Nationally, leftists want to eliminate bail. Bad idea. Where do you begin reforming “bail reform?” New Hampshire’s governor just signed a bill making her state safer, undoing years of experimentation. Many states, including Maine, suffer the same revolving door, felons “caught and released.” Genuine reform is overdue. It is time.
Facts are essential in any debate, especially here. Maine – a poor state, getting more poor by the year- faces a “perfect storm” of unpleasant facts. They converge to make reforming “bail reform” a must-do for the next governor and – God willing – Republican legislature. Until then, we all suffer. Other states are, too.
Fact: Maine is suffering the biggest public safety crisis in state history, with nearly a dozen organized crime groups and identified gangs operating in the state, and minimal effort to roll them back.
Fact: Maine suffered more than 10,000 drug overdoses last year, unthinkable, and between 40 and 70 young people die monthly, heartbreaking, reversable, a tragedy.
Fact: Maine’s one-party leadership – Democrat Governor, Attorney General, Senate, House, plus Secretary of State, Treasurer, and all Democrat district attorneys except in Androscoggin County, all prosecutors underfunded – is failing.
Fact: The problems we face are here, not in California or Washington, not someone else’s responsibility, not going to be solved by a Democrat majority that refuses to see listen, focus, understand real people’s struggles, roll up sleeves and solve them.
Fact: Ironically, Democrat bills actually push the OTHER way, indulging drug traffickers, organized crime, gangs, and overdoses, calling them this the “new normal,” trading safety for free education, housing, credit, and needles for illegals.
Fact: Bail reform figures into this picture directly, from York to Lewiston, Augusta to Bangor, north to “pick your town,” Calias, Holton, Presque Isle, all under siege from drugs, fentanyl, xylazine (also called “tranq”), meth, heroin, all deadly.
Fact: In places like Bangor, points north and south, current state law reinforces hopelessness, causing local officials to feel overwhelmed, too many mandates, too little law enforcement, drug treatment, rising rental costs, new homelessness, not enough jail space, taxes so high no one can pay them without painful choices.
Fact: The default, pushed hard by left-leaning “non-profits,” which somehow make money while pushing politics they say they don’t, is “let them out,” “no bail.”
Fact: Bills in the Maine legislature like LD 179, which effectively creates a “no bail society,” felons arrested, let go on “conditions” they violate, violations on release conditions then forgiven, “no prosecution” is a formula for lawlessness.
Fact: We can do better- far, far better. The answer is not incremental steps toward a “bail-less society,” no accountability for the first crime or 20th crime committed out on bail or on no bail – felons violating “conditions” with no consequences.
Fact: Consequences matter, whether in a home, town, state, or nation. Without them, everything frays. Costs rise, violations accelerate. So accountability matters.
Fact: If Maine follows New Hampshire, starts to lead, creates deterrence that frees this state from organized crime, cuts foreign drug supply – which can be done –returns to predictability, crime will result in sentences, but crime will also decline.
Fact: With no more head fakes, no more looking away from accountability, and no more saying it “cannot be fixed,” public safety returns and costs fall. We all win.
Bottom line: Reforming “bail reform” – reversing years of misguided policy, restoring predictable, well-funded law enforcement, drug treatment, and prevention, no more false promises, no more thinking the addicted and homeless are incurable, no more needle giveaways, we can live in the state we still remember, that many of us grew up in, that we love. It is time.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC. Robert Charles has also just released an uplifting new book, “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024).
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