The CPRC has analyzed how the number of felonies has changed over time in the Manhattan Borough of New York City. Since Alvin Bragg became the borough District Attorney, the number of felonies has surged by 26%. Newsweek has a very lengthy article that discusses our numbers.
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“Bragg has been in office just a year, but Manhattan seems to be getting progressively worse in crime,” said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, which describes itself as a non-partisan research organization with academics affiliated from Harvard University, The Wharton School, University of Chicago, University of Michigan and Emory University. Lott is also author of the book “More Guns, Less Crime.”
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According to his group’s research, culled from the Manhattan D.A. Office’s Data Dashboard, from 2021 to 2022, Manhattan’s seven major felony offenses (murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny auto) rose by 26 percent to the highest since 2006. . . .
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The payments to Daniels and McDougal are alleged violations of campaign finance laws since they were unreported, though such violations are typically the purview of the federal government, not a Manhattan DA, and they’re rarely called a “felony,” according to Lott.
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“This is supposedly a violation involving a federal campaign, so it is only covered by federal law,” said Lott.
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Lott notes that there were no calls to bring felony charges against Hillary Clinton after the Federal Election Commission fined her campaign and the Democratic National Committee for hiding their funding of the “Steele dossier” that accused Trump of colluding with Russia to win the presidency.
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He also noted that Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance, refused to bring a case against Trump. “Bragg himself declined to pursue this case when he first became DA. The US Department of Justice has also refused to bring this case, as has the Federal Election Commission,” he said. . . .
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According to Lott’s group, the number of felony cases Bragg declined to prosecute rose 35 percent in 2022 compared to 2019, while the drop in misdemeanor prosecutions resulting in jail sentences fell by 78 percent. “What makes this all the more remarkable is that this huge drop occurred while the number of offenses was increasing,” said Lott. . . .
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Alvin Bragg explicitly motivated his reforms to equalize the incarceration rate across racial groups,” said Lott. “But while Bragg is reducing the penalties on Black criminals, he is ignoring that the victims of these Black criminals are overwhelmingly Black. For example, Blacks murdered about 90 percent of Black murder victims. But whatever Bragg’s motivation, the bottom line is simple: if you make it less risky for criminals to commit crime, you will get more crime.”
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Paul Bond, “Alvin Bragg’s “Soft on Crime” Policies Face Scrutiny as Manhattan DA Goes After Trump,” Newsweek, March 21, 2023.
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