Forty-Nine...Do We Hear Fifty?

Criminal "justice"....Illinois style:

• Ronald Browning, accused of scamming Chicago businesses by posing as a city inspector while he was on parole for his 44th, 45th, and 46th felony convictions, is heading back to prison after pleading guilty to his 47th, 48th, and 49th felonies.

  He has another case pending that, if he is found guilty, will be his 50th felony conviction.

  Chicago police issued a community alert last December about a phony city inspector, a few months after Browning, 75, was paroled for running a similar scam. Cops in suburban Oak Lawn issued a similar bulletin.

  Sporting a reflective vest, Browning entered a smoothie store in the 6400 block of North Sheridan on December 13, 2022, and identified himself as a city worker. He demanded payment for replacing three carbon monoxide detectors on the building’s roof, officials said.

  He pretended to call the store’s manager on his phone, then told a store employee that the manager told him to get payment from the register. After the clerk handed over $80, he walked out the back door.

For all of you persons unfamiliar with legal terminology, a felony is a charge that is punishable by a sentence of 365 days or more in prison. Misdemeanors are punishable by anything up to 364 days.

So forty-nine felony convictions should have meant forty-nine years (of his seventy-five years of age) in the penitentiary. 

And it's highly doubtful that every single one of his felony convictions was only for a single year.

Not only that, but with sentencing enhancements, some convictions should have triggered additional years behind bars, not to mention parole violations whereby he was required to serve the remainder of any uncompleted sentences.

CWB has him down for 178 years or so in conviction time.

But there he is on the street. Contributing exactly what to society?