Philadelphia Murders to Hit All-Time High as Jail Pop. Down to 1985 Level
Philadelphia recently re-elected its "progressive reformer," District Attorney Larry Krasner, an advocate for freeing prisoners and ending cash bail. In a July interview with Vox, Krasner bragged about pushing Philadelphia's jail population down to its 1985 level: So [Philadelphia] is a city where, not so many years ago, there were 15,000 people in county custody. By the time I took office, there had been some good efforts to reduce it. When I took office in January 2018, we had 6,500. That number was down to about 4,800 before the pandemic hit. The pandemic hits, and we and other criminal justice partners, including the public defender’s office, we make very concerted efforts to reduce the jail population even further, so it won’t become a superspreader. And we got those levels down to 3,800, the lowest level of incarceration in Philly since 1985. People end up in jail because they commit crimes, as a rule of thumb, so it is logical that cutting the jail population by 7