Number of coronavirus deaths doesn’t warrant mass jail releases
Remember Herbert Hoover’s “A Chicken in Every Pot!” from your history class? Well, if Massachusetts progressives had a slogan in 2020, it would be “A Convict in Every Neighborhood and a ‘ We’re Closed’ Sign on Every Restaurant!”
That’s the plan Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins are pushing.
They’ve sent a letter to Gov. Baker urging him to immediately “decarcerate” thousands of prisoners due to a spike in COVID-19 infections in the state prison system. “It is incumbent upon your administration to significantly decrease the number of people who are incarcerated,” they wrote.
Among the convicted criminals these social justice warriors want to release into your community: “Older individuals, juveniles and those with less than a year remaining on their sentence.”
So if you’re an old wifebeater or young gangbanger, Rachael Rollins wants you back on the streets ASAP. Not surprisingly, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren (“the criminal justice system is racist from front to back”) are on board, too.
“Decarceration will save lives,” Markey said at an appearance with Rollins earlier this year. The same from Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts: “Let’s be clear: Ending mass incarceration is a matter of life and death.”
But whose life? And whose death?
While it’s true, as the Boston Globe-Democrat has aggressively reported, some 140 inmates at MCI- Norfolk have tested positive in the past few weeks. But the one detail the local liberal media leave out: There have only been 10 deaths in the entire Massachusetts prison population since the pandemic began.
Ten.
Anyone care to bet on whether there will be more than 10 new crime victims if Pressley gets her prison release? I’d definitely take the “over.”
“Public officials are opportunistically using the coronavirus to further their long-standing deincarceration goal,” the Manhattan Institute’s crime policy expert Heather Mac Donald told me yesterday. “The number of virus deaths among Massachusetts prisoners does not justify mass releases, especially the release of juveniles whose mortality risk from COVID is close to zero.”
And, Mac Donald added, politicians “should not reverse the valid decisions made by judges and juries regarding criminals’ appropriate sentences and their threat to public safety.”
If the issue really is fear of COVID-19 (as opposed to far-left progressive policy), why would the convicts want out, anyway? According to their latest public report, the DCI population is around 9,000 prisoners. That’s a fatality rate of 0.1%. Compare that to the Bay State’s nursing home fatality rate of 12.5% — literally 125 times higher.
You know what else is getting higher? Massachusetts’ violent crime rate.
“Even amidst a global pandemic, our local law enforcement partners are working harder than ever in major cities like Boston, Brockton and Springfield. However, despite their best efforts, repeat offenders continue to mock the criminal justice system,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling said at a recent press conference. “COVID has almost certainly emboldened violent offenders who think that the criminal justice system is closed. My office will be working closer than ever with our local and state partners to combat the surge in violent crime.”
So violent crime is “surging,” and Pressley, Rollins, et al. want to set the prisoners free?
Well, of course Pressley does. She’s an unapologetic advocate of defunding the police. The good news is that she’s lost that argument (badly). The bad news is, simply by making it, Pressley and her fellow progressives likely cost the Democratic Party congressional races across the country.
That’s certainly the view of more center-left Democrats like Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), who told her caucus that “Defund The Police almost cost me my seat because of an attack ad.” Congressman and POTUS kingmaker Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said #DefundThePolice could do to the Black Lives Matter movement what “Burn, Baby, Burn” did to Democrats in the 1960s.
“Defund” and “Decarcerate” are two sides of the same political coin. Either way it lands, Democrats lose.
Well, except in Massachusetts …