Foreseeable Consequences

Often the consequences of our choices are unforeseeable, as anyone familiar with Shakespeare's tragedies knows well.

On the other hand, sometimes they're completely foreseeable and even foreseen, but although those consequences may be harmful, people are often determined to make the dunderheaded decision. Unfortunately, when they do it's often other people who pay the price.

Writing for National Review, Jim Geraghty, the author of one of the best daily news columns in the country (Morning Jolt) tells us that we are today reaping the consequences of decisions made in the fairly recent past whose consequences were entirely foreseeable. Not only were they foreseeable but those who made those awful decisions were repeatedly warned that terrible consequences would follow, but they made the decisions anyway.

Geraghty discusses four "painful consequences" of our political leaders' failure to heed the warnings. Here's number three:

Down in Georgia, the state legislature belatedly realized that eliminating cash bail was putting too many dangerous criminals back on the streets too quickly. The Wall Street Journal editorial board lays out the hard lesson:

The Georgia General Assembly passed a bill this month to mandate cash bail for 30 crimes, including certain types of domestic violence, rioting and drug dealing. The change limits the power of judges to return arrested suspects to the streets without a pretrial deposit. The bill awaits a signature from GOP Gov. Brian Kemp, who began an anticrime campaign last year by tightening sentences for gang-related offenses.

The new bail law is a quick reversal for Atlanta lawmakers, who in 2018 granted judges the power to release people arrested for most misdemeanors. Dispensing with bail was part of a package of reforms enacted under former GOP Gov. Nathan Deal, which also included tripling the threshold for felony theft. The GOP-controlled Legislature whooped these reforms through amid the relatively low-crime 2010s.

By 2019 Atlanta police were raising the alarm about the number of crimes committed by defendants out on bail, and Judge Robert McBurney described a “revolving door” of offenders. Atlanta convened its Repeat Offender Commission of law-enforcement officials to report on how to curb the trend, only to see crime surge along with the rest of the nation after the summer 2020 riots.

In 2022, the Atlanta Police Department’s Repeat Offender Tracking Unit determined that roughly 1,000 people were responsible for 40 percent of the crimes committed in Atlanta: “In just one week, Atlanta Police arrested 20 repeat offenders who had a total of 553 previous arrests and 114 felony convictions.”

That year, the city experienced about 22,300 “type A” incidents — homicide, rape, aggravated assault, and six different kinds of property crimes — which means that on average, those 1,000 criminals committed nine felonies per year.

This strongly suggests that our cities are not overrun by an overwhelming number of criminals; they are plagued by a limited number of felons who are not kept behind bars for a sufficient amount of time considering the seriousness of their crimes.

Read the entire column to see a few other very foolish decisions for which our political elites are responsible.