Zohran Kwame Mamdani, running for New York City mayor on the Democratic ticket, is also a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose platform calls for slashing arrests, cutting prosecutors’ budgets, abolishing cash bail and pre-trial detention, scrapping electronic monitoring, and ending imprisonment for parole violations.
Although Mamdani has since walked back his earlier comments about defunding the police, his policies would effectively do just that. His plan would shift much of the NYPD’s patrol work to a newly created Department of Community Safety, restrict police authority, downgrade serious crimes, and discourage enforcement of misdemeanors, all consistent with the DSA’s broader push to weaken law enforcement and dismantle public safety.
In August 2020, when asked if prisons were obsolete, Mamdani replied, “I think that frankly, I mean, what purpose do they serve, right? I think we have to ask ourselves that… I think a lot of people who defend the carceral state, that defend the idea of it and the way it makes them feel, they’re not defending the reality of it and the practices that are part and parcel of it.”
Then, at a 2021 protest outside the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, he went even further, declaring, “What violent crime is, is defined by the state. Violence is an artificial construction.”
Mamdani has criticized the Adams administration for increasing the number of inmates on Rikers Island by roughly a thousand, claiming the population could be reduced to fewer than four thousand. Since Rikers averages about seven thousand inmates, that would mean cutting the prison population nearly in half, by around 3,300 people, or 47 percent. Supporters of Mamdani insist that overall crime is down, but those claims rely on deceptive statistics.
For example, in 2023, New York City saw roughly 1,000 felony reports for every 380 arrests. Of those arrests, prosecutors declined to press charges in 42 cases, and 200 more were dismissed. Ultimately, only 123 of the original 1,000 felony complaints led to any conviction, with just 32 resulting in felony convictions, and fewer than 40 offenders serving additional jail or prison time. New York City’s conviction rate is now 39 percent lower than in 2019 and 52 percent lower than in the rest of the state. Prosecutors are declining more cases than ever, and dismissals have skyrocketed.
Meanwhile, total reported crimes, including 188,418 felonies, 299,929 misdemeanors, and 88,761 violations in 2024, show that violence remains a serious problem. Assaults, both felony and misdemeanor, have climbed steadily since 2008 and reached their highest levels since 1998. Subway assaults have tripled since 2009. Despite these facts, Mamdani and his supporters use manipulated crime statistics to claim too many people are imprisoned, when in reality, fewer criminals are being prosecuted, convicted, or incarcerated than ever before.
One of Mamdani’s socialist proposals is to make public transportation free. A trial program was conducted and quickly declared a success by Democrats, though their definition of success was simply that people used the free routes. They ignored the fact that most of the ridership had merely been diverted from nearby fare-paying lines, reducing the city’s overall revenue. Even more importantly, they overlooked a basic truth: nothing is free. The cost of these “free” rides was merely shifted to taxpayers, many of whom drive or walk and therefore received no benefit from the program.
Supporters also claimed the project reduced transit crime, citing a 38.9 percent drop in assaults on bus operators along the free routes. Even if that number is accurate—which is doubtful, given the way Democrat jurisdictions often downgrade crimes—the logic behind it is absurd. Should the public really have to be bribed not to attack bus drivers? Do airline pilots get assaulted because passengers pay for tickets?
If paying a fare provokes someone to violence, that person is not a victim of the system but someone unfit for civil society, because the next time they’re asked to follow a rule, they’ll attack someone else.
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