It’s Time for Carl Heastie to Listen Up and Get down to Business to Make NYC Safer

With violent retail thieves brazenly flouting the law and battering those who try to stop them, many New Yorkers would like to see their government adopt harsher penalties for such abhorrent behavior.

Among them is Gov. Hochul; but she’s been unable to secure the support of Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

The reason, according to Heastie, turns on his answer to a simple question: “Do I believe that increasing penalties deters crime?”

His “simple answer?”

“No.”

He elaborated while addressing reporters this week: “I don’t believe, in the history of increasing penalties, has that ever been the reason that crime has gone down.”

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post

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Rafael Mangual is the Nick Ohnell Fellow and head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. He is also the author of Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most.

Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images