Soros-backed DA orders fewer prison sentences — Analysis

Alvin Bragg, Manhattan District Attorney, has issued his first memo to instruct prosecutors not to send criminals to jail in many cases. He also directed them to downgrade the charges of crimes like armed robbery or drug dealing.

Prosecutors in New York City’s most densely populated borough must no longer seek a “carceral sentence”Bragg stated Monday that Bragg did not recommend the use of Bragg’s memo except for a few cases such as murder, rape, and other major economic crimes. Bragg said that the sentencing recommendations of assistant district attorneys must also be considered in relation to public safety and housing barriers, as well as racial disparities when incarcerating people.

Bragg joins a long list of district attorneys in major US cities who were elected with the backing of Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, who reportedly donated up to $1 million to his successful campaign. And like other Soros-backed prosecutors, he’s trying to reform the criminal justice system by sending fewer people to jail and decriminalizing some lesser offenses.

These policies have led to an increase in violent crime in cities like Chicago which just experienced its worst year for a quarter century. Philadelphia has seen homicides reach all-time highs in 2021. New York has also been affected by an increase in violence. This includes hate crimes and murders targeting Asians.

Bragg also requested leniency in the worst violent crimes. Prosecutors were prohibited from seeking sentences over 20 years. “The office shall not seek a sentence of life without parole,” the DA said, barring a punishment that’s typically reserved for such heinous offenders as terrorists, serial killers, and people who rape and murder children.

And in many cases, Bragg’s office won’t even seek felony convictions, let alone prison terms. He ordered that charges be reduced to misdemeanors in such cases as armed robberies where a victim isn’t seriously injured, or drug dealing. He added that prosecutors also must consider the suspect’s circumstances, such as mental illness, homelessness, and poverty.

“These policy changes not only will, in and of themselves, make us safer; they also will free up prosecutorial resources to focus on violent crime,”Bragg stated.

Police are already pushing back against Bragg’s reforms. “In Bragg’s Manhattan, you can resist arrest, deal drugs, obstruct arrests and even carry a gun and get away with it,”Paul DiGiacomo is the president of New York Detectives Endowment Association. He stated that by removing many crime prosecutions from the table, the new DA “has made himself the police, the judge and the jury.”