Starting at the wrong end

With Washington state’s budget shortfall, the legislature is not looking at cutting back on non-essential services like free medical coupons for illegals, and is instead going soft on serious criminals.

Tough-on-crime legislation that has long filled courtrooms, prisons and parole offices across the country has apparently met its match — the economy.

In Washington and other states, lawmakers are considering budget cuts that would close prisons, loosen sentencing guidelines and slash probation terms.

With lawmakers in Olympia looking for nearly $4 billion in spending cuts, several high-ranking Democrats say the recession gives them an opportunity to add compassion to a criminal-justice system they believe has grown too large, too expensive and too harsh for some of the crimes.

OK, i could agree with that. The college kid or the white collar dude who was busted with a eighth of pot should be let go. The former accountant who embezzled a quarter million dollars doesn’t need to spend all five years behind bars.

But is that where they’re going to make the cuts? Not on your life.

Prentice is backing a plan in the Senate’s proposed state budget to close the McNeil Island Correctional Complex, a 1,300-inmate, medium-security island prison in Pierce County.

…
The House, in its proposed budget, would cut probation time for violent felons and sex offenders; allow for home detention instead of incarceration in some cases; close the medium-security Naselle Youth Camp; and eliminate parole for nearly a third of all juvenile offenders.

McNeil Island is where we keep the largest population of violent and habitual sex offenders in Washington. They’re so bad, we put them on our own little Alcatraz. Naselle is where the juvenile gang related violent offenders go.

How ignorant does one have to be to not believe that letting child rapists and gang members go about their merry way in society is a “Bad Thing”?