Daniel Horowitz Op-ed: TN legislature passes bill to finally lock up violent criminals
Commentary by DANIEL HOROWITZ | April 26, 2022
In recent years, sentencing for violent criminals has been like common core math. You start out with a sum of 20 years, for example, but somehow even the worst career offenders wind up turning 20 years into 8 years’ time served. Tennessee has become the first state to finally implement truth in sentencing to make sure that a sentence is actually served.
Last week, after a decade of red states promoting the Koch/Soros jailbreak agenda, the Tennessee legislature put victims first and passed true criminal justice reform. HB2656 / SB2248, as amended, requires people convicted of one of nine criminal offense categories to serve 100% of their sentences – no exceptions. This means no good time credits or parole are available for those found guilty of homicide, vehicular homicide, attempted first-degree murder, robbery, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated burglary, or carjacking.
Additionally, those found guilty of 20 slightly lower-level but still significant crimes, such as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated robbery, burglary, and arson, would still be eligible for good time credits, but only after serving 85% of the sentence.
This bill has reversed the decade-long tide of weak-on-crime legislation percolating through red-state legislatures. For years, we’ve been told that there is somehow an over-incarceration problem with people serving draconian sentences for nothingburger crimes. The reality is that even the most violent career criminals often serve a few months here and there and constantly get out to reoffend. With the growing crime wave in cities like Nashville and Memphis, the role of the de-incarceration agenda is hard to deny.
To begin with, most of the sentencing these days is very lenient. For example, in 2019, out of 17,355 felony convictions in Minnesota, only 3,612 were fully sentenced in accordance with the sentencing guidelines. Once you add all the parole and good time credit programs to that, even the worst career criminals are only serving a fraction of the sentence. This doesn’t even account for all of the ways they plead down throughout their criminal career, thereby incurring a sentence well below the threat level of their criminal proclivities. At a minimum, this bill ensures that violent and dangerous criminals will at least serve the entire sentence they are given. This bill should serve as a model in every other state, as the crime wave continues to grow.
The American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual CPAC gathering for alleged conservatives, vigorously opposed this bill because it apparently still believes there are too many, rather than too few, criminals behind bars. However, no sane person can believe we need to let more people out of prison.
Those who think we don’t have an under-incarceration problem should consider the following statistics from the FBI in 2019. Just 61.4% of the 14,325 homicides, 32.9% of the 124,817 rapes, 30.5% of the 239,643 armed robberies, and 52.3% of the 726,778 aggravated assaults were “cleared” cases. That means that in 5,529 murder cases, 83,752 rape cases, 166,552 armed robbery cases, and 346,673 aggravated assault cases, there was no arrest. Hence, just in the four violent categories alone, there were over 758,000 violent crime cases that went without a resolution just in one year.
What about duration of incarceration? According to BJS, among the prisoners released from state prison in 2018 – before some of the recent “reform” – they only served, on average, 44% of their sentences. Even for murder, it was only 58% of their sentences. The median length of time served for murder was less than 10 years in 30% of the cases and was more than 20 years in only 42%. The median time served for rape was less than 10 years in 64% of prisoners. In total, 71% of those serving time for a violent crime category served less than five years, and nearly half served less than two years.
In reality, the bromide of “criminal justice reform” for “low-level, nonviolent offenders” was always a ruse. Now groups like the ACU openly admit they oppose even truth in sentencing, much less enhanced sentencing, for the most violent and career criminals.
The truth in sentencing bill passed the Senate 20-6 and the House 86-9 with bipartisan support and now heads to Governor Bill Lee’s desk. The bill was sponsored by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who made a rare speech from the well of the House chamber to present his bill. This legislation piggybacks on last year’s truth in sentencing law, which closed the early release loopholes for crimes traditionally committed against women and children, such as rape and child abuse.
