Lax sentencing has led to scores of homicides in Baltimore

I’ve been saying for years that America has an under-incarnation problem. The problem became clear to me when I started researching high-profile homicide cases.

Almost invariably, the murderer had a record such that, in a nation with a well-functioning criminal justice system, he (it was always a he) would have been in jail and therefore unable to commit the crime. Often, the murderer had been released without serving his full sentence.

My evidence was anecdotal, to be sure. But that doesn’t make it unpersuasive.

Even if the gruesome cases I identified were the only instances of homicide by someone who should have been in prison (and obviously they were not), I would maintain that we have an under-incarceration problem. Certainly, the absence of a study provides no solace to the families of victims we know were butchered by career thugs who should have been in jail.

But if it’s a study you want, consider this one from Baltimore. According to the study:

Among 110 suspects in homicides occurring between January 2019 and July 2020:

82% had serious criminal convictions prior to the homicide;

59% had previously committed a weapons crime or used a firearm in another offense;

44% had prior violent crime convictions; and

41% had previously violated their probation or parole.

Furthermore:

Among the 77 homicide suspects convicted first of other serious crimes since 2015:

62% had a conviction for weapons or firearm-involved offense;

44% had violent offense convictions; and

47% had violated probation/parole.

2015 was the year that infamous left-wing prosecutor Marilyn Mosby became the state’s attorney for Baltimore City. As noted, 77 homicide suspects from the period January 2019-July 2020 previously had been found guilty of a serious offense on Mosby’s watch.

Of those 77, 61 (79 percent) faced jail terms longer than the time between disposition and the homicide incident, according to the study. In other words, if the alleged killers had been incarcerated for their full eligible sentences, they would not have been free to commit the homicide.

Thus, if the study is accurate, scores of Baltimore’s recent homicide victims would not have died at the hands of their assailants if the city’s justice system — led by Marilyn Mosby — had imposed and enforced sentences commensurate, as a matter of statute, with serious offenses the alleged murderers had already committed.

In a strange way, these killers did the community a service by identifying themselves through their serious but lesser crimes as menaces to human life. Like left-wing prosecutors throughout America, Mosby did the community a grave disservice by not putting that knowledge to use — i.e., by not locking them up for as long as she should have.

I think that qualifies as an underincarceration problem.