by Jack
Realignment is the new buzz word for releasing dangerous criminals back on to our streets. Prison overcrowding is of course the reason. Supporters of realignment cite that crime is way, way down, lower than it has been in over 40 years, so what are we thinking by locking all these people up for long sentences? Apparently it has not occured to these dimwits that crime is down
- precisely
because we have been locking up these criminals for long sentences!
I can’t speak for every state, but on the whole we generally don’t lock up people for petty drug crimes, there’s much more to it. In California the idea that our overcrowding is due to a lot of low level drug crime being given prison time is absolutely not true. A crook here has to make a considerable career effort to get to prison. For one, they must have made themselves inelgible for probation by past criminal convictions and a failure to abide by the terms of probation or they have too many convictions for violent crimes. This stuff is a fast track to prison the next time they get busted, even for seemingly small stuff like dealing drugs. So, it’s their criminal history more than any other factor that determines whether or not they go off to the big house. It’s not their money or lack thereof, it’s not their skin color, it’s their criminal history. As the saying goes, it’s not the skin, it’s the sin. I know, we can all cite some case where there was an injustice done and a person whent to prison when county time was more appropriate, but I’m speaking in the most general of terms and the system actually works pretty well, it’s not perfect, but it does what we wanted it to do 98% of the time.
Trying to get this simple point across to liberals is a tough job, despite the facts to support it. Even our AG, Eric Holder, is spreading this disinformation about too many criminal are being locked up because of racisim and/or petty drug crimes. The first thing liberals like Holder will tell us is how over represented blacks are in the system, which is true, but then they are over represented as offenders too. You will have to look a lot deeper than the justice system to find fault here. Holder has been a big disappointment, but then consider who hired him.
This action will do nothing but create a lot of work for the authorities as these people find their way back into the prison system. The cost will drop temporarily at the state level and increase at the local and county levels. This amounts to pushing your problems off on another neighborhood.
Wasn’t the guv talking about private prisons a few days back? That might work better.
Or, they could take a page from Sheriff Arpaio’s Tent City which celebrated 20 years awhile back:
Inmates were given a frills waiver to mark the day and were given, “coffee, candy, G-rated magazines, better food, and some music from the 1990s.”
Woo hoo.
Arpaio’s ricidivism rate:
Gravity works!