Chris Powell: More accountability needed from chronic criminals, too
The spiked heads of executed criminals once adorned the gatehouse of the medieval London Bridge.
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Connecticut state government lately has tried to increase the accountability of police officers, equipping more of them with dashboard and body cameras, establishing the office of inspector general to investigate police use of force, and diminishing the immunity of officers from lawsuits for actions on duty.
But strangely state government has done nothing to increase the accountability of criminals, even as serious crimes have increased and many are committed by chronic offenders who never should have been let out of prison. Many crimes by chronic offenders have been well publicized but the governor and state legislators seem to pay no attention.
Odds are that an especially horrible case involving a chronic offender this month will be ignored officially as well. That is, the man charged and being sought in connection with the murder of his baby girl in Naugatuck, Conn., has a serious criminal record -- drug dealing, assault and resisting arrest -- for which he served time in prison, and, the Waterbury Republican-American says, at the time of the murder was both on parole and free on bonds totaling $375,000 on new charges of carjacking, assault, robbery and burglary.
Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, in downtown Naugatuck (c. 1890).
Of course, the suspect in the baby's murder hasn't been convicted of it yet. Even so, given his record of convictions and the additional serious charges that already were pending against him, someone in authority should be asking why he was free on both parole and bonds for new crimes and why prosecution of his pending charges was not hastened. When someone has been killed and the suspect is a career criminal, the case should be worth at least a hearing before a General Assembly committee.
Yes, police should be held more accountable. But how about courts, prosecutors, probation officers, and social workers and therapists who work with criminals who reoffend?
Accountability is still lacking in the case of Henryk Gudelski, the jogger who last year was run down and killed in New Britain, Conn., by a stolen car allegedly driven by a 17-year-old boy who had been arrested 13 times in the preceding 3½ years but had been repeatedly freed by juvenile court.
The governor and legislature have never taken note of that case either, and no accountability has been achieved by their recent legislation allowing police to detain arrested juveniles for an extra two hours while seeking a detention order from a judge. While the governor and legislators touted the change, police say it is no practical help.
Indeed, instead of dealing with chronic offenders, the criminal justice issue gaining momentum in Connecticut seems to be faster restoration of voting rights to felons. How "woke"!
If only "woke" really meant having awakened to what's going on.
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OPEN PRIMARY MISCHIEF: While he is no friend of Republicans, columnist and talk-radio host Colin McEnroe says he has the remedy for the party's poor performance in Connecticut: open primaries. If unaffiliated voters were allowed to help choose Republican candidates, McEnroe writes, the party would not nominate extreme conservatives who can't win. McEnroe cites Connecticut's two most recent Republican governors, John G. Rowland and Jodi Rell, as proof that Connecticut will elect Republicans.
But Rowland and Rell were not extreme conservatives. They were hardly conservatives at all, and they were nominated without open primaries.
Besides, open primaries are undemocratic because they can impair like-minded people from maintaining a party, and they invite mischief like what recently occurred around the country as Democrats intervened in Republican nominations, assisting candidates associated with former President Donald Trump because they would be easier to defeat. This intervention by non-Republicans helped nominate the less electable Republican candidates.
Connecticut Republicans could restrict their open primaries to unaffiliated voters, nominally excluding Democrats. But in Connecticut changing registration from a party to unaffiliated and back is easy and quick, so mischief in open primaries would be easy too.
Of course, Democrats in Connecticut long have been winning elections without open primaries -- indeed, often without any primaries at all. So maybe the ability to dispense a lot of government patronage is more helpful than open primaries.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester. (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com)