Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Budget Take 2
« Democratic Primary for US Senate | Main | Beshear's First Legislative Session A Failure »One of the worst aspects of the budget is the provision to release felons early from jail. The decision obviously has some prosecutors a bit concerned.
Some Kentucky prosecutors are concerned about a potential "mass exodus" of felons leaving jails and prisons in coming months because of a provision in the budget allowing nonviolent inmates to serve the last six months and possibly more of their sentences on home incarceration. Advertisement
Chris Cohron, commonwealth's attorney for Warren County and president-elect of the Kentucky Commonwealth's Attorney Association, said the proposal, part of the state's effort to save money and reduce jail crowding, is shortsighted, lacking in specifics and dangerous.
"If you open up the floodgates to these people and put them on home incarceration, it's not going to prevent them from committing new offenses," he said. "I think in the financial interest of the state, we are going to severely jeopardize public safety."
While I am very sympathetic to the concerns of the prosecutors, I also have a larger more general question. How have we gotten to the point that we can't even fulfill one of the most vital roles of government? Government only has a few roles that it must perform to maintain an orderly society. Enforcing and upholding the laws of the state are first most among them. We are a state of laws. We must enforce them and punish those who chose to break the law. We shouldn't be letting people out of jail early because we are short on money.
Taxpayer's money should go first to make sure we can uphold the law. All of the other legislator's pet projects (public education, health care, parks, etc) that government doesn't have to perform should take second stage to the full funding of our judicial system. Anything less is a gross dereliction of duty and waste of taxpayer funds.
