A report on recidivism among convicted criminals, released by North Carolina state officials, is drawing fresh scrutiny toward Roy Cooper, the state’s former governor and current Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.
The New York Post recently reviewed data from the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission.
The commission reviewed what happened to the thousands of felons released in 2021 due to alleged COVID overcrowding in the state system. The mass release occurred following a settlement reached between the Cooper administration and the NAACP and the ACLU.
“At least 3,500 convicts were released as part of a little-known settlement between Cooper’s administration and civil rights groups in February 2021 — and The Post found more than 600 of those later committed serious felonies like homicides, sex offenses, or other violent crimes,” the news outlet reported.
This includes 18 prisoners “[who] have been charged with murder in the four years since.”
The campaign of Republican Senate candidate Michael Whatley has criticized Cooper’s handling of the situation.
Cooper’s campaign team says he fought the release of the prisoners, calling the accusations “blatant lies.”
Even if he did fight the release, the mass release of prisoners in 2021 and thereafter is an indictment of left-wing “civil rights” groups that worked to get them released.
“What’s happening in North Carolina prisons is the convergence of two pandemics both fueled by racism and classism – COVID 19 and an unjust criminal legal system,” North Carolina NAACP President Anthony Spearman said in 2021.
Spearman stated further:
Even as we celebrate this monumental step in our efforts through this lawsuit, we must acknowledge that a disproportionate number of those marginalized, oppressed, and put in harm’s way by being incarcerated during the pandemic are melanin-rich, working poor, or both.
“The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, Disability Rights North Carolina and other advocacy groups joined onto the NAACP’s complaint filed in Wake County in April 2020,” WFAE previously reported.
However, short of being a victory for the “marginalized” or against “racism,” at least some of the felons who were released later went out and allegedly inflicted violence on black citizens.
One criminal “was arrested and charged with the murder of Elante’ Thompson, 23, on Jan. 29, 2022, after being set free in July 2021 following multiple jail stints over the preceding decade for grand larcenies, breaking and entering, and assault by strangulation of a female with an unborn child,” the NY Post reported.
[Featured image courtesy of North Carolina Department of Adult Correction]
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