This is not a good opinion piece. The piece title suggests that other parties cough conservatives cough have better plans, then doesn't mention any, then says liberal bail reforms do seem to be working, then concludes with, "we need to collect more data".

Wow "we should study violent crime to better understand its root causes" what a thought provoking opinion.

I had to look up what the crime severity index is.

The Crime Severity Index tracks changes in the severity of police-reported crime by accounting for both the amount of crime reported by police in a given jurisdiction and the relative seriousness of these crimes. It tells us not only how much crime is coming to the attention of police, but also about the seriousness of that crime.

The specific weight for any given type of offence consists of two parts. The first component is the incarceration rate for that offence type. This is the proportion of people convicted of the offence who are sentenced to time in prison. The second component is the average (mean) length of the prison sentence, in days, for the specific type of offence.

I'm still a little confused. If the number of all crimes including muggings stays the same but they start to punish mugging more severely, the index goes up? Even though the number of crimes is the same?

Also the data he is referencing is for 2022, like he can't wait for 2022 data?