It’s an early August evening in the small town of Bristol, Connecticut, and a man staying at his mother’s house steps outside to have a quick hit of marijuana laced with hallucinogens. His wife is waiting upstairs for him to return, along with other family members and a one-year-old baby his mother is watching.

Arthur Hapgood, Sr., deranged from the illicit drugs he just smoked, walks upstairs and begins to act violently.

Hapgood grabs a knife and corners his own stepdaughter, who’s holding the baby in her arms. He raises the knife and fatally stabs the baby. Hapgood then strips naked and waits for police to arrive, arrest him, and take him back to prison.

Arthur Hapgood (currently in prison awaiting sentencing) killed that baby in August 2014 after being released 233 days early from the Connecticut prison system as part of the Earned Risk Reduction Credits Program introduced in 2010 — otherwise known as prisoner early release. Hapgood earned many of his credits for participating in a prison drug rehabilitation program. He successfully racked up early release points while simultaneously failing three drug tests, all while living within the walls of prison.

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Stories like Hapgood’s are increasingly common as instances of violent crime skyrocket, with the passage of early release programs like that in Connecticut and the introduction of liberal, restrained policing measures in major cities.

The sharp shift in criminal justice policy is contributing to a collapse of law and order, after an almost unbroken 22 years of steady decline in violent crime nationwide. The crime boomerang may hit the left with devastating force in 2016 if current trends continue or exacerbate, but only if the eventual Republican nominee gets smart on the issue.

The rise of violent crime in every corner of the United States seems lost on many Republican 2016 presidential contenders. They seem to be treating the crime wave as an inconvenient anomaly rather than a chance to reclaim old power turf for the party. A search for any tough rhetoric on the recent crime wave turns up nearly nothing from any in the Republican field.

The Democratic contenders for the White House, on the other hand, are already ballyhooing the very policies endangering America’s communities. We must “reinvent how we police America,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., said in an August interview on MSNBC. Sanders recently released a criminal justice reform plan that, among other proposals, called for increased hamstringing of urban police attempting to enforce minor drug crimes.

“It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an April campaign speech at Columbia University.

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Clinton also lambasted the “tough on crime” policies, largely begun under her husband’s administration, which started the steady decline of violent crime from 1994 to 2014.

The reversal in many cities of the “broken windows” “zero tolerance” policies towards policing — driven by the Black Lives Matter movement and bolstered by rhetoric from President Obama and Democratic presidential hopefuls — has already had devastating effects in 2015.

According to a July composite report on violent crime statistics from USA Today, shootings are up 82.5 percent in Baltimore and 40 percent in Chicago this year.

The time may be ripe to unfurl the GOP law-and-order banner once again.

That same report showed a 20 percent increase in murders in New York City, 32 percent in Atlanta, 30 percent in St. Louis, 36 percent in New Orleans, 43 percent in Houston, and a staggering 180 percent increase in Milwaukee. Los Angeles is grappling with a 25 percent spike in all violent crime.

The time may be ripe to unfurl the GOP law-and-order banner once again.

The Republican Party has a proud heritage of strength on the issue of crime. Richard Nixon promised that “we shall have order in the United States” on his way to a White House win in 1968. Ronald Reagan campaigned successfully for governor of California on a law-and-order platform, and said at an RNC Platform Committee speech in 1968, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.”

George H.W. Bush used the crime issue to great effect during his successful 1988 campaign against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, highlighting the state’s weekend furlough program that allowed convicted murderer Willie Horton to escape and commit rape and assault.

In addition to the surge in violent crime caused by the neutering of policing, early release and prison furlough programs — driven by tight state budgets and big deficits — now exist in some form in 46 states and the District of Columbia, according to a May study by Fordham University.

“I think what you’re going to see within a year, maybe less, is a spike in crime by the offenders released to the street,” District Attorney David Prater told Oklahoma Watch News after the expansion of the Oklahoma program was announced in December 2014.

By mid-2014, Connecticut’s early release program had already put more than 21,000 criminals back on the streets before they served their full sentences. Together those criminals were back on the streets more than one million days early in aggregate. Some two-thirds of those prisoners will commit a crime worthy of a new prison sentence within three years of being released, according to statements made by the head of the department.

The newly minted early release program, and the light enforcement of “minor” drug crimes, has already made a big splash in California. A column published Saturday by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Sanders pointed out that car thefts have increased nearly 50 percent, and robberies nearly 25 percent in San Francisco since the passage of California’s Proposition 47. She noted the early release provision means around 50,000 criminals have been removed from the prison population and let free in Californian communities.

There are at least a couple of Republicans who could become the torch-bearer for law and order in 2016, and revive the GOP’s mantle of the law and order party.

There are at least a couple of Republicans who could become the torch-bearer for law and order in 2016, and revive the GOP’s mantle of the law and order party.

“Whether it’s two years, 20 years, 40 years or anything in between, the victim, those involved in the criminal justice system and public as a whole will know that’s the exact amount of time (criminals will) spend behind bars,” said Gov. Scott Walker after signing a bill to repeal Wisconsin’s early release program in July 2011. “We tried to reform the process, we tried to work within the process, but ultimately we decided it was time to kill the program and start from scratch. And that’s exactly what we did.”

“From a public policy and public safety point of view, the statutory early release law was a disaster,” Gov. Chris Christie said in a statement when he successfully killed early release in New Jersey in May 2011. “(The) repeal should have happened 10 months ago, when we predicted and warned of the tragic circumstances that would follow if this law remained in effect.”

With a tough record on prisoner early release, Walker or Christie may be best positioned to again turn the flawed liberal rhetoric and actions of the Democrats on criminal justice reform against them. Law and order could be the sleeper issue of 2016 and burgeoning violent crime the death knoll for Clinton’s or another Democrat’s presidential aspirations.

But only if Republicans seize the opportunity.