Each day Atlanta television news stations graphically report stories of victims who were shot, killed, beaten or raped in the preceding 12 to 24 hours. While Georgia residents sadly accept the depressing reports as our new normal for violent crime, we tend to become desensitized and less empathetic toward crime victims and their grieving loved ones. As we become increasingly obsessed with the rights of the offenders, we lose compassion for their victims.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
Some believe the violent crime rate in Georgia is a growing pain of the radical left and they are okay with liberal elected officials who ignore crime even though it disproportionately impacts low-income victims who live in constant fear of it. Manipulated fear and misconceptions about crime are used to divide people by race and ethnicity to stoke the flames of distrust and make legitimate crime reduction efforts difficult at best.
It’s easier to understand the big picture of violent crime by first examining common myths. For example, contrary to popular belief, roughly 85 percent of all violent crime is committed by criminals against other criminals, not against the public. Those who fear criminals in general may find comfort in that, but the frustrated parents of young gang members and those caught in the crossfire usually do not agree.
A common false myth is that a high percentage of violent crime is committed by drug addicts or the behaviorally mentally ill. Neither drug-addicted nor mentally ill individuals commit any significant percentage of violent crime. They tend to commit property and drug crimes, but they typically do not hurt anyone other than themselves.
Some tend to blame the current upward spiral of crime on the criminal justice system, alleging that it is systemically racist, brutal or both. That too, however, is a myth and it is unfair because the average police department, prosecutors, courts, and corrections organizations are all overworked, but they still operate in good faith. Most are staffed at all levels by dedicated public servants and they labor daily to preserve constitutional rights of the accused and achieve equal justice for all victims.
Despite the finger pointing, the real core of the violent crime problem is violent career criminals who are the worst of the worst offenders: sociopathic murderers, shooters, sexual predators, human traffickers and drug traffickers. As long as they are not incarcerated, they continue hurting and intimidating people while creating a smoke screen for the garden variety criminals who are actively dismantling civility in cities and suburbs.
The fairness and thoroughness with which we administer justice to both violent career criminals and the victims upon whom they prey has a direct bearing on the volume of all violent crime. Conversely, the more we advance political ideology and myths about crime, the more we tend to overlook the underlying long-term problem which is jail and prison overcrowding.
It is unpopular for elected officials of either party to allocate funding to build new prisons or improve conditions for prison staffing. Thus, the system’s capacity has not grown commensurate with the inflow of convicted violent career criminals for years. Managers of the corrections system do what they must. They recommend remedies like reducing sentences by half or eliminating bail to release potential prisoners out of the system. Unfortunately, violent criminals use those opportunities to prey on society all over again. Meanwhile activists tout early or total release of violent offenders, or elimination of bail, as some sort of social engineering. But they are just falsely rationalizing inadequate prison bed space. As a result, public safety suffers.
The short-term way to mitigate violent crime waves is to stop the ill-advised plague of liberal “criminal justice reform.” We need to restore sensible bail practices and make more pragmatic use of the jail and prison space created by the reduced number of felony arrests since the pandemic began in 2020.
In the long run, we also need to elect and support competent leaders who understand the need for less rhetoric, nonpartisan support of the criminal justice system and more prison space.
To reverse violent crime trends, we need to get tougher on violent career criminals while studying better ways of dealing with non-violent criminals and behaviorally mentally ill individuals. Humane solutions like accountability courts– public-private partnerships to help the drug-addicted and homeless recover to become more constructive citizens– are moves in the right direction. It’s not easy, inexpensive or pretty. But it can help us achieve a better tomorrow for Georgia.
Dan Flynn is the former police chief of Marietta and Savannah.
