Category: Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement
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Virginia Senate Committee Passes Second Look Bill
by Hans Bader Do all inmates deserve a chance for release? Even a serial killer, or a serial rapist who has been locked up and released before? They may soon have that chance in Virginia. In the state Senate, the Judiciary Committee has just approved the Second Look bill, SB 842. It would allow offenders…
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Virginia Community Schools Redefined – Hubs for Government and Not-for-Profit Services in Inner Cities – Part 1 – the Current Framework
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in Attendance, Charity, Philanthropy, Nonprofits, Children and Families, Civil Rights, Individual Liberties, Courts and law, Crime, Corrections, Law Enforcement, Culture wars, Discipline and Disorder, Education (K-12), Efficiency in Government, General Assembly, Health Care, Infrastructure, LGBQT, Mental illness and substance abuse, Political Influence, Poverty & income gap, Public safety & health, Social Services and Entitlements, Threat Assessmentby James C. Sherlock I believe a major approach to address both education and health care in Virginia’s inner cities is available if we will define it right and use it right. Community schools. One issue. Virginia’s official version of community schools, the Virginia Community School Framework, (the Framework) is fatally flawed. The approach successful elsewhere…
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The Violent-Child Problem
by James A. Bacon The story of the six-year-old school shooter in Newport News generates endless attention. It seems indicative of so much that is wrong with our society today. Law-enforcement authorities are rightly focused on the question of how a six-year-old child (a) managed to lay hands on a gun that his parents claimed…
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Chilling Revelations In The Saga Of The 6-Year-Old Teacher Shooter
by Kerry Dougherty Excuse my language, but what the hell is going on at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News? On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that school administrators there have downplayed threats of violence, apparently ignoring pleas for help from frightened teachers. One account claims that the same boy who shot and nearly killed…
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Look Who’s Using Encrypted, Self-Deleting Emails
Speaking of corruption (see previous post), this press release from Virginians for Safe Communities just arrived in my email inbox: Fairfax, Virginia – Yesterday, Virginians for Safe Communities filed a formal complaint [read here] with the Virginia State Bar, the professional standards body for licensed attorneys in the Commonwealth, against the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Fairfax…
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Not a Good Look, Virginia
Not to give our friend Don the Ripper more ammo in his assertion that Virginia is the most corrupt state in the country, but… These numbers regarding federal public corruption convictions in Virginia’s Eastern District, published in a 2022 University of Illinois at Chicago study, “Anti-Corruption Report #14,” speak for themselves. I’d like to see…
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RVA 5×5: Redefining 100 Percent Compliance
by Jon Baliles The recent stories from the City Jail have been anything but good — inmates dying far too often, staffing shortages leading to dangerous work conditions, deputies quitting, and the lack of leadership that can’t fill the vacancies while conducting lie detector tests on some of the staff that remain. Tyler Layne at…
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Part II: School Discipline, Virginia Data and Virginia’s Disproportionality Concerns
This is the second of a three-part series on school discipline. The authors present information and provide discussion questions for the audience to respond. We hope the discussion will further an understanding of the complexity of school discipline and safe and orderly schools within the context of the presented data. by Matthew Hurt and Kathleen…
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Miyares Reminds Republicans the Difference a Year Makes
by Shaun Kenney If Virginia Republicans needed a sizzle reel, this was it. With news that leftist Commonwealth Attorneys are openly refusing to enforce the law in some cases, the threat to the rule of law and the problem of selective enforcement is greater now than ever before. Which is why a long list of…
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Virginia Dems Loathe No-Parole Laws
by Kerry Dougherty What do you do if you’re a soft-on-crime Democrat legislator in a no-parole commonwealth? You get creative. You find ways around the no-parole law that took effect back in the mid-1990s when Virginia was experiencing a crime wave similar to the one sweeping parts of the commonwealth now. Democrats in the State Senate…
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‘Second-Look’ Bill to Release Inmates Is Back Without Safeguards
by Hans Bader In 2022, legislation allowing inmates to seek a reduction in their sentence after 15 years in prison passed the Virginia state Senate, but died in a 5-to-3 vote in a House subcommittee after a lobbyist for the bill boasted it would empty two entire Virginia prisons. The bill, SB 378, was viewed by…
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The Shooting at Richneck Elementary – Part One
by James C. Sherlock There is trauma everywhere you look. A six-year-old boy shoots his teacher in school and we first consider the trauma. Then we look for ways to minimize its effects. And we simultaneously ask questions about the event itself. What happened and why? Unless we are personally involved, and even if we…
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Governor’s Plan to Bolster Law Enforcement Is Meek Rather Than Bold
by Dick Hall-Sizemore In October, amidst much fanfare, Governor Youngkin announced Operation Bold Blue Line. In the words of the Governor’s press release, this initiative is “a series of concrete actions to reduce homicides, shootings, and violent crime.” I had some questions and wanted some details on the proposal. I posed these questions to the…
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Why Law Enforcement Supports Gov. Youngkin’s Behavioral Health Transformation
by James C. Sherlock Updated Jan 6 at 13:10. Virginia’s sheriffs and police chiefs are reasonably hardened by what they see every day. They have very difficult jobs to do and are unlikely, either individually or in groups, to support nonsense. Governor Glenn Youngkin has accepted the challenge of finally fixing Virginia’s behavioral health system.…
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Mysterious Laptop May Hold Clues To Virginia Beach Mass Shooting
by Kerry Dougherty Most of the country is focused on the chaos taking place in Congress. That’s nothing compared to the slice of crazy unfolding in Virginia Beach. As best we can stitch together from Facebook and stories in The Virginian-Pilot, a member of the House of Delegates has been sitting on what could be…