HEATHER MACDONALD: The Trump Administration is trying to nudge cities back in the sanity of holding people accountable and making sure that the streets are passable for senior citizens, for children going to schools. That is something to be supported, but, of course, the advocates are . . .

What can government do to restore sanity to drugged-out, filth-encrusted, dangerous city streets? Defund the advocates and refund jails and insane asylums. There is money to do so if we stop supporting activist social programs. Create ample incarceration and institutional… pic.twitter.com/09n0aYW0db

— Heather Mac Donald (@HMDatMI) September 25, 2026

What can government do to restore sanity to drugged-out, filth-encrusted, dangerous city streets? Defund the advocates and refund jails and insane asylums. There is money to do so if we stop supporting activist social programs. Create ample incarceration and institutional capacity and thereby strip every excuse, such as prison overcrowding, from de-incarcerating prosecutors and judges. Two strikes and you’re out. Ditch Housing First, replace with Treatment First and judicial oversight.

TRANSCRIPT

The government's primary responsibility is to the law-abiding people who are trying to go about their daily business try to work try and better themselves.  It is an absolute, should be an absolute entitlement to have safe city streets.  We took that for granted.  I mean you can look at pictures of the New York subways in the 1950s.  You didn't have people being pushed onto the subways. That was nothing anybody had to worry about.  If it takes spending, redirecting the billions that we're spending on these feckless harm reduction programs that you rightly mentioned, Corinne, and redirecting that to building more capacity for involuntary commitment, to building more capacity for incarceration, we've got to do it.  

The Trump Administration is under fire right now.  It has another pilot program where it is incentivizing urban jurisdictions to get rid of their harm reduction program, to get rid of "housing first," and say, 

No. Treatment first.  Law first.

And if you are willing to enforce the law, to use things like homeless courts that say, okay, you've broken the law against street camping, public drug use; in theory, we could send you to jail.  But if you stay in treatment, court-supervised for a year to get better, we will wipe your record clean. That is a perfectly legitimate bargain.  The Trump Administration is trying to nudge cities back in the sanity of holding people accountable and making sure that the streets are passable for senior citizens, for children going to schools.  That is something to be supported, but, of course, the advocates are calling things like . . . .  Louisiana has a homeless Court program, and the rhetoric is just unbelievably hysterical, like, "This is the cruelest thing I've seen in decades."  It's a judge supervising somebody's drug treatment to get that person better.  That's not cruel, it's humane.