Reminiscent of some of the debates over COVID, proponents of weak sentencing are demanding to see “studies” showing more jail time leads to less crime. Speaker Sexton believes no such study is needed when common sense dictates fewer criminals on the street equals less crime. “This solution creates the toughest penalties in America for violent criminals; it also establishes a firm line for criminals not to cross,” said the speaker in a statement to TheBlaze. “If they do, punishment will be swift and severe under our new law. I do not need a fancy study to tell me more bad guys in jail with longer sentences reduces crime.”
It is shocking how red-state governors and legislatures have failed to pursue these ideas until now. Even blue-state governors are now vulnerable to defeat because of the growing crime wave. A recent Gallup poll showed that 53% of Americans worry a “great deal” about crime and it ranks as the third most important issue on the minds of voters. A Pew Research poll showed that crime is the number-one issue among black voters.
With surging crime in cities like Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee had the sixth highest murder rate in 2020. In both 2020 and 2021, Memphis set new homicide records and now boasts the ninth highest homicide rate in the country and is ranked the most violent metro area in the country. The homicide rate in Tennessee has gone from a low of 5.2 per 100,000 in 2013 to 9.6 in 2020. Motor vehicle thefts have spiked from 183 per 100,000 to over 300. Even smaller cities like Chattanooga have become increasingly dangerous.
Kudos to the Tennessee legislature for recognizing that weak-on-crime policies plague red states just as much as blue states and need to be rectified. Along with the passage of robust medical freedom bills and a new ivermectin over-the-counter bill, the Tennessee legislature is on its way to forging an agenda of freedom and public safety that should be emulated in every red state. If every GOP supermajority state would use its power to its fullest, we wouldn’t have to wait for ineffective GOP majorities in the irremediably broken federal system to make a difference.
Reported By 
This is what Trump was talking about when he repeatedly promised to Make America Great Again.
By: 
In response, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., introduced legislation on Monday afternoon that would suspend issuance of visas to refugees from countries with a high risk of terrorism until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security meets certain standards. Those standards include fingerprinting and screening all refugees, implement a tracking system “to catch attempted overstays,” and enhancing security measures that are already in place.
How would you feel if you drove into a town here in the United States and found that many of the street signs were in Arabic only with no English wording? Then you look around and discover that many of the signs on businesses were also in Arabic. Not possible you say? Think again! Welcome to Dearborn, Michigan.
It’s rare to receive 
What Did You Say? 
Several politicians have recently been offering free goodies to voters. One of the most popular of these, oddly enough, is something that several state governments have already tackled: free college tuition.
The details vary by state, but Oregon, Tennessee, Georgia, Michigan, and Louisiana (among others) all use tax dollars to pay for at least some of their residents’ college tuition.
Louisiana provides a great case study for advocates of similar federal policies. Louisiana just so happens to be in the news right now because the governor is threatening to suspend his state’s version of free college tuition for everyone.
Louisiana’s Tuition Program
Louisiana’s plan is called the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students, or, more commonly, TOPS. This extremely popular program uses tax dollars to pay full tuition (and some fees) at any of Louisiana’s public universities. Other than residency requirements, all high school students qualify as long as they have a C average (2.5 GPA) and at least an 18 on the ACT.
So the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students doesn’t cover every student’s tuition, but it ends up covering it for a large chunk of middle-/upper-class families.
How It Started
The program started out in the late 1980s as the brainchild of oil tycoon/philanthropist Patrick Taylor. The program, which wasn’t originally named for him, started out as a tuition assistance plan only for low-income individuals.
In 1997 the state removed the income caps. At that point, all Louisiana students, regardless of financial need, were made eligible for “free” tuition at any Louisiana public college. Once in college, students had to maintain a C average to keep their TOPS awards.
As of 2010, approximately 70 percent of Louisiana’s high school graduates headed to college within one year. That’s nearly 20 percent higher than the rate in 2000.
Who’s Paying for It?
It’s easy to call the program a success because of this increase, but it’s just as easy to point out that the program doesn’t really provide free education. In one way or another, someone pays for it.
The eventual implosion of the program was easy to predict back in 1997 for the same reasons that pretty much any similar subsidy is destined to fail. Subsidies don’t really lower the cost of products and services; they only lower the up-front price that some people pay.
