Leftists in the Justice System Should Pay For What They Unleash On Society…

When I was 12 years old, we moved to the Navy base on Guantánamo 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 behind 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 principal, 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.

And that’s when I learned something about the military, or at least how it was decades ago.  Apparently, when you’re a kid in a military family, particularly when living on a military base, your dad is held accountable for your actions.  Basically it’s his job to keep you in line, and if he can’t do that then his career can be impacted.

Although this is where things get a bit blurry as to my actual punishment, what’s not blurry is that I learned that having your dad called to pick you up from school was a bad thing… and I don’t think he ever had to again… From that point forward, I knew that I was being held responsible for my actions, and I behaved accordingly.

Clearly, forty-some years later, that lesson stuck:  Actions have consequences.

Sadly, however, that lesson doesn’t apply so much today.  At least not everywhere.

One place it often does is the private sector.  Doctors have to carry mountains of insurance in case they make a mistake and someone dies or is harmed by them.  Architects carry insurance in case one of their buildings collapses. Supermarkets carry insurance in case someone slips in the produce aisle and breaks their arm.  And you and I and most Americans carry car insurance in case we run a red light and T-bone a Chevy Impala at the corner of First & Main.  Americans, eschewing Shakespeare’s advice to “Kill all the lawyers”, are litigious people.  Why?  Basically because – other than a sizable army of grifters – most Americans think one should be held responsible for one’s actions.

But you know where that rule rarely applies?  Government.  From politicians making promises they break as soon as they take their oath to schools that fail to teach students to a Pentagon that can’t seem to account for $220 billion in gear, someone could write a book about all the failures of government driven by incompetence and negligence.

While there is no dearth of examples of government 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 as they relate to violent criminals. Unlike 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, where 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 we soon discover they were let out early on parole or were 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 or victims in a hospital or bodies in a morgue.  Those are real-world consequences of decisions made by government employees who have no fear of themselves or their families suffering consequences for their bad decisions. And it happens all the time.  Prosecutors plea attempted murder down to assault and 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 reoffend 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 murdered the young son of his ex-girlfriend the day after he was released. That’s news only because it rarely happens.

The solution to this problem is actually quite simple, although there is zero chance it ever gets implemented. What is it?  Accountability.  Judges and DA’s 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 duration of the remainder of their original sentence. I’m not suggesting that they should face the chair if one of the thugs they put back on the street murders someone, but they should share some of the consequences of their bad decisions.  Perhaps getting fired with no pension, disbarment, some time in jail, or something sufficiently painful so that they take their duties seriously.

Now, 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 put so much trust.

No doubt there would be a great deal of pushback from “justice reform advocates”, defense attorneys, and state and local treasurers, but regardless of the merits of their arguments, none outweighs the right of the public 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, but eventually, judges, DA’s, and parole board members would hone their decision-making skills so that they make decisions that are better balanced between the desires of the criminals for relief and the desire of the community for safety.  There is certainly a balance to be had between the rights of criminals and the safety of a community, but right now 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.