Horowitz: What is Governor Bill Lee’s Response to Memphis killing spree?



Before residents of Memphis recovered from the shock of a young mother brutally murdered by a career criminal who was released early, they were forced to shelter inside Wednesday night because of a rash of shootings being livestreamed on Facebook by the alleged perpetrator. Now it turns out that individual also should have been in prison but was released early. The uncontrolled crime is yet another indication that big cities in red states are just as bad as blue states because Republican governors like Bill Lee have bought into the lie that we suffer from an over-incarceration rather than an under-incarceration problem.

On Wednesday night, Memphis police apprehended Ezekiel Kelly, 19, after he crashed a stolen vehicle, but not before four innocent people were left dead and three injured from an alleged shooting spree and two carjackings he livestreamed online. Just as in the case of Eliza Fletcher’s alleged killer, Cleotha Abston Henderson, Kelly should have been behind bars and the victims should be alive today.

In February 2020, Kelly was charged as an adult with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated assault, using a firearm to commit a dangerous felony, and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. If we are a nation that truly is serious about “gun violence,” he should have been behind bars for many years. But as has become the rule rather than the exception in the justice system, the prosecutor accepted a plea deal to convict him only on assault, which triggered a three-year sentence. Then, of course, Kelly failed to serve the sentence and was released after 11 months in prison in March of this year.

Everyone, including the Democrat mayor and the Soros prosecutor in Memphis, is feigning outrage over the early release, but in reality it is the culture of leniency that both parties have adopted over the past decade that has led to this crime wave. This year alone there have been over 100 kidnappings in Memphis. In both 2020 and 2021, Memphis set new homicide records and now boasts the ninth-highest homicide rate in the country and is ranked the most violent metro area in the country.

One could blame this on Democrat politicians, but Republicans control the state and should be able to set policies regarding sentencing. Yet Gov. Bill Lee has been one of the most passionate supporters of de-incarceration, even rivaling the liberal views of the New York and California governors on crime. When he took office, Lee promised to “empty our jails.” He claimed, “We have to be creative and innovative and disruptive and challenge the way we’ve been doing things forever.”

The homicide rate in Tennessee has gone from a low of 5.2 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.6 in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts have spiked from 183 per 100,000 to over 300. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga have become increasingly dangerous. Where is the outrage from Bill Lee? It’s not just the media that has been silent on the criminal spree.

Thankfully, the state legislature, led by state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, has gone in the opposite direction and recently passed a bill requiring violent criminals to serve 100% of their sentences. Bill Lee strongly opposed the bill. Had Bill Lee supported this effort during his tenure rather than pushing more jailbreak policies, both Kelly and Abston Henderson would have been in jail and their alleged victims would be living today.

Rather than promising tough-on-crime legislation, Bill Lee met yesterday with the phony “conservative” pro-criminal group “Right on Crime” to discuss “criminal justice reform.” They are most certainly not referring to the reforms the residents of Memphis are demanding. Here is a now-deleted tweet from Right on Crime:

Even Republicans who don’t officially identify with the Koch-funded pro-jailbreak organizations tend to focus only on policing or Soros prosecutors. But the bottom line is that GOP legislatures need to tighten laws on juveniles, repeat violent offenders, and pretrial bail for those who are a public safety risk. It’s shocking how even the most violent perpetrators are able to plead down their charges despite clear evidence in this day and age, where cameras and DNA are everywhere. Somehow technology only seems to be used against us, but not against violent criminals. Every loophole throughout the trial process that allows people like this to escape full justice needs to be examined.

Moreover, it’s time that Republicans stop ceding the large (or even mid-sized) cities in red states to Democrats. It’s true that the left has the votes to elect pro-criminal judges and prosecutors in those cities, but state legislatures write the statutes for the entire state. There’s no reason why cities like Memphis and Houston should be as bad as Los Angeles if Republicans actually did their jobs. Then again, that would require us to elect Republicans who actually share Reagan’s view on criminal justice from the victim’s standpoint rather than those of Bill Lee from the criminal’s standpoint.

Horowitz: TN legislature passes bill to finally lock up violent criminals



In recent years, sentencing for violent criminals has been like common core math. You start out with a sum of 20 years, for example, but somehow even the worst career offenders wind up turning 20 years into 8 years’ time served. Tennessee has become the first state to finally implement truth in sentencing to make sure that a sentence is actually served.

Last week, after a decade of red states promoting the Koch/Soros jailbreak agenda, the Tennessee legislature put victims first and passed true criminal justice reform. HB2656 / SB2248, as amended, requires people convicted of one of nine criminal offense categories to serve 100% of their sentences – no exceptions. This means no good time credits or parole are available for those found guilty of homicide, vehicular homicide, attempted first-degree murder, robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, or carjacking.

Additionally, those found guilty of 20 slightly lower-level but still significant crimes, such as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated robbery, burglary, and arson, would still be eligible for good time credits, but only after serving 85% of the sentence.

This bill has reversed the decade-long tide of weak-on-crime legislation percolating through red-state legislatures. For years, we’ve been told that there is somehow an over-incarceration problem with people serving draconian sentences for nothingburger crimes. The reality is that even the most violent career criminals often serve a few months here and there and constantly get out to reoffend. With the growing crime wave in cities like Nashville and Memphis, the role of the de-incarceration agenda is hard to deny.

