The New York Times Finally Discovers That Criminals Commit Crime

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Earlier this week, the New York Times editorial board declared with great alarm that “The People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree.” President Donald Trump has issued many pardons and grants of clemency, as have his predecessors. The worst of these decisions, says the board, was Trump’s grant of “clemency on the first day of his second term to everyone who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” That clemency was extended to approximately 1,500 participants in the infamous riot universally known by the date on which it occurred: January 6. Whether it was wise to issue a mass clemency to the rioters is a debatable proposition, but whether those rioters have since gone on a crime spree is an empirical question with a clear answer: Not even close.

The Times’ editorial tells readers that the results of the clemency “have been disastrous.” Big, if true! But the claim doesn’t hold up under even modest scrutiny. Here is what the board considers damning evidence: “At least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack.”

Twelve, you say!?

“Disastrous” is about as dishonest a characterization for a recidivism rate of less than 1% as one can imagine. For context, national data show that more than 80% of released state prisoners — most of whom are released (typically after less than two years) onto parole after serving an average of about 44% of their maximum sentence, despite having around 10 prior arrests and five prior convictions — in America are rearrested for a new crime. On average, state prison releasees will generate five new rearrests over a 10-year period. Now, who would bet on the Times running an editorial decrying the practice of early parole, or calling for longer sentences? I certainly wouldn’t.

In fact, the same editorial board has a long history of dedicating page space to those pushing a decades-long effort to decarcerate and de-police. Over the years, the Times has said very little about the recidivism issue, but has had plenty to say in supporting efforts to be more lenient with offenders and tougher on police. That long record of both implicit and explicit support for criminal justice and police reforms that enabled a significant amount of reoffending — exactly the kind the Times now criticizes — makes this week’s editorial impossible to take seriously, especially the part calling for an electoral referendum on public safety.

Where were those calls when Democrats across the country were defunding their local police departments, pushing to release more and more repeat criminal offenders, and breathlessly celebrating prosecutors who ran on diverting as many criminal offenders as they felt they could politically get away with releasing?

The question is, of course, rhetorical. No one actually believes that the New York Times’s editorial board has suddenly connected with its inner carceralist. The editorial is transparently cynical and flagrantly hypocritical.

Republicans have traditionally held an advantage over Democrats in public opinion regarding which party is more effective on public safety. President Trump has made “law and order” a central theme of his presidency. Less than two weeks ago, he presided over a roundtable discussion on crime in Memphis, TN, where his administration deployed a U.S. Marshals-led task force comprising federal law enforcement agencies, local police, and the National Guard. The administration has been enthusiastically touting the success of the task force, to which it has attributed a steep decline in crime in what has long been one of America’s most dangerous cities.

Facilitating a 1,500-person crime spree would constitute a major political liability for any president — but it would be an especially bad look for this president. But the New York Times is grasping at straws here, and if it wants the public to take its newfound concern for the problem of repeat offending seriously, it should consider speaking up about any one of the countless examples of that problem plaguing Democrat-run cities across America.

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Rafael A. Mangual is the Nick Ohnell fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a contributing editor of City Journal, and author of the 2022 book, Criminal (In)Justice.