The serial killer who terrorized a South Carolina community by shooting five people to death before police killed him Monday was a career criminal paroled just two months ago, authorities said....Burris had a long rap sheet filled with charges such as larceny, forgery and breaking and entering from states across the Southeast, including Florida, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland. He had been paroled from a North Carolina prison in April after serving nearly eight years.
"Look at this," Lloyd said, waiving a stapled copy of Burris' criminal record. "This is like 25 pages. At some point the criminal justice system is going to need to explain why this suspect was out on the street."
Note that larceny, forgery, and breaking and entering are "nonviolent" offenses. If the let-em-out crowd were correct, this record would make the "offender" (as they like to call criminals) no more likely to commit a violent offense than the rest of us. But they are not correct. Criminals do not specialize to anywhere near the degree they would have us believe.
B & E? If someone is repeatedly breaking into homes, he is a great risk to commit a violent offense. Whether people choose to call B & E "non-violent" really obfuscates the issue. Moreover, it defies reality to conclude that the crimes for which this guy was previously convicted were the only crimes of this recidivist hardened criminal. At some point, a repeated "non-violent" offender/criminal needs to be permanently removed from society.