California’s soft-on-crime experiment just claimed another victim.
A seven-month-old baby is dead because politicians thought they knew better than common sense.
And Gavin Newsom’s deadly mistake cost one child his life.
Jake Haro walked free after nearly killing his daughter
Jake Haro should have been rotting in a prison cell when his seven-month-old son Emmanuel died.
Instead, he was walking the streets of California thanks to a judge who bought into Gavin Newsom’s fantasy that violent criminals can be reformed with a little counseling and community service.
The facts are stomach-turning.
In 2023, Haro was convicted of savagely beating his 10-week-old daughter Carolina so badly that she’s now bedridden for life.
The little girl suffered fractured ribs, a fractured skull, a brain hemorrhage, and other horrific injuries at the hands of her own father.
Any reasonable person would expect a monster like that to spend years behind bars.
But Judge Dwight W. Moore had other ideas.
Moore sentenced Haro to probation, a work-release program, and counseling – despite prosecutors fighting for prison time.
"Mr. Haro should have been in prison," Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin said last week.
Now Emmanuel Haro is dead, allegedly tortured to death by the same man who nearly killed his sister.
Jake and Rebecca Haro are charged with murder after trying to convince police that Emmanuel had been kidnapped from a parking lot on August 14.
When their story fell apart, Jake allegedly confessed to killing his son to an undercover cop posing as a cellmate.
Newsom’s prison closure spree continues despite rising crime
Here’s the thing – this wasn’t some rogue judge making a bad decision.
This was California’s criminal justice system working exactly as Newsom designed it.
Nearly two-thirds of felons in California don’t see a day in prison, according to the state’s own court system.
That number has risen five points since Newsom took over in 2019.
And instead of learning from deadly mistakes like the Haro case, Newsom doubled down last month by announcing the closure of another state prison.
The California Rehabilitation Center in Riverside County – the same county where Jake Haro was allowed to walk free after nearly beating his daughter to death – will be the fifth prison to close on Newsom’s watch.
Think about the twisted logic here.
California’s prisons are still dangerously overcrowded at nearly 120% capacity, and the state expects prisoner populations to surge by 20% in the coming years.
But Newsom’s solution isn’t to build more capacity or keep violent criminals locked up longer.
It’s to shut down more prisons and hope for the best.
"This decline in the prison population and empty bed space is not a reflection of a lack of need in California," Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes explained. "It is a shift of this population from the state government onto local communities."
The deadly consequences of progressive policies
Look, here’s what Newsom’s defenders won’t tell you about California’s soft-on-crime experiment.
It’s not working.
Crime rates haven’t dropped as prison populations declined – they’ve just shifted the problem to local communities that can’t handle the load.
The state has unleashed a wave of legal get-out-of-jail-free cards that keep dangerous criminals on the streets.
Proposition 47 turned theft under $950 into a misdemeanor, creating an explosion of shoplifting that’s 50% higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Other reforms made it easier to gain parole and gave judges more leeway to avoid mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders.
The result? A parade of violent criminals walking free to victimize more innocent people.
Last year, a road-raging maniac with a 20-year rap sheet was released less than a year into his five-year sentence for smashing drivers’ windshields with a metal pipe.
Nathaniel Radimak was arrested again just months later for attacking his mother and sister.
In 2023, Leroy McCrary received no jail time for armed robbery – his second felony.
A year later, McCrary was charged with murder for fatally dragging a woman with his car after a botched stickup.
Each of these cases represents a failure of leadership that cost innocent lives.
Voters are finally fighting back
The good news is that Californians are waking up to the disaster Newsom created.
San Francisco and Los Angeles booted their soft-on-crime district attorneys in recent elections.
New LA District Attorney Nathan Hochman vowed to reverse the plummeting conviction rates under his predecessor George Gascón.
"I firmly believe the revolving door of recidivism in our state must stop and deterring criminal conduct before it occurs will make our communities safer," Hochman told the New York Post.
Last November, nearly 70% of California voters passed Proposition 36, making low-level theft a felony again for repeat offenders.
It was a clear rejection of Newsom’s failed approach to criminal justice.
But instead of listening to voters, Newsom’s response has been to keep closing prisons and stick to the same policies that got Emmanuel Haro killed.
His office claims they’ll crack down on crime by expanding funding for law enforcement and rehabilitation programs.
That’s political spin, not real solutions.
You can’t rehabilitate someone like Jake Haro who beats infants nearly to death.
Some people are simply too dangerous to be walking among decent families.
The real victims of California’s justice system
Emmanuel Haro should be celebrating his first birthday next year.
Instead, he’s dead because California’s justice system prioritized the comfort of violent criminals over the safety of innocent children.
His sister Carolina will spend the rest of her life bedridden because a judge thought counseling would fix her father’s murderous rage.
These aren’t statistics – they’re real children whose lives were destroyed by politicians more concerned with looking compassionate than protecting the vulnerable.
"Our criminal justice system . . . it broke down. It’s not how it’s supposed to work," District Attorney Hestrin said.
He’s right, but the system didn’t break down by accident.
It was deliberately dismantled by politicians like Newsom who believe violent criminals deserve second chances more than innocent families deserve protection.
Will O’Neill, the former mayor of Newport Beach, put it perfectly when he said "Gavin Newsom has made one decision after another with a clear through-line: He is pro-criminal and anti-voter."
That’s exactly what we’re seeing in California – a governor who consistently chooses to protect the rights of violent felons over the safety of law-abiding citizens.
The Haro family paid the ultimate price for that choice, but they won’t be the last unless California voters continue to fight back against Newsom’s deadly experiment in criminal justice.
¹ Jared Downing, "Accused killer dad Jake Haro was free despite horrific child abuse conviction — after Gavin Newsom pushed for years to keep criminals out of prison," New York Post, September 3, 2025.
