Some progressive cities have cut police funding to instead hire “violence interrupters”, people who often have criminal records yet are hired to do community outreach that is labeled “violence prevention.” These “violence interrupters” don’t reduce violence, but if you try to cut off their funding, they may threaten you with violence. The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports on one example:
A prominent north Minneapolis pastor interrupted a Monday Minneapolis City Council committee meeting and made threatening statements, then doubled down in a Facebook Live video posted Tuesday night….
The Rev. Jerry McAfee — whose nonprofit has done violence prevention work for years — brought a council committee meeting to a halt Monday when he interrupted the meeting and went on a five-minute rant about the council considering temporarily moving some violence prevention programs to Hennepin County….Minneapolis police said the department had met with council leadership as well as McAfee….
When [Council member] Chavez asked if he was threatening them, McAfee said, “I don’t make threats, I make promises.” He said if they tried to arrest him, his “people” would come. As he left the meeting room, he told the council members, “I’ll see you again; that’s a promise.”…
McAfee suggested in subsequent social media posts that he half expected to be arrested. He doubled down in a Facebook Live post Tuesday night, in which he said “Rev. McAfee ain’t hittin’ nobody. I ain’t shot nobody. However I will if I have to. I don’t want to.”… Council Member Robin Wonsley said of McAfee: “This individual has now publicly made death threats.”…
“Violence interrupters” are often ex-inmates, some of whom go on to commit more crimes, or “ex-gang members who still” have “ties to current gang members.” They promote largely useless things like “restorative justice.” Chicago hired “violence interrupters,” and its crime rate went up even as the crime rate fell nationally. Chicago pioneered the idea.
Violence interrupters do not seem to done any good in Minneapolis, either. Its crime rate has spiked even as crime has fallen in some parts of the U.S. Newsweek reported in August that “carjackings in Minneapolis are up 548 percent” in the last several years. Murders have risen much more in Minneapolis than in the country as a whole. Minneapolis had 76 homicides in 2024, compared to 48 homicides in 2019.
Violence interrupters often advocate “restorative justice” rather than incarceration, claiming long prison sentences don’t keep cities safe.
They are wrong about that. Keeping criminals in prison keeps them from committing crimes. Also, holding inmates in jail longer results in some of them aging of out crime and some others no longer committing the most serious crimes. Most inmates commit more crimes after being released, but older inmates commit fewer crimes after being released, and they tend to commit less serious crimes than inmates released at a younger age. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested by 2018, but only 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release, 56.1% of those age 55 at the time of their release, and 40.1% of those over age 65 at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018) (Sept. 2021), pg. 4, Table 4).
So longer prison sentences do reduce crime, reducing the rate at which violent crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape are committed.