To begin with, most of the sentencing these days is very lenient. For example, in 2019, out of 17,355 felony convictions in Minnesota, only 3,612 were fully sentenced in accordance with the sentencing guidelines. Once you add all the parole and good time credit programs to that, even the worst career criminals are only serving a fraction of the sentence. This doesn’t even account for all of the ways they plead down throughout their criminal career, thereby incurring a sentence well below the threat level of their criminal proclivities. At a minimum, this bill ensures that violent and dangerous criminals will at least serve the entire sentence they are given. This bill should serve as a model in every other state, as the crime wave continues to grow.

The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC gathering for alleged conservatives, vigorously opposed this bill because it apparently still believes there are too many, rather than too few, criminals behind bars. However, no sane person can believe we need to let more people out of prison.

Those who think we don't have an under-incarceration problem should consider the following statistics from the FBI in 2019. Just 61.4% of the 14,325 homicides, 32.9% of the 124,817 rapes, 30.5% of the 239,643 armed robberies, and 52.3% of the 726,778 aggravated assaults were "cleared" cases. That means that in 5,529 murder cases, 83,752 rape cases, 166,552 armed robbery cases, and 346,673 aggravated assault cases, there was no arrest. Hence, just in the four violent categories alone, there were over 758,000 violent crime cases that went without a resolution just in one year.

What about duration of incarceration? According to BJS, among the prisoners released from state prison in 2018 – before some of the recent "reform" – they only served, on average, 44% of their sentences. Even for murder, it was only 58% of their sentences. The median length of time served for murder was less than 10 years in 30% of the cases and was more than 20 years in only 42%. The median time served for rape was less than 10 years in 64% of prisoners. In total, 71% of those serving time for a violent crime category served less than five years, and nearly half served less than two years.

In reality, the bromide of “criminal justice reform” for “low-level, nonviolent offenders” was always a ruse. Now groups like the ACU openly admit they oppose even truth in sentencing, much less enhanced sentencing, for the most violent and career criminals.

The truth in sentencing bill passed the Senate 20-6 and the House 86-9 with bipartisan support and now heads to Governor Bill Lee’s desk. The bill was sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who made a rare speech from the well of the House chamber to present his bill. This legislation piggybacks on last year’s truth in sentencing law, which closed the early release loopholes for crimes traditionally committed against women and children, such as rape and child abuse.

Reminiscent of some of the debates over COVID, proponents of weak sentencing are demanding to see “studies” showing more jail time leads to less crime. Speaker Sexton believes no such study is needed when common sense dictates fewer criminals on the street equals less crime. “This solution creates the toughest penalties in America for violent criminals; it also establishes a firm line for criminals not to cross,” said the speaker in a statement to TheBlaze. “If they do, punishment will be swift and severe under our new law. I do not need a fancy study to tell me more bad guys in jail with longer sentences reduces crime.”

It is shocking how red-state governors and legislatures have failed to pursue these ideas until now. Even blue-state governors are now vulnerable to defeat because of the growing crime wave. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of Americans worry a “great deal” about crime and it ranks as the third most important issue on the minds of voters. A Pew Research poll showed that crime is the number-one issue among black voters.

With surging crime in cities like Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee had the sixth highest murder rate in 2020. In both 2020 and 2021, Memphis set new homicide records and now boasts the ninth highest homicide rate in the country and is ranked the most violent metro area in the country. The homicide rate in Tennessee has gone from a low of 5.2 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.6 in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts have spiked from 183 per 100,000 to over 300. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga have become increasingly dangerous.

Kudos to the Tennessee legislature for recognizing that weak-on-crime policies plague red states just as much as blue states and need to be rectified. Along with the passage of robust medical freedom bills and a new ivermectin over-the-counter bill, the Tennessee legislature is on its way to forging an agenda of freedom and public safety that should be emulated in every red state. If every GOP supermajority state would use its power to its fullest, we wouldn’t have to wait for ineffective GOP majorities in the irremediably broken federal system to make a difference.

Horowitz: More insane examples of our under-incarceration problem



Victims of crime often don’t get second chances. But criminals in California get endless chances. The California criminal justice system is so weighted toward the criminal that the most violent criminals who are caught committing gun crimes are released. The case of the mass shooting in Sacramento on Sunday that killed six, allegedly at the hands of a career gun felon who used an illegal weapon, is a perfect example of the old adage, “Guns don’t kill, bad people kill.”

Smiley Allen Martin was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Jan. 12, 2018, after being convicted of domestic violence and assault with great bodily injury. He already had a big rap sheet beforehand, dating back to when he turned 18 and likely when he was a juvenile. Yet he was arrested this week in connection with a mass shooting in downtown Sacramento early Sunday morning, after police say he was caught illegally possessing a handgun modified to fire as an automatic weapon and was injured in the wild shootout.

You might be wondering how a man sentenced to 10 years in 2018 can be out in 2022 to allegedly be involved in a shooting, but you have to remember this is California. Math works differently, at least when it favors the criminal.

According to court documents obtained by the Sacramento Bee, Martin was caught illegally with a rifle in 2013 but was given probation. Ten months later, he was apprehended after committing multiple robberies in Walmart and Target stores. He was sentenced to just two years and likely got out earlier. He was caught while on parole giving false information to police and leading them on a foot pursuit. Shortly thereafter is when he was arrested for brutally beating a prostitute at his home and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. However, because of the convoluted good time credit system, he was already up for parole three and a half years later. Although he was initially denied release, he was eventually released in February of this year after serving just four years.

Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert wrote a letter to the Parole Board last year beseeching them not to release Martin. “As shown by Inmate Martin’s pattern of conduct, he is an assaultive and non-compliant individual and has absolutely no regard for his victims who are left in the wake of numerous serious offenses,” Schubert wrote last April. “He has no respect for others, for law enforcement or for the law. If he is released early, he will continue to break the law.”

