Can We Please Enforce Existing Criminal Law?

It was the kind of news that tears your heart out. A young woman, Nykea Aldridge, pushing her baby in a stroller was gunned down in cold blood — hit by a stray bullet when two gang member brothers allegedly tried to murder a man who’d “exchanged looks” with them as he dropped of some women in their neighborhood. So far the case has gained notoriety far beyond the typical accidental gangland killing because Aldridge is NBA superstar Dwayne Wade’s cousin and because Donald Trump responded to the atrocity with this repugnant tweet:

Last night, however, news emerged that compounded the tragedy. When the Chicago police made its arrests, we learned exactly how preventable this murder was. Read the following paragraph and weep:

Darwin Sorrells was sentenced to six years in prison in January 2013 on a gun charge and was released early on parole. Derren Sorrells is a known gang member who is also on parole for motor vehicle theft and escape, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, adding that he has six felony arrests on his record.

Did you catch that? Both men were out on parole. One man was out on parole on a gun charge.

Again and again we’re told that two great injustices of American life are (1) mass incarceration and (2) lax gun laws. Yet in this circumstance, if the state had simply imposed the punishments due for the crimes charged, the Sorrells would be behind bars, and Ms. Aldridge would be alive today. It’s time for a reckoning, for Americans to understand the true stakes of the debate over incarceration and gun control.

First, regarding mass incarceration, it’s simply a myth that our nation is filling its prisons with nonviolent drug offenders — the peaceful stoners and addicts of popular legend. In reality, the vast majority are in prison for exactly the reasons the Sorrell brothers were in prison — violent crimes and property crimes. Releasing these men means releasing people who use weapons, steal cars, and otherwise terrorize their communities. Writing last year in the print edition of National Review, University of Pennsylvania law professor Stephanos Bibas broke down the numbers:

As Fordham law professor John Pfaff has shown, more than half of the extra prisoners added in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were imprisoned for violent crimes; two thirds were in for violent or property crimes. Only about a fifth of prison inmates are incarcerated for drug offenses, and only a sliver of those are in for marijuana. Moreover, many of these incarcerated drug offenders have prior convictions for violent crimes. The median state prisoner serves roughly two years before being released; three quarters are released within roughly six years.

In other words, prison inmates aren’t simply locked up as punishment but because they represent a real risk to the public. There is no easy way to reduce prison populations without exposing innocent Americans — like Nykea Aldridge — to increased danger. 

Second, the Left is constantly telling us that more gun laws are necessary to decrease homicide, yet when one looks closely at who actually commits gun crimes, and you tend to see a long rap sheets of unenforced or poorly-enforced prior crimes. In other words, a state that is unwilling to enforce existing criminal laws often seeks to impose new laws on a population when the criminal underclass already obtains its weapons illegally. The result is a nonsensical legal structure in which law-abiding citizens face greater obstacles to self-defense, while the actual criminals benefit not just from spotty enforcement but also from political pressure on sentencing. 

I completely agree with the notion that American mass incarceration is a tragedy, but it’s less a tragedy of bad policy than it is of bad behavior. And when we don’t incarcerate the dangerous, it is the innocent who suffer.