150 arrests and he still walks: How NY laws push criminals to grow worse

Thanks to “criminal-justice reform,” you can rack up almost 150 arrests in this town and still get to walk when caught again.

Meet career crook Shaquan Seth, cut loose last week after five, count ’em five, shoplifting busts in Queens — less than six days after he got out of Rikers after a five-month stint for previous thievery — because New York law forbids cash bail for offenses like Seth’s. 

No matter that he was no sooner back on the streets than he was eagerly reoffending, nor that he stole $600 worth of fancy candles, when the no-bail believers insist such theft is mostly out of need, like Jean Valjean. 

No matter that he threatened to shoot a young female clerk who was brave enough to try stopping him.

He was put right back on the street. 

So you’ll be reading about Shaquan Seth again in these pages; we hope it’s not because he’s made good on his promise to shoot someone. 

But that’s what our “reformed” laws encourage: years of offending and reoffending as the perp gradually works his way up from petty crime to homicide. 

Seth has already done jail time for larceny, robbery, resisting arrest and assaulting a cop; it’s clear he has much worse in him than candle theft. 

He belongs in prison (or, conceivably, locked up in a mental institution). 

The progressive lawmakers who’ve made it all but impossible to keep such menaces the street are still working to further empty New York’s jails and prisons — proving conclusively whose side they’re on. 

It isn’t yours.