Schubert and 44 other district attorneys have sued the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation over its new policies of calculating early release credits, which they say could lead to the early release of 76,000 inmates. She is now running for attorney general as an independent.

Martin is not an anomalous criminal. He has the quintessential rap sheet of a career criminal. The reality is that for all the tough talk on gun violence, the anti-incarceration crowd has no desire to lock up gun felons. They get more than second chances. It’s among that pool of criminals that you will find most of the murder and violent crime committed in this country.

The reality is that in blue states, only law-abiding citizens can’t carry guns. New York City Mayor Eric Adams recently admitted about his city, “Here’s a climate on the street that carrying a gun is no longer an illegal act and we have to stop that.” But whose fault is that? He correctly observed, “We have to look at repeated offenders. There’s only a small number of people driving crime in our city and in country. They’re repeat offenders.” Yet his party supports policies that ensure repeat offenders are not locked up because liberals hate prison more than they hate guns.

Lest you think this is only a New York and California problem, though, check out how they punish child molesters in the red state of Ohio. Lamont Baldwin, a former wrestling coach and security monitor at Princeton Middle School in Cincinnati, confessed to fondling four boys with the most satanic subterfuge imaginable. According to Sharonville Police Detective Brad Hondorf, Baldwin would give each kid a dollar bill and tell him to hide it on his person, after which he would fondle him everywhere as if to pretend to find it. Hondorf also believes there were numerous other victims during the time Baldwin spent as a security monitor in the school.

What do you think is the appropriate punishment for a demon like this? I doubt zero time in prison was on your mind, but then again, you don’t work in the corrupt judicial system. Hamilton County probation officials recommended no prison time, and Judge Alan Triggs sentenced him to just probation and community service, along with the requirement to complete a “behavioral intervention program.”

Clearly, this was not an anomaly but a mindset among both the probation staff and the judges. They have all been brainwashed into the notion that we have an over-incarceration problem, but the opposite is true.

By refusing to fund more prisons, courts, and prosecutors to accommodate the growth of the population – as we’ve done with every other policy issue – lawmakers have been faced with a false dichotomy of backlogs or jailbreak. Well, it’s time for another “infrastructure project” to build jails and prisons and to start filling them up with the people who belong there.

Washington state Democrats push to reduce sentences for drive-by shooters in the name of 'racial equity'



Washington state Democrats have introduced a bill that would reduce penalties for drive-by-shootings as part of an effort to promote "racial equity in the criminal legal system."

The proposal, House Bill 1692, would remove drive-by shootings as a basis for elevating a first-degree murder charge to aggravated murder in the first degree, which carries a greater sentence of life in prison without parole. It was introduced by state Reps. Tarra Simmons (D) and David Hackney (D) on Dec. 23, pre-filed for the upcoming legislative session that will begin on Jan. 10, according to the Center Square.

House Bill 1692 would apply retroactively to anyone convicted of aggravated first degree murder where a drive-by shooting was the only aggravating factor in the charge. Such persons "must be returned to the sentencing court or the sentencing court’s successor for entry of a conviction of murder in the first degree and sentencing according to the sentencing guidelines in effect on the date of the offense.”

Additionally, the bill grants Washington state judges the discretion to discard the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for anyone who was convicted of aggravated murder for a drive-by shooting committed when they were under age 21. In such cases, the bill says judges may "take the particular circumstances surrounding the person's age and all other pertinent factors into consideration when determining an appropriate sentence."

In a statement to KTTH-AM, Simmons' office said first degree murder "is a heinous crime which already carries a long and serious sentence." But she added that, “it’s clear that [this aggravated classification] was targeted at gangs that were predominantly young and Black.” She went on to argue that the current law is an example of "systemic racism."

According to the Center Square, Washington state added drive-by shootings as an aggravating factor for first degree murder charges in 1995, amid a surge in gang-related crime. A 1997 annual report from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs catalogued gang-related homicides, showing just 3 cases in 1991, followed by 17 in 1992, 31 in 1993, 26 in 1994, and 13 in 1995.

Republicans lawmakers opposed to the bill charge that Democrats are pushing soft-on-crime policies as part of the "defund the police" movement at a time when violent crime is rising again in Washington.

“Violent crime is on the rise in our communities, in part, because law enforcement officers do not believe under new laws passed by the Legislature earlier this year that they have the authority to detain or pursue individuals, for whom they reasonably suspect have committed criminal acts,” Rep. Gina Mosbrucker (R), the ranking Republican on the state House Public Safety Committee, said in a press release.

She continued: "It was reported during the summer that at least nine drive-by shootings in the Yakima area this year have left a trail of injuries, deaths and traumatized neighborhoods. This horrific crime is happening more and more across our state, taking the lives of innocent victims, destroying their families, and leaving neighborhoods and communities in fear."

Rep. Jacquelin Maycumber (R), the House Republican floor leader and a former law enforcement officer, asserted House Bill 1692 is the latest in a series of Democrat-backed criminal justice reform bills that are soft on crime.

“The Defund the Police movement pushed by progressives in this state brought forth a package of law enforcement ‘reform’ bills during the 2021 legislative session that, in the end, have made families and communities less safe, law enforcement less effective, and criminals were emboldened,” she said in a press release.

Maycumber cited statistics showing a surge in violent crime in Washington, questioning why Democratic lawmakers are pushing to reduce sentences for violent criminals.

“Washington state is already seeing a surge in violent crime which is currently at a 25-year high, with murders at an all-time high in 2020, up 80 percent from five years ago,” she said. “Rape is up 40 percent from five years ago and aggravated assaults are up 50 percent from five years ago. In light of this, why are some elected officials so intent on making it easier to be a violent criminal and releasing murderers back onto our streets?

