scholarship at the brooklyn law school. she s written a book. it ll come out this august, and it s titled radical acts of justice. how ordinary people are dismantling mass in car. saray shin professor simonsen respond if you would please. to what you heard from mayor lightfoot. does she have the right answer. good morning. thank you for having me . uh what i do agree with mayor lightfoot about is that public safety is important and taking care of survivors of harm are important. but i disagree entirely with her characterization of what bail reform does and even what prosecution and incarceration do and i should add that the people of chicago disagreed as well. if we re thinking about perceptions of crime and safety lori lightfoot recently lost an election. so someone who is saying that public safety shouldn t always mean arrest, bail and prosecution. what is the data show? what does the data show? if you get rid of cash bail, you let people out on
2001 on that issue. it s a perception prevalent in america. you ve probably heard it from political commentators. maybe you believe it yourself. crime is soaring in american cities and democratic policies, like bail reform are to blame. does that match with reality? well here s the bottom line. these crime statistics. they lend themselves to lots of sound bites, but the big picture is more nuanced. nationwide violent crimes spiked by more than 5% from 2019 to 2020. then it dropped by just 1% in 2021. during that same year murder jumped by more than 4% rape up 3.9% robbery and aggravated assault are the only two categories of violent crime that declined. as the philadelphia inquirer pointed out about this city, the homicide rate, while lower than in the past few years, remains at a pace that s near a three decade high. so yes, some violent crimes are on the rise. are the downtown areas of american cities, crime infested. crimes committed
philadelphia yesterday, outgoing chicago mayor lori lightfoot, a democrat, put her party on notice for its rhetoric on crime. as democrats if we do not speak the truth about violent crime in our city, we will be the worst for it. if we say yeah , the police department is spending all this time and resources to rest put a case on and then the judges and the prosecutors say, you know what? we re going to let you out on electronic monitoring to wreak havoc again. and if we don t call that out every single day with these prosecutors and with the judges, many of whom don t live in our city and don t care about what s happening, then we are going to lose an opportunity to advocate for the victims and the witnesses and a resident who just want in deserve peace. we gotta say it. she was one of the four black mayors leading