Baltimore prosecutor ends drug, sex prosecutions as violent crime plummets
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I didn't see an updated graph for 2020, but in 2019 Baltimore set a record for homicides. A graph of the past 30 years is illuminating: https://www.economist.com/sites/default/files/20190803_USC48...
Baltimore's homicide rate at around 58 per 100k people makes it the 11th most violent city on earth, second only to St Louis in the USA and over 10x the national average rate (which itself is 5-10x the homicide rate in most other OECD countries): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
Doesn't necessarily argue against ending prosecutions for minor non-violent offenses, but I find this story's framing and blanket rejection of "tough on crime" odd. You could get the impression Baltimore is a major success story in depolicing resulting in a calming peace, rather than it having a (perhaps stochastic) 1 year decline from historic and globally record levels of violence, when the murder rate has been bumping up and down by similar amounts while hovering around an absolutely ghastly level of death.
Even before that, there was a tactic of prosecutors competing with each other to be "tough on crime", prosecuting every minor offense so that people would feel safe. It's popular with voters, but it doesn't seem to work. Most notably, people don't feel safe, even as crime falls and prisons fill up.
Baltimore has problems of its own, and it's clear that whatever they've been doing hasn't worked. So they're announcing a change of tactic. We won't know if it works for at least five years.
The title of the post is a lie.
That doesn't necessarily mean skip judgement but home arrest and community service should be the modes to serve penance where due.
This way people still pay their own way and the system is less bogged down and even low level criminals may find opportunity to become better through education etc...
Also an opportunity to question your union stance.
Not a bad move in any case. Throwing drug users and sex workers in jail doesn't make one shred of sense.