Detroit Empties Its Prisons

by JASmius



This isn't necessarily a case of Detroit's chronic hard-left municipal government valuing criminals' freedom over the lives and property of the honest, law-abiding citizenry - really, at this point, is there any such thing left in that hellhole? - as it is the brutal fact that they literally can no longer afford to keep the Motor-less City's criminal element locked up:

A published report says dozens of suspected killers, rapists and others who were arrested by Detroit police over the past four years have been released because of a backlog of unsigned warrants.

Among the unsigned warrants at the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office are 21 for murder, including one going back to 2010, according to a report in the Detroit News. The newspaper says there are 105 for sexual assault and 126 for child abuse.

In most cases, police were forced to release the suspects, since the law requires that they can’t be held beyond 72 hours without being arraigned.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy says many of the releases are a result of too few employees in her office. She says the office has “lost half of our staff and it is no surprise that we are not able to fulfill our mandated functions with such drastic staff reductions.”

“It certainly is not surprising that this has impacted our ability to review and charge warrant requests presented to us,” Worthy said. […] [emphasis added]

Sixty years ago Detroit had a population of three million people and was an economic magnet and industrial center.  Today it's population has plummeted by three quarters, it's bankrupt and a literal ward of the State of Michigan, and over half its one-time jurisdiction is an amalgam of abandoned, collapsing ruins - the result of sixty unbroken years of leftwing extremist rule that substitutes radical romanticist fantasies for economic reality and responsible financial stewardship.  It's the old saying about "nature, red of tooth and claw" when you ignore its lessons come to life: No, money DOESN'T grow on trees.  No, there ISN'T any such thing as a free lunch.  You can't revel in the bread & circuses of ever-expanding vote-buying via ever-expanding "public services" with an ever-expanding public payroll at ever-expanding and ridiculously inflated salary/benefit/pension levels, all of which jacks up taxes that drive away middle class residents and, ergo, the tax base, indefinitely.  If such a city isn't willing to cease the binge, grow up, start making tough choices about what it can afford and what it can't versus what "services" it genuinely needs and those without which it can do, it winds up where Detroit is today: With others, including circumstances and an empty treasury, making those choices for it.

The same lesson applies to States and nations as well, of course.  Detroit's present is Obamerikastan's future.  Guaranteed.  So this isn't so much a cautionary tale as it is a sneak preview of ever-bleaker days to come.