Carl Heastie’s preposterous claim that punishment serves no purpose

“I just don’t believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last week.

Really.

Truly.

Seriously.

How does this man have any job, let alone one of the three most powerful posts in New York state government?

He doesn’t believe . . . one of the most fundamental facts of human nature, a keystone of codes of law going back at least to ancient Babylon’s King Hammurabi.

No wonder this state is a mess, with crime and disorder rising everywhere: The leader of half the Legislature is either deluded, or so contemptuous of the public that he’ll justify his positions with arrant nonsense.

Carl Heastie doesn’t believe harsher penalties add to deterrence.

How about no penalties for not paying your taxes, Carl?

He was talking specifically about Gov. Hochul’s push to crack down on the $4.4 billion retail-theft industry, and assaults on retail workers, and went on to say, “We care very deeply about that. We just have other ideas of how to get there.”

Pixie dust, maybe? A legion of “retail-theft interrupters”?

He babbled more: “If you just keep dealing with the penalties, what happens after people get arrested? You’re still only worrying about what happens after something has already happened.”

Well, in a world where thieves get arrested, jailed pending trial, prosecuted and if found guilty sent to prison, at the very least they’re not re-offending as long as they’re locked up.

And no one’s talking only about penalties: Better deterrence also includes a stronger chance of getting caught, and reasonable certainty that the guilty will get convicted.

Of course, progressive police-defunders want lower chances of perps getting caught, and Heastie’s pack of “criminal-law reformers” have hamstrung New York prosecutors and courts to minimize the chances of anyone being found guilty, or doing hard time even if they are.

Heck, as top dog in the Bronx Democratic machine, the speaker plays a huge role in tapping the borough’s notoriously soft-on-crime judges.

This is a flat declaration that Heastie doesn’t see law-abiding New Yorkers as his constituents, but rather the criminal class and the demented ideologues who side with them.

If Assembly Democrats thought he really believed this nonsense, they should immediately revolt and try electing a new speaker: After all, he wouldn’t penalize anyone for trying, right? What would be the point?

Then again, if he were unseated, he’d instantly become the top candidate for President Biden’s next border czar.