Rodolfo Godinez has just been arrested in connection with the Newark homicides. He is a legal U.S. resident and there goes the immigration argument in this criminal issue. Again, the problem isn't about the legality of the residency status but the fact that we let violent criminals back on the streets even when we know for sure they are dangerous to the community. Godinez got bail for stabbing two men in a robbery. Then he vanished.
Bail should be for nonviolent offenders. Yes, they have committed a crime and they should be prosecuted for it. But, you are more of an annoyance than a physical danger to the community. However, if you are the kind of guy who has no problem choking, stabbing, or shooting people, I really don't want you walking around on the streets while we decide what to do with you. Let's make sure the public is as safe as possible and then make sure we apply proper justice.
Having said all of this, it is important to look at the some of the kind of folks that sneak into the country. They are clearly not doing all that well in their own. Sometimes it is because economic opportunity is near nonexistent; sometimes it is because they are not the kind of people folks want to hire. In other words, they may be losers and they may be dangerous losers. The governments of their countries will be more than happy to get rid of them.
Many illegal immigrants are nice people trying to survive. But, some are scum who we should be keeping out of the country if we can. We have the right to refuse such folks entry and to track them down if they make their way in. However, moving from a general argument to this one incident is not useful as we can now see that one of the alleged killers is an actual legal resident. Let's focus on the most important aspect of this heinous crime: let's stop bail for violent offenders.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
Bail should be for nonviolent offenders. Yes, they have committed a crime and they should be prosecuted for it. But, you are more of an annoyance than a physical danger to the community. However, if you are the kind of guy who has no problem choking, stabbing, or shooting people, I really don't want you walking around on the streets while we decide what to do with you. Let's make sure the public is as safe as possible and then make sure we apply proper justice.
Having said all of this, it is important to look at the some of the kind of folks that sneak into the country. They are clearly not doing all that well in their own. Sometimes it is because economic opportunity is near nonexistent; sometimes it is because they are not the kind of people folks want to hire. In other words, they may be losers and they may be dangerous losers. The governments of their countries will be more than happy to get rid of them.
Many illegal immigrants are nice people trying to survive. But, some are scum who we should be keeping out of the country if we can. We have the right to refuse such folks entry and to track them down if they make their way in. However, moving from a general argument to this one incident is not useful as we can now see that one of the alleged killers is an actual legal resident. Let's focus on the most important aspect of this heinous crime: let's stop bail for violent offenders.
Criminal Profiler Pat Brown
I agree that is the core problem. Lack of prison space, lack of interest in building more prisons, overwhelmed courts, lack of interest in funneling funds toward hiring enough people. Lack of intelligence about who can and who cannot, at this time, be rehab'd. That's a very alarming issue to me. There's a growing belief that these hard-wired criminals can be fixed with a lot of TLC.
ReplyDeleteOld habits are hard to break, and our plea system has been around and become standard practice. It's a joke. I'd like to throw whoever came up with that in prison for life - but we all know he'd only do two to five.