Rich Lowry: Brandon Johnson is a Moron

Indeed he is.

According to Johnson, “We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence.”
“We’ve already tried that,” he said, “and we’ve ended up with the largest prison population in the world without solving the problems of crime and violence.”
He declared of our “addiction” to jails and incarceration in this country, “It is racist, it is immoral, it is unholy, and it is not the way to drive violence down. We cannot return to the same failed strategies that got us here in the first place.”
As the mayor of the city that regularly leads the United States in murders, one would think that Johnson would demonstrate a little more humility on the question.
Chicago had nearly 600 murders in 2024 and the eighth-highest homicide rate in the nation. It had the highest homicide rate among the big cities. The Windy City has seen recent declines, but, as with Washington, D.C., a downward trajectory doesn’t make the intolerable any more acceptable.
Contra Johnson, as both common sense and the research suggest, incarceration is indeed an answer to violence. By definition, it prevents offenders from harming the general population while they are behind bars.
Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute points to studies showing this effect, including one finding that after Maryland reduced jail time for young adults, offenders committed on average 2.8 criminal acts and 1.5 serious crimes during the time they otherwise would have been behind bars.