Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) is rightfully urging lawmakers to enact harsher penalties for criminals amid rising crime rates in New Mexico. The special legislative session scheduled for Thursday is a ripe opportunity for policymakers to protect communities that have been ravaged by violent crime due to years of leftist legislation.
Lujan Grisham’s proclamation cited a “dangerous intersection” between crime and homelessness and the “revolving door” that keeps violent criminals in communities, as reported by the Associated Press. A crucial aspect of her argument was that thousands of cases in recent years, many of which involved violent felonies, were dismissed due to “competency questions.”
As expected, there has been pushback from many on the far Left. State House Speaker Javier Martínez, an Albuquerque Democrat, claimed at a news conference that Lujan Grisham is “uninformed” and the plan could “backfire.” Meanwhile, Daniel Williams of the ACLU of New Mexico believes the proposal represents “rushing into legislation where there are some real risks of harm.”
These notions that there may be unintended consequences aren’t wrong, but they represent a miscalculation of the costs and benefits of the program. Crime rates in the Albuquerque metropolitan area are about three times that of the rest of the country. Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said Wednesday that the city spends $1 million a month on housing vouchers and that it had to clear 1,000 homeless encampments in June alone. The most ironic and shameful aspect of this inquiry is that over $800 million has been appropriated to address crime problems over the past three years. How that much money led to increased crime is anybody’s best guess.
Well, it’s actually not that difficult to figure out why homelessness, gun crimes, and panhandling have become more prevalent in New Mexico. The aforementioned “revolving door” creates an incentive structure that implicitly motivates wrongdoers to commit crimes.
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Cracking down on illegal activity requires proactive rather than reactive policy. It’s not enough to punish a criminal after a crime has been committed — the purpose of long sentences and hard-on-crime legislation is to prevent an offense from occurring in the first place. When criminals know that they’ll likely get off the hook or receive short sentences, they are significantly more likely to engage in criminal activity. Soft-on-crime policies that stem from leftist politicians have heartbreaking ramifications. Our cultural conscience no longer cares about administering justice to those who harm others.
The far Left is incapable of comprehending this basic logic, apparently. It makes sense though, given that logic and reason are substituted for ideology on that side of the spectrum. It’s a blessing that we have politicians such as Lujan Grisham who are willing to do the right thing despite being attacked by their contemporaries.