“House Bill 1692 is a tragedy in the making as our children and families will be less safe in their own homes and even their own beds. This bill will allow those who have committed murder when engaged in drive-by shootings to get out of jail sooner.”

The Center Square reported that murder and manslaughter rates both rose last year, citing a more recent WASPC report.

According to the WASPC, there were 302 murders in 2020 compared to 206 murders in 2019, an increase of 46.6%. Manslaughter rose 100%, with 34 cases in 2020 compared to 17 in 2019.

Horowitz: New Justice Department report: Prison rates plummeting, lowest level since 1992



Why is there a record number of criminals on the streets? Well, if they are being removed from the prisons, where else do you think they will land?

It’s not enough for Republicans to only focus on funding the police. What point is there in funding the police if prosecutors, judges, and new laws from the legislature will just let out all the repeat violent offenders? A new Bureau of Justice Statistics report easily sheds light on why there is so much rampant crime in the streets. Here are some of the key takeaways:

  • The combined state and federal imprisonment rate has declined a whopping 28% since 2010, and the incarceration rate is now the lowest since 1992. Contrary to those who believe there is an over-incarceration rate among black people, the rate of decline was even sharper – 37%.
  • Although the culture of leniency has been going on for a decade, it was massively accelerated by COVID jailbreak. The population went down 15% just in one year from 2019 to 2020. That is the single largest decline since records began to be kept in 1926. Nine states showed decreases of greater than 20% (New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, North Dakota, Maine, New York, Hawaii, California, and Vermont). New Jersey claimed the No. 1 spot, with nearly a one-third reduction in its entire prison population in one year, following a decade of slower declines.
  • On the state level, some incarceration rates are even lower than the national aggregate. For example, the incarceration rate in New York is the lowest since 1984, and in California it’s the lowest since 1990.
  • Not only were so many people released, but so many others were not sentenced and incarcerated last year. There was a 40% decrease in those initially sent to prison since 2019. That number was 66% for California and 60% for New York.
  • The drop was particularly steep among those sentenced for serious crimes. The number of persons sentenced to more than one year in state or federal prison decreased from 1,379,800 in 2019 to 1,182,200 in 2020.
  • State and federal correctional authorities held 352 persons age 17 or younger at year end in 2020, a 46% decline from 2019. There is your juvenile crime wave right there.

Is there any wonder why every major city is plagued by carjackings and shootings? Prison ain’t pretty, but making our streets look like the prisons is much worse. Yes, it’s time to “lock them up” and build more prisons. The notion that it’s low-level crimes and drug crimes that are fueling the prison population, especially among black people, is nonsense. The fact of the matter is that a higher percentage of black prisoners are incarcerated for violent crimes than white prisoners. Only 49.8% of white prisoners are incarcerated for one of the violent crime categories, while 64% of black prisoners and 66% of Hispanic prisoners are in prison for one of those offenses. White prisoners are actually more likely to be incarcerated for drugs or property crimes, while black prisoners are more likely to be incarcerated for weapons charges.

In fact, just 12% of incarcerated black criminals were in prison by year’s end in 2019 for drug charges, and only one-fourth of those people were in for possession. It’s also extremely likely that even those few people were only there for a short time because they pleaded down from more serious charges or they were repeat offenders with a more serious criminal history, parole violation, or broke the terms of probation. Roughly 80% of black prisoners were in prison for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, car theft, or weapons charges. So, the notion that we have an over-incarceration problem among black criminals is a complete hoax – and in fact, we have an under-incarceration crisis among all demographics, especially for violent crimes and car thefts.

Republicans have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right the ship when the legislative sessions commence. They have political winds at their backs, with 61% in an ABC News/Ipsos poll disapproving of President Biden’s handling of crime. A new Pew Research poll shows just 28% of Americans, including 40% of black people, believe that criminals are sentenced for too long. And those numbers would likely drop if people would know how little time people serve for serious, repeat offenses.

From longer prison sentences to more funding for courts, prosecutors, and prisons, Republicans need to embrace law and order once again. With so many cities setting homicide records this year, there is simply no constituency for the Koch-Soros jailbreak agenda.

Squires: Kanye and Krasner coddle criminals, promote chaos, empower a new Klan



The most influential voices in American politics and culture have made criminals this country’s newest victim class, and their misplaced sympathies have made life very difficult for everyone else.

Larry Krasner, the district attorney in Philadelphia, raised eyebrows when he claimed his city does not have a crisis in violent crime. This came as a shock to most people, because the city recently surpassed its previous record of 500 homicides in a single year. Krasner was quick to dismiss the crime spike in his city because he knows many people blame his policies for contributing to the problem.

Krasner, a former criminal defense attorney, campaigned as a criminal justice reformer when he first ran for district attorney in 2017. He was aided by a $1.45 million donation from George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist who has contributed to the campaigns of several progressive prosecutors. He has done everything to live up to his reputation since then. Krasner dropped cash bail in 2018 for over twenty “low-level” offenses, including DUI and retail theft.

Krasner has also been criticized for his approach to more serious crimes. In 2020, the federal prosecutor with jurisdiction over Philadelphia detailed ten cases in which Krasner’s office offered lenient plea deals to defendants who were subsequently charged with murder. Keith Garner, a man with multiple prior felony convictions, was arrested for executing four people eight months after being given a plea deal on an assault charge. Another man named Tariq Grant was arrested for murdering a 19-year-old six months after receiving a plea deal for multiple violent offenses. A third individual with prior felonies, Francisco Reyes, allegedly murdered a man two days after pleading guilty and receiving probation on multiple drug offenses.

