Philadelphia – Progressive de-prosecution policies likely caused 374 more murders during a five-year span in Philadelphia, according to research by Thomas Hogan, an attorney and a former prosecutor. Hogan’s research will soon be published in Criminology and Public Policy, a peer-reviewed journal of the prestigious American Society of Criminology.
Hogan told The Epoch Times that Philadelphia started on a de-prosecution path in 2015 under then-District Attorney R. Seth Williams. Larry Krasner, Williams’s successor, carried it even further.
De-prosecution is a policy to no longer prosecute certain criminal offenses. It is a signature policy move adopted by progressive prosecutors across the nation.
By 2019, the annual new prosecutions in Philadelphia dropped by a third to 9,514 when compared to 2014, the year right before the de-prosecution began.
Hogan counted new prosecution cases as those that had been charged and gone through preliminary hearings, based on data from the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts.
He also found that as cases traveled through the system, more of them were dismissed before any consequences could be imposed at the sentencing stage.
By 2019, the annual number of sentencings dropped by 70 percent to 2,195 when compared to 2014, according to data from Pennsylvania Sentencing Commission.
Meanwhile, as prosecutions and sentencings dropped, murders climbed steadily to 356 in 2019, a 43.5 percent jump from 2014, based on FBI crime data.
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