Gov. Phil Murphy Friday signed a package of bills that will increase penalties for auto thefts. The new laws will increase penalties for those who use certain technology to steal cars, or who lead car theft rings, and repeat offenders. One measure takes away the presumption of pretrial releases for anyone who’s been arrested for car theft within 90 days of a previous arrest.
“We will doggedly continue to address inequities, but at the same time we have to be smart about law enforcement, and I think these bills do that,” Murphy said. The Assembly passed the bills on Friday; the Senate passed them unanimously earlier in June. Bill sponsors cite year-over-year increases in car thefts and say communities have been “plagued” by thefts perpetrated by repeat offenders.
“It’s been an urban problem, a suburban problem, and it’s been a statewide issue,” Attorney General Matt Platkin said.
Social justice advocates have criticized the four bills for harkening back to regressive tough-on-crime rhetoric that created racial disparities in policing and incarceration rates. “Law enforcement has already been working on this issue and auto thefts have decreased, so there is no need to have further legislation that will increase detention, increase incarceration in a state that has the most stark racial disparities in the whole country,” said Yannick Wood, the director of the criminal justice reform program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.
