re: Another criminal on parole goes on to kill

Bandit, you claim to be a conservative, and the most-important benchmark of FISCAL conservatism is that you do not willy-nilly implement governmental spending without knowing how much it is going to cost and where you will be getting the money.

Crimes committed by prisoners on parole is a real problem. If you want to solve it, you must look at REAL solutions.

You cannot resolve a metallurgical problem by assuming that you will discover unobtainium. You cannot solve an energy problem by assuming that someone will discover a perpetual motion machine. And you cannot solve a prison capacity problem by assuming that you can ignore six decades of Constitutional jurisprudence on prison overcrowding.

If you want to eliminate parole (in whole or in part), you will need additional prison capacity. Anyone who pretends otherwise is a child trying to join a discussion at the adult table.

The current prison population is about 1.6 million. If you eliminate parole, you are looking at an increase of about 400,000. The average cost per bed to build a max security prison (violent felons, right?) is between $75k and $100k, but let’s say it can be done a bit cheaper. You are still looking at $25 BILLION just for construction. Figure another $4 billion of annual costs per year.

To those silly posters who sarcastically make the “just one life” argument, I have NEVER made that argument, because it is childish. Deploy your strawman argument in response to the children who do use it.

Likewise to the sarcastic “eliminate all,guns” poster. Again, I have never made such a stupid argument. My view of the bread of the Second Amendment is certainly more nuanced than many here, but just as broad.

To the “not ALL paroles” posters, you are just looking down a slippery slope. Ban parole for ONLY murder today, and you will want to expand it tomorrow when a crime is committed by someone committed of assault with a deadly weapon. When you have done that, the next debate will be “simple assault,” until we are arguing about parole for tax evasion.

Is is worth the cost? That is a tough question. But do not be disingenuous about the EXISTENCE of the question … not if you claim to be a fiscal conservative.