[NYPOST] It’s crunch time for state budget negotiations, with all manner of nonsense obscuring the No. 1 issue: the urgent need for major fixes to the no-bail law and other botched criminal-justice "reforms." As we’ve said before, a late budget — even weeks late — is better than one that doesn’t do the job.
If they don’t do the right fixes now, after two previous tries, it’ll take a voter revolution to force their hand.
Even Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 10-point criminal-justice plan may not do enough. As former Queens prosecutor Jim Quinn noted for The Post, it overfocuses on gun-related crimes, ignoring violent mostly peaceful perps who use knives or other weapons.
New York judges must get the power the other 49 states allow: to order jail for perps they deem dangerous or at high risk of reoffending, all the way down to serial shoplifters. Unless a gun is involved, Hochul’s "fix" doesn’t allow jail pending trial for those charged with attempted murder, rape, robbery, burglary, first-, second- and third-degree assault, grand larceny, stalking or drug sales, among hundreds of other offenses.
Part of the problem, clearly, is that the gov doesn’t want to offend politicians by saying they botched it big-time. Thus, she "defended" her plan with a Daily News column that pretends it was purely the pandemic that caused the two-year crime wave.
Bull: While progressive "anti-law-enforcement" has pushed up crime all across the country, New York needs to focus on the mistakes that did the damage here.
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