When I was 12 years old, we moved to the Navy base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We moved in the summer and, by the time school started, I’d made friends and was feeling pretty comfortable.

One day, during the first week of school, I was sitting in the back of Mr. Scroch’s Social Studies classroom before he arrived. While we waited, some friends and I were messing around, throwing erasers at one another and calling each other names. Then, we noticed a man sitting in the front row. We immediately settled down but I remember ducking my head and yelling something to the old guy about how he must have failed a lot to be there with us.

Moments later Mr. Scroch walked in the door. After he had settled at his desk, the man in front stood up, pointed out the three of us, and said, “Mr. Scroch, would you please send these three gentlemen to my office at the end of the day.” As my eyes bugged, Mr. Scroch said, “Students, I’d like to introduce our vice principal, Mr. Andrews.”

We dutifully went to Mr. Andrews’ office after school and, somehow, inexplicably, I found myself laughing at him when he asked if we thought we were funny. I protested that class hadn’t started yet, but he was having none of it. He then called my dad to come pick me up.

And that’s when I learned something about the military, or at least how it was decades ago. Apparently, when you’re a kid in a military family, particularly when living on a military base, your dad is held accountable for your actions. Basically, it’s his job to keep you in line, and if he can’t do that, then his career can be negatively affected.

Although this is where things get a bit blurry as to my actual punishment, what’s not blurry is that I learned that having your dad called to pick you up from school was a bad thing… and I don’t think he ever had to again. From that point forward, I knew that I was being held responsible for my actions, and I behaved accordingly.

Some forty years later, that lesson still sticks with me: Actions have consequences.

Sadly, however, that lesson doesn’t apply so much today. At least not everywhere.

One place it still applies much of the time is the private sector. Doctors have to carry mountains of insurance in case they make a mistake and someone dies or is harmed by them. Architects carry insurance in case one of their buildings collapses. Supermarkets carry insurance in case someone slips in the produce isle and breaks an arm. And Americans are required by law to carry car insurance in case we run a red light and T-bone a Chevy Impala at the corner of First and Main. Americans, eschewing Shakespeare’s advice to “Kill all the lawyers,” are a litigious people. Why? Basically, because—other than a sizable army of grifters—most Americans think people should be responsible for their actions, and they’re willing to fight to see that happen.

But you know where that rule almost never applies? Government. From politicians making promises they break as soon as they take their oath to schools that fail to teach students to a Pentagon that can’t seem to account for $220 billion in gear, someone could write a book about our federal, state, and local governments’ failures, most of which are driven by incompetence and negligence.

While there is no dearth of examples of a government entity being unaccountable for its actions, there is perhaps one place where government accountability should be the rule more than any other: The Judiciary. In particular, district attorneys, parole boards, and judges should have accountability as they relate to violent criminals.

Unlike the situation when the Pentagon loses a hammer or when a transportation department builds a road to nowhere, when criminals are let back out on the street to terrorize citizens, there are real consequences for real people. But regardless of the gravity of those consequences, the people who created that circumstance are never held accountable.

We see it almost every day across the country, as some career criminal with a rap sheet as long as your arm kills someone or rapes someone or pushes someone in front of a train. And repeatedly, we soon discover the perpetrator was let out early on parole, was sprung via a laughably low bail, or walked out of a jailhouse after no bail was required.

Invariably, those failures result in blood on the streets, victims in a hospital, or bodies in a morgue. Those are real-world consequences of decisions that government employees make when they do not fear that they or their families will suffer consequences for their bad decisions.

And it happens all the time. Prosecutors plea attempted murder down to assault or a judge sets an unconscionably low bail, and, suddenly, a violent criminal is back out on the street. And it happens from the other direction as well, when gullible parole boards believe professional liars when they promise they’re reformed and won’t re-offend and allow them out years early.

Recently, two members of an Illinois parole board resigned (not fired) after a convict to whom they granted parole, within one day of his release, murdered the young son of the parolee’s ex-girlfriend. That’s news only because it almost never happens that the parole board members take responsibility for their decisions.

The solution to this problem is actually quite simple, although there is zero chance it ever gets implemented. What is it? Accountability. Judges and DAs should be held accountable for the crimes committed by the people they put back out on the street, at least for X number of years. Same deal for parole board members. They should be held accountable for the crimes of criminals they put out on the street for the length of time that person would have been imprisoned under the original sentence.

I’m not suggesting that these government employees should face the chair if one of the thugs they put back on the street murders someone. However, they should share some of the consequences of their bad decisions. Perhaps getting fired with no pension, being disbarred, spending time in jail, or facing some other sufficiently painful consequence will see them take their duties more seriously.

Of course this won’t guarantee recidivism drops to zero—that’s impossible. But it might put the “Fear of God” into the people in whom the public has placed so much trust.

Undoubtedly, there would be a great deal of pushback from “justice reform advocates”, defense attorneys, and state and local treasurers. Regardless of the merits of their arguments, though, none should outweigh the public’s right to be safe in their communities from known criminals.

This may seem like a draconian solution, and, like most hard fixes, it would take some time to work itself out. Still, judges, DAs, and parole board members eventually would hone their decision-making skills so that they make decisions that are better balanced between criminals’ desires for leniency if they’re first-time offenders or have proven remorse and repentance, on the one hand, and citizens’ desire for safety, on the other hand.

There is certainly a balance to be had between the rights of criminals and the safety of a community but, currently, Democrats have put a bag of lead on the side of the criminals, and citizens across the country are paying the price. This might just help bring the scale back into balance.

Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA, or you can visit his new website Gratitude for America.

Image by Vince Coyner