The studio hesitated. Cameras kept rolling. Sandler leaned forward, eyes locked on the panel with the same laser-focus he usually reserves for a performance.
“Let me be clear,” he continued. “This chaos you keep talking about isn’t spontaneous. It’s being amplified. Weaponized. Used for political gain.”
A panelist tried to jump in, but Sandler raised his hand, halting the interruption with professional poise.
“No—look at the facts. When streets are allowed to spiral out of control, when police are restrained, when the rule of law is weakened, ask yourself one question: who benefits?”
He paused, then answered it himself.
“Not Donald T.r.u.m.p.”
“This disorder is being used to scare Americans. To convince them the country is broken beyond repair. And then—conveniently—to blame the one man who keeps saying the same thing: law and order matters.”
Someone muttered, “That sounds authoritarian.”
Sandler snapped back immediately.
“No. Enforcing the law is not authoritarian. Securing borders is not authoritarian. Protecting citizens from violence is not the end of democracy—it’s the foundation of it.”
The camera zoomed in.
“The real game here,” Adam Sandler said, his voice sharpening, “is convincing Americans that demanding order is dangerous, while celebrating chaos as progress.”
He spoke slowly, deliberately.
“Donald T.r.u.m.p isn’t trying to cancel elections. He’s trying to defend the voices that the political and media elites ignore—the people who just want a safe country and a fair system.”
Sandler finished, staring straight into the lens.
“America doesn’t need more fear-driven narratives. It doesn’t need apocalyptic monologues. It needs truth, accountability, and leaders who aren’t afraid to say that order is not the enemy of freedom.”
The room fell quiet—not from shock, but because the message had been delivered plainly.
A stabbing at Penn Station shows the design failure at the core of our criminal justice system.
By: Charles Fain Lehman
Published: Jun 10, 2026
On Sunday, police charged Hector Deleon, an “emotionally disturbed” and homeless 51-year-old, with slashing six fellow New Yorkers in an unprovoked attack at New York’s bustling Penn Station. Deleon, the New York Post subsequently reported, has a vibrant criminal history: another slashing committed in Newark four years ago and six other prior arrests, including “aggravated assault, unlawful possession of a weapon, use or possession of drugs, assault, domestic assault and criminal mischief.”
Deleon’s crimes have provoked a now-familiar outcry: Why was a violent criminal, with a string of priors and a history of deranged behavior, on the streets? Why wasn’t he locked up, either in prison or a mental facility? And why do such people seem to cause so much of our crime problem?
That frequent offenders drive a massive share of all crime is one of the most well-established findings in criminology. But it turns out that in many states and cases, our criminal justice system isn’t designed for that reality. That means people like Deleon keep offending. But it also means that we have lots of opportunities to bring such crime under control.
That a few offenders commit most of the crime is the closest thing we have to an iron law of criminology. Offending follows what social scientists call a “pareto” distribution or the “80/20” rule: (At least) 80 percent of crime is committed by (at most) 20 percent of offenders. The true concentration may be even greater than that. One 2017 systematic review found that the 10 percent of the population that is most criminally active accounts for 66 percent of all crime, on average.
That finding is not new. In one famous study, sociologists Marvin E. Wolfgang, Robert M. Figlio, and Thorsten Sellin followed a cohort of nearly 10,000 Philadelphia boys born in 1945. They found that just 6 percent of those boys were responsible for roughly half of all police contacts observed. Nor is this pattern of crime concentration restricted to the United States. Analysis of data on nearly 2.4 million Swedes found that just 1 percent were responsible for a whopping 63 percent of all criminal offenses.
Concentration shows up across a variety of offenses. Most gun violence, for example, is highly concentrated in tight social networks, a phenomenon that has shown up in Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and Oakland. Concentration is also common in petty crime: In New York City, just 327 people accounted for more than 6,000 shoplifting arrests in 2022, while some 63 people were responsible for more than 5,000 arrests on the subway last year.
Why does criminal offending follow this pattern? A simple answer is that a life of crime is the product of the confluence of many different rare events. Frequent shooters, for example, tend to occur only in environments with a lot of well-armed young men with little oversight and a strong culture of honor. Frequent shoplifters tend to be seriously mentally ill and/or addicted to drugs, and also have frequent opportunities to shoplift. Peer groups, family environment, and genes likely all play a role. In short, a lot of things have to go wrong for someone to become a frequent offender, so most people don’t.
But if the reality of offender concentration is so well-established, why do we see so many stories about people like Deleon—people with a criminal history who should be locked up, but aren’t?
Some, mostly on the right, tend to think that the issue is ideological. They assert that progressive prosecutors and lawmakers are simply opposed to punishing criminals, viewing it as racist and unjust. Others, often but not exclusively on the left, see the issue as one of deprivation. Frequent offenders lack the resources needed to stop their behavior, and the system lacks the resources needed to provide them with appropriate care.
There are merits to both of these views. Bad criminal justice laws often remain in place for ideological reasons. And our criminal justice and mental health systems often lack the capacity needed to deal with the problems of frequent criminal offenders.
But there’s a deeper, structural problem: Our criminal justice system is built with offenses, not offenders, as its fundamental unit of analysis. Decisions about how to deal with a given case—whether at the point of arrest, arraignment, prosecution, or sentencing—tend to turn on the character of the offense in question, rather than on what we know about the offender. Yet if criminal offending is highly concentrated among certain people, then for purposes of preventing future crime, we should care much more about who is offending than what the “instant” offense was.
To be sure, offender considerations play some role in the criminal justice system. Sentencing decisions often incorporate criminal history; in most states, bail decisions can be made based on an offender’s reoffense risk, and prosecutors can weigh criminal history in deciding whether to move forward. But these factors are almost always secondary to the actual offense in question.
