Rep. Laurie Schlegel has a bill, HB 16, which passed with 71 votes in the House of Representatives on Thursday and is likely to pass the Senate with a veto-proof majority in both houses.

What HB 16 does is something to specifically address a real problem in New Orleans, which is the city’s criminal barbarians rampaging through lines of parked cars with hammers, breaking windows and leaning in to steal anything inside. You’d say it’s maybe a little too specific to put into a statue, but here’s what it says. From the abstract…

Abstract: Provides for an additional penalty for the crime of simple burglary under certain ircumstances.

Present law (R.S. 14:62) provides for the crime of simple burglary along with penalties.

Proposed law amends present law to include a penalty of imprisonment with or without hard labor for not less than one nor more than 12 years for an offender who commits multiple simple burglaries as a part of a continuous sequence of events. Provides that at least one year of the sentence of imprisonment shall be imposed without benefit of probation or suspension of sentence.

In other words, get caught on a “vehicle-wilding” spree, and you’re going to be screwed.

WWL-TV’s handling of the bill was interesting, and it brought up the issue we have with the bill…

This isn’t a criticism of Rep. Schlegel, nor is it a particular criticism of her bill.

But Rep. Greg Miller, who noted that district attorneys in places like New Orleans where this activity is a problem in the first place tend to be pretty notorious about refusing to prosecute “petty” crime like breaking into cars and stealing purses, shopping bags, sunglasses and whatever else.

And given that, Schlegel’s bill might not have much effect. Your particularly criminal-friendly DA’s might prosecute even less if the penalties are harsher.

So what we would say is that for bills like this one to actually have some teeth, what’s needed is some sanction against district attorneys who won’t prosecute property crime. We have that in New Orleans and Shreveport most prominently, or at least we did up to a few days ago when Jason Williams somehow got religion about his city’s out-of-control crime problem. Even so, Williams was talking about murders and not car break-ins.

Which is why the nice lady from the Marigny who has to wait two weeks for the auto glass people to replace the window on her Kia was dubious about the bill. Sure it’s great to increase the punishments when they’re caught, she says, but who’s to say they’ll ever get caught? Or even prosecuted if they are?

That’s why we think – and we’re pretty sure the people of Louisiana think similarly – that Schlegel’s next bill, perhaps in the almost-certain special legislative session we’ll have with the new governor next year – ought to empower either the governor or the attorney general of the state to suspend or fire district attorneys he or she believes are systematically refusing to prosecute crimes.

Not prosecutorial discretion, mind you. But when a DA says “I’m not going to prosecute car break-ins,” which is more or less what Williams has done, and of course that’s completely out of control in his city now, that would trigger a sanction by the state official – we’d say the attorney general is probably best poised for that.

For most district attorneys in the state this isn’t a problem and in fact you don’t even really need this law in most of Louisiana – because if somebody decided to bust open the windows of all the cars in the parking lot at, say, the Lamar Dixon Convention Center in Gonzales, they’d better pray they don’t get caught because the DA in Ascension Parish would absolutely throw the book at them.

The crime problem is in the cities where the local officials don’t address it. As much as we’d like to pass laws to go after the criminals, you can’t really fix the problem unless you include the criminal enablers as well.