Despite the impact of his policy changes, Krasner easily won re-election in November. A month later, it was time for another criminal justice reformer to take the stage on behalf of America’s newest victim class.

Kanye West and Drake teamed up on December 9 to put on a benefit concert at the L.A. Coliseum for Larry Hoover, founder of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciple street gang. The event page said the concert would “raise awareness and support for Larry Hoover and the cause of prison and sentencing reform.”

Hoover has been in prison since 1973 on a combination of state and federal charges, including murder, conspiracy, extortion, and continuing to engage in a criminal enterprise. He is currently serving six life sentences but has allegedly renounced his association with the Gangster Disciples.

Kanye unsuccessfully lobbied President Trump for Hoover’s pardon in 2018. He also included a song about Hoover on his new album, “Donda,” called “Free My Father” that features Larry Hoover Jr. advocating for his father’s release.

Kanye is a Chicago native and could have chosen to use his immense influence to bring attention to any of the more than 750 people who have been killed in his city this year. One analysis of crime data in September found that more children had been shot in Chicago (261) than had died of COVID (214) across the entire country. Kanye could have done a benefit concert for those children.

Anyone who understands anything about how the ruling class thinks about crime and punishment knows why that didn’t happen. Both Kanye and Krasner, archetypes of American culture and politics, believe society’s primary criminal justice problem is a system of racist policing and incarceration that unfairly targets black people.

This is why Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities only bring national attention to black people when they believe the perpetrators are white police officers or vigilantes.

As a Christian, I am eternally grateful for a savior who took the punishment for my sins. But there is something important to be learned from the Old Testament laws that governed ancient Israel.

Four of the first five books of the Bible detail hundreds of laws governing Israel’s vertical relationship with God as well as horizontal relationships between people. These books also include punishments for lawbreakers, which are clear and commanded to be executed swiftly.

What caught my eye in the book of Deuteronomy was the frequent use of the phrase “and so you shall purge the evil from your midst.” The phrase is used when discussing punishment for breaking the law. That phrase was often followed by another: “And all of Israel will hear, and they will fear.”

The lesson was clear: Deal with sin quickly to stop it from spreading. Every parent understands this lesson. In general, what is rewarded is repeated, and the behaviors that don’t get corrected will only get worse.

This lesson has been completely lost on our culture, especially the liberal activists, celebrities, and politicians who are driving our national conversation around criminal justice reform. They think coddling criminality, whether through rhetoric or policy, is rehabilitative. But the recent crime waves across the country demonstrate that failure to purge evil has a multiplying effect.

Criminals, regardless of skin color, feel emboldened to steal when they know theft won’t be punished. They will run into stores, smash display cases, and stroll out with as many items as they can carry. The same dynamic exists in violent crime.

The left argues that when the people doing the shooting are black, moral problems will be corrected with material solutions.

Oddly enough, they don’t apply that principle to all groups. They would never argue that a jobless Klansman terrorizing a middle-class black family is simply in need of a new career and better housing. When it comes to that type of crime, they are quick to purge evil.

They claim that black lives matter but spend more time and attention on fake hate crimes than real street crimes.

The people elected to prevent and punish crime have incentivized it. Instead of purging evil from our midst, celebrities and political ideologues welcome it. We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s spreading.

Horowitz: Woke companies that funded BLM agenda now complain about looters, thieves on the loose



We definitely need to get tougher on sentencing looters and store robbers, but we should exempt those criminals from prison time if they loot one of the big corporations that helped spawn this epidemic of shoplifting to begin with.

Last week, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, representing 20 major retailers, sent a letter to Congress asking legislators to deal with the growing theft, shoplifting, and “smash-and-grab” mob attacks on retail stores. The corporations represented include giants like Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Home Depot, and CVS.

"As millions of Americans have undoubtedly seen on the news in recent weeks and months, retail establishments of all kinds have seen a significant uptick in organized crime in communities across the nation," said the letter.

The group’s solution is to push the Notification and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers Act, which attempts to help inform consumers and online platforms about the sale of illicit products on the market. But that is treating the symptoms, and not even the most evident ones stemming from the crime wave acknowledged in this letter. Why not treat the problem?

The reason is that the problem is not a natural disaster. It began around 2015, when states began passing “criminal justice reform” at the behest of these very companies. They are now learning the hard way that when you call theft a low-level crime and essentially decriminalize it – at least in terms of incarceration – well, you will get more theft. These companies have funded the policies, organizations, and politicians behind the decriminalization and de-incarceration laws.

According to a 2020 survey of 61 retailers by the National Retail Federation, organized retail theft skyrocketed by nearly 60% since 2015 and cost stores an average of $719,548 per $1 billion dollars in sales. What changed around that time? Since California passed Prop 47 in 2014 and other numerous sentencing downgrades and early releases, violent crime has risen 13 percent, and there was a significant increase in burglary, larceny, and auto theft in 2015 and 2016. This is why we are seeing “smash and grab” flash mobs in California more than anywhere else. They know that if they steal less than $950 at a time, they will not be punished, but even for thefts larger than that sum, they practically never serve time in jail, even for repeat offenses. There is literally no deterrent.

But it’s not just California. In 2017, Oklahoma passed State Question 780, which also downgraded theft and led to an entire black market created from brazen shoplifting in once safe central Oklahoma.

