Los Angeles finally decided to put someone who doesn’t love criminals in charge of its criminal justice system, meaning that crime is once again illegal in the City of Angels.
Nathan Hochman is the new Los Angeles County district attorney, and after taking office on Tuesday, he immediately rescinded the pro-criminal policies of his predecessor, George Gascon. Under Hochman, Los Angeles prosecutors will now be allowed to file low-level misdemeanor charges for trespassing, will pursue sentencing enhancements for criminal gang members and criminals who use guns in their crimes, and will be allowed to charge minors with misdemeanors for thefts of less than $950. Hochman will also allow prosecutors to attend the parole hearings of rapists and murderers to advocate for the families of their victims.
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Gascon banned all of that. Gascon’s pro-criminal worldview, painted with concern about “mass incarceration” and equitable prison populations, banned all of that. Gascon thought juvenile criminals should be free to do almost anything they want because it wouldn’t be fair to charge them with crimes. He wanted criminals to get out of jail as soon as possible, to the point that he wanted to give gang members the shortest sentences possible. Gascon’s priority in Los Angeles was never victims or their families. His goal seemed to be to always to do everything he could to help criminals roam free.
As a result, Los Angeles became a haven for criminals — from the high-profile incidents of convicted gang members let out early who went on to murder police officers, to the general decay in quality of life that happens when you don’t charge people with misdemeanor trespassing and don’t charge juvenile criminals with misdemeanors for anything. When you let criminals get away with crimes, they continue to commit crimes, and often become more emboldened to commit bigger crimes.
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Hochman is not some special expert or a criminal justice savant. His positions are the same, uncontroversial, normal positions you can find if you were to ask anyone off the street about jailing violent gang members or making sure people don’t steal things from people or businesses. These basic tenets of the criminal justice system are outright rejected by pro-criminal activists such as Gascon, which is why cities such as Los Angeles have come to their senses and moved on from electing glorified defense attorneys as their chief prosecutors.
This must be the way forward in several other major American cities, where pro-criminal district attorneys (such as Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg) let real criminals off while making life unbearable for law-abiding residents who simply want to live their lives without fear of being robbed or murdered by someone with 30 prior arrests.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
