Kentucky Is About to Pass the Cruelest Criminal-Justice Bill in America

[marmar]

Kentucky Is About to Pass the Cruelest Criminal-Justice Bill in America
The state is making it easier to kill homeless people on private property—and that’s just one part of one of the most draconian crime bills in recent history.

PAIGE OAMEK and ROHAN MONTGOMERY


(The Nation) On March 14, the Kentucky Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve HB 5, the “Safer Kentucky Act.” The legislation will now head to the Senate floor for a vote, and it will almost certainly pass. The 78-page bill criminalizes homelessness—and decriminalizes the use of deadly force against individuals engaging in “unlawful camping.” Under this law, if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is attempting to commit a felony or attempting to “dispossess” them, they can shoot the homeless person.

That’s not all. “Really, this is like 20 bills packed into one,” Kaylee Raymer, a criminal-justice policy analyst at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, told us. A slew of “tough on crime” policies would create or enhance penalties for sleeping in your car, damaging your apartment while moving out, or fleeing from police. It will institute a three-strike rule, where the third strike is either a mandatory life sentence or execution. The result will be more people in prison for a longer time. The bill is a rewind to the failed policies of the 1990s.

More than a hundred advocacy groups in Kentucky oppose the bill, but they face a veto-proof supermajority of Republicans animated by fears of a nonexistent crime wave, driven by a desire to control Democratic cities, and backed by a conservative think tank pushing similar legislation across the country. HB 5 is the most extreme anti-homeless, tough-on-crime bill introduced in a state legislature this year—and copies of HB 5 could soon start popping up across the country.

Catherine McGeeney, the director of communications at the Coalition for the Homeless of Louisville, told us, “It’s just unfathomable cruelty.” ......................(more)

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/kentucky-crime-bill/

[CrispyQ]

1. "...the third strike is either a mandatory life sentence or execution."

These people are are some mean, sadistic fuckers.

[hlthe2b]

2. So, they will give innocent yet desperate homeless zero choice except to defend themselves violently...

How's, THAT for an act sure to result in unintended consequences

[Diamond_Dog]

3. This is just unfathomable.

How cruel and heartless do you have to be to execute someone for being homeless? Who thinks this is the answer to the homeless problem? Well, I guess I know who thinks it’s the answer.

[Meadowoak]

4. Andy Beshear (D.) will never sign that bill into law.

[DBoon]

5. a Democratic governor is no match for ...

... "a veto-proof supermajority of Republicans animated by fears of a nonexistent crime wave"

[Grins]

6. Insert a clause mandating a tax increase to PAY for it...

…and then watch it die.

[Karadeniz]

7. Good christians.....

[SoFlaBro]

8. No wonder why Kentucky is such a fucking blue grass MAGA toilet.