St. Louis Mayor: We Need ‘to Find a Balance’ Between Reform, Enforcing Law

During an interview with the Fox News Rundown podcast released on Tuesday, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said that we do need to find a better balance between reforming the criminal justice system and ensuring strong law enforcement.

Host Jessica Rosenthal asked, [relevant exchange begins around 20:10] “I wonder, when you look around the country, and you sort of reflect on your job and the mayors of other large cities, have things gone too far, like cashless bail, overcrowding resulting in people being released, maybe based on their last crime, maybe [rather] than a more violent prior. Do we need reforms to the reforms now, or more of an effort to find a balance?”

Jones responded, “I think we need more of an effort to find a balance. And in St. Louis, no one wanted to see the circuit attorney’s office fail, but we do have a new circuit attorney, and we know that he is applying a standard of excellence to re-staffing the office, to working with all of the pieces of our criminal justice system, because it’s an ecosystem and it only works when all of the pieces are working together.”

Jones also said that we do need to ensure criminals who have served their time have a better shot at a second chance to become law-abiding members of society. And discussed efforts she has undertaken to try to keep people out of a life of crime in the first place and to have people other than the police deal with mental health issues.

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