As I write this, I think back to exactly one year ago, one mile from my home
A suburban mom and her daughter were walking out of the local supermarket, and got into their SUV to travel home. A scene so mundane in my town as to almost avoid notice.
But not to two men in the parking lot, released back to society since they "were no longer threats".
The older of the two had approximately twenty arrests for various iterations of break-in and drug abuse and had spent virtually his entire adult life in jail, or on parole, or on probation. The younger had just emerged from one stint in the slam, having spent less than five years in despite the sentencing judge calling him a predator after committing a one man crime sprees of nighttime burglaries.
Far from a mundane evening, these men planned to commit the most heinous crime in Connecticut history.
They followed Mom and her daughter to their home, then went to obtain rope and pellet guns...after nighfall they found the family had left the basement door unlocked. Entering the home they beat the husband with a shovel, and then took turns assaulting the three women in the home. At dawn one went to obtain gasoline, then they other took the mom to the local Bank of America and told her to withdraw her money. A teller sensed something was upand tipped off the cops,, but when the perpetrator returned with mom and the money he strangled her. The two daughters were left tied to beds and the house set afire. The husband, left fot dead, stumbled out of the burning home as the police apprehended the fleeing pair trying to run a roadblock in the stolen SUV.
http://www.wfsb.com/news/14405060/detail.html
Within less than 18 hours, the lives of an entire community would be changed irrevocably and permanently. The question of whether evil exists had been answered conclusively for the people of Cheshire.
So why am I using bandwidth on a political blog to discuss a crime more gruesome than what Gil Grissom deals with? Because politicians made all this possible.
During the early part of the decade, the state's spending on prisons went up rapidly along with the number of criminals jailed. The state even resorted to leasing jail space in Virginia, which proven very unpopular with Democrat lawmakers who wanted "alternatives to incarceration". Which CT adopted, lock, stock and barrel
Some liberal think tanks, Vera Institute and Pew Center on the States had a ready made proposal "justice reinvestment". What this really meant was that the Department of Correction was not given any space to house prisoners and was ordered to reduce parole and probation revocation by 25% Meantime, more money was spent on inner city social programs http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/CT%20Case%20Study%202-22-07.pdf
Well, the message was received by the state parole board----open the cell doors-- as in the three months prior to the massacre 87% of parole application were approved
And what sorts of folks went set loose in our society ---"nonviolent" offenders like Hayes and Komisarjevsky who had about 40 burglaries to their credit. Evidently, the concept of "life on the installment plan" was a cruel joke in CT
Well, folks you would think the early release crowd would go back to the drawing board after this debacle (their former CT allies became lock-em-up advocates ASAP, FYI)
Nope, They are trying to sell this snake oil to other states., arguing that too many "nonviolent" offenders are being locked up. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/28/AR2008022801704_pf.html
Remember, these guys who committed this massacre were "nonviolent". And look whose campaign is on board the "open the prison door" movement...I'm sure you are shocked
http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/group/AmericansforPrisonReform/2008/07
and here's Barack himself in the "pre-moderate era"
"It reminds us of the fact that we have a system that locks away too many young, first-time, non-violent offenders for the better part of their lives – a decision that’s made not by a judge in a courtroom, but all too often by politicians in Washington and state capitals across the country," Obama said. "It reminds us that we have certain sentences that are based less on the kind of crime you commit than where you come from or what you look like.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/09/obama_on_glaring_inequities_in.html
And this attitude is shared by other prominent Democrats, like Obama's possible running mate Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius , who said "Building more prisons does not solve our problems" http://www.aca.org/publications/pdf/Garland.pdf
One year ago to this moment a Connecticut family spent a Sunday evening at home thinking that their government would protect them from violent predators for whom capital punishment is far too kind a penalty. They were wrong.
Should Barack Obama become President, we all will have no reason to believe our safety or the safety of our loved ones will matter next to political correctness or liberal ideology. We are now wiser here in Connecticut, where even our dark blue legislature came belatedly to its senses..
Sadly, I am worried the rest of the nation will need to experience this first hand to learn, however.
People in the Kansas City area can move across the state line and re-register to vote, and unknowingly become registered voters in both Kansas and Missouri. Such folks vote in their “new” state and are likely not even aware they are still registered in their “old” state. Legally, a voter cannot vote twice in both states, but it’s unclear whether such a voter accidentally registered in both states could vote in either their “old” state or their “new” state. And who would know if they did?
