Democrats have made fighting “mass incarceration” their focus on criminal justice. The result is the constant release of violent career criminals who would be kept behind bars by properly enforced “three-strikes” laws.
We have video from the Aug. 22 murder of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee who fled Vladimir Putin’s invasion only to be murdered on a light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was stabbed multiple times by Decarlos Brown Jr., a career criminal who attacked her entirely at random as she minded her own business in her seat on the train. Brown has been arrested more than a dozen times and has a rap sheet that includes armed robbery, felony larceny, and breaking and entering. After serving five years for that armed robbery, he was released in 2020 and arrested five months later for assault.
There is no excuse for someone like Brown being free in society. He has shown repeatedly that he is incapable of being a law-abiding citizen. North Carolina does, in fact, have a three-strikes law for “habitual felons,” but that is of no use when charges are dropped or state and local officials purposefully undermine it. Former Gov. Roy Cooper appointed a “racial equity” task force to explain how racist North Carolina’s justice system is and how it can be changed. That task force called for eliminating the state’s “habitual felon” status. That task force was led by then-Attorney General Josh Stein, the current Democratic governor of North Carolina.
Nor is any law worthwhile when judges do their best to keep violent criminals like Brown out on the streets. Brown was arrested in January 2025 for misuse of the 911 system. Rather than keeping him locked up because of his extensive, violent record, Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes released him so long as he promised to reappear. Another judge, Roy Wiggins, appointed a forensic evaluation of Brown last month, but Brown was never evaluated. Then he brutally stabbed Zarutska to death.
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If states such as North Carolina are not going to enforce their three-strikes laws and, in effect, turn their public transportation systems into bastions for violent criminals, then those states do not deserve federal transportation funding. And Democrat-run states and cities have made this the norm, whining for years about “mass incarceration” and reorienting their criminal justice systems to focus on releasing criminals, no matter if they have been arrested 14 times or 41 times. (Yes, that latter example is real, right from New York City).
The safety of law-abiding people, whether they be lifelong citizens or Ukrainian refugees, should be prioritized over how “mass incarceration” makes Democratic politicians feel uncomfortable. Career criminals belong behind bars forever, and Democratic states and cities that refuse to enforce that are responsible for every death like Zarutska’s.