George Soros Defends Backing Leftist Prosecutors, Says He Is Concerned About Crime

George Soros answers to questions after delivering a speech on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on May 24, 2022. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

By Zachary Stieber August 2, 2022

Billionaire George Soros is defending his support of prosecutors who have implemented a raft of measures that critics say have led to a spike in crime and other negative effects.

Soros said in a new op-ed that he is concerned about crime but also sees a need to reform the criminal justice system, which he described as “rife with injustices that make us all less safe.”

“The idea that we need to choose between justice and safety is false. They reinforce each other: If people trust the justice system, it will work. And if the system works, public safety will improve,” he wrote, pointing out that black people in the United States are more likely to be in jail as white people, a discrepancy some attribute to racism and others to crime rates between the groups being different.

Soros and groups he funds have financially supported the campaigns of dozens of leftist district attorney candidates in recent years, many of whom have won elections.

They include George Gascon, the Los Angeles prosecutor who may be recalled; Lawrence Krasner, the district attorney of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Alvin Bragg, the top prosecutor in New York County, top Chicago prosecutor Kim Foxx, and Kimberly Gardner, the circuit attorney for St. Louis, Missouri.

The prosecutors share some commonalities. Policies practically all have implemented include halting or curbing the prosecution of lower-level crimes and moving for some type of bail reform, either eliminating bail or adjusting the bail system.

The prosecutors and their supporters say the alterations are aimed at improving the justice system, but critics say the policies have led to crime spikes.

While prosecutors backed by Soros oversee 20 percent of Americans, over 40 percent of U.S. homicides in 2021 occurred in their jurisdictions, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, a group with the mission of supporting law enforcement.

“Most of these prosecutors pursue radical justice policies upon assuming office including eliminating bail, dismissing felony cases, and seeking lenient sentences while creating antagonistic relationships with their public safety partners, especially the police,” the group said in its report, released in June.

Soros said that the “reform-minded prosecutors” are implementing “an agenda that promises to be more effective and just,” including “prioritizing the resources of the criminal-justice system to protect people against violent crime,” treating drug addiction as a disease rather than a crime, and seeking an end to “the criminalization of poverty and mental illness.”

“This agenda, aiming at both safety and justice, is based on both common sense and evidence. It’s popular. It’s effective. The goal is not defunding the police but restoring trust between the police and the policed, a partnership that fosters the solving of crimes,” he wrote.

Soros also claimed that the spike in crime witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic was not connected to the policies of prosecutors he’s supported, citing an academic study that “shows no connection between the election of reform-minded prosecutors and local crime rates.” He did not link to or name the study, and it was unclear where or when it was published. He also said he’d continue supporting candidates whose policy proposals he favors.

Challenges

The op-ed drew challenges from critics, including Rafael Mangual, head of research for the Policing and Public Safety Initiative at the Manhattan Institute.

Soros, Mangual wrote in the City Journal, “offered a shallow, essentially data-free collection of platitudes—’If people trust the justice system, it will work’—and incomplete observations,” taking issue with the note about black people being more likely to be locked up than white people.

“Such a contention is meant to persuade the reader that these incarcerations are mostly (if not overwhelmingly) illegitimate—the product of racial animus more than anything else. What else could it be? Well, how about disparate rates of criminal offending? A Bureau of Justice Statistics study of homicides between 1980 and 2008 found that blacks commit homicide offenses at a rate ‘almost eight times higher than the rate for whites,’” he said.

The Washington Examiner editorial board, meanwhile, said that Soros’s op-ed “was supposed to defend and justify his backing of prosecutors who are extraordinary for being soft on crime.”

“But time and again, such prosecutors have shown that their philosophy is inconsistent with justice. Again and again, they release violent career criminals who victimize ordinary citizens going about their business,” the board said, noting examples from Virginia and Illinois.

“Criminal justice reform was once popular and bipartisan. But Soros and his soft-on-crime prosecutors have been busy destroying the consensus that previously existed behind it,” the board concluded. “By applying leniency when completely inappropriate and letting predators loose on their communities, he is killing off any chance for genuine common sense to rule the day and mete out justice with appropriate mercy.”

Déjà vu All Over Again

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio – articles – email ) | Aug 01, 2022

The caustic and always entertaining British novelist Evelyn Waugh observed:

It is better to be narrow-minded than to have no mind, to hold limited and rigid principles than none at all. That is the danger which faces so many people today—to have no considered opinions on any subject, to put up with what is wasteful and harmful with the excuse that there is “good in everything”—which in most cases means the inability to distinguish between good and bad.

The pseudo-sophisticated resurgent use of “paradigm shifts” in contemporary moral theology undermines orthodox Catholic teaching on intrinsically evil acts, blurring the distinction between good and evil.

