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From Douglas Rapozo of Kapa’a:

On

any given week, I’ll read a dozen newspapers from various parts of the U.S. and

Canada. To my mind The Garden Island leads the way in gullibility and

foolishness when it comes to crime reportage.

The Aug. 27 issue was full of

propaganda served up by state bureaucrats and reported with zeal by staff

writers. Staff writers are those lockstep creatures who never think to doubt a

spoon-fed statistic or question a fat-cat bureaucrat. One knows these creatures

by one characteristic: Laziness.

The page 2-A article with theh headline

“Hawai’i tops at keeping paroled convicts from returning to jail” was plain

nonsense. It is meaningless for a staff writer to write, “Fewer of the state’s

convicted felons are rearrested while on probation than in any other state…”

The qualifying clause is “while on probation.”

For the ex-convict, there is

life-and quite often crime-after probation. Probation is not forever. In most

cases, probation lasts a year or two and sometimes it is set at five years. The

appropriate measurement to be used is the lifetime recidivism rate. The

criminal recidivism rate in Hawai’i is nearly the same as in other

states.

Another bromide cited in the article was the old moss-laden

statistic showing that, “It costs an average $70 to $100 a day to house

inmates. Probation services, on the other hand, cost an average of $1.57 per

day…”

But what does it cost an innocent person whose head gets bashed by

a pipe-wheeling, drug-using parolee? What does it cost when someone’s home is

broken into and looted by some recently released thug on probation? What does

it cost when someone’s young daughter gets raped by an ex-jailbird just

early-released from custody? What does it cost when a paroled, intoxicated

repeat-offender drives a vehicle and smashes into you, dear gentle

reader?

The $70 to $100-a-day lockup cost is cheap when matched against the

destruction heaped upon innocent people by criminals on parole or

probation.

In the article, one also finds this gem of mindless reporting:

“Fewer people are going to jail, too. The overall crime rate dropped in Hawai’i

from 1996 to 1999.”

The overall crime rate dropped because most reported

crimes are property crimes. Crimes against property went down. The rental cars

of tourists and the luggage and cameras within are getting better protection

from police patrols.

But crimes of violence are as high as they have ever

been in Hawai’i. Insiders know that “fewer people are going to jail, too”

because state judges are sending fewer thugs to jail. Weak-kneed, water-boy

judges are being pressured, by the state Democrats who appointed them, to

reduce prison overcrowding. Year after year, state Democrats showed no desire

to get a desperately-needed new prison built.

Judges who put convicted

offenders on probation are the true terrorists and assassins of the innocent

people being hurt by such releases.