Before the week ends, Kathy Hochul will release 8,000 ex-cons from parole supervision.
Felons who were under the control of a court, with pending periods of incarceration, will be turned loose to run the streets.
All across New York state.
She’s doing it to provide political cover for herself and all the other Democrats on the ballot in November.
“Less is More” is what she calls it, that’s short for “Less Punishment is More Crime,” which is apparently the new Democratic Party mission statement. Less punishment for voters whose favor the Democrats are currying, and more crime for you and your community.
That’s the reality. The governor and her party care more about their own political fortunes than they do about whether or not you and your family are safe.
And in case you think that’s a dog whistle, let me be more specific. Kathy Hochul and her party care more about making themselves look good politically than they do about the carnage being wrought against black people on New York’s streets. As the Hochul crime rate spikes across the state, the victims of violence and homicide are overwhelmingly black and brown – people whose lives are endangered by policies exactly like this.
But, back to this.
By the end of Thursday, 8,000 parolees will officially be released from parole. Their prior court supervision will be terminated. They will, in effect, get early release from the punishment imposed upon them when they were sentenced.
And all future parolees will receive one day of early discharge from parole for each day they don’t actively violate their parole.
Kathy Hochul and the Democrats say they are doing this to fight back against racism and injustice in the criminal justice system.
But that’s a lie.
They are doing this to cover their own asses.
Because as the Kathy Hochul Democrat decriminalization of crime has rolled forward, as the governor and her party have done everything possible to free criminals from responsibility for their crimes, an awkward reality has become evident.
Most of the criminals turn out to be parolees.
Over and over again, when there is a particularly egregious crime, when there’s a horrific rape or murder, the accused ends up being a parolee. The person accused of a new crime was out of prison early for an old crime. That means the Kathy Hochul Democrat catch-and-release approach endangers people.
When the killer is a parolee, Kathy ends up with blood on her hands.
Which naturally raises the question: How do we get parolees to stop committing crime? How do we protect society from re-victimization by parolees? How do we stop the night-after-night recitation on the evening news that the accused is a parolee?
By putting parole violators back in prison? By improving and increasing parole supervision? By reducing parole and having inmates serve more of their original sentence?
Of course not.
We do it by making them former parolees.
Oh, people still get raped, and they still get robbed, and they still get killed.
But not by parolees.
They get raped, robbed and killed by former parolees.
And while that doesn’t do anything to help the people who get raped, robbed and killed, it does do something for Kathy Hochul and the other Democrats on the ballot in November.
It lets them lie, it lets them twist the narrative, it lets them avoid responsibility for the carnage they have loosed in New York’s impoverished urban neighborhoods.
It solves the problem of parolee crime by eliminating parolees. It takes the last possible tool the state had to protect lives and property – the last chance the state had to control ex-cons – and throws it away.
“Less is More” is not a solution, it destroys a solution.
And it shows that Kathy Hochul and every other Democrat on the ballot this November don’t give a damn about actual people and the reality of New York’s streets. When you empower criminals, innocent people die. Neighborhoods are destroyed, life is made miserable and communities are destroyed.
But maybe votes are gotten.
Maybe some shrill segment of the Democratic Party, some cell of the progressive movement, some leftist revolutionaries intent on tearing America down one gunshot wound at a time, will embrace this fight against order and law and produce money and votes for the governor and her party.
That’s what the Kathy Hochul Democrats want – power at any price.
And so it is that the no-bail, defund-the-police party is today turning 8,000 convicts loose.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t see that on the evening news, because the “press” is in on it, too.