“. . . . individuals are just not being held accountable for gun crimes”
Jonn published an article yesterday based on this story. But there are a couple of points here I thought warranted further emphasis, so I’m doing a follow-up.
First point: IMO significantly, Chicago police are decidedly not blaming this uptick in violent crime on fallout from the SCOTUS’s decision in McDonald v. Chicago (2010). Rather, here they’re pointing the finger squarely at the courts – who in the opinion of Chicago’s police effectively are running a “revolving-door” prison system through excessive use of probation, short sentences for violent crimes, and early release of violent felons.
Gee. Not holding violent felons accountable for their crimes – specifically, by letting them out of prison after only a short incarceration, or by not incarcerating them at all – leads to more violent crime from the same violent felons. Who’d a thunk that? Well, judges (and prosecutors; more about them below), lemme tell you: anyone with even a single iota of common sense could have told you that. And now, the police have just told you exactly the same damn thing.
It’s not that hard of a concept to grasp. Bad actions that have few meaningful negative consequences simply are not deterred. Instead, they’re repeated. And running a “revolving-door prison system” through extensive use of short sentences, probation, and early release is a classic example of “bad actions having few meaningful negative consequences.”
Second point: what’s just as significant here IMO is what the police are not requesting be done. Remember: this is “we love gun control by law” Chicago. But here, the police are not calling for new gun control laws to fix a “gun violence” problem. Instead, here they fairly clearly say that existing laws are sufficient; it is instead enforcement of these laws that is lacking – specifically, the post-conviction consequences part of enforcement. They’ve therefore called for sentencing that takes violent felons “off the street” for protracted periods – mandated by changes to those portions of law involving sentencing as necessary.
Based on this last point, anyone with common sense can see that new gun laws simply aren’t necessary to fix the problem; effectively enforcing those laws already “on the books” is what’s needed. It’s a point Jonn’s made repeatedly here at TAH, but it’s worth repeating here again.
I’d like to think that judges (and prosecutors: as commenter 2/17 Air Cav observed in comments to Jonn’s article yesterday, near-universal prosecutor willingness to “plea bargain” indiscriminately in order to keep conviction rates up is a second, big part of the problem) in Illinois and elsewhere will “get with the program” here and actually start taking dangerous, violent felons off the street for long stretches of time; it’s within their power now to do exactly that at sentencing. But I’m not holding my breath – especially since there are now proposals in Congress to reduce or do away with mandatory minimum sentences for many Federal felonies. See the Fox News link (second link above, or in Jonn’s article) for details.
In my city the problem is the police have been told NOT to charge people with gun law violations. They arrest someone who is a felon and find a gun, but don’t charge him with having a gun. The reason is the DA’s don’t want to be accused of being “anti-gun” and judges don’t like it either.
A few years back a person with out a CCW used a concealed gun in a “self defense” shooting, they went after the person and the DA nearly lost the election over it.
So now we have police and DA’s unwilling to charge people for using a gun in a crime. on top of the very short stays in jail for murder and other crimes.
That is yet another way that prosecutors (and in your case, LE) abdicate their responsibilities. And in such cases – as is the Chicago case discussed in the article – new laws are NOT the answer. Rather, actually enforcing those laws that already exist would be sufficient.
Any prosecutor or LE officer that consistently refuses to enforce existing laws should be shown the door. Yes, both have discretion, and should use that discretion when apropos. But simply refusing to enforce a law due to politics is (or should be) an absolute NO GO in either profession.
The detectives in this city, when presented with an arrestee in possession of a firearm, should present the case to the prosecutor’s office and make them, if they are so inclined, decline to prosecute. And, keep very good records as to offender’s name, date of arrest, date of the prosecutor declining to write the warrant, and said prosecutor’s name.
The prosecutor’s “feelings” shouldn’t be of any concern to a detective doing his/her job. Yeah, I know, pie in the sky thinking.
Indeed here in the PRoM we also have a problem with actually prosecuting our mandatory one year for an unregistered weapon whenever we catch these felonious turds. Our police do a great job of catching some thieving bastards who always seem to have a gun with them….of course an illegal, unregistered weapon, often with the serial numbers ground away..but based on case load our felon agrees to plea to the simple burglary or thievery minus the weapons charge and in the interest of expedient justice the PRoM’s duly elected DAs are only too willing to accommodate these requests. Consequently we don’t prosecute these guys on weapons charges until they also use violence with the weapon….
The PRoM also likes to lock up addicts for longer periods of time than our violent felons…probably Chicago has a similar system where we have a lot of junkies serving ten year sentences while armed robbers are looking at less than five thanks to dropping weapons charges.
Less junkies in jail for simple possession and use and more violent felons would go along way in further reducing the crime rates across the country. The police are doing the right things, now we need the justice department to catch up.
Unless it is a “high profile” case (i.e. lots of newspaper ink and TV face time = votes), prosecutors don’t really care about justice, they only care about wins. If they can get a repeat felon to plea down to a misdemeanor, with out a lot of time invested, then a win is a win. More wins = more votes. More votes = another term on the public dole.
But. .. but. .. but. ..
SOCIAL JUSTICE!! NO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY!! IT’S NOT MY FAULT!! SOCIETY MADE ME DO IT!!
The reason for the revolving door situation is that there are too many criminals and not enough prisons, and not enough room in the prisons we have. Even in prison, the prisoners have to be treated humanely and that becomes a problem when you have four men in a room meant for one or two men. So it becomes very simple: build more prisons, or turn some of them out to make room. And while crime is unpopular, so are prisons. They cause property values to plunge, and so most homeowners immediately think: “Not in MY backyard!” So what can be done to fix this? I’ll get back to you when I have the answer. Or not.
