Under Prosecutor Foxx, almost no-one was held. Burke’s new policies require her prosecutors to request detention in:
Any case where a defendant possesses a firearm equipped with an extended magazine, automatic switch, or used a ghost gun or a defaced firearm. Defendants possessing regular old handguns are, presumably, free to go.
Any domestic violence-related, stalking or sex offense where the offender used a weapon. I guess if you just knock your old lady’s teeth out with your bare hands you may not need to be detained.
Any detainable felony committed on public transportation.
All murder, aggravated arson, aggravated battery of a child, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated vehicular hijacking, armed robbery, and home invasion. Under the SAFE-T act, even these offenses do not require pre-trial detention. In fact, people committing these crimes cannot be detained unless a prosecutor affirmatively asks for detention, and, apparently, the prior prosecutor had no policy requiring such requests.
All sex offenses where the victim is under 13 and the offender is an adult, and all cases involving the manufacture, dissemination or possession of child pornography.
Burke also pledged to crack down on shoplifting—sort of. The previous prosecutor’s policy was that she would prosecute no retail theft under $1,000. Under Burke’s new policy, you can only steal up to $300 worth of goods without consequence.
These new policies still leave something to be desired, but they are downright draconian compared to the Foxx policies. The new prosecutor is taking a step in the right direction, and she should be commended for that. I wish her all the best. You can read more about it here.
More crime
Recently, the Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, touted the city’s homicide clearance rate as an indicator of progressive criminal reform policies working. The most recent reported clearance rate for homicides in Chicago is 54%. That is about average for modern American cities, though significantly down from years past. The Mayor’s numbers, like many of the progressive reformer numbers, don’t tell the whole story, however. There are clearance rates and then there are clearance rates. Under the Chicago Police Department reporting standards, a homicide is “cleared” when an arrest is made and charges are filed. The CPD has another category, though, called “cleared exceptionally.” A homicide is “cleared exceptionally” when an arrest is made but no charges are filed by the prosecutor’s office. In 2016, Chicago had 23 homicide cases cleared exceptionally. In 2021, that number was 135. As of mid-November 2024, the CPD had 117 homicides cleared exceptionally. You can read about it here.
When the Mayor says 54% of Chicago homicides were cleared, he does not include the cases where an arrest was made but no charges were filed. If you include those cases, the cleared exceptionally cases, then the overall clearance rate drops to a dismal 23%. It is normal to include all the homicide cases when describing a clearance rate, unless, of course, you are attempting to mislead people into believing your failed policies are working. Progressive criminal policies do not work, and fudging the numbers won’t convince people they do.
Other
A new study out of the Rutgers University Social Perception Lab has found that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training, meant to cultivate empathy and understanding, actually creates a more hostile environment. The study examined DEI trainings focusing on race, religion and caste, and looked at how those trainings impacted the people sitting through them. They found that “across all groupings, instead of reducing bias, they engendered a hostile attribution bias, amplifying perceptions of prejudicial hostility where none was present, and punitive responses to imaginary prejudice.”
It has been trendy to implement these trainings the last few years across the business and government sectors. For instance, Indiana courts require a minimum amount of DEI training for judges and lawyers. With new data emerging that such interventions do more harm than good, they should be discontinued. Nobody really likes them anyway. You can read the study here.
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