The new district attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, shows what reform of the justice system means:
Take a look at his unprecedented memorandum, which begins “These policies are an effort to end mass incarcerations and bring balance back to sentencing.”—
“If you are seeking a sentence of 3 years incarceration, state on the record that the cost to the taxpayer will be $126,000.00 (3 x $42,000.00) if not more and explain why you believe the cost is justified.”
If he’s really committed to reducing taxpayer costs, he ought to push for speedy executions, instead of letting people sit on death row for decades on end.
Oh? And is he going to get a constitutional amendment so that the death penalty can be applied in more cases? It’s been a long time since we were allowed to hang a peasant for petty theft, Flyer. He was talking about three-year prison terms. Those aren’t applied to capital crimes.
Wow, that’s fantastic! But it’s just the very beginning, of course. There’s big money in mass incarceration, and massive societal resistance to overturning the legacy of white supremacism in the justice system. It’s a long and very difficult road he and his allies are on, but I hope they succeed.
Here’s the thing with law enforcement. We’ve tried going easy, we’ve tried going tough. We know the relative costs and benefits of each approach. Of course, someone always comes along thinking that this time there will be a pony. I’m absolutely fine with states and localities experimenting, so I’ll be watching Philly with interest.
We’ll know we have a problem if people start serving 3 years for murder again, or rack up long rap sheets and stay out of jail.
One of the things that upsets me most about the way we enforce our laws is that there’s no consistent approach. For example, let’s say you want to stop illegal firearms. Given the rhetoric around gun violence we’re hearing lately, you’d assume that gun control advocates consider possession of an illegal firearm to be a very serious crime. Except they don’t: in places with relatively strict gun control laws, first offense is usually a misdimeanor. 2nd offense is a mild felony that you may or may not serve time for. It’s only on the third offense that you get the book thrown at you.
Another problem is “ending mass incarceration” as an end in itself. If we assume that we can integrate ex-felons into civil society, then we actually have to do that. That means making it illegal to discriminate against ex-felons under certain circumstances. It means allowing ex-felons to get occupational licenses. Since most modern criminals are a little or a lot messed up in the head, it means free psychiatric care(which should be a condition of release).
Back in the 1960s-1980s period, it was not unusual at all for someone to get a 20 year sentence for murder and then get parole in only three years. I’m actually on a project right now, reading my local South Florida newspaper from 1980, and the crime stories, most of which involve people with extensive rap sheets walking around free after serving 20% of their sentence or less, is appalling.
Why appalling? Would a few extra years really make a difference? The idea in those days was (partially) to hit the defendant iwth a long “indeterminate” sentence which would reward “good behavior” while in custody (and punish bad behavior). The inherent discretion of decision makers was problematic, but the early release (when it occured) seems to be a feature, not a bug.
Good behavior in prison does not translate to good behavior out of prison. I worked with prisoners in work release at one of my jobs, and it was amazing and scary the change that came over them when they got out and were back in their old environment.
People who are able to hurt others seriously need to be removed from society. We do that now. I agree there are some criminals that should not do jail time, or who should serve short sentences. But society’s predators need to just be put down, or at least put in cages.
There’s far, far more to criminal justice than “going easy” or “going tough”. For example – if prisons are vile hellholes that suck all possibility of joy and decency out of people, then sentence-length probably doesn’t matter. They’ll go in as convicted criminals, and unless they have very impressive moral courage and fortitude, at best they’ll come out as husks incapable of any thing but petty crime, and at worst they’ll come out as monsters. If prisons are places which treat convicts like people who might be able to be rehabilitated into productive citizens, then many of them might actually come out as productive citizens, and at least the others won’t be as likely to come out as monsters or husks.
And that’s just one aspect of criminal justice. This is an immensely complex issue, not nearly as simple as “going easy” or “going tough”.
You say “not unusual”, what are the actual statistics? Did 100% of murderers with 20-year sentences get probation after 3 years? 50%? 10%? 1%? Of those that did have their sentence reduced to probation, what % went on to commit further violent crimes? 100%? 50%? 1%?
You are examining newspapers. Do local newspapers regularly report on violent felons who live well-adjusted lives after early release from prison?
Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say “tougher” policies do incarcerate dangerous people and lower their violent crime rate over their lifetime. How does this balance with the effect these tougher policies have on other, less violent or nonviolent criminals? How do these tougher policies affect the communities where more violent crime tends to flourish? In other words, are the costs of this policy worth the benefits?
Why is it that no one ever seems to care about the victims of these people? Or the ones who become victims after they’ve been unleashed upon society time and time again?
We’ve already been at the point in this country for decades where people with long rap sheets are walking around free, often while still in their twenties or early thirties. This means they have a long history of victimizing people and yet are being set free over and over again to victimize even more people. Yet the focus from the left is always “How do we keep 'em out/get 'em out of jail?”.
It’s all well and good to favor the underdog, but when the underdog is robbing, assaulting, raping and killing people, it might be time to recognize that the real underdogs are the people that these people victimize.
I’m all for reducing incarceration rates and being more discriminating with punishment. The problem is that it’s politically risky and thus self defeating . Even if he succeeds in the long term, I can write the commercial for his opponent now.
“John Q. Criminal was arrested for vandalism. Under Larry Krasner’s weak, crime- loving rules, he was let right back out onto the street. Two weeks later, he shot Pete Victim. How many more have to die, Larry? How many?”
I’m curious if there will be a net positive, but you’re right that a few isolated negatives will be all it takes to get many people to aggressively give up.
It already has - see “Willie Horton”. The furlough program the GOP savaged Dukakis for had not only been put in place by a Republican predecessor, but had resulted in substantially lower recidivism.