NEW YORK, NY Aug. 2 (DPI) – If we are easier on criminals, the criminals will be more law-abiding because they’ll have more faith in the criminal justice system.

That’s the peculiar and shockingly destructive logic of billionaire George Soros, who finally offered a high-profile explanation for his years-long crusade to back reform-minded urban prosecutors across the nation. That effort to install the likes of San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin and New York City’s Alvin Bragg has destabilized American cities, and set back the urban recovery from the pandemic.

(Boudin, of course, was removed from office in a recall vote two months ago, precisely because of the results of Soros’s agenda.)

Yet the 91-year-old Soros wrote in an op-ed this week in The Wall Street Journal that, despite surging rates of serious crime, including homicides, he has no plans to back down in supporting so-called “woke” prosecutors. And he bases all of his let’s-go-easy-on-criminals agenda on race: “We need to acknowledge that black people in the U.S. are five times as likely to be sent to jail as white people. That is an injustice that undermines our democracy.”

For millions of law-abiding Black Americans who live in underserved communities and know plenty of injustice in America, easy-release policies aren’t a cure to racism; they still support the prosecution and incarceration of violent criminals. And the new league of prosecutors aren’t making things better, according to a wave of reader reaction.

Among the many odd claims of Mr. Soros’s op-ed, one jumps out: He refers to anonymous “research” that supports his position that his reform movement is working, and that citizens in hard-hit communities like it, and support him. But he offers no sources and no specifics, “another take-my-word-for-it explanation,” as one reader put it.

Some readers found much of what Soros wrote to be disingenuous, and that his motives didn’t appear to be an attempt to improve American society, but to destroy it.

As Soros wrote:

Some politicians and pundits have tried to blame recent spikes in crime on the policies of reform-minded prosecutors. The research I’ve seen says otherwise. The most rigorous academic study, analyzing data across 35 jurisdictions, shows no connection between the election of reform-minded prosecutors and local crime rates. In fact, violent crime in recent years has generally been increasing more quickly in jurisdictions without reform-minded prosecutors. Murder rates have been rising fastest in some Republican states led by tough-on-crime politicians.

This is why I have supported the election (and more recently the re-election) of prosecutors who support reform. I have done it transparently, and I have no intention of stopping. The funds I provide enable sensible reform-minded candidates to receive a hearing from the public. Judging by the results, the public likes what it’s hearing.

Readers on various sites, including the WSJ’s, not only challenged Soros’s positions, but were offended by them. The most popular comments of nearly 1500 that replied to Mr. Soros’s column:

The only thing you need to take away from this piece is that nowhere does it contain the phrase “victims of crime “.

” If people trust the justice system, it will work.” Soros has it backwards. If the justice system worked, people will trust it.

“We need to acknowledge that black people in the U.S. are five times as likely to be sent to jail as white people.” 

We need to acknowledge that if people commit crimes, it shouldn’t matter what color their skin is when we throw the book at them. Why is this framed as a race issue rather than, say, a poverty issue? Poverty is a much stronger determinant of criminality than race.

It is not a poverty issue either, although that could be considered part of the problem. It is not race, because there are many people of color that are fine citizens. It is not poverty, in and of itself, because many in poverty do not commit crimes. The truth is, it is a character issue, and always has been.

When stores desert poor neighborhoods because they can be robbed with impunity thanks to reform prosecutors, does that represent justice for the proprietors or the residents? Incentives matter and this argument doesn’t make contact with reality.

Soros’ meddling in local prosecutorial elections about which he knows nothing is responsible for untold misery happening in communities throughout the country.