by Laurel Duggan
More than 7,000 pedophiles convicted of “lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age” were released from California prisons the same year they were convicted, according to the Daily Mail.
The crimes included child rape, continuous sexual abuse of a child, sodomy with a child under 16 and kidnapping a child under 14 “with intent to commit lewd or lascivious acts,” according to the Daily Mail. The outlet analyzed data on thousands of convicts in California’s Megan’s Law database and found that individuals convicted of sexually abusing children were serving only months in jail or prison; Megan’s law requires that certain information about convicted sex offenders be made public.
“Statistics clearly show that pedophiles don’t get reformed. They’re going to come out and they’re going to commit again,” former Los Angeles sex crimes prosecutor Samuel Dordulian told the outlet. “Letting these people out early, we’re allowing for a lot more victimization. And that’s terrifying.”
“Lewd or lascivious acts with a child under 14 years of age,” was the most common crime in the database, committed 19,441 times, with an average time served of two years and 11 months, according to the Daily Mail; 7,152 people convicted of this crime served less than a year.
Proposition 57, a 2016 bill allowing early parole for nonviolent offenders which was supported by Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, is to blame for this string of early releases, Deputy DA Jon Hatami told the Daily Mail.
“Thousands of child victims are being denied justice and George Gascón and his group of radical prosecutors can care less,” Hatami told the outlet.
One 47-year-old who was charged with sodomy by use of force, sexual penetration by force and continuous sexual abuse of a child took a plea deal and was sentenced to three years; he ended up getting credits of 790 days, leaving 305 days of prison time to serve, according to the Daily Mail.
Another convict currently lives within three blocks of two elementary schools after he was convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child in 2015, according to the Daily Mail. He was charged in October 2014, pleaded no contest in January 2015 and was sentenced to two days in a Los Angeles county jail and five years of probation.
California’s Department of Justice did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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Laurel Duggan is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Photo “Prison” by Bart Everson. CC BY 2.0.
