If someone takes a leading role in shaping crime policy, and you politely disagree with them, that doesn’t make you bigoted against the group they belong to. But Congressman Dan Goldman (D-NY) claims that those who disagree with George Soros about crime are antisemites. On April 17, he wrote: “With antisemitic violence at record highs, today’s hearing confirmed that invoking George Soros’s name is nothing short of blatant antisemitism. I call on all Republicans to stop using this antisemitic trope immediately.”
George Soros is the nation’s most influential person on the subject of crime, and the biggest supporter of decarceral policies, which reduce the amount of time offenders spend in prison. He provides the lion’s share of campaign funding for many progressive district attorneys, as news stories in the Washington Post have revealed. He also publicly touts his support of those district attorneys, and their soft-on-crime policies, in high-profile ways such as a Wall Street Journal op-ed he wrote, titled “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.”
But Congressman Goldman, and progressive journalists, consider it antisemitic to point out Soros’s influence, or even mention his name in discussing crime policy, even though Jewish law professors such as Eugene Volokh and David Bernstein have pointed out that it is not antisemitic to do so, and that it is only natural to discuss Soros’s activitism given the prominent role he plays in this area of public policy. As Professor Volokh put it, “Of Course It’s Legitimate to Criticize George Soros’ Spending to Influence American Politics.”
When an LU blogger published a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal arguing that “Innocent black people would be harmed the most” by the policies backed by George Soros, because they involve “releasing vast numbers of dangerous criminals, most of whom preyed on other black people,” a reader claimed that the letter was an “antisemitic dogwhistle.” Presumably, this was because the letter mentioned Soros’s name — the letter began “Mr. Soros writes…” But it is hard to see how the letter could have avoided mentioning Soros’s name, given that the letter was responding to George Soros’s op-ed.
And given the prevalence of black-on-black crime, the soft-on-crime policies advocated by Soros for black offenders could indeed harm innocent black people most. Crime victims are overwhelmingly of the same race as their attacker, and are disproportionately black. As the Bureau of Justice Statistics explains, crimes are committed mostly between members of the same race, and this is true for “rape or sexual assault,” “simple assault,” “aggravated assault,” and indeed, “all types of violent crime except robbery.” These crimes are disproportionately committed by black people: “the offending rates for blacks were more than 7 times higher than the rates for whites” for murder cases between 1976 and 2005, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
It is likewise hard for political analysts writing about the politics of crime and prosecutor elections to avoid mentioning George Soros, given the enormously-influential role he plays in such elections. Soros donates vastly more money to election campaigns and ideological causes than the Koch brothers, whose every donation is deemed by progressive journalists to render recipients “Koch-funded,” even if Koch funding accounts for only a tiny percentage of the recipient’s funding.
Soros gives so much in dark money to support left-wing candidates that it overwhelms opposing candidates, who are heavily outfunded and outspent. Donations by local residents to moderate Democrats are dwarfed by outside spending from Soros, putting them at a disadvantage and resulting in leftist candidates winning close elections despite having controversial policies that many residents object to. To a moderate or conservative local voter, it can seem like they have been disenfranchised and stripped of self-determination.
As the Bacon’s Rebellion policy blog noted, a single county district attorney candidate in Arlington, Virginia “received a staggering sum of money — $583,237 — from a ‘dark money’ group bankrolled by George Soros. So reports the mainstream liberal newspaper the Falls Church News-Press…the Washington Post reported that Soros’s group had already pumped over $1 million into just two races in Northern Virginia, seeking to replace incumbent Democrats with leftist challengers.” These figures were prior to the end of the election campaign, and funding from Soros was closer to $2 million by the end of the campaign. In those races, a respected mainstream liberal incumbent lost to a left-winger in Fairfax County, and a centrist Democrat lost to a left-winger in Arlington. Both elections were very close, and the outcome was changed by the fact that the Soros-backed candidates massively outspent their more moderate rivals.
Fox News reported that at least 24 progressive prosecutors have received substantial funding from Soros:
These 24 chief prosecutors are all linked by their progressive policies which, according to Thayer, include policies of extinguishing cash bail and reducing sentences and prosecution of misdemeanors.
“There’s a direct correlation between spiking crime rates – of several percentage points – and the policies which they are enacting,” said Thayer…During [Orange County prosecutor Aramis] Ayala’s tenure, violent crime increased dramatically, such as homicides, which increased by 26% during 2020….After Ayala left her position to run for Congress, she was replaced by another progressive Soros-backed candidate named Monique Worrell. Worrell beat her more moderate opponent after receiving $1.5 million in aid from a Soros-backed group in the final moments of her race, according to Thayer and the Orlando Sentinel.
Mississippi is another state where progressive Soros-backed prosecutors have taken charge.
Jody Owens, the chief prosecutor for Hinds County, Mississippi, was aided by a $500,000 contribution from Soros’s Mississippi Justice and Public Safety PAC, Thayer reports.
Owens ran on a platform of promising “alternatives to incarceration.” He also brought what Thayer called “highly questionable” murder charges against two police officers. The charges were ultimately dismissed over lack of evidence showing the officers had caused any injury to the alleged victim.
During Owen’s tenure, Jackson, Mississippi has become one of the deadliest cities in the nation, according to CNN. In 2021, Jackson saw a record-high murder rate.
In the 16th District Court of Mississippi, Scott Colom received over $926,000 in Soros funding to help unseat a longtime incumbent, according to Thayer. During Colom’s tenure, violent crime, and specifically gun violence, has remained a growing problem in the district, according to The Dispatch.
Albuquerque, New Mexico has also experienced a record-breaking year of violent crime in 2021, Thayer reported. Raul Torrez, the district attorney in Albuquerque, received $107,000 in Soros funding, according to Thayer. Torrez is now running to be New Mexico’s Attorney General, a race in which Thayer said he believes Soros money is likely to come into play.
In Bexar County, Texas, chief prosecutor Joe Gonzalez received roughly $1 million in Soros funding, upsetting an incumbent Democrat. Since Gonzalez took office, violent crime reportedly increased by 15% in San Antonio, and convictions have dropped 17%, according to PoliceDefense.org.
Soros’ desire to reduce incarceration is not necessarily a good thing. Short sentences leave criminals free to kill again. Most murders in Baltimore are committed by people who previously were convicted of a serious crime, but didn’t serve a lengthy sentence for that crime. “You want to see homicides go down? Keep bad guys with guns in jail…The average homicide suspect has been arrested 11 times prior to them committing a homicide,” notes the police chief of Washington, DC.
Longer sentences keep dangerous people locked up so they can’t get out and harm law-abiding people. Studies of countries with very low incarceration rates have found that letting criminals out early increases the crime rate, and that higher levels of incarceration are a good investment. As El Salvador increased its incarceration rate, its murder rate fell from the world’s highest to a rate lower than many of America’s big cities (such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cleveland).
Criminal-justice expert Michael Rushford says longer sentences make inmates less likely to reoffend when they finally are released. Studies of two California laws indicate that longer sentences also deter some crimes, by making it more costly to commit a crime.
Talk of “mass incarceration” is misleading. The U.S. has a large prison population, but that is mostly because it has a large population and a lot of violent criminals. The U.S. incarcerates fewer people per hundred murders than Australia, Japan, or Switzerland, and incarcerates fewer people per capita than Turkmenistan or El Salvador. As criminology professor Justin Nix notes, “Given its level of serious crime, America has ordinary levels of incarceration but extraordinary levels of under-policing.” Most people in state prisons are there for “violent offenses.”
