Homicide Reduction: Aggressive Enforcement Plus Prosecution?

Baltimore has discovered what cops have known all along:  to reduce violent crime bad people need to be kept in prison.

I have long railed against the revolving door our criminal justice system has become.  I have arrested the same people again and again because the state refuses to actually incarcerate these dregs.  Every police officer and deputy sheriff I have ever talked to all agree: if you send people to prison, they can’t hurt anyone else.

Baltimore PD has been working with the Maryland Department of Parole and Probation and prosecutors to dog probationers and put them back into jail when they violate the terms of their release.  This has resulted in the sharpest decline of murders in the past 20 years.  By targeting people who have committed violent crimes, but who are merely on probation or parole, Baltimore has reduced the number of murders from 241 to 173 from last year to this year.

This is just more evidence that we can reduce crime!  Cops are doing their jobs by finding and arresting these perps.  If we could just keep them in prison, crime would significantly decrease across the board.

View the Baltimore Sun editorial here.