The Pontifical Academy for Life has released the results of a 2021 conference suggesting a “paradigm shift” in moral theology. Analysts suggest the report may become the foundation of a papal encyclical effectively redefining the intrinsic evil of contraception and other sins. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the academy’s president since 2016, describes the “paradigm shift” in moral theology. He says the shift is: “both descriptive and conceptual, as it follows a pattern that is both argumentative and narrative, theoretical and sapiential, phenomenological and interpretative.” The new paradigm promises to use big words.

Here we go again.

Many of us recognize the “new paradigm” as a rehash of the old, dissident, and discarded paradigm of proportionalism. Human Sexuality—published by Anthony Kosnik in 1977 under the auspices of the Catholic Theological Society of America—represents the same “paradigm shift” that occurred shortly after Vatican II. It reads like the playbook for all that has happened over the last 50 years. Msgr. George Kelly cited several disturbing assertions in his old book, Battle for the American Church. (The following bullet points are taken from that book, pages 105-106):

• “Concerning revelation, we [so the authors say] cannot guarantee the exact words of Jesus” (p. 19) and “Scripture is not even concerned with sexuality as such” (p. 30).
• “The question of artificial contraception has not yet found a definitive resolution in the Church” (p. 126). Therefore, the use of contraception can be a morally sound decision.
• “Sterilization, like that of contraception, is still far from a universally acceptable and definitive resolution in the Church” (p. 134). Therefore the options of sterilization are with the interested parties.
• Artificial insemination with semen from a man other than the husband cannot be prohibited (p. 139).
• While “mate swapping” is not ideal from a scriptural standpoint, the final word on this subject has not been said (p. 149).
• Adulterous relationships generally offend against the quality of fidelity, “but there may occasionally arise exceptions” (p. 151).
• Premarital intercourse may be justified if it represents “a loving relationship and some measure of natural commitment before sexual involvement” (p. 166).
• Christian “homosexuals have the same rights to love, intimacy, and relationships as heterosexuals” (p. 214) “and to receive Holy Communion too” (p. 215).
• Masturbation is not objectively and seriously wrong (p. 228).
• Bestiality is pathological “when heterosexual outlets are available” (p. 230).
• Therapists and patients may enjoy sexual intercourse, if in fact it “results in making the patient whole” [no citation provided].

Msgr. Kelly writes, “The manner in which this study was conceived, organized, evaluated, and published during the presidency of five CTSA theologians (John Wright, S.J., of Berkeley; Richard McBrien of Boston College; Luke Salm, F.S.C., of Manhattan College; Avery Dulles, S.J., of Catholic University; and Agnes Cunningham, S.S.H.M., of Mundelein Seminary) suggests that anything but the rigorous canons of scientific scholarship was followed.” (p. 107)

The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith condemned the book in 1979. Here is an excerpt from the Vatican statement:

The authors nearly always find a way to allow for integrative growth through the neglect or destruction of some intrinsic element of sexual morality, particularly its procreative ordination. And if some forms of sexual conduct are disapproved, it is only because of the supposed absence, generally expressed in the form of a doubt, of “human integration” (as in swinging, mate-swapping, bestiality), and not because these actions are opposed to the nature of human sexuality. When some action is considered completely immoral, it is never for intrinsic reasons, on the basis of objective finality, but only because the authors happen not to see, for their part, any way of making it so for some human integration. This subjection of theological and scientific arguments to evaluation by criteria primarily derived from one’s present experience of what is human or less than human gives rise to a relativism in human conduct which recognizes no absolute values. Given these criteria, it is small wonder that this book pays such scant attention to the documents of the Church’s Magisterium, whose clear teaching and helpful norms of morality in the area of human sexuality it often openly contradicts.

At the same time, the Congregation cannot fail to note its concern that a distinguished society of Catholic theologians would have arranged for the publication of this report in such a way as to give broad distribution to the erroneous principles and conclusions of this book and in this way provide a source of confusion among the people of God.

I would be grateful to Your Excellency for bringing this letter to the attention of the members of the Episcopal Conference.

[signed] Franjo Cardinal Šeper, Prefect

In an early work, Evelyn Waugh prophesized:

Every effort was made to encourage the children at the public schools to ‘think for themselves.’ When they should have been whipped and taught Greek paradigms, they were set arguing about birth control and nationalization. Their crude little opinions were treated with respect. Preachers in the school chapel week after week entrusted the future to their hands. It is hardly surprising that they were Bolshevik at 18 and bored at 20.

At a minimum, we need not treat the crude paradigm shift opinions of the Pontifical Academy for Life with respect.

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