Madness in Maine: Democrats Favor Felons

Madness comes in many forms. Maine seems to be ground zero for it. Despite historic support for mandatory minimum sentences for Class A and B felonies, Democrats aim to end mandatory minimums for murder, rape, drug trafficking, and gun felonies—madness.

Democrats in Maine are pushing LD 268, a bill that—very simply—ends the certainty that felons will face time. Entitled “An Act to Restore Sentencing Discretion to the Judiciary by Removing Mandatory Minimum Sentences,” Democrats from Bath, Portland, Auburn, and Gorham would empower major criminals by ending mandatory sentencing.

[RELATED: Maine Democrats Push Bill to Eliminate Mandatory Minimum Criminal Sentences]

Ironic is another word for the proposed folly, although madness fits. Maine has seen a shocking jump in annual drug overdoses, from minimal to 10,000 in ten years. These horrifying numbers, the loss of 40 to 70 young lives to drugs monthly, evidence collapsing public safety and well-being.

From York, Lewiston, and Bangor, east to Camden, Ellsworth, and Bar Harbor, north to Calais, Houlton, and Maine’s northern border – literally in all of Maine’s 16 counties – major drug traffickers now operate, many with near impunity, as Maine is outflanked and outgunned by bad guys.

Transnational organized crime groups from the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, and China see Maine as their “playground” – there’s very little in the way of deterrence, which is a big switch from the 1990s. Policing has been made harder, and the bureaucracy goes up, while funding, morale, and convictions go down.

Traveling the state, north to south, east to west, certain things are common. You find drug-related homelessness, addiction, overdoses, broken families, poverty, and drug-related crime – not just distribution, but burglary, robbery, and assaults everywhere. Human misery has become common.

Only a few years ago, this was not the norm. It should never be. Domestic abuse is also inordinately high, accounting for 50 percent of homicides and a third of all assaults. Perhaps as sobering, 80 percent of domestic violence is poly-drug related, and it hurts kids most of all.

In other words, Maine’s Democrats have delivered a world of hurt. This can be reversed, Maine made as safe as it is beautiful, but it will take work, and freeing dangerous felons is not the way.

Reversing Maine’s public safety crisis, which reinforces downturns in public confidence, education, business, jobs, and fiscal accountability, is possible – but it begins with facts. Maine is in real trouble, and the Democrat legislature and governor are responsible.

To see Maine’s Democrat legislature, governor, and constitutional officers whistling by the graveyard as Mainers suffer and now prepare to free the felons by ending mandatory minimums – including for murder, rape, and other felonies – is dumbfounding.

The effect of ending mandatory minimums would be catastrophic for public safety. In the 1980s, my job as a U.S. Court of Appeals clerk involved criminal cases, writing the 9th circuit’s constitutional defense of mandatory minimums for federal drug traffickers.

To believe we should now reverse course, when the mandatory minimums were part of reducing prejudice in sentencing, creating deterrence, and elevating public security, is pure folly.

What Maine needs is more of what works, not what never would. Needed is restored support for local, state, and federal law enforcement, authority to arrest those trafficking deadly drugs into Maine and within the state, less bureaucracy, more money, a HIDTA (designation as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) for northern Maine, and a focus on stopping drugs both from Boston and over the northern border.

If all this sounds like common sense, it is – combined with more effective and available treatment (350 beds for 1.4 million Mainers is absurd), plus ways to actively save kids and preserve families, help those addicted on a “get well, stay well” plan, and more prevention.

What boggles the mind is how Democrats – in Maine and places like Oregon – throw bad money after bad, failing to understand politics is not a game, lives do not come back, kids’ lives matter now and forever, and they – those in authority – are responsible.

Not every solution to collapsing public safety – especially when not coordinated – will work. Not every new idea or old one reapplied works. But freeing felons by ending mandatory minimum sentences for the worst crimes is a nonstarter. It is sheer Progressive Democrat madness.