Chicago’s Pursuit Of ‘Criminal Justice Reform’ Utter Failure; Homicides Top Nation For 11th Year, Crime Still Rising

Authored by Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner via Wirepoints.org,

Rising crime is the number one crisis facing Chicago today. More specifically, the city’s propensity for murder.

Chicago was the nation’s extreme outlier for homicides in 2022, with 697 deaths. More people were murdered here than anywhere else. 

What’s worse, Chicago has out-paced the entire nation in murders for 11 years in a row. It’s become an embedded, chronic wound for the city.

That’s not a surprising result given the failed policies of Chicago’s leadership in recent years, from a dramatic drop in arrests to ever-fewer prosecutions to reduced sentencing. The pursuit of “equity” and “social justice,” instead of actual justice, has only increased the protection of criminals, crushed police morale and increased the violence inflicted on ordinary Chicagoans.

That’s just one of the facts contained in Wirepoints’ latest Special Report: Chicago, New Orleans were the nation’s murder capitals in 2022: A Wirepoints survey of America’s 75 largest cities.

New Orleans is the nation’s other murder capital with more than 74 homicides per 100,000 residents. That’s the worst rate in the nation, by far. But Chicago still shares the crown due to the sheer amount of lives lost and its 11-year run at the top.

Apologists claim that the city’s mass number of murders is just a typical big-city problem. But it’s easy to dispel that myth. If that were the case, New York City would be the nation’s homicide capital. 

But it’s not. 

Chicago’s murder rate of 25.8 per 100K people in 2022 was 5 times higher than New York’s 5.2. That’s a staggering difference. Chicago would have had just 140 homicides last year if it had had the same murder rate as the Big Apple’s.

Conversely, New York City would have suffered 2,150 murders – not it’s actual 438 – if it had had the same homicide rate as Chicago’s.

Despite Chicago’s horrific results, city and state leaders continue to downplay the city’s overall crime crisis. Gov. Pritzker recently told CNBC in Davos, Switzerland recently that “crime is coming down gradually in the city,” a statement that is patently false. See him say it here. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said last year “we’re making progress on crime.” That’s also grossly untrue. 

Though murders did drop 13 percent in 2022, overall major crimes in Chicago ended up 41% higher in 2022 vs. 2021. And in 2023 major crimes are already up 55% compared to the same period last year.

These are the facts that city leaders should be obsessed about changing:

• The average arrest rate for major crimes in Chicago fell to just 5% in 2022.

• There were no police available in 2021 for more than 400,000 high-priority 911 dispatches. That included 15,000 assaults in progress, 1,300 instances of people shot, 14,000 instances of domestic battery, and many more serious crimes.

• Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans’ no bail, low-cash bail “reforms” of 2017 have, since then, resulted in an additional 15,000 new offenses for defendants already awaiting trial. 

• Every day there are about 1,000 more defendants accused of violent crimes on the street than there were in 2016 due to the expansion of electronic monitoring, Many of them are felons that end up committing more heinous crimes.

• The number of beat cops on the streets since Mayor Lightfoot took office is down by nearly 1,500, a drop of nearly 20%.

The city’s leadership, including Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, County President Preckwinkle, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Tim Evans have had years, some even more than a decade, to implement their equity-focused “reforms. They’ve had their chance and they’ve failed miserably. 

The crime data overwhelmingly tells us so. There can’t be any “equity” when blacks and Latinos, who make up 95% of all Chicago murder victims, are dying and being victimized in ever-higher numbers.

The chain of criminal justice is broken in Chicago. We are not arresting. We are not prosecuting and convicting. We are not sentencing. What few criminals are caught just go through a revolving door. And the SAFE-T Act, with the elimination of cash bail and the allowance of anonymous complaints against police, will only make things worse.

Chicago has already spent more than a decade as “The Murder Capital of the Nation.” At this rate the city will hold that title for two decades if nothing is done.

The obvious thing to do is to unwind these destructive policies that treat criminals like victims while the real victimization of ordinary residents continues to spike. The first target should be Los Angeles’ homicide rate of 9.9 per 100K – or 270 homicides a year for Chicago. And then go for New York’s, resulting in a murder total for Chicago of 140.

Still too many – but it would be progress – and it would free Chicago from the title of the nation’s murder capital.