From Fox News: Fox News Digital spoke with retired NYPD officer and current John Jay adjunct lecturer Jillian Snider, who said many of the incarcerated individuals released due to COVID-19 in 2020 were older and fell outside of the age bracket of individuals who typically commit most crimes. … “If you look at crime statistics overall, the population that most likely commits violent crime is your 18- to 25-year-olds. Those are the ones who are most responsible for violent crime that we see. And that’s been a number that’s been so consistent … since criminology became studied in the field. And the population that we were leasing from prisons and jails were actually quite older than that,” Snider said. “I don’t really think that there is a strong correlation between the releasing for COVID-related purposes and those individuals subsequently contributing to the current spike, because the data that we have thus far indicates that individuals released on COVID release actually re-offend and recidivate substantially less than individuals who are released through the traditional criminal justice processes,” she added. Violent crimes exploded across the U.S. in 2020, with murders increasing by nearly 30%, according to FBI data, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes. The crime wave continued in 2021, with FBI data showing murders increased another 4.3%. The 2021 data released this month, however, is incomplete and lacks data from nearly 40% of police departments nationwide, including full reports from New York City and Los Angeles. … Snider told Fox News Digital that another contributor likely added to the decrease in prison populations: a backlog at the courts in 2020. “One thing that could possibly be a contributor and again, not a sole contributor by any means, is we saw such a backlog in the processing system, so not necessarily the individuals who were released for COVID, but individuals who were arrested and pending prosecution for so long, because we did see a real slow down amongst our trial processes because courts are closed,” she said. … Snider, who also serves as policy director for R Street’s Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties team, said data is “scarce” on such suspects and if they were subsequently convicted. Snider, who said the defund the police movement “made people question the legitimacy of police,” argued that cities should put more resources into proactive policing units to help curb crime.

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