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Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidates' approaches toward crime [and] justice are often blurred
In a Republican advertisement aiming to sway voters in Pennsylvania’s all-important U.S. Senate race, the headline flashes across the center of the screen over a grainy video of a man brandishing a gun at a gas station: “5 men recently released from Pa. prisons are charged in 6 homicides.”
The ad by the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund may hit home, especially for voters in New Castle, where one of the five men — Keith Burley, of Edinburg — fatally stabbed his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son a few months after he was granted parole for a murder in the late 1990s, according to police.
The quick spot alludes to a state under siege by violent criminals, and if it were up to allies of the PAC’s preferred choice for Senate, Republican Mehmet Oz, the images would be seared into the minds of voters as a warning of what it may look like if Democrat John Fetterman is elected.
They don’t blame him for that specific incident — he had nothing to do with the decision to release Burley, and officials had said his record was clean for the seven years before his release — but a main theme of the GOP’s platform ahead of November is an attempt to connect Mr. Fetterman’s proclivity for giving convicts a second chance to letting criminals back on the streets at a time Pennsylvania is facing rising violent crime rates. Mr. Fetterman, meanwhile, describes giving second chances as way to push back against “our too often unforgiving and vindictive justice system.”
But in this race, the line between fear mongering and reality is often blurred, and the truth about the candidates’ approaches to crime and criminal justice is far more complicated, according to a Post-Gazette analysis of specific claims made so far in the contest.
Mr. Fetterman, who’s chaired the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons as lieutenant governor, has been a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform since the early 2000s when he became mayor of Braddock. He has often said he believes in the power of a second chance and insists he’s fought hard for second chances for “deserving Pennsylvanians” and the wrongfully convicted.
The ad by the GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund may hit home, especially for voters in New Castle, where one of the five men — Keith Burley, of Edinburg — fatally stabbed his girlfriend’s 8-year-old son a few months after he was granted parole for a murder in the late 1990s, according to police.
The quick spot alludes to a state under siege by violent criminals, and if it were up to allies of the PAC’s preferred choice for Senate, Republican Mehmet Oz, the images would be seared into the minds of voters as a warning of what it may look like if Democrat John Fetterman is elected.
They don’t blame him for that specific incident — he had nothing to do with the decision to release Burley, and officials had said his record was clean for the seven years before his release — but a main theme of the GOP’s platform ahead of November is an attempt to connect Mr. Fetterman’s proclivity for giving convicts a second chance to letting criminals back on the streets at a time Pennsylvania is facing rising violent crime rates. Mr. Fetterman, meanwhile, describes giving second chances as way to push back against “our too often unforgiving and vindictive justice system.”
But in this race, the line between fear mongering and reality is often blurred, and the truth about the candidates’ approaches to crime and criminal justice is far more complicated, according to a Post-Gazette analysis of specific claims made so far in the contest.
Mr. Fetterman, who’s chaired the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons as lieutenant governor, has been a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform since the early 2000s when he became mayor of Braddock. He has often said he believes in the power of a second chance and insists he’s fought hard for second chances for “deserving Pennsylvanians” and the wrongfully convicted.
- more at link -
Like every state, Pennsylvania incarcerates far more blacks than whites or any other race. It's for sure a racial touchstone as well as a legal and moral one.
I believe that John Fetterman, as former mayor and current PA Lieutenant Governor, is far more on top of the terms of early release and reform of former convicts. What experience has Dr. Oz ever had with PA prisons, recidivism, and prisoner releases? What does he know of our racial issues?
Oz is just flapping his gums and saying whatever they tell him to say next.
This will become evident when Fetterman and Oz square off in their upcoming October debate.
