These Streets are not Safe, but Let These Vermin Beware, I’ll See that Justice is Done – Javert, Les Miserables
Between 1960 and 1994, California saw a 500% increase in all forms of crime. The root cause of this increase in crime was a systematic decrease in prison sentences, literally cutting the average time a convicted criminal spent in prison by over 50%, then granting a variety of different methods of reducing the time of the sentence, methods like “good time” or “work time” reductions to those sentences. A convicted criminal would often be sentenced to a determinate sentence of 5 years, and end up spending less than half of that in prison.
The left constantly reinforced the attitude that prison sentences don’t deter crime. They have always seen criminals of some sort of modern Jean Valjean, a noble hero, driven by economic circumstance to steal bread to feed his or her family, while those who believe in the rule of law as some puritanical Javert, who care not about the person who broke the law, but only about enforcing the law.
After the passage of three strikes in 1994, the crime rate dropped by 50% in one year, for the first time in over 30 years. The law had a real effect on the criminal class. For the incorrigible felon,… Read More