On Monday, Stephanie Minter was stabbed to death at a bus shelter in Fairfax County’s Hybla Valley. Convicted criminal Abdul Jalloh was arrested for the killing. He was out of jail and free to allegedly commit this crime, despite having a long record of arrests for violent felonies such as rape and malicious woundings, and despite having been convicted in a 2023 case.
He exited the bus with her moments before the stabbing. Police arrested him the next day after he allegedly engaged in shoplifting at a liquor store. Police also “connected him to a larceny that occurred earlier in the day” in Woodlawn, reports WJLA.
“Fairfax County arrest records show Jalloh has more than 30 prior arrests, including five malicious wounding cases filed between 2023 and 2025. Other charges included assault, battery and theft-related offenses. Court records indicate the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office dismissed the violent charges in each case, resulting in his release,” reports The Fairfax Times. Critics blame those dismissals by Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano for the tragedy.
News4 notes that “Jalloh has a lengthy criminal history, according to Virginia criminal case records, which includes multiple assault larceny, assault and felony malicious wounding charges in May and August 2025.” “FOX 5 looked into Jalloh’s criminal history,” and found that although he has been arrested many times, “In most of those cases, prosecutors chose to drop charges.”
Descano’s office also allows an abnormally high fraction of killers to escape conviction by agreeing to their insanity pleas.
Descano, a progressive, seeks shorter sentences than his predecessor, and some of his decisions have drawn criticism even from his fellow Democrats.
A recent study finds that electing Republican prosecutors rather than Democratic prosecutors saves lives by incarcerating more criminals who would go on to commit deadly gun violence. “We find that narrow election of a Republican prosecutor reduces all-cause mortality rates among young men ages 20-29 by 6.6%. This decline is driven predominantly by reductions in firearm-related deaths,”note professors Panka Bencsik and Tyler Giles in their February 2026 study, “Local Prosecutors and Public Health.”
Soon, fewer Virginia inmates will be incarcerated. Both houses of the Virginia legislature have passed slightly different versions of legislation that would require the parole board to release more inmates. The bills would forbid the parole board to rely on factors outside an inmate’s “demonstrated ability to change,” such as “the nature of the offense,” if the inmate committed his crime as a minor.
SB 60 provides that “The Board shall not deny parole for a juvenile offender based principally on factors outside of his demonstrated ability to change, such as the nature of the offense or any effects resulting from the commission of such offense.” SB60 recently passed the state senate along party lines, with Democrats supporting it and Republicans opposing it. It then passed the state House of Delegates in a slightly revised version, with Democrats supporting it and most Republicans opposing it.
It is unwise for the bill to restrict the parole board’s ability to consider “the nature of the offense.” The nature of the offense can be very relevant, shedding light on whether an offender is persistently dangerous — such as if the offender is a serial killer or serial rapist. Yet SB 60 says that the parole board cannot deny parole “principally” based on “the nature of the offense.” Even though a serial killer may have a strong compulsion to kill people. If the inmate has a sadistic personality disorder, the inmate might argue that that’s a factor outside his “ability to change,” and thus is impermissible for the parole board to rely on that as a principal factor in denying parole, if it cannot “demonstrate” that he has the ability to change that personality trait.
Serial killers do not lose their desire to kill people merely because they have spent some time in prison or followed prison rules. They go on to kill again after being released on parole. One example is Kenneth McDuff. At the age of 19, after being paroled, McDuff and an accomplice kidnapped three teenagers. He shot and killed two boys, then killed a girl after raping and torturing her. Later, after being paroled yet again, he murdered additional women — as many as 15 women in several different states.
Criminals often commit more crimes after being released. Nationally, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested within a decade, including 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018), pg. 4, Table 4)).
Inmates who have spent many years in prison are less likely to commit crimes upon being released, but their recidivism rates are still substantial. 57.5% of federal inmates imprisoned for violence for ten years or more were arrested again within 8 years after being released, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. (See Recidivism of Federal Violent Offenders Released in 2010, pg. 33 (Feb. 2022)).
When Italy released inmates early, that increased its crime rate a lot, according to a 2014 study in the American Economic Journal. Other studies find similar results.
Most prison inmates in America are there for violent crimes, and the typical state prison inmate is a repeat offender with 5 convictions.
