Conservative political commentator, Judd Garrett, clearly illustrated the fallacy of “restorative justice” in a commentary underpinned by the recent series of egregious crimes that made national headlines.

• Chicago: 26-year-old Bethany McGee was riding a CTA train when Lawrence Reed—a career criminal with 72 prior arrests—doused her with gasoline and set her on fire. She is now clinging to life with burns over 70% of her body. When asked why she had released Reed shortly before the attack, Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez replied, “I can’t put everyone behind bars just because the State Attorney asks me to.”
• Charlotte: Last August 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who fled Russia’s war, was stabbed through the heart and killed on a light-rail train by Decarlos Brown, a repeat offender arrested and released at least 14 times before the murder.
• New York City: On a Manhattan train platform, 28-year-old Tyquan Manassa pulled out a knife and slashed multiple victims. Earlier in the year he had been arrested for violent misconduct in a shelter and released. In total he has over a dozen arrests, most involving assault—yet judges repeatedly returned him to the streets.
• Charlotte (again): On November 5, 2025, Dontaveon Craig was arrested for assaulting a woman and possessing a controlled substance—his 52nd arrest in just over a decade. He posted bond and walked out of jail ten hours later.

As Garrett points out, the pattern is depressingly familiar: a career criminal—often someone whom ideological prosecutors and judges view as a “victim of the system”—is repeatedly released until yet another innocent person pays the ultimate price.

This is what liberal activists call restorative justice: a system that prioritizes “repairing harm” and “dialogue” over incarceration, even for individuals who have repeatedly demonstrated that they are violent and dangerous.  In far too many cases, liberal judges appear to believe that when a minority offender commits a crime, the real culprits are the system, the legacy of slavery, systemic racism, or some socioeconomic inequity—anything or anyone but the perpetrator.

From this worldview flows a belief that imprisoning habitual offenders is unfair, unjust, and even racist.  But restorative justice as applied to violent criminals is neither just nor restorative—it is a perpetuation of injustice.

It’s axiomatic that social policies should be measured against results, not intentions, nonetheless, our country continually adopts policies that appear to be noble yet have failed miserably when put into action in the real world.  What follows are just two real-world examples.

“Housing First” as a standalone solution to homelessness. This approach provides permanent housing without requiring sobriety, treatment, or behavioral change, based on the theory that stability now leads to recovery later. But that promise has never materialized.  There is no evidence that housing first policies reduce much less eliminate addiction, unemployment, or mental illness—its core justifications.

Meanwhile, cities that embraced this chimera most aggressively—Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle—saw homelessness increase sharply despite spending billions.  The problem was that the policy framed homelessness purely as a housing problem (rather than a complex mix of addiction, mental illness, and instability) causing California’s homeless population to grow by 31% during the period studied.

Rent control is another specious idea that appears compassionate but is just the opposite.   Yes, rent control temporarily lowers rents for some people.  Yet the long-term consequences have been disastrous everywhere it’s been tried: it always reduces the supply of rental units.  It makes new development unprofitable, blocking new construction leading to unit withdrawal from the rental market.  Frozen rents mean reduced maintenance accelerating neighborhood decline and eventually raises rents for newcomers, worsening affordability, all of which is evinced repeatedly by hard evidence.

At the same time, economists across the political spectrum, from uber liberal Paul Krugman to conservative Milton Friedman, and nearly all serious academic research—agree on this pattern.

Why Restorative Justice Fails in the Real World

There is scant evidence indicating that restorative justice reduces violent offending or improves public safety at a system-wide level.  And nearly all published research focuses on hand-picked individual cases, not community-level crime outcomes.  And while a small number of offenders may benefit, the evidence simply does not support reductions in city or region-wide violent crime.

The success of restorative justice depends upon program quality and trained facilitators.  But most jurisdictions lack anything close to the quality and quantity of facilitators needed.  Meanwhile, its implementation has been grossly inconsistent, often ideological, and rarely data driven.  It is routinely misapplied to repeat violent offenders, for whom it has absolutely no track record of success.

I do not criticize compassion, and to be clear, restorative justice has been effective under certain circumstances.  It has shown value for juveniles, first-time offenders, non-violent crimes, and minor assaults, when supported by strong structure and qualified professionals.  But there is no record of restorative justice providing any measurable benefit regarding the offenders who most endanger the public, i.e., violent habitual offenders, serial criminals, and repeat predators.

Using it as a substitute for incarceration—particularly in politically progressive jurisdictions—is not compassion, it’s negligence!  And as the aforementioned tragic cases demonstrate, the cost of that negligence is paid by innocent civilians who have suffered life-changing and life-ending consequences from a ‘noble idea’ that has no basis in reality.