Recently in Probation and Parole Category

When the First Step Act was pushed through Congress, we knew that its expansive drafting was going to kill people. Troy Pine of Providence, Rhode Island died on October 2. The direct cause of death was stabbing, and a formerly life-sentenced former gang leader, Joel Francisco, has been charged with that crime. See this article by Brian Amaral in the Providence Journal. The indirect cause was the way the First Step Act was written.

Residents of the District of Columbia deserve protection from the most violent criminals and to be confident those offenders receive prison sentences commensurate with the gravity of their crimes. A bill pending in the D.C. Council would undermine that expectation and subject residents to unwarranted risks from convicted murderers, rapists and child sex abusers.

The legislation would directly benefit the most serious and violent criminals -- specifically, those who killed, raped or committed sexual abuse before reaching age 25 -- by making them eligible for release, or a reduced sentence, while still in their 30s.

It's important to be clear about the implication of the pending legislation, sponsored by D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6): Under the bill, if the gunmen who massacred innocent people in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, this month had instead committed their crimes in the District -- and had both survived -- one would be eligible for release or reduced sentence at age 36, at a judge's discretion; the other at age 39.

A Madera County arsonist convicted of a string of fires in Yosemite Lakes Park could be eligible for parole and that has many people concerned.

Cecena was convicted of killing SDPD officer Archie Buggs in 1978, after shooting the 30-year-old officer four times during a traffic stop in Skyline before killing him with a final shot at point-blank range, according to the DA's office.

In an earlier time, convicted defendants were regularly sentenced to long prison terms with eligibility for parole well before their time was up. Parole came with conditions (like, e.g., don't go back, Jack, and do it again). Parole could be revoked for violation of the conditions, and the violators could be sent back to prison. Because he was going back to serve out some portion of his original sentence for the original crime, the violation did not have to be found by a jury or proved beyond a reasonable doubt.

The drive to put ever more criminals and more dangerous ones on the streets gathers steam, funded by Soros money on the left and Koch money on the libertarian side, leaving relatively few defenders of the strong and sensible policies that have been a major factor in the tremendous drop in crime since the peak in the early 1990s.  Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas is one of the few, and he has this op-ed in the WSJ with the above headline.

While the House bill has some flaws, the Senate can fix them on a bipartisan basis. But under no circumstances should Congress cut mandatory minimum sentences for serious crimes or give judges more discretion to reduce those sentences. That foolish approach is not criminal-justice reform--it's a jailbreak that would endanger communities and undercut President Trump's campaign promise to restore law and order.

There isn't a woman alive who was ever raped while either intoxicated or unconscious who doesn't consider the entire experience violent.

But that's not how these crimes are defined legally in California. The same for human trafficking of a child, abducting a minor for prostitution, drive-by shootings at inhabited homes or cars, felony domestic violence, solicitation to commit murder, among others.

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But a series of bills aiming to expand the list of crimes defined as violent died in legislative financial committees. Too expensive, was the verdict. That was the reason given when the Assembly Appropriations Committee just about one year ago killed a bipartisan measure aiming to classify all rapes and all human trafficking as violent.

The results of the study should deter the Senate from embracing the FIRST STEP legislation passed by the House just before the BJS figures were published. Indeed, the BJS numbers undermine FIRST STEP in multiple ways.

Violent crime in Santa Monica jumped almost 50 percent in 2017 over the previous year, reaching its highest level in two decades, according to police and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) statistics.

Data released by the City showed a total of 705 violent crimes in Santa Monica, or 230 more incidents than the 475 reported in 2016 -- a 48 percent increase.

Behind the big jump in violent crimes was a rocketing number of aggravated assaults, the City's data showed. Those crimes increased 67 percent, from 244 incidents in 2016 to 407 reported occurrences last year.

Last year also marked the third year in a row of increases in violent crime, which also includes robbery (up 28 percent from 2016, or 241 incidents), rape (up from 40 in 2016 to 57 in 2017) and homicide (one incident in 2016 and two in 2017).

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As with law enforcement throughout California, Santa Monica police blame much the rise in crime on two statewide measures approved by voters over the past four years.

Marshall Project's False Narrative:  In February of 2017, repeat felon and gang member Michael Mejia, released from prison a year earlier and a few days after release from jail for another crime, murdered his cousin and stole his car, got in an accident and murdered a responding officer.  At the time of Mejia's arrest, law enforcement officials and victims groups pointed to California sentencing reforms (AB109 and Proposition 47) as the reason Mejia remained on the streets long enough to commit the murders.  A recent LA Times article by Abbie VanSickle and Richard Winton cites a review the paper conducted with the Soros-funded Marshall Project which "found a far more complex chain of events that allowed Mejia to remain free despite his record of criminal behavior."  The main findings reported in the article are:  1) Mejia's probation officer used excessive short jail stints to correct his criminal behavior. 2) The county was too slow in referring Mejia to drug treatment and when they finally did, he didn't show up.  3) The county waited too long to get tougher on Mejia for repeated new crimes and the prosecutor failed to have the probation officer participate in the plea bargain for his last offense.