Wednesday, November 4, 2015

IF EVERYTHING WAS LEGAL WE WOULDN'T HAVE ANY CRIME

Now if I have this right, the Obama Administration, who apparently believes if everything was legal we wouldn’t have any crime, is planning to release thousands of “non-violent” incarcerated prisoners from our Federal Prisons before their terms are up over the next few days and weeks. This, they opine, will help ease overcrowding and improve our economy. I guess they believe these ex-cons will go out and get good paying jobs and become legitimate tax paying citizens. Besides, they say, most will have served a lot of their required time in prison. Also they will be on “supervised” release. That means they will have to report to a parole officer who will keep tabs on them.

Here is what we know. Most individuals who are released from prison are prone to be rearrested and returned to prison. The reasons given range from being unable to get an actual job to never having been rehabilitated in the first place. Prisons, we have been told, are institutions of rehabilitation as well as places of punishment.

Here is what else we know. Most individuals who make the news as thieves and killers, are people who have extensive records of arrest and imprisonment. This moron who was just killed in Tennessee was arrested at least twenty-eight times and convicted many, many times. The killer of the young girl in San Francisco had been arrested and convicted many times and even deported five times. But, instead of actually being in prison, these individuals were out on the street ready and willing to commit mayhem and all manner of lawlessness. How many times have we seen young people in their twenties having long arrest and conviction records but are out on the street reoffending?

But no, screams the Administration. We’re talking about non-violent offenders, mostly just drug criminals. You mean like dealers of poison to stupid kids? No, they say, these are people who are just trying to augment their meager incomes by selling and producing illegal narcotics designated for the unsuspecting users among us.

Also among those to be released are the users who steal to support their habits or commit other crimes like prostitution and forgery. Besides, the government is going to check them out and make sure they can be trusted to walk the straight and narrow. There should be nothing to worry about, right?

A number of police chiefs and sheriffs are worried though. Some are even saying this is going to cause a huge increase in crime. I think I would side with the police on this one.

I have wondered aloud and in this forum from time to time, just what sort of crime do you have commit to be put into prison and kept there?  I remember when armed robbery called for twenty to life. Now it is often pled down to a misdemeanor with little or no prison time. Drug convictions are so common that they seem to be swept under the rug. Prisons are swinging doors of recidivism. The penal is gone out of the penal prison system and the rehabilitation is just conversation.

As a country based on law and order we should require of ourselves the building of  sufficient prisons for  offenders. I know they are expensive. So is crime. If we are not willing to punish our offenders, we have no right to expect crime to go down. We also have no right to expect individuals to obey laws. This latest bit of nonsense coming out of the Obama Administration is just another example of liberal defiance of law. Watch with me how many of these parolees reoffend and wind up back in prison. Probably, I’m guessing, most of them.

Ron Scarbro

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