Brutal crime mistake Mamdani plans to make all over again

The mayor has announced his plans to “responsibly” reduce the population in city jails because of a rise in the jail population, citing a shortage of correction officers and a decline in conditions.This is all related to the unrealistic and foolhardy move to close Rikers Island.We’ve seen this movie before.In 2019, to help speed up the closure of Rikers, the state passed “bail reform,” which led to the release of almost 2,000 career criminals from city jails.Within 2 ½ months, by mid-March 2020, crime rose 20% after decades of steady decline.A month later, in April of 2020, the city released another 2,000 inmates from Rikers to control the spread of COVID.These were more violent inmates not eligible for release under bail reform.By the end of 2020, murders had risen 47%, burglaries were up 42% and shootings doubled over the year before.It took more than five years for the city to re-populate the jails and bring the crime rate slowly down to “only” about 15%-20% higher than pre-bail reform.Now Mayor Mamdani wants to release more people from Rikers because, essentially, the city is too incompetent to manage a jail system.The problem is that the current group of inmates is far worse than the last set they released — and setting them free will only endanger the people of this city even more.There are currently 5,645 inmates in city jails awaiting trial, 95% of them charged with felonies.Of those, 1,436, or 25%, are charged with murder; 2,602, or 46%, are charged with violent felony offenses — robbery, burglary, assault, sex offenses, weapons possession and attempted murder.In other words, 71% of the people held on bail are charged with murder or a violent felony offense.Another 1,351 of those held on bail, or 24%, are charged with a “non-violent” felony offense — crimes like car theft, commercial burglary, grand larceny, fraud, A-1 felony drugs, and criminal contempt.Now, mind you, under the new justice “reforms” most people charged with th...