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‘Less is More’ Has Increased Crime

Public Safety Policing, Crime Control

New Yorkers will soon return to the polls. There, one issue will loom large in their minds: violent crime, which has surged since 2019.

But while crime has risen, Albany has not moved to check it. Instead, legislators have passed sweeping reforms of New York’s criminal justice system — reforms they said would make us safer.

Some of these reforms are well known, especially bail reform. But another has flown under the public’s radar, despite having tangible impacts on the citizens of New York: The Less is More Act, which drastically altered New York State’s parole system.

Parole — the supervised release of state inmates — serves an important public purpose. It allows incarcerated individuals to serve a portion of their sentence in their communities, while ensuring they do not engage in behavior that would likely lead to their recidivism. Historically, it has been viewed as a progressive alternative to incarceration.

Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Daily News

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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Follow him on Twitter here. Elias Neibart is a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and a former collegiate associate at the Manhattan Institute. Based on a recent MI report.

This piece originally appeared in New York Daily News