So ironically, the companies’ beef has nothing to do with Congress, but with state governments that reversed a generation-long trend of tough-on-crime laws. Who is responsible? These CEOs need to look in the mirror. Target promised $10 million in support of the BLM agenda, which is largely responsible for the effort to defund or deter the police, reduce sentencing, and let criminals out of jail. Home Depot donated $1 million to the pro-criminal Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is one of the lead organizations pushing the de-incarceration agenda. CVS pledged $600 million to combat “systemic racism,” which is the lead argument used to push the fallacy of over-incarceration.

The chickens have now come home to roost. These CEOs don’t care about the robberies, rapes, and murders that have increased because of the woke policies, foundations, and candidates they support. It’s only when it affects them with uncontrolled shoplifting that they finally discover the consequences, yet still refuse to address the root cause. Thanks to the BLM agenda, Soros prosecutors, and de-incarceration legislation that they support, ABC News reported that 12 U.S. cities have now set all-time records for homicide this year: Portland, Ore.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Toledo, Ohio; Rochester, N.Y.; Philadelphia, Penn.; Columbus, Ohio; Baton Rouge, La.; Austin, Texas; Albuquerque, N.M.; Tucson, Ariz.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Louisville, Ky. What about the endless property crimes and car thefts that citizens must deal with every day, often going uncompensated? They don’t have a voice with Congress or state legislators now that these 20 big corporations have created a monopoly for politicians who side with criminals.

Indeed, if these CEOs really cared about the robbery epidemic, they would pledge to stop funding pro-criminal candidates, organizations, and district attorneys. Until they get on the right side of what caused this problem, they should not be allowed to dictate narrowly tailored solutions that only address the part of the mess they created that affects their bottom line.

Are these corporations really worried about the lawlessness on the streets, or are they using the BLM-driven chaos they helped fuel to pass a bill that will go after legitimate third-party online vendors that are undercutting them with cheaper prices?

The bottom line is that their solution will not rectify the problem of career criminals like Karim Clayton. Known as the serial CVS bandit, Clayton, a registered sex offender with a history of robbing CVS stores, was arrested for assault and battery on Sunday, Sept. 26, in Fairfax County, Va., and released on bail the very next morning, The next day, he was arrested for … you guessed it … robbing a CVS. He has barely served time in prison for all his infractions, including child sex abuse and crashing his car during a police chase, and even committed these crimes while out on an ankle monitor.

The point is that the people who are robbing large retailers are the same people harming citizens and are the same individuals who are facing no consequences or deterrent because of the Soros DAs, weak sentencing laws, and war on cops. What we need is a bill to get these people behind bars, not some oblique technology bill that seems designed to deal with another issue entirely.

Let’s face it, large retail chains, unlike mom-and-pop stores that get robbed, have the economies of scale to bake the loss of shoplifting into the cost of the products. What really concerns them is the technology crime and even legitimate online competition from people who have committed no crimes other than the ones these retailers would like to create. These CEOs are just using the crime wave as an excuse to advance their agenda, all the while continuing to fund the very politicians and NGOs that have successfully dismantled law and order in this country.

Horowitz: The crisis of violent criminals out on bail and parole is worse than you think



In case you thought the endless catch-and-release of Darrell Brooks, the suspect in the Waukesha parade massacre who reportedly killed 6 and injured 60, was an aberration, think again. It’s a rampant problem in all 50 states, particularly in Indiana.

Last week, 20-year-old Deonta Williams was arrested on two counts of attempted murder after he allegedly stabbed two Indianapolis police officers near the Indiana State Fairgrounds on Wednesday. Williams told investigators that he lured the officers to the area by calling in a fake report of a white man harassing him. When the officers went to search for the phantom attacker, Williams admits he stabbed the officers in the neck and chest. Both officers are expected to recover, but Williams told investigators he wanted to kill one police officer because he was upset about a medical bill the city of Indianapolis sent him.

According to WTHR, Williams was arrested for burglary in January and had his bail reduced from $25,000 to $750 by a local judge. Then, he violated the terms of his release and was arrested again in July for reported criminal mischief. The obvious question is why people already given a second chance are released again when we know they are the most likely to commit violent crimes.

It turns out that the Bail Project, a pro-violent criminal organization that strives to keep violent criminals on the streets at all costs, bailed him out in March. As WISH reports, the Bail Project had previously bonded out two other violent career criminals who are now accused of murder.

The sad reality is that these are the sort of NGOs that have been driving the criminal justice policy on both sides of the aisle in all 50 states over the past decade. As Rick Snyder, the head of the Indianapolis Fraternal Order of Police, observes, these organizations need to be subjected to the same regulations as private bail bondsmen. All too often, they bail people out and the suspect never shows up for court and is able to remain free. These NGOs need to be held responsible.

It is becoming abundantly clear that we need to toughen mandatory minimums for repeat offenders, tighten — not loosen — bail laws, and create a much stronger three-strikes-and-you're-out law than we did in the 1990s. The time has come for all 50 states to pass legislation in January when the legislatures reconvene that will toughen bail laws in general and end bail for anyone who already violated their bail terms after the first crime. This would likely prevent the majority of violent crimes in this country.

Most violent criminals don't come out of nowhere. They are known wolves. One study in Sweden in 2014 found that 1% of the criminals were responsible for 63% of all violent crime convictions. Researchers found that if all violent criminals were locked up after a third conviction, "more than 50% of all convictions for violent crime in the total population would be prevented."