Build all new prisons in the Arizona desert, put them all under the authority of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, make the prisoners serve their entire sentence – including any additional time added for possession of an illegal weapon. Solves all the problems: Plenty of new prisons, nowhere near people claiming NIMBY, and the felons are off the streets for decades and, once released, will likely NOT want to be sent back to prison again.
Another possibility is building prisons in the Alaska Wilderness – the further north the better – but still keep them under the authority of Sheriff Arpaio.
Hell no, keep them out of Alaska. We already have tons of dirtbags flocking up here with warrants because they know their respective home state will not extradite. In turn the legal revolving door begins in Alaska as well, with I’d argue the most pro criminal, hug a thug, liberal judiciary in the US. It honestly makes me believe Alaska is now part of Canada.
I’ve always been amazed that a state as sparsely populated with as many armed citizens as Alaska has the high crime rate it does.
Compare them to other states like WY, AZ, VT, NH crime rates which have similar CCW laws, etc., and Alaska seems a bit of an outlier in that regard.
In the villages it is largely alcohol related and sexual abuse. In the cities it is the standard stuff – booze, drugs, assault, you name it. I want to say that the standard stuff comes from the liberals from outside but I don’t know. When I lived in a small town in Southeast, fishermen and loggers drank too much and there were drugs. I remember that there was a murder around 1982 or 83 – it was big news. There was another one in Thorne Bay but it turned out to be defense of a 3rd party.
Back in the early 1980s in the town of McCarthy – population 25 – a fella got up one morning and decided to kill everyone in town. He killed 7 people before one of the locals winged him and they held him for the Troopers. The headline read, “Unemployed Computer Programmer Kills 7”. The employed computer programmers (including myself) didn’t enjoy the extra press. I think that the perp is still in the Alaska Psychiatric Institute.
A long time ago I was talking to an FBI guy in Anchorage. He was talking about bank robbers. In the lower 48 when asked about the gun the clerks would say, “I don’t know but it was Yuuugggeee!” In Alaska, the clerks will tell you make, model, caliber, and sometimes the load (think revolver). Unfortunately that was a long time ago.
There have always been a lot of odd people in Alaska.
You are absolutely correct Richard about the villages vs the road system, booze and more booze. Up here we just had a senate bill pass and is on to the house to “reduce recidivism” by letting ” non violent” offenders out of prison early. The largely oil based economy in Alaska is in the tank and it was our insanely bright elected officials idea to reduce spending by releasing offenders. State income tax… Nah. Sales tax… Nah, cut the PFD… Nah, lottery…nah, we will lay off employees and set prisoners free, and you still get your free $1-2k per year, yay! Sadly Alaska is the end of the road for a lot of people, generally you end up in Alaska because youre running to something or running from something. I just stayed after I ETS’d and now I’m stuck because the old lady is from up here.
Not enough to sweat, make the S.O.B.s bust rock in the heat of the day….work would scare the crime right out of them!!
Barry M. Goldwater Range…. just sayin…
Four men in a cell designed for two does not arouse a lot of sympathy… when I was in the Army, it was a popular statistic that a Federal prisoner was allotted more space than a USAREUR soldier got. You don’t want to wind up living in someone else’s armpit, don’t do the crime.
Try being on a submarine. A lot of junior enlisted don’t even get their own bunks.
Here in Michigan, we don’t have to build any new prisons, we just have to hire people to staff the ones we closed. The spokesman for the Department of Corrections called the practice “rightsizing”.
We have 18 shuttered prisons now.
The big problem in Illinois is the economy. Illinois is broke. The state hasn’t been paying on most of its obligations for years and does not have the money to maintain the prisons they have. Even things like the Illinois Veterans Grant which is supposed to pay for 4 years of college for Illinois vets hasn’t been paid to the schools for the past three years. Private schools have stopped accepting IVG students and public ones are having to increase tuition to cover the IVG students they are accepting. Hell the state wasn’t even paying lottery winners until the courts made them do so.
When I worked as a jailer at a county sheriffs office for the short time between serving in the USAF and then the Army, we had one kid in there who was originally arrested for assaulting a police officer. The judge gave him probation in lieu of a prison sentence. A couple weeks later he was arrested AGAIN for assaulting a police officer. As this was a violation of his probation he was sent to prison to serve a 6 year term. Less than a day later I was in the local bar (very small town) enjoying a beer and in walks, you guessed it, this same kid that we had just shipped to prison for 6 years. He had served less than 24 hours before being released.
Fun fact, that same night he had celebrated a little too much on his good fortune and decided to fight a Sheriffs Deputy. Soon after I left for the Army so I don’t know how long he served in prison after that, but if I had to guess, it wasn’t long.
I’ll fix the prison overcrowding. Anyone convicted of white collar crime gets mandatory restitution (even if they have to be made to work on a chain gang for the rest of their lives to pay it all back), not prison. Anyone convicted of rape or murder automatically gets the death penalty, and quickly (no long, drawn-out appeals process that lasts for decades). For the rest, make prison so miserable that no one wants to go back. Sheriff Arpaio has the right idea.
I bet that at $200 dollars a year per prisoner, we could get Turkey to take a bunch of our violent career criminals. A decade or more in a Turkish prison would sure as hell take the fight out of these thugs. If they survived!
That or make our prisons like the ones in South Korea where the inmates get “Three C’s”, Cold food, Cold Showers, and Cold Cells!!