PICKENS — When authorities announced last week that the Gaffney serial killer had been shot and killed, they thumbed through the man’s 25 page rap sheet, questioning why he was on the streets to kill.

“At some point, the criminal justice system is going to have to explain why this suspect was out on the street,” said Reggie Lloyd, head of the S.C. Law Enforcement Division.

Lloyd was briefing media on how Gastonia, N.C. police had to gun down 41-year-old Patrick Burris when he shot a fellow officer.

Burris had shot and killed five people in the Gaffney area the previous week, just two months after being released from jail.

But the fact he was free despite his extensive crime record was no surprise to Pickens County Assistant Sheriff Tim Morgan.

For several years, Morgan has been saying the justice system is broken and needs to be fixed.

“It’s an overwhelmed system,” he said.

From law enforcement on the streets to the over-crowded jails that house the criminals, the need is far greater than what the system can handle.

And that leaves law enforcement frustrated because they keep arresting the same people over and over, only to see them back on the streets again, Morgan said.

The 30-year veteran also said it’s frustrating for the victims of crime when perpetrators are not adequately punished.

“If you break into one car, you might as well break into 12 because they’ll roll it up into one charge,” one juvenile offender recently told police.

Morgan said this often happens when someone is arrested on multiple charges.

Because of the volume of cases coming through the solicitor’s office, Morgan said a lot of plea bargains are negotiated, and that offering probation, time served, and fewer charges makes it more attractive for a criminal to plead guilty.

But the end result is that the criminal isn’t sufficiently punished for the crime and goes right back to breaking the law, he said.

“We’re dealing with a lot of the same families,” he said. “For a lot of people, going to jail is not a big deal – it’s a right of passage.”

And since going to jail is not a threat to some, and because of plea bargains, many do not think the threat of punishment outweighs the risk of doing something wrong, Morgan said.

“There’s going to have to be more severe consequences,” he said.

Singapore was in the heart of the opium triangle, yet the country doesn’t have a drug problem, Morgan noted.

“That’s because if you commit a crime over there, they cane you,” he said. “And you will be executed if you traffic drugs.”

Morgan said he wasn’t suggesting that caning criminals here was the answer, but the punishments do need to be more severe.

“We’ve got to change people’s behavior patterns,” he said.

He said he doesn’t know the answer to the problem, but he thinks it will need to start with keeping our younger generation in school, providing them with job skills, and having a good job market for them.

The American justice system was created in the 1800s, but there’s no other system in this country that old that hasn’t been overhauled, Morgan said.

He said he hopes recent attention to the Gaffney serial murderer and his criminal history will bring the problem to the attention to legislators and those in charge of the judicial system.