Carl Heastie Removed Any Doubt He’s a Political Imbecile – and a Driving Force for All of NYC’s Plight; Carl Heastie Wants Proof of How Penalties Curb Crime? Here You Go

Carl Heastie removed any doubt he’s a political imbecile – and a driving force for all of NYC’s plight:

Now he’s done it.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, normally a man of few words, has made the grave mistake of opening his mouth and revealing what’s behind the blank façade.

It’s not a pretty sight.

In doing so, Heastie proved the wisdom of the warning that “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”

While the suspicions about him have been confirmed, calling Heastie a fool doesn’t capture the significance of what he said and the policy impacts on the life of every New Yorker.

His declaration that “I just don’t believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime” amounts to a Holy Grail of political imbecility.

Everything bad about New York — the mayhem, the criminal coddling, the cold shoulder for taxpayers — is at least partially a ­result of his strange thinking.

Heastie and his fellow travelers in Albany and City Hall don’t have a clue about human nature and therefore the necessity of certain punishment that fits the crime.

His confession lays bare the fact that he is so out of touch with ­reality that he ought to have the decency to slink out of office and into oblivion.

He’s ostensibly from the Bronx, but might as well be living on the moon.

Otherwise, how can he fail to grasp the obvious fact that people who are locked up are deterred during their time behind bars from committing more crimes?

And has he never considered the possibility they will be so chastened by their experience in prison that they will go straight when they are eventually ­released?

That, too, is deterrence. —>READ MORE HERE

Carl Heastie wants proof of how penalties curb crime? Here you go:

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie demands proof that tougher penalties deter crime. Seriously.

Facing public outrage (including our contempt) over his first remarks on the issue, Heastie doubled down Tuesday, insisting, “I don’t believe, in the history of increasing penalties, has that ever been the reason that crime has gone down” — and “I’d love somebody to give me an example as to when that happened.”

Uh, just one? We won’t even break a sweat.

As Manhattan Institute crime expert Rafael Mangual documents in The Post, there’s a ton of compelling evidence that “harsher criminal penalties can and do deter crime.”

He cites, for instance, a study showing that California’s three-strikes law cut felony arrests among those with two strikes by as much as 20%.

Another study found that including incarceration among the penalties for court-fine scofflaws made payments more likely.

Not to mention the indisputable fact that anyone locked up for longer can’t reoffend during that time.

The likelihood of being arrested and locked up is also critical: When Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani boosted the number of city cops nearly 30% — from 31,000 to 40,000 — major felonies plunged, from 430,460 in 1993 to 162,064 by 2001.

Murders those years went from 1,927 to 649 — a 66% drop — and kept falling, to 292 in 2017, a whopping 87% off the 1990 high of 2,262. —>READ MORE HERE

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