Just how much is the “bail reform” movement responsible for the growing crime wave? CWB Chicago, which reports assiduously on the Chicago crime scene, created a list of 53 known Chicago criminals who were arrested for murder or attempted murder this year, affecting a total of 75 victims after having been released on bail, or without even having to post any cash bail. Many of these victims were children. The latest bailed-out criminal charged with attempted murder is 19-year-old Maalik Lumpkins, who is charged with shooting a 1-year-old. Several months ago, Lumpkins was charged with felony aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. But because in Chicago they don’t take gun crimes seriously and only oppose guns for those defending themselves from these criminals, Lumpkins was released on his own recognizance.

The release of violent criminals has become the catalyst for reversing New York’s once miraculous decline in crime. Last week, a Columbia University graduate student and an Italian tourist were stabbed in unprovoked attacks in what used to be a very safe part of Manhattan. The suspect was on supervised release for viciously beating another innocent person and had been arrested 11 times since 2012. Second chances, you say?

Fox News reported last week that Jacqueline Avant, wife of Grammy Award-winning music executive Clarence Avant, was killed in her Beverly Hills home by another paroled career criminal. The suspect, Aariel Maynor, was released from prison just weeks before, after serving three years of a four-year sentence for a 2018 robbery and grand theft, which in itself was only made possible his early release from a 2013 sentence for robbery and causing great bodily injury.

Another way the pro-criminal crowd is flooding the streets with criminals is by letting them off on mental health diversion programs. Eric Ramos-Hernandez was seen on video in 2020 punching, kicking, and shoving 84-year-old Rong Xin Liao off his seated walker while waiting for a bus in Santa Clara County, California. Despite the victim suffering life-altering wounds, Ramos-Hernandez was released seven months later and actually re-arrested and released for another crime thereafter. He was released because the DA’s office claims the victim went along with a plan to place the suspect in a mental health diversion program, a claim the victim’s family vehemently denies. If someone truly is incorrigibly violent because of mental health problems, then he certainly needs to be taken off the streets – whether in a traditional prison or a mental ward.

Last week, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm blamed the release of Darrell Brooks on a “human error,” but the only human error involved is a decadent ideology that believes in de-incarceration at all costs. This gutter ideology has permeated both parties, including allegedly conservative think tanks and even the Trump administration. It’s time to reverse this fatal error.

Horowitz: Wisconsin Gov. Evers vetoed bills that could have kept Waukesha suspect behind bars



Here's an infrastructure bill idea: How about we build prisons and jails — lots of them?

It's great to finally see the political commentariat catching up to our criminal justice observations over the past decade, as everyone observes with horror how Darrell Brooks, the suspect in the Waukesha parade massacre, was released from jail multiple times despite a 20-year violent criminal career. Just two days before the attack, he was released on $1,000 bond after being charged with running over a woman, despite having violated the terms of release from a July 2020 incident when he was accused of discharging a firearm that he could not lawfully possess.

But I have news for those who are just waking up and smelling the stench of our rotten criminal justice system. There are likely hundreds of thousands of people like Brooks on the streets who have committed numerous violent felonies, including gun crimes, yet the same people who cry about gun violence are the first ones to release gun felons from prison. In fact, the only people held without bail nowadays are military veterans with a clean record accused of trespassing on public property on Jan. 6.

A simple proposition that every Republican legislature should push in this upcoming session is that anyone who violates the terms of parole or supervised release should be immediately re-incarcerated and anyone who has a history of either violating bail or a mix of violent crimes or arrests for felony possession of a firearm should be denied bail at a special bail arraignment. These people, by definition, already had their second chances.

Incidentally, such legislation already passed the Wisconsin legislature, but in Feb. 2020, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed those bills. They included the following:

  • Assembly Bill 805: The bill required the Department of Corrections to revoke parole from anyone charged with a crime while on parole, extended supervision, or probation.
  • Assembly Bill 806: At a time of skyrocketing juvenile crime, this bill would have authorized prison time for any juvenile convicted of a Class G felony, which comes with up to 10 years in prison if committed by an adult.
  • Assembly Bill 808: This bill would have barred a prosecutor from dismissing a charge of felony firearm possession if the offender had a previous violent crime conviction.
  • Assembly Bill 809: This bill would simply have barred the early release of anyone convicted of violent crimes like homicide or aggravated battery.

Yet Gov. Tony Evers vetoed all of these commonsense bills that exclusively target violent criminals. The dangerous "criminal justice reform" movement began with its rallying cry of freeing "low-level, first-time, nonviolent" offenders filling up our prisons. The problem is, as they well know, these people are not filling up our prisons. Thus, in order to achieve their goal of de-incarceration at all costs, they had to proceed to releasing the most violent criminals. The same people who cry about gun rights for peaceful citizens actually oppose any effort to lock up dangerous gun felons.

But here's the paradox. Republicans are more aggressive in states with divided control, such as Wisconsin, so they passed prudent anti-crime bills. Yet in many red states where Republicans control all of government, they are behaving much like Tony Evers and are still passing bills to loosen crime laws rather than toughening them.

The five people killed in the Waukesha parade would be alive today if these bills had passed. In fact, most murder victims would be alive today if we would simply lock up the known repeat violent offenders. Letting out violent criminals simply because you don't want to spend the money on incarceration is like making a left turn into oncoming traffic onto a busy street because you feel you've waited long enough. It's simply not an option.

Those who think we don't have an under-incarceration problem should consider the following statistics from the FBI in 2019. Just 61.4% of the 14,325 homicides, 32.9% of the 124,817 rapes, 30.5% of the 239,643 armed robberies, and 52.3% of the 726,778 aggravated assaults were "cleared" cases. That means that in 5,529 murder cases, 83,752 rape cases, 166,552 armed robbery cases, and 346,673 aggravated assault cases, there was no arrest. Hence, just in the four violent categories alone, there were over 758,000 violent crime cases that went without a resolution just in one year. Now, obviously a lot of them were committed by the same individual, but this still means there are likely tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of violent criminals who escaped justice.

