Land of 1000 Stances

I'd like to be able to walk down the street and not feel that the next person I encounter is likely to commit mayhem in the general area I'm in, but of course no one can guarantee that.

There are things that can be done to cut down on the possibility of being injured or maimed by malevolent strangers - or malevolent friends, for that matter.  The cops try awful hard to round up the bad guys, only to look out the window of the police station and see the bad guys out on the street while the cops are still doing the paperwork on their short time under arrest.

I'm getting to a point here.  Give me a sensible answer, please:  if you knew that a person had:

• gotten tossed out of a college ROTC program for punching holes in a wall in a fit of temper
• been described by the sergeant in charge of that program as "Virginia Tech waiting to happen"
• suggested that his college's hazing policy include “blood sacrifice”
• beaten a man with a baseball bat on that college campus, fracturing his skull and making blinding him in one eye, only to be freed on $220,000 bail.

If you knew this much about this man, you'd probably say that he does not belong out with us in the world where we can come and go as we please.  You would have raised that bail and kept him locked up pending psychiatric evaluation, wouldn't you?

Well, just a few days after blinding this man, the man in question went home to his family dwelling up in Joppatowne, MD, a home they shared with another college student.  He stabbed that man to death, and then cut out his brains and heart and ate them.  He admitted all this, so I don't have to bother saying he ALLEGEDLY did it. I don't know how he pleads on the maiming of the other guy, but he's in real deep water now.

I wish someone smart like you had been making the decisions about bail.  We always hear this - some guy gets a life term, serves 7 years and is out right behind you in line at Popeye's ready to do who knows what.

But just let me commit a crime someday and whoa Nellie! The judges and the juries and all the King's horses will make an example of me and send me to the chill factory for 119 years, no parole, bread and water, no library privileges.

I make light, because I cannot wrap my head around a society that allows disturbed, violent individuals to wander freely.  Can you help me understand?  Or better yet, can you explain it to the families and loved ones of these two victims?