The Colorado Springs Gazette final

The price of going too soft on crime

For a glimpse at what the latest round of “justice reform” sweeping the Legislature could mean for Colorado communities, consider the upshot of a measure adopted in 2019. The Colorado Chance to Compete Act, aka “Ban the Box,” was passed into law amid that session’s quest to be kinder to criminals. The new law prohibited employers from asking about a job seeker’s criminal history on an application. It also barred employers from stating in a help-wanted notice that people with criminal records need not apply.

The policy’s well-meaning if naive intent wasn’t just to spare ex-cons the embarrassment of ‘fessing up to past indiscretions. It was to make it easier for them to get jobs and avoid a return to prison. And yet, in reality, keeping employers in the dark about the past of a murderer, a child molester, or even a workaday burglar or embezzler, is a bad idea in all sorts of ways that should be obvious to just about everyone. Everyone, that is, except the lawmakers who signed onto this terribly misguided policy. They did so, of course, out of a starry-eyed commitment to forgiveness, equity, “second chances,” “restorative justice” and other buzz phrases driving the Democratic majority’s justice-reform efforts.

The chickens came home to roost last week in Loveland. As reported by the news and commentary site Complete Colorado, a man who had been convicted of the double-murder of his parents as a juvenile in 2011 was working as recently as this month in a nursing home in Loveland because his employer was unaware of his conviction. Gideon Long, 22, was employed at Good Samaritan Society’s Loveland Village until only days ago — even after having been arrested again last year for trying to buy a gun as a felon.

Long was convicted of killing his parents, shooting his younger brother and slitting the throat of his younger sister in Burlington in 2011. He eventually pled guilty in juvenile court and was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile detention facility.

According to Complete Colorado and Denver’s Channel 9 News, Long was released in 2018 and has lied on other applications since, including enlistment in the Army and to obtain an emergency medical technician license. He was dishonorably discharged upon the Army learning of the conviction and his EMT license was revoked as well.

But as Complete Colorado notes, Long didn’t have to lie on his application to Loveland Village — thanks to the 2019 “Ban the Box” law. The employer wasn’t allowed to ask on the application and stumbled upon the truth only after learning of 9 News’ report about Long’s arrest last September for attempting to buy a guy.

And while “Ban the Box” doesn’t prevent an employer from conducting a time-consuming and costly background check on job applicants, it wouldn’t have turned up anything in Long’s case; the record of his grisly crimes was sealed because he was a juvenile.

The misplaced push to reinvent justice continues in the 2021 session. Some particularly reckless policies have been introduced. The good news, fortunately, is that some of those have been derailed. They include a bill that would have expunged the records of convictions for nonviolent charges after three years. How’s that for giving a convict a second chance!

Another bill no longer in play would have prevented students from being referred to police, ticketed, or arrested for misdemeanors, petty offenses, and municipal code violations at school. Police could have stepped in only where there was an imminent threat of serious bodily harm or a felony was suspected.

The bill was a recipe for bedlam. It would have made public education all the more hazardous for students and teachers alike. Its authors, drawing fire from all sides — law enforcement, public schools, victims’ groups — relented and withdrew the bill.

Still alive in the legislative session is a much-debated effort to eliminate cash bail for a wide range of criminal charges. It essentially would allow those arrested for such offenses to be released, come what may.

Lost in the rush by politicians to preen with righteous indignation about the unfairness of the justice system — is the unfairness of “fixing” the system on the backs of crime’s many voiceless victims.

People of every race, creed, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and walk of life — residents of a certain nursing home in Loveland, too — are placed in harm’s way when their elected lawmakers go soft on crime. Shouldn’t they get at least as much representation at the Capitol as do their perpetrators?

Lost in the rush by politicians to preen with righteous indignation about the unfairness of the justice system — is the unfairness of “fixing” the system on the backs of crime’s many voiceless victims.

OPINION

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2021-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-05-13T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/281878711257887

The Gazette, Colorado Springs