Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and his radically doctrinaire legislature should heed an observation of the venerable Scottish philosopher, economist and classical liberal sage Adam Smith.

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent,” Smith wrote in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

In this timeless tome, Smith explains how love, affection and common perceptions of good and evil form the foundation of civil societies. Communities “cannot subsist among those who are at all times ready to hurt and injure one another.”

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Smith explains the risks of societies extending communal values of decency, peace and kindness to those who most disrupt those sentiments.

“When the guilty is about to suffer that just retaliation, which the natural indignation of mankind tells them is due to his crimes… when he ceases to be an object of fear, with the generous and humane he begins to be an object of pity. The thought of what he is about to suffer extinguishes their resentment for the sufferings of others… They are disposed to pardon and forgive him…”

Colorado proves Smith’s theory. Our authoritarian politicians – lacking legitimate leadership skills – codify pity for criminals and cruelty for the innocent.

Indeed, mercy to the guilty tortures their victims. Ask survivors of rape about the cruelty of light sentences for rapists. Ask survivors of children killed by adult or juvenile drug dealers, perpetrators our state treats as victims of an unfair society that led them to crime.

Colorado, under the authority of far-left activists – with few resembling the sensible liberal Democrats of the 20th century – epitomizes Smith’s vision of perverse misallocation of compassion.

Colorado’s legislature and governor stuck us with a series of laws designed to reduce intuitive retaliation against those who violate the agreements of love and compassion essential to ensuring justice and peace. The state’s litany of soft-on-crime “criminal justice reforms” correlates with disturbing, record-breaking surges in crime.

A Department of Justice report released in March – “Criminal Victimization in the 22 Largest U.S. States” – says Colorado has the highest rate of violent crime among the 22 most populous states.

Colorado’s crime rate is twice the national average. Federal researchers were stunned to find this once-peaceful western utopia more dangerous than Illinois, New York and other states traditionally known as bastions of crime.

In Colorado – thanks to counterintuitive criminal justice reforms – criminals are victims deserving of compassion. In all new laws involving crime and punishment, we have lowered the risks of retaliation for disrupting order, safety, peace and the right to live.

No wonder we have teenagers wantonly throwing landscape boulders through car windshields – killing for thrills. No wonder a gunperson shot up an LGBTQ nightclub. No wonder we’re sixth in the country for rapes per 100,000. No wonder we lead the country in car thefts. No wonder we lead all other states in bank robberies, with nearly 200 each year.

Along with first place in violent crime, Colorado takes second for its rate of property crimes. Car thieves are people in desperate need of cars, crying out for help. We think little of single parents with two jobs who lose their only means of getting to work.

We let drug dealers carry up to four grams of deadly street drugs without the threat of felony charges. We treat them as victims of desperation, not heartless criminals.

Hard-left politicians make victim status a valuable currency, while mistaking victimizers as victims. Treat criminals as victims, to whom we owe our compassion, and we get more of them. The younger they are, the more they are due.

No wonder Colorado’s Division of Youth Services reports a 31% increase in violent crimes by minors from 2019 through 2022. The legislature’s response: more compassion for young suspects and convicts, who should have feared committing crime like the wrath of a deadly plague.

House Bill 23-1249 increases the age for prosecution in the juvenile court system from 10 to 13. If passed, the state won’t prosecute 10- and 12-year-olds for rapes, stabbings, shootings and theft. To heck with their victims, who are often other children.

House Bill 23-1042 would tie the hands of law enforcers trying to solve crimes involving juvenile suspects. The 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Frazier v. Cupp gives police broad latitude to interrogate suspects. Colorado legislators want to snub the Supreme Court, making inadmissible confessions by juveniles during questioning deemed “deceptive” by the court.

Despite leading the country’s most crime-ridden state, count on Polis to sign any “cruelty to the innocent” bill that crosses his desk. With party loyalty the governor’s highest cause, Colorado has no semblance of the checks and balances ostensibly provided by separate legislative and executive branches. Under Polis, radical leftists – and the criminals they seem to adore – can do no wrong.

As described in “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” ignorance leads to misplaced pity on criminals and cruelty for those they harm. Colorado fulfills Adam Smith’s worst nightmare.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board