Exclusive | Accused killer dad Jake Haro was free despite horrific child abuse conviction after Gavin Newsom pushed for years to keep criminals out of prison

Little Emmanuel Haro’s father never served a day in prison, despite being convicted of savagely abusing another of his children just a few years earlier — the latest shocking example of policies backed by Gov.Gavin Newsom that have focused on shutting down penitentiaries and attempting to rehabilitate criminals over locking them up.Jake Haro faced up to six years behind bars for battering his 10-week-old daughter Carolina so badly that she is now bedridden for life.

But a judge let him off with probation, a work-release program and counseling in 2023.He is now charged with murdering his son Emmanuel after he and wife Rebecca allegedly tortured the boy to death and then claimed he was kidnapped from a parking lot on Aug.

14, prosecutors say.It’s a case that has stunned California.And Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin fumed last week that it was “outrageous” that Jake Haro was on the street.

“Mr.Haro should have been in prison,” Hestrin said.But the Haro case was not a fluke in California: His sentence came amid a years-long push led by Newsom to keep criminals, even violent offenders, out of prison.Haro’s walk-free sentence, given by Judge Dwight W.

Moore over the protests of prosecutors, came at a time when more and more convicted felons were getting probation instead of prison.Nearly two-thirds of felons don’t see a day in prison, according to California’s court system.

That figure has risen five points since Newsom took over in 2019.The latest development in Newsom’s criminal justice agenda: he announced the closure of a state prison in Riverside County last month — the same county where abusive dad Jake Haro was allowed to skate.The California Rehabilitation Center will be the fifth prison to go dark on Newsom’s watch as state officials work to empty out the cells.He touted the record-low prisoner population in the Golden State — almost half what it was 20 years ago.Yet prisons are still dangerously overcrowded w...