The ‘Crimes of Poverty’ Lie

Are you upset, like “1619 Project” chief Nikole-Hannah-Jones, at the “demeaning” way drugstores “lock up everything”? Distressed that Midtown merchants are deploying K-9 units to deter thieves?

Horrified by the homicide that followed alleged shrimp-stealing at the Fulton Fish Market? Saddened by the case of bodega clerk Jose Alba, who killed in self-defense in another escalated-from-shoplifting incident?

Welcome to the progressive dystopia, created by lefties who imagine that all shoplifting is a “crime of poverty” and so should effectively go unpunished. Thanks to New York’s criminal-justice “reforms,” district attorneys find it near-impossible to jail these perps, so the same relative handful (but growing number!) of suspects keep on re-offending.

As a result, shoplifting complaints across the city surged to more than 63,000 in 2022, up 45% over the 2021 level and almost 275% from the first decade of the century. And ever-more merchants don’t even file complaints, since it seems pretty pointless.

It’s not just the no-bail laws: Other “reforms” oblige prosecutors to do endless paperwork for every case they mean to bring to court — leading them to give up on some felonies, as well as most misdemeanor crimes.

Of course, it’s not to put food on the table, or any other “crime of poverty”: Mostly, we’d wager, the thieves’ profits go to buy drugs.

“People who say that we’re criminalizing the poor — they’re wrong,” noted Mayor Adams noted last week. Instead, “poor and low-income New Yorkers are being unemployed because we’re losing those businesses in our city.”

Retailers who don’t close down are doing everything from hiring private security patrols to deploying facial-recognition tech, along with all the locked-up toothpaste, deodorant and so on.

Meanwhile, progressives in the Legislature are determined to nix Gov. Hochul’s modest fix to the no-bail law, scrapping the confusing requirement for judges to apply the “least restrictive” means to ensure a defendant returns to court. Instead, they’re looking to “reform” some more by eliminating a few last mandatory-minimum penalties for those who still get convicted.

To the left, the only crime problem is people winding up behind bars. And they wonder why so many small businesses are shutting down in the neighborhoods they represent.