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This Drudge-linked article, La Puente Mayor Blames Prison Realignment For Surge In Violent Crime, has prompted me to bump an earlier post.

The mayor of La Puente said Thursday that a federal mandate to cut the inmate population in California prisons is to blame for a sharp jump in crimes in the city.

According to Mayor John Solis, sexual assaults are up about 300 percent and assaults with guns and knives up nearly 150 percent citywide since the realignment plan took effect a few months ago.

It seems that, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, it’s the civic duty of the working citizen to be robbed, raped, and murdered in order to free up money to pay off the public sector unions, and also for other vital tasks such as printing and distributing new texts in the schools to highlight the role of homosexuals in history.

Meanwhile, it was recently reported that the CHP is cracking down on people that use cell phones while driving. However, the additional revenue collected from these criminal cell phone users will probably not fill the deficit caused by the new law banning police from impounding cars of unlicensed drivers. Since the legislature was unable to actually give drivers licenses to illegal aliens, they have decided to render drivers licenses unnecessary. Our leaders may lack decency and common sense, but we must give them credit for persistence.

That’s the world we live in. Government looks to penalize you for every possible misstep, while coddling the truly dangerous and destructive. Every day we get another poke in the eye from our civic authorities, who seem intent on proving that they exist to serve the special interests and criminals at the expense of normal people. Does the madness ever end?

The original post follows:

Five families with children who were shot or traumatized at a Jewish center in Los Angeles in 1999 have filed a $15 million suit against Washington State for releasing the shooter on parole prior to his rampage. He had earlier been imprisoned for threatening a mental health worker with a knife. The state decided he didn’t pose a significant risk to the public, so he was paroled after only 8 months. Three months later, he went on the shooting spree. [The original post included a link to a news article that is no longer on the web. Here is the Wikipedia report on the incident.]

This lawsuit raises the broad question of government liability for releasing dangerous criminals inappropriately. We know the level of recidivism is very high, and yet questionable paroles and early releases are common occurrences. Law enforcement authorities cite limited budgets and prison overcrowding as the reasons for their actions.

Occasionally, public outrage over a high-profile case will cause an atrocious decision to be rescinded. For example, Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy in 1968, was scheduled for parole in 1984, but the resulting outcry caused this to be reversed. A lesser-known murderer would have been released.

Consider the analogy of the prison system to a company that processes toxic chemicals. Imagine the public reaction if a commercial plant were to cut costs by dumping corrosive poisons into the street. The offending company would not get far in its defense by explaining that it was reasonable to ask citizens to accept a certain amount of property damage and injuries and deaths to help the business balance its books. But these are the decisions that our justice system makes every day, and we accept it. I’m not sure the solution is to seek millions of dollars of compensation from the state, as this lawsuit is attempting to do. But perhaps it’s an opportunity to take a hard look at the practice of knowingly releasing people who will go out and harm innocents.