Illinois has a new Attorney General, Kwame Raoul. He rose to fame by filling Barack Obama’s former Illinois State Senate seat way back when. And now he’s bringing his equally far-left perspective to his statewide office as the Land of Lincoln’s top prosecutor.
Regarding Chicago’s infamous crime problems he told Illinois News Network:
“We cannot prosecute and incarcerate our way out of the gun violence impacting many communities across the state,” Raoul said.
Except that’s not true.
Florida’s 10-20-Life sentencing enhancement law brought the Sunshine State’s firearm violent crime rate down to historic lows. Under that statute, offenders with a gun in a violent crime get ten extra years of hard time. No probation, no parole, no plea deals. Just hard time. Discharging the gun earns them 20 years extra hard time on top of the sentence for the underlying crime. Injuring someone with gunfire buys ’em 25 years to life.
Illinois, on the other hand, has a revolving door criminal justice system. Offenders like violent, gun-toting home invaders are sentenced to…thirty months probation. This particular home invader’s probation curfew, via electronic home monitoring, was lifted a few months after it began. Two weeks later, cops say he murdered an off-duty Chicago Police Officer and wounded another person.
This (alleged) cop killer’s case isn’t the only home invader armed with a gun who received probation in Cook County, either.
And Prairie State politicians wonder why we have a crime problem.
But Illinois’ Attorney General says we can’t prosecute and incarcerate our way out of the city’s horrendous gun gang violence problem. That’s more than a little reminiscent of another claim that we couldn’t drill our way out of high gasoline prices.
All you have to do to fight these problems is actually want to do something about them. Attorney General Raoul apparently has no stomach for that.