experienced a massive crime wave beginning half a century ago that naturally resulted in more imprisonments. In reality, as criminologist Barry Latzer points out in his book “The Myth of Overpunishment,” the U.S. spent decades arbitrarily locking up millions of people to make itself a deeply unjust carceral state. If the 2022 midterms can drive a stake through the decarceration movement, which gained intellectual ground during the Obama years and seemed set to sweep all before it in the immediate aftermath of the death of George Floyd, they will have done a favor to the country - and, incidentally, the Democratic Party.Ī key erroneous contention of this critique is that the U.S. At the same time, it has made - for the second national election in a row - Democrats vulnerable to a Republican fusillade on crime. Its premises are false, and its effects are destructive. Progressives have accepted a wholesale critique of the criminal justice system that is deeply flawed, not to say a complete fantasy. Hochul’s highhandedness encapsulated an attitude toward crime and punishment that has been shaped by the decarceration movement. Kathy Hochul delivered one of the most memorable lines of the midterm debates when she said she didn’t know why her Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin, cared so much about locking up criminals.
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