“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
As the coronavirus spreads its deadly shadow over every country in the world, American liberals have come up with a novel solution: They want President Donald Trump to set millions of American prisoners free.
And as usual, the loudest voice shouting a bad idea belonged to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
The virus, which is formally known as COVID-19 and spreads person-to-person, does the greatest damage in settings with concentrated populations—like schools, concerts, public transportation, and yes, prisons.
In a jail, “there’s nowhere to go,” said prison union representative Aaron McGlothin. “If somebody comes down sick, what are you going to do? Everybody’s going to get sick.”
Social liberals have decided the easiest remedy is to put as many prisoners on U.S. streets as humanly possible.
The Sentencing Project—a George Soros-funded nonprofit dedicated to reducing criminal penalties—called on lawmakers to “release individuals” the group believes “do not pose a public safety risk,” including what the group calls “rehabilitated individuals in prison.”
It would also release elderly prisoners and anyone who is being held on bail for a crime but who has not yet been convicted.
The number of people in prison awaiting trial alone came to 482,000 in 2017, according to the Department of Justice.
Identical talking points spilled out of the Prison Policy Institute, another Soros-funded think tank advocating lax criminal law enforcement.
PPI demanded that prison guards “release medically fragile and older adults” who are in the “justice-involved population.”
The liberal advocacy group even found the perfect country as a model for its plans: Iran.
To avoid the coronavirus—which is ravaging the Islamic Republic—from spreading to Iranian prisons, the mullahs temporarily released 54,000 criminals. That’s “almost a quarter of their total prison population,” PPI reported proudly.
That would be the equivalent of about 400,000 American prisoners flooding U.S. neighborhoods, according to PPI’s figures.
Never mind that there has not yet been a single case of COVID-19 in prison.
“The Federal Bureau of Prisons said there have been no confirmed coronavirus cases in its 122 facilities as of March 10,” the respected outlet Kaiser Health News reported.
And forget that three health care experts recently said that the best way to prevent a prison pandemic is the use of “protective gear and diagnostic kits,” and the “immediate reporting, testing and coordination of care.”
The facts don’t enter into it. The liberals see their chance to put inmates on the streets, and—led by democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—they’re not going to let a crisis go to waste.
On Wednesday, AOC tweeted, “Right about now would be a great time to weigh emergency measures” like “humanitarian provisions in prisons & decarceral policies.”
“Decarceral” is the opposition of incarceration: It means taking convicts out of prisons and sending them back to the streets.
The next day, she doubled down.
“We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health & economic affects,” she wrote.
This included what she called “detention relief” for people who have not yet come to trial, older prisoners, and illegal aliens.
“This is not the time for half measures,” she said.
Right about now would be a great time to weigh emergency measures like:
– Extending Medicare/Medicaid coverage to all
– Eviction freezes
– No-strings UBI programs
– Eliminating work requirements for SNAP &other assistance
– Humanitarian provisions in prisons & decarceral policies— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2020
This is not the time for half measures.
We need to take dramatic action now to stave off the worst public health & economic affects.
That includes making moves on paid leave, debt relief, waiving work req’s, guaranteeing healthcare, UBI, detention relief(pretrial, elderly, imm)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 12, 2020
Other public figures have joined her call. San Francisco public defender Mano Raju advocated for the Bay City to release any prisoner aged 60 or older with an underlying medical condition…which is virtually every prisoner over 60.
Turning criminals loose isn’t enough for American liberals; they also want to keep offenders from ever going to jail in the first place.
PPI recommends that police start “reclassifying misdemeanor offenses that do not threaten public safety into non-jailable offenses.” Cops should also start “using citations instead of arrests for all low-level crimes.”
Prosecutors in cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia have already enacted such soft-on-crime policies, touching off a massive spike in crime.
Of course, the criminals love these policies. 56-year-old New York City subway thief Charles Barry personally thanked Democrats after he was released for the 139th time, saying, “Bail reform is lit!”
“The Democrats know me and the Republicans fear me,” he said. “You can’t touch me! I can’t be stopped!”
Extreme liberals and socialists like AOC would like to use the coronavirus epidemic to set loose a pandemic of crime.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”