Many of our jails and prisons are overcrowded. That’s just a simple fact. Ordinarily, it’s an annoyance and little more unless you’re actually in prison. At that point, well, you don’t get a lot of sympathy.

Yet when COVID-19 reached our shores, a lot of officials knew they had to do something. So, there were efforts all over the nation to try and alleviate the pressure and minimize the risk to prisoners.

Unfortunately, those efforts haven’t had some…stumbles.

However, in many of those cases, you can at least see where someone was trying to minimize the risk to the public to some degree.

Washington state, however, almost went in the opposite direction. In fact, they almost released a notorious serial killer.

But nothing is more, what’s the word for it? Ah, yes – INSANE – than what Washington State prison reformers nearly succeeded in doing last week.

The man we now know as the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgeway, was sent to prison for more than 500 years. He was convicted of 49 murders of prostitutes, girls on the streets and vulnerable runaways, but he was suspected of committing 71 murders in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

…

A legal activist group, Columbia Legal Services, began agitating for inmates over 50 years old to be set free to save them from the virus. Ridgeway is 71 years old.

The problem with pushing for everyone over a certain age to be released is that there are plenty of people who are vicious killers who fall above that age. Ridgeway, for example.

But hey, it’s not like he was really close to getting out of prison, was it?

Well…

On Thursday, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that those “really bad people,” including The Green River Killer, would face the coronavirus locked up like everyone else in the country.

The vote was 5-4. That means four of the Washington State Supreme Court were ready to empty the state prisons of 2/3 of the prisoners, including Gary Ridgeway.

One vote. Just one vote kept Ridgeway and other psychopaths off the streets.

I’m sorry, but can’t we all agree in keeping the convicted serial killer serving a life sentence behind bars along with all the other violent people? Isn’t this something we should all agree on?

Apparently not, and that’s a big problem.

Especially when you consider that this is Washington state, a state that has spent recent years doing everything they can to curtail people’s God-given right to keep and bear arms. You know, the kind of thing that would help protect them from notorious serial killers being released from prison because of a virus?

You also need to remember that serial killers don’t just reform. They feel a need, a burning desire, to murder people and that need doesn’t really go away.

Efforts like this make it impossible to look at some on the left in Washington and wonder just why they’re so in love with the idea of protecting criminals. Not only do they want to let notorious murderers out of prison, but they want to inhibit people’s ability to defend themselves from those murderers. It’s outright insanity.

And no, it’s not necessarily limited to Washington state by any stretch. It’s just most other states have had the good sense to not release notorious serial killers.