Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Update on Charlottesville Race Threats
Last week, I urged people not to jump to conclusions regarding the threats of racial violence that resulted in the closure of Charlottesville public schools. Many such threats turned out to be hoaxes, perpetrated by activists seeking to raise consciousness of racism and bigotry. Let the police investigation play out, I suggested. Well, it didn’t…
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The Marijuana Legalization Debate in Virginia: Lessons from Colorado
Elevated thinking. I recently had the opportunity to do some skiing in Colorado. I hadn’t been to Colorado since the state legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014. I expected to see a Cheech and Chong movie played out on a vast scale high in the Rocky Mountains. That expectation went unmet. Instead, I saw an…
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Fear and Loathing in the People’s Republic
The City of Charlottesville is closing all of its public schools today after alleged threats of racial violence surfaced online. Authorities did not say what the threats were, but the Washington Post reported images circulating on social media sites referring to a post on 4chan, an anonymous online messaging board, that “included a racist meme,…
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More on Solitary Confinement
(This is a follow-up to, and expansion on, an earlier post by Jim Bacon on solitary confinement.) “Solitary confinement” is a term fraught with dread or terror. It conjures up images of Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, or, in real life, John McCain in the Hanoi Hilton. That…
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Are Conclusions Pre-Ordained for Solitary Confinement Study?
One of the latest crusades of the Left is the abolition of solitary confinement in Virginia prisons. A coalition of 16 groups, including the ACLU of Virginia and Amnesty International, are concerned that placing prisoners in isolation can lead to mental health issues and suicide attempts. Now these groups have prevailed upon the General Assembly…
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Bad Analysis, Legislative Gamesmanship, Misplaced Priorities
In 2016, Keith Harward was released from Virginia’s prisons after serving 33 years for a crime he did not commit. Harward was convicted of a 1982 rape and murder largely on the basis of the testimony of forensic dentists that bite marks on the victim matched his teeth. Many years later, following improvements in DNA…
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Give a Warm Bacon’s Rebellion Welcome to Dick Hall-Sizemore
I am pleased to announce that Richard W. “Dick” Hall-Sizemore has joined the stable of semi-regular contributors to Bacon’s Rebellion. Dick has haunted the halls of Capitol Square for some 40 years, first as a legislative aide, then as a local government lobbyist, and in the past 25 years as a policy analyst with the…
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Fifteen Months Later and Still No Answers on the Bijan Ghaisar Killing
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OXvXQqZE8g&w=500&h=315] 463 days. November 17, 2017 was the date that U.S. Park Police gunned down / assassinated Bijan Ghaisar on a street in Fairfax County. That was 463 days ago. n all that time there has been no comment from the U.S. Park Police or the FBI (assigned to investigate the case) regarding this killing.…
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Befuddled, Confused and Conflicted: A Glimpse into the Inner Workings of State Government
by Richard Hall-Sizemore “The Director, Department of Corrections, shall procure and implement an electronic health records system for use in the Department’s secure correctional facilities using the platform provided through Contract Number VA-121107-SMU managed by the Virginia Information Technologies Agency on the behalf of the Commonwealth.” The dry language of that amendment in the House…
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Five Virginia Politicians Thwart the People and Democracy in Marijuana Reform Legislation
We the people elite. A number of proposed bills to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana were put forth in the ongoing General Assembly session. These bills were systematically killed in subcommittee by a tiny fraction of the General Assembly. Generally speaking, five Republican Delegates decided that the proposed marijuana reform bills should not…
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What? The School-to-Prison Pipeline Is a Myth?
The House Committee on Courts of Justice has tabled a school discipline bill, essentially consigning it to oblivion. The bill, described as an effort to disrupt the “school to prison pipeline,” would limit the practice of charging students found guilty of disorderly conduct in school with a misdemeanor. “We’re criminalizing conduct that really needs to…
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State Database Missing 55,000 Felons
The Virginia State Crime Commission is asking why 750,000 conviction records — including those for 300 murder and 1,300 rape convictions — are missing from the state database used to run background checks for gun purchases, court sentencing and employment, reports the Washington Post. It turns out that conviction records are entered into the database…
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Hate Crime Hysteria
“Hate is turning deadly with frightening frequency in America,” wrote Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring in an anguished Washington Post op-ed last month. In building his case, he cited the 11 Jews slain recently in Pittsburgh; the killing of two African-Americans in Louisville, and Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal…
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You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby!
So… My wife was out of town Friday night, and I was doing my wonky thing, poking through the Virginia State Police 2017 Crime Report, when I came across a breakdown of criminal offenses by gender. I’ll ignore the VSP’s retrograde oversight in classifying offenders by only two genders — male and female, as if…
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Washington City Council Puts Virginia Taxpayers, Metro Riders at Risk
Well, Washington City Council has gone and done it — decriminalized Metro fare evasion. America now will be treated to an interesting social experiment. If it doesn’t go well, Virginia taxpayers will wind up picking up part of the tab. The financially strapped Metro, which operates the mass transit bus and rail system for the…