WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ALL YOU WANT TO BE IS ….NOT PAT BUCHANAN

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I couldn't resist posting a comment on TAC again.  God knows if they will run it. 

They are on the so called Justice Reform bandwagon with all the other GOP dupes and opportunists.  Anyone familiar with criminals knows this farce.  We want to save money spent on prisons so lets let a bunch go... They won't be living in my neighborhood.  The Democrat version of this is, lets get the brothers out of jail and into the voting booths.  The children who write for The American Conservative have already declared their faith in the cause.  All I can say is the road to not being Pat Buchanan leads  to many funny and embarrassing places.

Senator Mike Lee from Utah wrote this about all of his fine plans.  I suspect the good Senator  is a true believer and holds what he writes.  

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-conservative-case-for-criminal-justice-reform/


My Comment:  

Perhaps the beginning of wisdom in any criminal justice reform would be to turn a skeptical eye on proposals from legislators from states like Utah or Hawaii, etc.  

I served the last eight years of my public employment career inspecting all the criminal halfway houses in the state of New Jersey.  Let me assure you that they have so little effect on recidivism that my superiors always had to hide or corrupt the statistics.  At one point we could only cite how few were rearrested within Six Months! This was also during a time when the number of such halfway houses, treatment centers, halfway back centers etc., were expanding like mushrooms.

I have some faith that the Senator is speaking in good faith.  He probably believes what he writes.  But I see nothing in this that gives me the slightest confidence that what he proposes will work.  

Note that the GOP has close financial ties with the private prison industry.  These are the same companies who will manage the alternatives to prison facilities the reform movement is pushing.  While Senator Lee may be an evangelist for inmate salvation, there are others licking their lips waiting to make a buck out of his efforts.

A most of the criminal offenders who have been sentenced to draconian terms are not hapless characters who stumbled into the net.  They have long records extending back into their juvenile past.  They are part of a permanent criminal underclass that is not going away.  There is a lot of talk about family disruption here but just how many of these offenders are either from stable traditional families or in such families?  Perhaps in Utah but surly not in urban states that breed the majority of criminals.  

Criminality is not a disease.  It is a choice.