[1]Not much else to say here. From the Washington Post [2]:
“I want everybody just to relax here, we’re not saying let everybody out, we’re not doing that. We’re going to do a comprehensive study,” McAuliffe said.
Parole abolition fulfilled a gubernatorial campaign promise by Allen (R), who ran on an anti-crime platform. Allen was one of the dozens of politicians nationwide who won office in an era of rising crime by pledging to toughen the justice system.
The state now requires that inmates serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before they can be released for good behavior. The changes also increased sentences for first-time offenders.
George Allen’s legacy still governs most of what we are doing in Virginia today. To a point, we are all still living with Allen’s legacy as a leader in Richmond during his four years as governor — arguably one of the high water marks of conservatism that broke only when then-Governor Jim Gilmore’s car tax relief broke on the rocks of the Virginia Senate in the late 1990s.
Ever since then, Warner and Kaine both fiddled with the environment, but never really stamped Capitol Square with their own visage. McDonnell was focused utterly on job creation and rarely moved on any actual reform.
McAuliffe, perhaps instinctively, knows this. Allen’s legacy as governor will continue to be a stumbling block to any grand strategy to keep Virginia in the blue column. Hence the imperative of tearing down Allen’s legacy for certain Democrats.
The question remains as to whether or not it can be saved, or whether McAuliffe is really interested in prison reform at all. One-off ideas that announce sweeping changes only to demonstrate little real result seem to be the modus operandi of the McAuliffe era at the moment. Then again, he has 2016’s biennial budget to work on that.