Published: August 15, 2008 05:28 pm            

MAIL CALL: My plan to drive down crime in Texas

I recently read two articles on reducing crime in Texas and the nation that are right on with my program.

In Thursday Metro of Dallas Morning News, police presence drives down crime. Dallas police officers watched a man break into a car and steal a stereo. The man was a 51-year-old career criminal with at least 15 burglary convictions. In their new get tough policy on repeat offenders, he was locked away with many others I suppose, and crime is down 17 percent.

In your Sunday editorial you had a great article on cracking down on gun criminals. In Virginia, if you commit a crime with a gun you get jail time.

I’m a get-tough-on-crime kind of guy and I know many people reading this will not be. They will be for rehabilitation and parole and probation, they will say we already have too many prisoners and they are too costly. Under my plan we only need one more prison and we could build it on the cheap. My prison is on the plains of North Texas, 10,000 acres at least. It will have a pretty secure fence around it but it will be minimum security. If some prisoners break out it will not be a terribly big issue because 95 percent of all the inmates are usually just cruising our streets anyway.

We will supply the inmates with farm implements and any type of seeds they request to grow themselves all the food they could possibly say grace over, we will even supply cows and chicks so they can really eat well if they choose because the state will otherwise only provide the bare essentials, making my prison as cheap to the taxpayer as possible.

In my program the liberals get to run the show on all youth crime and first, second and third offenders. They can offer any program they like, up to or about four or five strikes, but after the offenders have shown us they cannot obey the law we will have a place for them.

Many of the prisoners currently in our system could be moved to our new minimum security prison clearing the way for beds in our maximum security prisons for dangerous criminals.

I say let’s do it and drive down crime in Texas.

Don Burton

Eustace

        

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