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 and
settled 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.
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 isle 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 or First & Main. Americans, eschewing Shakespeare’s advice to
“Kill all the lawyers”, are a 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 almost never 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 of the failures of government driven by incompetence and negligence.
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 a 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 almost never 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 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
duration of 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, DAs
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.
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