Public Safety and Welfare

New York City’s crime rate has remained at relatively low levels even as the size of the police force has fluctuated. This reflects a basic reality that decades of evidence have made clear: police and incarceration have diminishing returns as tools of public safety. There is only so much that police arriving after a crime has occurred can do, and there is a hard limit to how much public safety can be improved by incarcerating low-level offenders. Both strategies carry enormous social and fiscal costs, often without delivering lasting reductions in harm.

Truly improving public safety means investing in the strategies that are actually proven to reduce dangerous situations before they escalate—approaches that address instability, untreated illness, and systemic failure rather than managing the consequences after the fact.

• Legal Support for People Reporting Crimes (see Public Safety)

  • It is incredibly difficult to report a crime. A large part of this is because reporters have no legal support unless the DA decides to get involved, which is dependent on a successful report. NYC recently started a program to supply any person facing housing court with an attorney; it is a civic imperative to provide this for people reporting crimes.

• Universal mental health and addiction services as public safety infrastructure

  • Untreated mental illness and addiction are major drivers of homelessness, public disorder, and repeat interactions with police. Much of what people experience as “disorder” on the street—erratic behavior, public distress, and visible crisis—is rooted in the absence of accessible treatment, not criminal intent.

  • States that expand access to treatment see reductions in emergency room use, incarceration, and repeat offending. The alternative—cycling people through jails, shelters, and emergency departments—is vastly more expensive and less humane.

• Housing security (see Affordable Housing)

  • Housing instability is one of the strongest predictors of crime victimization and contact with the justice system. Housing policy is therefore inseparable from public safety. Preventing eviction and homelessness does more to reduce crime than expanding jails or increasing patrols.

  • Fair housing — not discrimination for a felony

• Funding for more shelters and better shelter design

  • Shelters are often treated as a last resort and funded accordingly, producing environments that feel unsafe for residents and surrounding communities alike. SRO-style units with secure storage, lockers, and appropriate staffing reduce conflict, improve outcomes, encourage shelter seeking, and cost less than policing street homelessness or building and operating jails.

  • Warming locations to draw folks off the street

• Consent and Emotional Regulation education (see Consent Education)

  • Ben supports K–12 consent education and emotional regulation instruction as part of a broader public safety strategy. Research shows that early, age-appropriate education reduces sexual violence, bullying, and later violent behavior far more effectively than downstream interventions, reducing incidents by 25-50%. Preventing harm is both more humane and more cost-effective than responding after lives have already been disrupted.

• Expand the court system and make it more flexible to permanently end the shortage of judges (see Home Rule)

  • New York’s chronic shortage of judges, especially in New York City, brings the wheels of justice to a slow grind. Long waits for trial create a cascade of serious problems, from violation of constitution, to life-altering holding of unconvicted detainees, to a justice system that fails to bring people to justice.