Worse, a cleared case only means that the case resulted in an arrest. Only a tiny number of them wind up being convicted and are sentenced to even the guideline level of incarceration. For example, in 2019, out of 17,355 felony convictions in Minnesota, only 3,612 were fully sentenced, and almost all of them get out of prison much earlier because of numerous early release and good time credit programs.

Interestingly enough, Darrell Brooks barely served a few weeks in jail at a time for violent crimes, even in the supposed era of mass incarceration last decade.

According to BJS, among the prisoners released from state prison in 2018 – before some of the recent "reform" – they only served, on average, 44% of their sentences. Even for murder, it was only 58% of their sentences. The median length of time served for murder was less than 10 years in 30% of the prisoners and was more than 20 years in only 42%. The median time served for rape was less than 10 years in 64% of prisoners. In total, 71% of those serving time for a violent crime category served less than five years, and nearly half served less than two years.

Now, crime is skyrocketing and clearance rates are plummeting. As Milwaukee experiences record homicides, the clearance rate has dipped below 50%. The notion that we have over-incarceration could not be farther from the truth. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2019 – before the mass coronavirus jailbreak – the combined state and federal prison imprisonment rate was the lowest it's been since 1995.

Furthermore, the imprisonment rate has actually plummeted 29% among black residents (32% among black adults) and 24% among Hispanic residents over the past decade, resulting in the lowest black imprisonment rate since 1989. Some might laud this statistic as reason to celebrate, but what is a boon to black criminals is bloodshed for black victims. In Milwaukee, for example, black people compose less than 40% of the city's population, but accounted for 91% of this year's record number of homicide victims.

If Republicans in red states continue to allow the Koch special interests to dictate the crime agenda rather than prudence and public safety, they will be just as liable for the growing bloodshed as their Democrat counterparts.

Horowitz: 43% of Indianapolis murder suspects were out on pretrial release at time of murders



The Indiana governor and legislature have no interest in holding a special session to deal with COVID-related human rights violations, but perhaps they will have an appetite to deal with the record crime. For those who think the crime wave is limited to blue states, many have forgotten that red states have signed onto the same jailbreak de-incarceration agenda items most directly responsible for the crime bubble. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, with the same career criminals who are released early going on to commit the lion's share of the crime.

For those wondering why a city like Indianapolis is experiencing record homicides, look no farther than the percentage of felons let out of jail. A new Fox 59 investigation found that 43% of murder suspects arrested in Indianapolis through October of this year were either out on pretrial release or serving post-conviction sentences. And this report does not even include the juvenile suspects who almost assuredly would have gotten a lenient sentence or pretrial release stemming from prior criminal charges.

Nor are these criminals necessarily released pretrial for nebulous crimes. Marcus Garvin, who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend, Christie Holt, in July, was charged with stabbing a random person seven months earlier but was released on low bond.

Republicans like to focus the debate on crime exclusively on funding for the police, but most of them tacitly agree with the Democrat premise that somehow we have an over-incarceration problem, when in fact we have a de-incarceration problem. Career criminals are not being properly deterred with tough sentences any more. Moreover, too many criminals are being released on low bail, and then it takes forever for a trial to commence.

The bottom line is we need more funding for courts and prosecutors. At a time when we are spending trillions of dollars on COVID fascism and welfare, our governments – even in red states – are ignoring their most sacred job of preventing dangerous people from harming innocent citizens. They need to fund prosecutors' offices with special grant programs designed to enforce specific statutes against repeat offenders that will result in the longest prison times. After years of weak-on-crime policies, there is a massive backlog in cases of violent felons. There's an even greater need to fund prosecutors than to fund the police.

There is also a need to build more prisons and courts. If there are years' worth of backlogs in the courts, that will result in the worst criminals remaining on the streets indefinitely. Legislators should use some of the COVID funds to pay for this, because even Biden blessed the reprogramming to combat crime. Why not use it to lock up more criminals that he likes to coddle?

Just as of Nov. 17, Indianapolis was on the verge of breaking its murder record for the second straight year, at 244 homicides year-to-date. For its relatively small size as a major city, that is a homicide rate almost as high as Chicago's. According to a mid-year report from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, 75% of the victims and suspects were known to law enforcement. Indiana, like many other states, has dramatically shrunk its incarcerated population. According to the Indiana Department of Corrections, the incarcerated population has declined by approximately 20% over the past two years. This, despite the fact that carjackings are skyrocketing in Indianapolis. They simply are not being locked up, and the lack of deterrent encourages more crime.

Last year, Indianapolis blew out the previous homicide record by 37%. The overwhelming majority of those murders remain unsolved. Republicans have stupidly shied away from their traditional tough-on-crime stance in recent years, in part out of fear of alienating black voters. But the reality is that as in most major American cities, the growing homicide bubble resulting from jailbreak "reform" policies disproportionately harms black people. Although black people compose less than 30% of Indianapolis's population, they accounted for 75% of all homicide victims in the city in 2020.

Overall, across the nation, murder increased 29.4% and aggravated assaults rose by 12% in 2020, according to the FBI. By all accounts, this year appears to be continuing on that dangerous trajectory.

Perhaps if allegedly Republican governors like Indiana's Eric Holcomb would focus on punishing criminals as much as on enforcing injections and masks on behalf of the new "Pfizer constitution," Hoosiers would be safe from violent crime. As for the GOP supermajorities in the legislature, they as may as well hand over the keys to the Democrats.