When I was 12 years old, we moved to the Navy base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We moved in the summer and, by the time school started, I’d made friends and was feeling pretty comfortable.
One day, during the first week of class, I was sitting in the back of Mr. Scroch’s Social Studies classroom before he arrived. While we waited, some friends and I were messing around, throwing erasers at one another and calling each other names. Then, we noticed a man sitting in the front row. We immediately settled down but I remember ducking my head and yelling something to the old guy about how he must have failed a lot to be there with us.
Moments later Mr. Scroch walked in the door. After he had settled at his desk, the man in front stood up, pointed out the three of us, and said, “Mr. Scroch, would you please send these three gentlemen to my office at the end of the day.” As my eyes bugged, Mr. Scroch said, “Students, I’d like to introduce our vice principle, Mr. Andrews.”
We dutifully went to Mr. Andrews’ office after school and, somehow, inexplicably, I found myself laughing at him when he asked if we thought we were funny. I protested that class hadn’t started yet, but he was having none of it. He then called my dad to come pick me up.
can’t seem to account for $220 billion in gear, someone could write a book about our federal, state, and local governments’ failures, most of which are driven by incompetence and negligence.
While there is no dearth of examples of a government entity being unaccountable for its actions, there is perhaps one place where government accountability should be the rule more than any other: The Judiciary. In particular, district attorneys, parole boards, and judges should have accountability as they relate to violent criminals.
Unlike the situation when the Pentagon loses a hammer or when a transportation department builds a road to nowhere, when criminals are let back out on the street to terrorize citizens, there are real consequences for real people. But regardless of the gravity of those consequences, the people who created that circumstance are never held accountable.
We see it almost every day across the country, as some career criminal with a rap sheet as long as your arm kills someone or rapes someone or pushes someone in front of a train. And repeatedly, we soon discover the perpetrator was let out early on parole, was sprung via a laughably low bail, or walked out of a jailhouse after no bail was required.
Invariably, those failures result in blood on the streets, victims in a hospital, or bodies in a morgue. Those are real-world consequences of decisions that government employees make when they do not fear that they or their families will suffer consequences for their bad decisions.
And it happens all the time. Prosecutors plea attempted murder down to assault or a judge sets an unconscionably low bail, and, suddenly, a violent criminal is back out on the street. And it happens from the other direction as well, when gullible parole boards believe professional liars when they promise they’re reformed and won’t re-offend and allow them out years early.
Recently, two members of an Illinois parole board resigned (not fired) after a convict to whom they granted parole, within one day of his release, murdered the young son of the parolee’s ex-girlfriend. That’s news only because it almost never happens that the parole board members take responsibility for their decisions.
The solution to this problem is actually quite simple, although there is zero chance it ever gets implemented. What is it? Accountability. Judges and DAs should be held accountable for the crimes committed by the people they put back out on the street, at least for X number of years. Same deal for parole board members. They should be held accountable for the crimes of criminals they put out on the street for the length of time that person would have been imprisoned under the original sentence.
I’m not suggesting that these government employees should face the chair if one of the thugs they put back on the street murders someone. However, they should share some of the consequences of their bad decisions. Perhaps getting fired with no pension, being disbarred, spending time in jail, or facing some other sufficiently painful consequence will see them take their duties more seriously.
Of course this won’t guarantee recidivism drops to zero—that’s impossible. But it might put “Fear of God” into the people in whom the public has placed so much trust.
Undoubtedly, there would be a great deal of pushback from “justice reform advocates”, defense attorneys, and state and local treasurers. Regardless of the merits of their arguments, though, none should outweigh the public’s right to be safe in their communities from known criminals.
This may seem like a draconian solution, and, like most hard fixes, it would take some time to work itself out. Still, judges, Das, and parole board members eventually would hone their decision-making skills so that they make decisions that are better balanced between criminals’ desires for leniency if they’re first-time offenders or have proven remorse and repentance, on the one hand, and citizens’ desire for safety, on the other hand.
There is certainly a balance to be had between the rights of criminals and the safety of a community but, currently, Democrats have put a bag of lead on the side of the criminals, and citizens across the country are paying the price. This might just help bring the scale back into balance.
Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA, or you can visit his new website Gratitude for America.
Image by Vince Coyner
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