Isegoria

Freddie DeBoer sees us entering a new period of spectacular acts of public violence:

After decades of unusually low levels of such violence, we may now be returning to conditions similar to those of previous eras where such acts become distressingly common — notably, the turn of the 20th century, with the wave of anarchist assassinations from 1881 to 1914, the Haymarket Affair, and the Galleanist bombings, as well as the “Days of Rage” of the 1970s, including the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and FALN (the Puerto Rican separatist movement).

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Mass shootings and similar events are now so normalized that it can be difficult to sort out whether we’ve slipped into such an era, but my fear is that recent violence will spread and grow, that in fact each act will serve as an accelerant for the next, as the cascading violence will help the people who commit this violence see their work as part of some broader movement that gives them the meaning they seek.

This is, in fact, my overarching argument: that where we are trained to see public violence as the outcome of ideology — those anarchist assassinations, 9/11, Oklahoma City, Anders Breivik, Yukio Mishima — in the 21st century, a certain potent strain of political violence is not the product of ideology but rather an attempt to will ideology into being through violence itself. To create meaning in a culture steeped in digital meaninglessness by the most destructive means available. The 21st century school shooter (for example) does not murder children in an effort to pursue some teleological purpose; the 21st century school shooter exists in a state of deep purposelessness and, at some level and to some degree, seeks to will meaning into being through their actions. This is part of why so many of them engage in acts of abstruse symbolism and wrap their politically-incoherent violence in layers of iconography; they are engaged in cargo cult meaning-making, the pursuit of a pseudo-religion. The tail wags the dog; acts we have grown to see as expressions of meaning are in fact childish attempts to will meaning into being through violence.

In 2019, more than 1,000 Democratic Socialists of America gathered in Atlanta for their national convention, where they endorsed decarceration:

The background to the resolution clearly outlines the underlying ideology: “DSA will promote a socialist vision of prison abolition that protects people from corporate exploitation as well as dismantling racist incarceration and ending prosecutions of the working class.” The DSA’s official platform further asserts that “incarceration, detention and policing are active instruments of class war which guarantee the domination of the working class and reproduce racial inequalities.”

Following the national organization’s lead, New York City DSA issued its Agenda for Decarceration in January 2020. The program consisted of nine existing legislative proposals and seven new ones aimed at reducing Gotham’s incarcerated population. Among these were the elimination of cash bail; decriminalization of drug possession and prostitution; creation of supervised injection sites; abolishing mandatory minimums; reducing maximum sentences with retroactive effects; and restrictions on the use of solitary confinement. The agenda also included a “no new jails” pledge, which prohibited supporting more jail construction.

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Many of the decarceration agenda’s proposals—bail reforms, restrictions on solitary confinement, decriminalization of drug possession—have been tried, in New York or elsewhere.

In 2019, New York eliminated bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies. Over the next two years, the city’s pretrial prison population fell by over 40 percent. At the same time, major crimes rose 36.6 percent. New York remains the only state that forbids judges from considering a suspect’s potential danger to the community when setting bail.

In 2015, New York City moved to end the use of solitary confinement for prisoners under 21. In 2021, New York State passed the HALT Act, which limits solitary confinement to 15 days for all prisoners and bans it altogether for younger and older inmates. As City Journal’s Charles Fain Lehman argued, these restrictions have contributed to greatly increased prison violence and eliminated one of the main tools corrections officers use to maintain order.

Oregon tried decriminalization of drug possession in 2021. Subsequently, narcotic-related deaths and open-air drug markets proliferated in its largest city, Portland, which was described as a “war zone.”

Other proposals from the Agenda for Decarceration might be implemented soon. Take Intro 798, a city council bill to abolish the NYPD’s Criminal Group Database, which centralizes information on alleged gang members, reported incidents, and gang dynamics. Though this item is off the legislative agenda for now, Mamdani recently expressed support for abolishing the database, echoing Councilwoman Althea Stevens’s reproach that most of the individuals on the list are minorities. NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber responded to Stevens by observing that the perpetrators of violence were also disproportionately minority.

Finally, Mamdani and other elected DSA officials who signed the agenda stand by their intention to close the city’s Rikers Island jail facility by the legally mandated 2027 deadline. The mayoral front-runner has argued that faster timelines for court hearings, as well as additional bail reforms, could help shrink the city’s jail population. Brad Lander, who serves as the city’s comptroller and has backed Mamdani in the race, praised a 2024 move on the part of Chief Administrative Judge Zayas that aimed to do the same.

Expediting cases and attempting to address the underlying factors of crime are desirable moves in their own right. But, as Lehman noted in a report for the Manhattan Institute, “under almost no conceivable scenario can the city expect to safely and sustainably reduce daily jail population to 3,300”—the borough-based jails’ expected capacity by 2027.