FIX THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM - CATCH THE CROOKS

 Following on this last weekend's shootout and murders (where 12 people were wounded and 4 killed) unsurprisingly there have been renewed calls for harsher penalties. However amidst all of the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth nobody has hit on the simple fact that the criminals and murderers are simply not being caught.

I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that for every 100 murders the conviction rate was somewhere in the vicinity of 7 percent and that most of those convictions related to what can loosely be called 'domestic disputes'. The arrest rate for what might  loosely be called 'gang related' murders and crimes were somewhere around 3 percent and the conviction rate for these types of crime was less than 1 percent!

My guess is that the arrest rate percentages are even lower now, and as for the conviction rate!  Well that is just about non-existent! 

So? Think like a criminal: if you had a less than 3 percent chance of getting caught would you hesitate to commit the crime? My bet is that you wouldn't give it a second thought. And if by some chance you were actually arrested and charged, your chances of being actually convicted are so close to zero that no threat of any penalties will deter you!

Think about it! We don't really need more stringent, "hang-em high" laws; what we need is for the police to actually do their job and catch the crooks. Then we need for the justice system to work quickly so that between an arrest and a verdict from a trial, less than one year has passed instead of the very long wait - sometimes/often more than10 years - that pertains now. 

Until we fix this we are simply whistling in the wind! Politicians can give us as much "basket" as they want - and we can all cheer lustily while they hold expensive meetings in first class hotels (which we pay for, by the way) that come up with all kinds of fancy rhetoric that make them sound as if they know what they are doing. But nothing that ANY politician has said has ever provided ANY solution as to how they propose to catch the crooks. And until the crooks start getting caught our crime situation will just get worse. Watch!