Socialist Zohran Mamdani once questioned ‘purpose' of prisons, jails — raising alarm bells: ‘It's scary'
The Queens socialist, who easily won the Democratic primary last month, made the eyebrow-raising remark when he was running for his current state assembly seat nearly five years ago.
'I think that frankly, I mean, what purpose do they serve, right?' Mamdani said when asked by a co-host of the 'The Far Left Show' in August 2020 if prisons were obsolete.
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'I think we have to ask ourselves that … I think a lot of people who defend the carceral state, that defend the idea of it and the way it makes them feel, they're not defending the reality of it and the practices that are part and parcel of it,' he continued.
'Because if you actually break it down … how many people come out the prison system better than they went in to the prison system?'
The clip — which resurfaced on social media this week after being shared by the 'End Wokeness' account and shared widely in conservative circles — sparked outrage in the law enforcement community.
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'It's scary that a mayoral candidate could be this out of touch with the realities of living in communities that have historically experienced violence and crime,' one source said. 'Sounds like he will change his tune once he realizes how unhinged that sounds in the real world.'
Mamdani made the remarks in August 2020.
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Another law enforcement source ripped Mamdani's comments as 'luxury beliefs' with potential dire consequences that the 33-year-old Democratic nominee and his supporters won't need to face.
'It's the poor neighborhoods that the stalker, domestic abuser, and shooting recidivist will return,' the source argued.
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'But the rules of civil society that make this city the luxury item most of Zohran's constituency want to live in is a product of that – bad people in jail so they can pretend they live on a movie set.'
One Manhattan cop added: 'Letting criminals walk the streets without any repercussions is not repairing anything.'
Mamdani's campaign didn't return a request for comment.
Mamdani has long criticized the prison system, calling it in one past social media post one of white supremacy's 'many faces,' and stating in another that cutting the jail population was the only way to handle the crisis at Rikers Island.
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In the 2020 interview, Mamdani questioned 'how much harm is actually being prevented versus created' by locking offenders up.
'I think when you ask these kinds of questions people don't always have clear answers, what they always want to pivot to is what are you going to do about murders and what are you going to do about rapists and sometimes you have to ask them what are you doing about them right now?' he said.
'We need a system of justice that will repair the harm that has been caused and address it in a serious way because right now we don't have it and it makes everyone more unsafe and that is the truth of it.'
More recently, Mamdani told The City leading up to last month's Dem primary that he wanted to stay the course on closing Rikers, while working with district attorneys in the city to cut loose more defendants pre-trial or divert them from prosecution entirely.
Mamdani has been critical of the awful conditions at Rikers Island.
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At a mayoral forum in March, the lefty candidate again vowed to shut down Rikers — which is unlikely to meet its legally-mandated closure date in 2027 — while also promising to throw more funds at alternatives to locking people up, according to Gay City News.
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GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa — who will face Mamdani in the November general election — slammed the past sound bite as 'absolutely preposterous.'
'Of course we need jails to keep dangerous individuals off our streets,' the Guardian Angels founder said in a statement, 'but he is no different than Eric Adams who is shutting down Rikers or Andrew Cuomo who pushed to close it while celebrating the shutdown of over 18 state prisons and passing laws that coddle criminals and let them avoid the jail time they deserve.'
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