By Selwyn Duke
“We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence,” stated Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson recently.
Actually, we can.
So might say a retired police detective who has witnessed the phenomenon firsthand.
And, no, this doesn’t require locking up 15 million Americans. All that’s necessary, says Mike McDaniel, that ex-cop-turned commentator, is delivering a surgical strike.
You incarcerate the small number of people who commit the majority of crime. That is, too, the reality and the good news: Very few of our fellow citizens are hard-core lawbreakers. But the handful who are perpetrate a lot of criminality.
McDaniel relates a case in point from his law-enforcement days. His municipality was experiencing a spate of car burglaries, with items such as auto stereo gear being taken. As luck would have it, a burglar imprisoned on other charges decided his future didn’t look so bright. So, having relevant information, he decided to make a deal, which gave McDaniel a break in the case. One thing led to another — and to the culprits. Providing details, McDaniel wrote Wednesday that one burglary ring
would venture out into the night in groups of 3-6 and hit as many vehicles as they possibly could, heading home as dawn beckoned with as many as 10 stereos, matching speakers, amplifiers and anything else of value they could steal.
I worked steadily for about a month, retrieving stolen property, getting confessions, serving the occasional search warrant when someone didn’t want to consent to a search, and ended up making 25 arrests and charging 350 counts among them, mostly felonies.
…That series of cases pretty much stopped vehicle burglaries for several months until a new series of burglars got busy, and so did I. But do burglars ever move on to more serious crimes like murder? Not always, but some do. Most people who commit serious violent crimes are well known to the police and have lengthy records going back to their juvenile days.
A good example is DeCarlos Brown, Jr. He’s the miscreant with a long rap sheet who murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail last year. (Video below.)
Brown had at least 14 prior arrests/cases. These include for crimes such as armed robbery, assault, felony larceny, resisting an officer, and felony breaking and entering. And his own mother implored authorities to involuntarily commit him psychiatrically. Bottom line:
We could have incarcerated our way out of the violence that took Iryna Zarutska’s life.
Monsters Roaming the Countryside
Here are some more fairly recent examples:
- Anthony Jelks, Jr., 25 or 26, was arrested at least six times over the last six to seven years. He had a pattern of domestic violence and child endangerment charges, and had committed other serious crimes. But he was still walking free when he raped a four-year-old girl last September, giving her an STD.
- Venezuelan illegal alien Bairon Posada-Hernandez, 34, had at least 15 charges on his record. Then, on March 17, he pushed an 83-year-old veteran onto NYC subway tracks, killing him.
- Illegal “trans” migrant “Nicol Alexandra” Contreras-Suarez, a 31-year-old man masquerading as a female, had five to seven charges on his record, including robbery. Nonetheless, this illegal remained in the United States and, last February, raped a 14-year-old boy in Manhattan. The kicker: He only served six months for that crime. Second kicker: Contreras-Suarez was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 2023 for illegal entry. He was later released, however, by the Biden administration.
It’s rhetorical asking why these miscreants were still on the street. Left-wing authorities, enabled by irresponsible voters, have abdicated their duty to secure domestic tranquility. Having a warped sense of justice and often ulterior motives, they prioritize illegals over citizens and lawbreakers over the law-abiding. And bottom line:
We could’ve incarcerated ourselves out of violence that saw two children raped and two innocent lives claimed.
She’s a Pro — and Proud of It
Then there’s the New York woman seen in the video below (at 0:18), identified as “Michelle.” She hasn’t killed anyone and probably never will. Yet she is a serial shoplifter — arrested more than 97 times. She also makes clear in her interview that she plans to continue stealing despite being on supervised release. In fact, she won’t even admit she’s a thief; she calls herself a “professional booster.”
Now, how much shoplifting would be eliminated if Michelle and her fellow “pros” were removed from circulation? And how much cheaper would goods be if we weren’t subsidizing these criminals? (Retail theft is a generally unmentioned contributing factor to high prices.)
This is why it’s not just that habitual-offender laws (e.g., three-strikes measures) are prudent. It’s that they should, in fact, be applied not just to serious crimes, but also lower-level offenses. (This is the case, too, in certain jurisdictions.) When someone serves notice he’s a predator, you cage him and protect his innocent prey.
Proper Punishment Is Rehabilitation
Aside from this being best for society, there’s something virtually never said:
Allowing crime also harms the criminal.
Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle explained why millennia ago, stating:
Legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.
Aristotle’s point was that the goal of law isn’t merely to encourage people to be superficially good with each other. It’s to help them be good, within — through cultivation of virtue (moral excellence).
How does this work? It’s the same as when using rules and punishment (along with love and modeling virtue) with a young child. Setting a good example may serve to, let’s say for argument’s sake, help form the kid’s moral compass 60 percent. But the remaining 40 percent of formation may be effected via rules and consequences. And as the child is compelled to act rightly over time, he can experience something, viscerally.
That is, it feels better being good than bad. He then has a strong emotional incentive to be good.
And this is when you develop good moral habits — aka virtue.
As the modern philosopher Will Durant put it, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
So repeatedly do evil, and you become evil in acquired nature. This is why we do criminals, and those who’d later follow their example, no favors by enabling their wicked habits.
Speaking of Enabling…
And who are the direct enablers? Well, watch the 13-second video below.
“Racist,” “immoral,” and “unholy.” Some would call this projection.
Others might call it Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, seen below threatening to arrest the people who’d take illegal-alien murderers and child molesters off the street.
But then there are the indirect enablers of criminals. They also happen to be the direct enablers of the politicians.
This article was originally published at The New American.
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