Parolee Again

There's a Pulitzer Prize in here somewhere, but investigative journalism is dead in this town - dead, dead, dead:

• A man on parole in three 2011 cellphone thefts on the Near North Side has been charged with sexually assaulting a woman over the summer at a store blocks away from where the thefts took place, authorities said.
  
  Michael Roberson, 30, has been charged with aggravated criminal sexual assault and kidnapping using deceit in the Aug. 6 attack at a store near Illinois and State streets.
  
  Roberson, of the 7900 block of South Ingleside Avenue, is on parole in the November 2011 thefts and was taken back into custody this month, according to Illinois Department of Corrections records. He also was wanted for jumping bail in two theft cases from this spring, records show.

And there's more!

• In the 2011 thefts, Roberson was arrested Nov. 21 after a woman recognized him as someone who had stolen her iPhone about an hour earlier from a restaurant near Dearborn and Division streets. Roberson was found to have two more stolen iPhones, and was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in the thefts, according to police and court records.
  
  At the time of the Near North attack this summer, Roberson was free on bond in three cases from May and early June, committed after he was released from prison on May 9, court and prison records show.

Wait a second - we thought that a condition of bond, you weren't supposed to commit any more crimes? So if police charged him properly (which if they ran his name, they had to) then the Violation of Bail Bond charge should have remanded him to County to see a judge, who still let him out, not once, but twice, in under 60 days.

And being arrested is a slam-dunk would seem to be a violation of parole, wouldn't it? But the IDOC most likely refused to issue the hold, so guess who was out, free as a bird, to rape and rob?

We keep putting them in jail, then Cook County and Illinois keep putting 'em back on the streets.