When Criminal Justice Reform Goes Too Far

“While bettering the criminal justice system is always laudable, measures that benefit criminal gangs run afoul of every principle for which our government stands.”

Last week, dramatic action to combat the Gang Crisis became associated with two principal Georgia politicians. During his State of the State address, Georgia Governor Brian P. Kemp announced that his 2020 legislative priorities would target criminal street gangs. Similarly, a local commentator called on newly-appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler to propose a federal gang prosecution law.

However, the gang-crime-denying volcanoes immediately erupted. Showing their clear preference for often-violent criminals over innocent members of the community, they immediately went on the attack. Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) political commentator Jim Galloway, for instance, in a subsequent op-ed denounced reports of the Gang Crisis saying the “numbers” were grossly exaggerated. Like that column, follow-up AJC coverage included victim-indifferent, uninformed conjecture drowning out the voices of crime victims all over this nation. Other commentary argued in favor of a wildly outdated conception of constitutional priorities, as opposed to prioritizing protecting communities from criminal gangs.

Clearly, all of these positions ignore a titanic array of academic studies, law enforcement surveys, and expert commentary demonstrating a Gang Crisis in the United States. In fact, in the past 30 days, Georgia alone has seen multiple separate joint law enforcement operations targeting gangs that operate across Georgia and the nation.

Also ignored was AJC’s own reporting showing a rise in murders in Metro Atlanta. This sort of derelict double-talk is the hallmark of mainstream media coverage on gangs. The justification, however, is telling.