The system’s focus on offense rather than offender yields skewed priorities. “Habitual offender” statutes are often old or poorly drafted. Misdemeanors often go unprosecuted, even though someone who has committed a dozen misdemeanors may be a more serious problem than someone who has committed a single felony. It’s often hard to track offenders through the system, whether for bureaucratic reasons or because old charges are sealed.
Some states, moreover, have made offender discrimination much harder than it needs to be. In New York, for example, detaining people pre-trial on the basis of their re-offense risk is against the law. Other states have narrowed three-strikes laws and other enhancements meant to catch up career offenders. Prosecutors who categorically refuse to charge “minor” crimes similarly blind themselves by focusing on the offense, rather than the offender.
Other jurisdictions are taking the frequent offender problem more seriously. Some, like Baltimore, are implementing “focused deterrence” strategies, policing tactics that entail focusing on the most violent few and aggressively discouraging them from violence. Other states are expanding restrictions on bail (in North Carolina), pushing to update their three strikes laws (in Tennessee), and modernizing their systems to track high utilizers more easily (in Utah).
In many ways, it’s a virtue of our system that offenders are treated alike—discrimination on irrational bases, like race or ethnicity, is wrong. But some offenders commit far more crime than others, a fact the system needs to recognize at every step. Until we do so, shocking crimes by frequent offenders will remain all too normal.
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“This kid gloves approach to bail and lack of prosecution isn’t cutting it,” a frustrated law-enforcement source said.
By: Joe Marino and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon
Published: Sep 7, 2025
Subway crime has dipped in the Big Apple — but try telling that to the victims of these transit terrors.
A cluster of 63 career criminals continues to wreak havoc in the city’s underground, racking up more than 5,000 busts between them — yet only five of them are currently behind bars, The Post has learned.
The motley crew has amassed a disturbing rap sheet for crimes including assault, robbery, theft, turnstile-jumping and a string of other nuisance offenses — but they largely remain free because the state’s lax criminal-justice reforms bar judges from holding them on bail.
“Crime is down in the subways, but it’s the same handful of criminals making it feel like chaos,” a frustrated law-enforcement source said. “This kid gloves approach to bail and lack of prosecution isn’t cutting it.”
The latest NYPD statistics show that transit crime in the five boroughs has been on the decline, down 3.8% over the first eight months of the year compared to the same period in 2024 and dipping nearly 6% in the past two years thanks to focused enforcement and police deployments.
That’s no thanks to the state’s 2019 criminal justice reforms, which bar judges from setting bail on most crimes, including all non-violent crimes.
Under the so-called reforms, repeat offenders busted for any crime other than violent felonies typically get a slap on the wrist and are cut loose while their cases are pending — with many allegedly committing new crimes.
That’s been the case with dozens of transit system offenders, according to sources.
Among the most notorious is Michael Wilson, a 39-year-old vagrant with 198 total arrests, 190 of them tied to the transit system — and 36 of them this year alone.
Wilson’s rap sheet — who cops say should be in the subway crime “Hall of Fame” — includes multiple arrests for alleged criminal tampering for rigging MetroCard dispensers.
Another repeat offender is 28-year-old Kenney Mitchell, who has been arrested a total of 149 times in his life, including 18 times just since May of this year for alleged theft and forgery — and in June after he was found lying on a C train platform with a pocket full of crack vials, sources said.
Carlos Baezcaban, 53, has logged 72 career arrests, including for alleged grand larceny, trespassing and drug possession. That count includes the six times he has been busted since he was put on probation in May for a possession of stolen property conviction.
Some of the offenders have been hit with sex-related crimes such as public lewdness and forcible touching.
Matthew Leon, 26, has 29 arrests under his belt — with 13 that were sex-related, including for allegedly fondling female straphangers and pressing against others.
Another repeat offender, 38-year-old Jamar Cobb, has logged 48 career arrests including for alleged robbery and public lewdness and theft.
Shaquille Clarke, 32, whose 18 arrests include alleged forcible touching and robbery, has been charged with pressing against a woman in the subways and slugging a lady to take her phone, sources said.
Clarke was placed on probation in May for a robbery conviction and has been arrested once since.
Of the six chronic offenders named above, only one, Leon, is currently behind bars. The rest are still roaming the streets and train system.
Leon was finally ordered held without bail on a February charge of forcible touching of a minor in Queens.
Some conviction and prosecution rates have fallen, too.
Ten years ago, 81% of transit felony arrests resulted in convictions, compared to just 36% to 38% today, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The accused scofflaws have been represented by multiple lawyers over the years, primarily public defenders, while some of the charges against them were minor and did not involve the need for an attorney.
The Legal Aid Society, which helps provide public defenders, declined to comment. The Post reached out to numerous lawyers who have repped some of the scofflaws, but the attorneys either did not return calls for comment or would not discuss the cases.
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"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
– Adam Smith, "Theory of Moral Sentiments"
People aren't entitled to endless chances. And declining to lock up black perpetrators because they're black is the real racism of low expectations.
Lock up the worst 1% of society who commits crimes, and then go the extra mile and execute the worst 1% of the 1%.
🫂🤝🏙️ Crime declines in U.S. cities thanks to community programs and less policing! Homicide and violent crime rates are dropping to pre-pandemic levels nationwide, with cities like Birmingham, Chicago, and Baltimore seeing double-digit declines through prioritizing community-based initiatives! Amidst a decline in police department staffing, local and municipal leaders have invested in community services such as recreation projects, violence intervention, affordable housing, mental health services, and youth programs, tackling systemic problems at the root.
While national rhetoric leans on fear and force, mayors in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, and Birmingham are reducing homicides through dat
