Gov. Phil Murphy never seems entirely at home when he’s talking tough on crime, and at the signing of a new law that raised penalties for armed home invasions, the governor tried to remind onlookers to his social justice side, too.
“We’re incredibly proud that we’ve brought fairness to our criminal justice system,” he told reporters after the bill signing. “Today was about stronger, but the past seven years have also been about fairness.”
The new law was indeed more about punishment, increasing the penalties for armed invasions and also treating juveniles as adults when it came to armed burglaries.
State Assemblyman Paul Kanitra (R-Ocean) said thieves broke into his house to steal the keys to his state car and then drove off in it. He says this bill should go even further and treat those under 16 as adults when it comes to unarmed invasions as well.
“The bill that just got passed makes young thieves even more valuable now, because it increases the penalties for adults but it does nothing for youth without a gun, who committing 90 percent of these crimes anyway,” he said.
Advocates said politicians this election season are just trying to tap voters’ anxieties, even if the data points otherwise.
“These policies are not based on data or evidence, so I can only think of them as politically motivated at this point, because we know that tough on crime policies don’t work,” said Marlena Ubel, a senior policy analyst for New Jersey Policy Perspective, a progressive policy think-tank,
“What we know is that in 2014 burglaries in New Jersey were over 31,000 that year,” she said. “Last year, it was 13,000. That’s a huge difference.”
Still, Edison Mayor Sam Joshi called home invasions a “crisis ” in his community, even as statistics show that Edison Township’s crime rate is significantly lower than the national average in all categories, including burglaries.
“We increased the amount of police officers to 196, which is the highest number of police officers here in Edison Township in 15 years,” he said. “We had sometimes even four times the amount of police officers that were on the road at a given time. and yet that was still not enough…”
“When our officers were catching those bad guys and those criminals, what would end up happening is, unfortunately, some of them, especially the juveniles would be right back out on the street.”
