All of my good friends in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, wracked by crime — despite the fact that reported crime is down — would love to hear news like I’m going to report below. Crime in Philly isn’t so down that it prevented Ramon Rodriguez Vazquez, 36, from — allegedly, of course! — shooting a 31-year-old Philadelphia Police officer following a traffic stop. While Mr Rodriguez-Vazquez has no rap sheet in the Keystone State, he was arrested in his native Puerto Rico in 2011 after he and another man, José M. Serrano Ares, 24, stole an SUV at gunpoint, and then shot at responding officers.

If he had been in jail in Puerto Rico last weekend, he could not have shot a Philly police officer.

Kentucky incarcerates people at a rate higher than all but one country, data shows

by Taylor Six | Wednesday, June 26, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT | Updated: 10:24 AM EDT

If Kentucky were its own country, the commonwealth would have a higher incarceration rate than any nation except El Salvador, a new report from the Prison Policy Initiative shows.

The report, released Tuesday, shows Kentucky has an incarceration rate of 898 people per 100,000 in state prisons, local jails and other systems of confinement.

As of the week of June 6, Kentucky has 32,334 people in custody throughout state, federal, and county facilities, according to state data.

While El Salvador has an incarceration rate higher than any U.S. state, nine states have the next-highest incarceration rates in the world, followed by Cuba.

Kentucky ranks seventh on the global list, just trailing behind Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Alabama.

There’s more at the original, but the reader is supposed to be appalled that so many people are locked up in the Bluegrass State. I am not, because I know that those people behind bars are not out on the streets committing more crimes, making other people victims.

And then there’s the source. What is the Prison Policy Initiative? From their About page:

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative produces cutting edge research to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization, and then sparks advocacy campaigns to create a more just society.

The Prison Policy Initiative’s research and advocacy is at the center of the national conversation about criminal justice reform and over-criminalization. Because essential national and state level data is often completely inaccessible, the Prison Policy Initiative’s insightful data analysis and powerful graphics help fill these gaps to bring in new supporters and help other movement leaders achieve their goals.

In other words, the PPI’s goal is to release more criminals out onto the streets! People like Cody Allen Arnett, whom we have mentioned the previously. Mr Arnett was treated leniently by the Kentucky Parole Board, and released well before his previous sentences were up. Despite having five prior violent felony convictions on his record, the parole board recommended him for early release. On June 26, 2018, he was granted parole, and scheduled for release on August 1, 2018, for a conviction on August 7, 2015 for robbery, for which he was sentenced to consecutive five-year sentences.

On September 23, 2018, he broke into the dorm apartment of Georgetown College student Ava Stokes^[1]Though the media normally do not disclose rape victims’ identities, Miss Stokes has gone public with her story. and raped her, repeatedly, at knife point. He eventually got careless, and Miss Stokes was able to seize the knife from him, and she stabbed him several times. Fleeing the scene, he was quickly apprehended.

In July of this year, he was finally convicted, and the jury recommended six consecutive life sentences. Unfortunately, Kentucky state law does not allow consecutive life sentences, so he was sentenced to life, and Mr Arnett will be eligible for parole after having served twenty years. According to the Kentucky Online Offender Lookup, he will be eligible for parole on September 23, 2038, at which point he be only 56 years old, and able to offend again.

Hasan Elliot could have been in jail on Friday the 13^th in March of 2020, on both a parole violation and yet another drug charge, but instead Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and his minions treated that fine gentleman leniently, when they already had him in custody, and he was out on the streets when, shockingly enough, a warrant was issued for his arrest on a murder charge, and Police Corporal James O’Connor IV was killed during the attempt to arrest him.

On their main page, the PPI states:

Learn about the national prison crisis and how we can begin to turn the tide on mass incarceration. Then, drill down to your state. Be sure to also check out our pages focused on D.C., and the incarceration of Native people.

This is where they are wholly wrong: the United States does not have a “mass incarceration” problem, but a problem that not enough people are incarcerated, for not a long enough time.

My friends in Philly know this, know from bitter experience what the lenient treatment their George Soros-sponsored, police-hating and criminal loving District Attorney has wrought.