D.A. Bragg Focused on ‘Racial Equity,’ Not ‘Crimes of Poverty’

Speaking to a group from Young New Yorkers in May 2021 during his campaign, George Soros-backed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that racial equity needed to be a priority and that he didn’t believe thievery should be prosecuted since it was a “crime of poverty.”

“I grew up with friends disappearing over charges like that [theft] and even if there is an alternative [to incarceration, such as diversion programs, there is a] consequence of disruption for the family. We need to be asking, ‘Does something make us safer?’ And prosecuting a young person, even if it doesn’t end in incarceration [such as in diversion programs], in my view does not make us safer,” he said. “I think we need to move away from what I would call a crime of poverty.”

Thieves and looters aren’t committing “crimes of poverty.” They’re ransacking Walmarts for big-screen TVs, not loaves of bread because they’re starving.

Bragg said his overall intention was to “Shrin[k] the footprint” of the criminal justice system. And he’s doing that — at the expense of the victims of crime and of the community he serves.

A campaign webpage, which has since been scrubbed, said Bragg believed crimes that disproportionately incarcerate black people are “morally indefensible” to enforce.

“These cases do not belong in criminal court. The punishments are disproportionately harsh, and fall disproportionately on the backs of people of color. This makes them morally indefensible,” Bragg stated on his website. “This is why I will not prosecute most petty offenses through the traditional criminal court system… I will either dismiss these charges outright or offer the accused person the opportunity to complete a program without ever setting foot in a courtroom.”

“In Manhattan, every single step in the way a case is processed from what someone is charged with, to the plea they are offered, to the sentence they are given, is rife with racial disparities,” Bragg said during the 2021 meeting.

What Bragg, Soros, and their fellow leftists want you to believe is that racial disparities in incarceration are the result of systemic racism. They don’t want you to understand that blacks are disproportionately represented because they commit a hugely disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent ones.