Horowitz: 43% of Indianapolis murder suspects were out on pretrial release at time of murders

The Indiana governor and legislature have no interest in holding a special session to deal with COVID-related human rights violations, but perhaps they will have an appetite to deal with the record crime. For those who think the crime wave is limited to blue states, many have forgotten that red states have signed onto the same jailbreak de-incarceration agenda items most directly responsible for the crime bubble. Now the chickens are coming home to roost, with the same career criminals who are released early going on to commit the lion's share of the crime.

For those wondering why a city like Indianapolis is experiencing record homicides, look no farther than the percentage of felons let out of jail. A new Fox 59 investigation found that 43% of murder suspects arrested in Indianapolis through October of this year were either out on pretrial release or serving post-conviction sentences. And this report does not even include the juvenile suspects who almost assuredly would have gotten a lenient sentence or pretrial release stemming from prior criminal charges.

Nor are these criminals necessarily released pretrial for nebulous crimes. Marcus Garvin, who is accused of brutally murdering his ex-girlfriend, Christie Holt, in July, was charged with stabbing a random person seven months earlier but was released on low bond.

Republicans like to focus the debate on crime exclusively on funding for the police, but most of them tacitly agree with the Democrat premise that somehow we have an over-incarceration problem, when in fact we have a de-incarceration problem. Career criminals are not being properly deterred with tough sentences any more. Moreover, too many criminals are being released on low bail, and then it takes forever for a trial to commence.

The bottom line is we need more funding for courts and prosecutors. At a time when we are spending trillions of dollars on COVID fascism and welfare, our governments – even in red states – are ignoring their most sacred job of preventing dangerous people from harming innocent citizens. They need to fund prosecutors' offices with special grant programs designed to enforce specific statutes against repeat offenders that will result in the longest prison times. After years of weak-on-crime policies, there is a massive backlog in cases of violent felons. There's an even greater need to fund prosecutors than to fund the police.

There is also a need to build more prisons and courts. If there are years' worth of backlogs in the courts, that will result in the worst criminals remaining on the streets indefinitely. Legislators should use some of the COVID funds to pay for this, because even Biden blessed the reprogramming to combat crime. Why not use it to lock up more criminals that he likes to coddle?

Just as of Nov. 17, Indianapolis was on the verge of breaking its murder record for the second straight year, at 244 homicides year-to-date. For its relatively small size as a major city, that is a homicide rate almost as high as Chicago's. According to a mid-year report from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, 75% of the victims and suspects were known to law enforcement. Indiana, like many other states, has dramatically shrunk its incarcerated population. According to the Indiana Department of Corrections, the incarcerated population has declined by approximately 20% over the past two years. This, despite the fact that carjackings are skyrocketing in Indianapolis. They simply are not being locked up, and the lack of deterrent encourages more crime.

Last year, Indianapolis blew out the previous homicide record by 37%. The overwhelming majority of those murders remain unsolved. Republicans have stupidly shied away from their traditional tough-on-crime stance in recent years, in part out of fear of alienating black voters. But the reality is that as in most major American cities, the growing homicide bubble resulting from jailbreak "reform" policies disproportionately harms black people. Although black people compose less than 30% of Indianapolis's population, they accounted for 75% of all homicide victims in the city in 2020.

Overall, across the nation, murder increased 29.4% and aggravated assaults rose by 12% in 2020, according to the FBI. By all accounts, this year appears to be continuing on that dangerous trajectory.