I talk a lot on this blog about “Bad Justice”, where essentially the legal system betrays public safety and lets known violent predators out on the streets where they almost always commit further crimes (its their damn nature!), the ones that get the most press are when they escalate their crimes. A stalker becomes a rapist, a violent offender becomes a murderer, a single-murderer commits multiple murder. Sean has been making quite the crusade to bring attention to the fact that most people who commit murder have already committed many violent crimes before. Essentially repeat offenders are telling the world they should not be trusted with freedom, and there are people so stupid not to listen and turn them lose on the rest of us. There is a bill here in Massachusetts that would correct this.
If Melissa’s Bill had been law, supporters say Dominic Cinelli, a career criminal serving three life sentences, would not have been eligible for parole and would not have been on the streets to plan and execute a hold-up at the Kohl’s jewelry counter on Dec. 26 of last year.
It is essentially a gentler version of the “Three-strikes-and-you’re-out”, on your third felony no parole, no good behavior, you serve your time. If your third crime is 5 years you do 5 years, if your third crime is life, you’re done. Its a pretty fair law if you ask me. Frankly if somebody can’t get it right on the third time they never will and will only get worse the longer they walk the streets.
I urge all in Massachusetts to contact their legislators and urge them to support this bill. More information can be found here.
Unintended consequence: prosecutors contrive to manufacture three felony charges for anyone arrested if at all possible (and given the intended levels of legislative intricacy that exist today, this isn’t all that difficult). If maximum job performance (and, thus, maximised re-election/reappointment possibilities) are defined as “three strikes convictions”, that becomes the basic standard of professional conduct by law enforcement and the court system generally. California has a “three strikes” law, check into how well that’s worked out before leaping over this particuar social barrier maybe?
Want fair and impartial cops? Give them fair and impartial laws to enforce and conviction-neutral standards by which to catagorise prosecutor’s performance. The three strikes jurisprudence fallacy is effectively identical to the broken windows economic fallacy in that they both mis-allocate resources and they both conflate rational actor’s choices with social environmental factors.
I do think we need some sort of “step back a second and look at the big picture” style sentencing. NC has “structured sentencing” that tries to take into account previous crimes. I am just not convinced that the career criminals are being given enough time. At a certain point you have to throw up your hands and say, “It’s over. Life, no parole.”
Crusade, lol. I always knew that the murderers and serious criminals mostly had records. I am just surprised how bad it really is. I have another one for tomorrow. He won’t be needing the life sentence he should have gotten already.