Pro-crime measures are a mistake. Freeing crack dealers from prison rarely leads to good things. And CNN’s attempt to spin this outcome of the First Step Act as being Trump’s fault is dishonest.
The First Step Act was another one of those ‘bipartisan’ measures. And ‘bipartisan’ means Democrats get what they want. And somebody gets murdered,
But this is how CNN spins it. “He was one of the first prisoners released under Trump’s criminal justice reform law. Now he’s accused of murder.”
The First Step Act wasn’t Trump’s law. It passed by wide majorities of Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately. It had backing from the usual lefty activists and from libertarians. It was supposed to be the first of a series of lefty-libertarian plans to fix “mass incarceration”.
Now it’s suddenly “Trump’s law”.
The critics of this thing have always been Trump supporters, people like Senator Tom Cotton and Tucker Carlson.
There’s no opposition to putting criminals back on the street on the Left. There’s plenty of opposition on the Right.
And, indeed, when CNN has to find a critic of the First Step Act, they find a Republican critic and a Democrat supporter.
“This case is upsetting but it’s not a surprise,” said Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who was one of the bill’s biggest critics on Capitol Hill. “Letting violent felons out of prison early as the First Step Act did leads to more crime and more victims.”
Meanwhile, one of the causes here was lack of accountability.
When convicted crack-cocaine dealer Joel Francisco was released from prison in February after a federal judge agreed to reduce his life sentence under a recently passed criminal justice reform law, he had to follow a few rules.
Within about two weeks, according to an arrest warrant, Francisco started breaking them.
He tested positive for cocaine on Feb. 20, a violation of a condition to stay away from drugs, probation officials said in court papers seeking a warrant for his arrest. He tested positive for marijuana on June 12, June 18 and June 27, the court papers show. That was a few weeks before he was arrested on a charge of using a knife to try to slice through the screen of his ex-girlfriend’s bedroom window, which was another alleged violation and which he failed to report to probation, which was yet another. He tested positive again for cocaine on Sept. 23.
None of those drug tests or the July arrest immediately prompted federal probation officials to try to revoke his supervised release or to modify its terms, such as having him go to a halfway house where he’d have more supervision.
But a week and a half after the last positive cocaine test, Francisco would, according to authorities, do something that would finally spur federal probation to seek his arrest and to have him answer in court for violating the rules: He fatally stabbed a man at a hookah bar on Federal Hill, the police said.
The positive drug tests and the July criminal charge raise questions about federal probation’s oversight of a man who police had warned was a local Latin Kings gang leader with a propensity for violence.
Pro-crime activists promise accountability, but actual accountability would undermine their effort to set criminals loose.
Criminal amnesties, like illegal alien amnesties, pull the same scam, promising reliability, trust and security. They deliver none of these things. The wrong people qualify for them. And once they’re passed, there’s no turning back.
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