(In 1997, this program inspired my very first public critique of a government policy. Back then, I thought it was a terrible idea.)
No Such Thing as Free Tuition
A person receiving “free” tuition may not see it (or even care), but subsides actually raise the total cost of an education. The core problem is that they remove the paying customer—in this case the student—from the equation.
Without the subsidy, the paying customer receives the direct benefit for the service and bears the direct cost. If that person doesn’t think the cost is worth it, they don’t pay.
Louisiana’s program replaces this paying customer with groups of government officials. These officials neither receive the direct benefit nor endure the direct cost of obtaining an education. These groups do, however, benefit a great deal from obtaining more of your tax dollars.
And they rarely bear any direct cost from either increasing your taxes or delivering a substandard education product. (The incumbency rate is fairly high for politicians.)
On a practical level, Louisiana’s program converts tuition payments into a state budget item. In other words, a large chunk of each school’s “tuition” becomes nothing more than revenue sent in by the state bureaucracy.
In Louisiana, four separate higher education systems—each its own bureaucracy—fight over these “tuition” payments. Smaller schools inevitably get the smallest shares, but that’s kind of another story.
A Burden on University Resources
When the influx of students hits—more people going to school when tuition is “free” is pretty much a foregone conclusion—it strains universities’ existing resources. So the transfer of money has the natural tendency to lead to expanded facilities, faculty, and staff.
But these increases call for a permanently higher level of funding, and all of these effects tend to reinforce each other. That is, school officials have a built in reason to ask for larger transfers, and politicians have a built in excuse to raise taxes.
When the state’s coffers are not flush with cash, the schools’ budgets get cut. Thus, universities have every incentive to raise more money from students who are not a part of the Taylor Opportunity Program.
Of course, for any given level of Taylor Opportunity Program students, a higher posted rate of tuition results in a larger transfer from the state. If the program covered full fees and tuition for literally every student, then taxpayers would bear the full cost. But it doesn’t, so non-TOPS students bear some of the cost.
(Pretty much every student ends up paying higher fees directly, too, but that’s almost an aside.)
Non-subsidized markets don’t work this way—prices can actually fall in response to changes in demand and supply. Subsidized systems, on the other hand, are destined to result in higher—not lower—tuition.
Recent numbers support this explanation. The Taylor Opportunity Program has nearly doubled in cost since 2008, and most of that increase has been due to higher tuition.
What I failed to fully appreciate in 1997 was how bad of a deal the Taylor Opportunity Program would end up being for the smaller schools. Then I spent almost a decade teaching at Nicholls State University, a regional state school in Thibodaux, La.
Small Universities Are Hardest Hit
In one sense, the Louisiana program amounted to a cruel trick for these institutions. Smaller schools are the ones least able to sustain the permanently higher costs associated with the new TOPS-generated revenue stream.
When the state budget goes south—and it always does in Louisiana—smaller schools get slammed. (Louisiana State University has more than 25,000 students, so small changes in per-student fees go a long way).
No matter how much we want it to, subsidizing something simply doesn’t make it more cost-effective.
The Taylor Opportunity Program does give certain people a better deal on tuition at one point in time, but then it makes up for it somewhere else.
Ironically, the earlier waves of Taylor Opportunity Program graduates are among those about to get hit with a tax increase. That’s what politicians mean by free.
Aside from the subsidy/cost issue, there are many other reasons why this is bad public policy.
First of all—and I know this sounds crazy—everyone should not go to college. Some people simply aren’t cut out, and many just don’t need to. Yes, people with college degrees tend to earn more than those without, but it does not follow that everyone should go to college.
When the program was started, Louisiana public universities offered students a good value because they were relatively inexpensive. Now that Louisiana taxpayers have spent more than $2 billion on the program, tuition rates are out of reach for many students that don’t qualify for the program.
While the best solution for Louisiana would be to get rid of the program altogether (unlikely since politicians love the program), the best residents can hope for now is an increase in the program’s academic standards and some form of means testing. At least these changes would better direct subsidies to academically prepared students with more financial need.