By Paul Vallas

April 24, 2024

You want to know why violent crime is surging in the nation’s urban centers? Look no further than the radical left’s efforts to “reform” the criminal justice system by pretending that criminals are just a new class of victims whose violence is a product of our systemically racist society. According to them it’s not the sociopaths committing the violence, it’s racism. Racism, not crime, explains America’s prison population which has not plummeted as violent crime has surged.

For decades activists have railed against the prison industrial complex, coined after the military-industrial complex of the 1950s, used by scholars and activists to describe the many relationships between institutions of imprisonment such as prisons, jails, detention facilities, and psychiatric hospitals and the various businesses that benefit from them. The term is most often used in the context of the contemporary United States, where there is an expansion of the U.S. inmate population.

What is ignored, is the emerging more powerful criminal industrial complex. A growing group of special interests who have transformed criminal justice reform into a lucrative enterprise. They are the lawyers, advocates, university researchers, consultants, consent decree monitors that have a growing financial interest in treating criminals like victims and police like criminals. It has become a livelihood for many and for some a very lucrative one. This is a clear and present danger to public safety.

The Criminal Industrial Complex has used race quite effectively to legitimize and protect and expand its economic enterprise. It’s not the pursuit of profit but the pursuit of justice.  Never mind the fact that Black males are a disproportionate amount of the incarcerated population because, as a demographic class they commit a disproportionate amount of crime. Police do not witness crimes. Crimes have victims, and victims file reports identifying the suspects. That’s what the police act on.

The Criminal Industrial Complex is particularly determined to continue their narrative of racial bias in police shootings. The fact remains however, that there is no evidence of racial motivated discrimination if the violent crime statistics are to be believed.

According to the US Census Bureau and Statistics almost twice as many whites are killed by cops than Blacks. While Blacks are killed at a disproportionate rate when measured as a percentage of population, the rate is far below their percentage share of violent crime, according to the FBI Crime in the US Statistics (Table 4).

If the statistical breakdown of violent crimes by racial group is to be believed, then one might make the argument that apparent statistical discrimination is rational and not race based. In fact one could conceivably argue that given their share of violent crimes, Whites are actually more likely to be shot by police than Blacks. The only counter would be to argue that violent crime statistics for arrests are skewed by police bias in enforcement but arrest records for violent crimes don’t lie.

Some of the Democratic Party machines biggest contributors are lawyers who sue the city for a living. They also include firms that the city hires to settle lawsuits brought against the city. Between the lawyers, the well-funded criminal justice reform advocates and the universities who are funded to do extensive client directed research to validate reforms, there is big money in criminal justice reform. Welcome to Chicago’s Criminal Industrial Complex. In the wake of Kim Foxx’ eight years in office, a number of Chicago firms now specialize not only in representing perpetrators accused of committing violent crimes, but also scrutinizing and suing police, alleging violations and frequently winning giant, taxpayer-funded settlements that the city leaders seem all too willing to ignore. No coincidence that lawyers specializing in suing the police made up the largest segment of donors to the campaign of Clayton Harris, III, Cook County Board President and Democratic Party Boss Toni Preckwinkle’s handpicked successor to Kim Foxx.

Foxx provided further evidence her office has become an advocate for criminals, not victims, in her defense of Assistant State’s Attorney Michelle Mbekeani, head of the state’s attorney’s Conviction Review Unit. Mbekeani operated a state licensed business linking inmates with wrongful conviction claims with private attorneys. This conflict of interest and lying when questioned by a judge about it, got her barred from representing clients before the Cook County Judiciary.

It’s not only that law firms bringing these cases against the city get rich, but so do the often politically connected firms that are brought in to settle these suits also get rich. They rarely litigate. They never counter sue. They settle, take their fee, and then take on the next case. Since 2000, the city has paid out nearly $700 million in 300 cases in which people said they were framed by Chicago police. Of that, $138 million went to outside lawyers who defended the city. The tally covers only federal lawsuits and does not include fees awarded to the plaintiffs’ lawyers.

Meanwhile, next to the damage that is done by the Safe-T Act’s elimination of bail, which will increase the number of serious and habitual criminals being released, there is likely to be a dramatic increase in lawsuits pending from the plethora of new mandates that the Act imposes on police. This will make it easier for lawyers to get their clients off while creating more opportunities to file lawsuits suits against the city and the officers.

It’s little wonder why arrests for serious crime are down, as only 5% of those of serious crimes result in an actual arrest being made. Officers and their supervisors and commanders are reluctant to be proactive as the never-ending addition of new rules are like dangerous trip wires for officers, destroying their cases, potentially damaging their careers, degrading their proactive responding for fear of being sued. The Safe-T Act will make life much worse for officers.

Make no mistake as to who will be most impacted by the degradation of the police and the failure to get and keep violent offenders off the street. What is indisputable in the analysis of the crime statistics is the epidemic of “Black on Black” crime that is escalating and ignored by left wing activists. Escalating Black-on-Black crime is terrorizing and destroying inner city communities, and driving what remains of the middle class out of too many major American cities. According to a report on Black families forced to leave Chicago, the city has seen an unprecedented number of Blacks–more than 266,000 have left the city since the year 2000.

The FBI 2019 Uniform Crime Report broke down crime by race. Blacks despite comprising only 12.5% of the population accounted for 55.9% of all homicide offenders, with Whites (including Hispanics) accounting for 41.1%. Among homicide victims 54.7% were Black. The per-capita offending rate for African Americans was roughly eight times higher than that of Whites, and their victim rate was similar. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Blacks between the ages of 10 and 34 die from homicide at 13 times the rate of Whites.

In Chicago, Blacks comprise 32% of the city’s population but almost 80% of the murder and attempted murder victims with over 90% of the assailants Black. The vast majority of the high priority 911 calls including shootings, assaults, robberies, burglaries, carjacking, come from predominantly Black communities. This means more police officers are working in high crime areas where Blacks are dominant so there are going to be more arrests and dangerous and sometimes lethal encounters.

Largely ignored by the anti-police activists is impact violent crime is having on women, particularly Black women. A CBS News Chicago analysis of Chicago Police crime data first found that Black women accounted for 30% of all crime victims in 2022, nearly one in three Black women were targeted by crime in Chicago last year. Black women and girls under 18 are hardest hit, with fourteen Black girls attacked and injured for every one White girl.

If you want to know why crime is up, you need to understand why it went down, dramatically, after the high-crime generation from the 1970s into the ’90s. Enough police on the street to ensure local “police beat “integrity so 911 calls could be responded to in real time. Prosecutors and police recognize that crime rates are a function of expectations about the rule of law that requires acting against quality-of-life crimes, signaling to criminals that the community’s laws would be enforced. Recognition of the need to keep dangerous and habitual felons from returning to the streets.

Public safety is a human right. It constitutes the government’s primary responsibility. The Criminal Industrial Complex is working to deny that right. That these actions will disproportionately impact the Black community is racist, if not by intent, then by outcome. It is their community that disproportionately bear the brunt of violent crime. That violent and habitual criminals are being returned to their communities, and that victims and witnesses that are left unprotected.

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Paul Vallas formerly ran the public school systems in Chicago, Philadelphia and the Louisiana Recovery School District. He was a candidate for Mayor of Chicago.