What Adams Can Do
Some new steps to fight crime when Albany refuses to help
FOR the 18th time in a little more than two years, yet another New Yorker lost his life in yet another senseless act of deadly violence on the subway. Last weekend’s victim was finance professional Daniel Enriquez, 48. And, as is so often the case, the 25-year-old man charged with his murder, per The Post, is a career criminal with at least 19 prior arrests since 2015 — who was released after his most recent arrest, in April, despite prosecutors asking the judge to set bail at $15,000.
Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell described the suspect as “another repeat offender who was given every leeway by the criminal-justice system.”
This case demonstrates what will be the defining challenge of Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure: a criminal-justice system working at cross-purposes with his police force and leaving a trail of avoidable injustices in its wake.
That someone can rack up 19 arrests in seven years and still be on the street not only undermines the narrative of New York’s “progressive” reformers — that our criminal-justice system reflects a draconian overreliance on incarceration, even for low-level crimes — it also illustrates the limited impact of good policing when the broader system isn’t similarly committed to the idea that bad guys belong behind bars.
To his credit, Adams seems to understand this, and he has suggested legislative changes addressing some of the barriers to reaping the public-safety benefits that used to flow from enforcement. Albany has thus far refused to heed his calls for reform. To make matters worse, the City Council and even some local district attorneys don’t seem too keen on playing ball either. So what’s a mayor to do?
For starters, he can (and should) continue to apply public pressure for changes to policies that have lowered the transaction costs of crime (bail reform, “Raise the Age” and “Less Is More”) and raised the transaction costs of enforcement (discovery reform and the “diaphragm law”).
One thing he hasn’t tried on this front is to make public the sort of data that would give us a clearer picture of the crime problem’s scope and the role certain policies may be playing in that problem.
Questions we should be able to answer include: How many prior arrests, on average, does the typical homicide, shooting or violentfelony suspect have? What percentage of shootings, homicides and other violent felonies are committed by offenders who were out on parole, probation or pretrial release at the time of the offense?
What percentage of gun offenders are incarcerated pretrial and post-conviction? How about those charged with/convicted of other violent felonies? How long do they serve on average? How have these measures changed over the last decade?
The public should have had access to the answers to these questions long ago; but these data are more salient now than ever, as they can paint a better picture of the risks associated with a systematic failure to incapacitate dangerous criminals.
Next, the mayor should think about how to amend the plan to close the jails on Rikers Island and replace them with boroughbased jails that would hold far fewer inmates (just 3,500) than the more than 5,000 jailed on a given day now — a number that already reflects a sharp decline in recent years thanks to decarceration efforts like the statewide bail reform enacted in 2020.
With crime on its way up and dangerous offenders already being diverted from incarceration, there is simply no way we can restrict our jail capacity to 3,500 without 1) putting even more New Yorkers at risk and 2) muting the benefits of a more sensible pretrial-release policy because — should New York state join the rest of the country in allowing judges to jail dangerous defendants — we won’t have anywhere to put them.
Last, city law-enforcement officials should be doing their best to work with their federal counterparts to identify opportunities to maximize public safety by having the feds take on cases involving higher-risk offenders where there’s concurrent jurisdiction.
These measures may not fully plug the hole in our public-safety ship, but perhaps they can keep us afloat long enough to correct course.
Rafael A. Mangual is a senior fellow and head of research for the Manhattan Institute’s Policing and Public Safety Initiative and a City Journal contributing editor. His first book, “Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most,” comes out in July.