A Revolving Door of Predators
When a society chooses to tolerate violent behavior, it does not abolish violence -- it reallocates it.
Jim Cardoza | February 18, 2026
America’s growing sense of danger is often discussed as if it were a mystery -- something caused by “complex social forces” that no one can quite identify, much less change. But what is happening is not mysterious at all. A society that tolerates predatory behavior will get more of it. Criminals respond to incentives as reliably as everyone else does.
If the odds of punishment and the cost of punishment do not outweigh the benefits of crime for a would-be predator, there is no deterrence. It becomes a simple risk-reward calculation.
One of the most stubborn facts in modern criminal justice is that repeat offending is not just an occasional occurrence. It is the norm. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracked state prisoners released in 2005 and found that 68% were arrested again within three years, 79% within six years, and 83% within nine years. Over that nine-year period, those 401,288 released prisoners racked up nearly two million arrests -- about five arrests per released prisoner.
That is not a “few bad apples.” That is a revolving door.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/02/a_revolving_door_of_predators.html
