In 2015, Billingsley was sentenced to 30 years in prison, with 16 years suspended, after he pleaded guilty to a first-degree sex offense, court records show.
The Maryland sex offender registry shows he was released from prison in October. The registry classified him in “tier 3,” which includes the most serious charges and requires offenders to register for life.
Why shouldn’t he have been out? Did he escape custody or something? Was he locked up and then processed out by mistakes?
Sounds like he pleaded guilty to his prior charges and was sentenced to a lengthy prison term which he served and was then released at the end. Nothing wrong with that.
If anything this is evidence that the way in which we are incarcerating is not working. We had this dude in custody for sounds like about seven years or something? What the fuck were they doing in that prison?
No, but the American prison system just makes people more violent and insane. So, this person was only going to get worse. Instead of asking why that is our politicians just think we should leave people in prison forever. #Murica.
No, but the American prison system just makes people more violent and insane.
Prisons overall seem to do that… Ditto with correctional facilities.
Prisons overall seem to do that… Ditto with correctional facilities.
Not everywhere. This is what a maximum-security prison in Denmark looks like that is designed to promote rehabilitation over punishment.
That’s cool! Over here in LATAM correctional facilities and prisons just make people worse.
Too lenient of a plea deal with such a violent offender.
Compared to what?
The full 30. This woman would still be alive if he’d been kept behind bars. How he worked it out to serve only 7 should be going into a lawsuit, which unfortunately won’t bring this woman back but might send a message to prosecutors and prevent future tragedies.
This woman, yes, but him serving another 23 years could have just been delaying it happening to another woman in 23 years’ time.
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but the key point here is that prisons should be about rehabilitating prisoners so that they’re fit to return to society. Just locking someone away for 30 years and assuming they’ll come out reformed is flawed thinking; the prison system needs to actively work towards making sure prisoners are safe to release into society and equipped to deal with society. And if one of those things isn’t true, the prisoner should not be released.
In this instance, it’s clear 7 years wasn’t long enough either way. But I doubt 30 years would have been enough either with the current attitude of prisons being for punishment rather than rehabilitation.
Partially agree, but people often age out of crime. Statistically speaking, a 55 year old man is much less dangerous than a 32 year old.
That might be your key point, mine is the prosecutor didn’t do their job.
What did the prosecutor do wrong? They proved that he was a violent criminal and a danger to society. The original sentencing would have him in jail until at least 2029 (if he did not fuck up, reoffend in prison, and serve the full 30) and put him on the sex offender registry (which worked as well as expected).
It was a judge that chose to suspend part of the original sentence. It was a prison system that failed to rehabilitate him. It was a parole board that decided that time served was long enough.
A lot of people (and a lot of systems) fucked up to let a violent individual roam the streets, but I feel like the prosecutor did their job to the best extent that could be expected.
Probably quiet as a mouse when they are overcharging kids. All fired up about nothing.
Any system that classifies things has two types of errors: false positives and false negatives. As you increase one you decrease the other. It’s as simple as that. So if you want to be 100% sure you put every bad person in prison you just put everyone in prison. Anything short of that you’re going to miss some. How many innocent people being tortured or killed by the system does it take to equal the value of killing or torturing one guilty person or even keeping one guilty person in prison for the rest of their lives?
Stories like this primarily exist to justify massive amounts of violence by the state to ostensibly prevent things like this… except they never actually do. The criminal legal system is the only system that uses its own failure to perpetually justify additional investment. As long as you have prisons, you will have this. You will have people who go to prison and become more dangerous. You will have people falsely imprisoned and even murdered. You will have police murdering people regularly and getting away with it in the name of “preventing” crimes like this. All you need to do is look at the clearance rates for police and the recitivism rate for prisons to see that they just aren’t worth the investment.
Until we shift to a public health model of public safety, this is guaranteed. Public health approachs like investment in early childhood education, restorative justice systems, and making mental healthcare more accessible have been proven repeatedly to have multiple times higher return on investment than police or prisons.
While revenge feels good and feels intuitive based on the history of the legal system, it doesn’t fit with modern psychology. Classifier based punitive legal systems must always either cause suffering by action or inaction because that’s part of the fundamental definiton of classifiers and punitive systems. Making sure people like this are in prison means making sure innocent people are also in prison. Is it worth it?
It’s disappointing to see you getting down voted like this.
Like sure, this guy probably shouldn’t be on the streets, but how many innocent people are we willing to imprison in the process of keeping people like him behind bars?
All the while our education, healthcare and social safety nets are being dismantled. All the things that actually help reduce violent crime.
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Honestly, there are many people on Baltimore’s streets that shouldn’t be on the streets, yet they still are.
Edit: Im a Baltimore native, no idea why I’m getting downvoted for saying something that’s true.
They caught him on September 29th
If you do hanous shit like he did, he should have been put in prison for life. I am not for death sentence, thats fucked up.
You did a hanous crime, welp, your life is over. Rest of your shitty little life in prison.
*heinous.
Any system that classifies things has two types of errors: false positives and false negatives. As you increase one you decrease the other. It’s as simple as that. So if you want to be 100% sure you put every bad person in prison you just put everyone in prison. Anything short of that you’re going to miss some. How many innocent people being tortured or killed by the system does it take to equal the value of killing one guilty person or even keeping one guilty person in prison for the rest of their lives?
Stories like this primarily exist to justify massive amounts of violence by the state to ostensibly prevent things like this… except they never actually do. The criminal legal system is the only system that uses its own failure to perpetually justify additional investment. As long as you have prisons, you will have this. You will have people who go to prison and become more dangerous. You will have people falsely imprisoned and even murdered. You will have police murdering people regularly and getting away with it in the name of “preventing” crimes like this. All you need to do is look at the clearance rates for police and the recitivism rate for prisons to see that they just aren’t worth the investment.
Until we shift to a public health model of public safety, this is guaranteed. Public health approachs like investment in early childhood education, restorative justice systems, and making mental healthcare more accessible have been proven repeatedly to have multiple times higher return on investment than police or prisons.
While revenge feels good and feels intuitive based on the history of the legal system, it doesn’t fit with modern psychology. Classifier based punitive legal systems must always either cause suffering by action or inaction because that’s part of the fundamental definiton of classifiers and punitive systems. Making sure people like this are in prison means making sure innocent people are also in prison. Is it worth it?
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