Interesting article. When it comes to hypocrisy, Ernie Preate is a good spokesman.
When it comes to people actually doing their time, and not getting away with every “legal” dodge in the book, and those sentenced to the DP actually receiving the penalty, the system will be serving the people. Until then, it’s a political game of smoke and mirrors.
I think our system should better distinguish people who we believe can be rehabilitated and those who can’t. Despite my general liberality, I don’t have any real problem with conditions in prison being relatively shitty for people who will be in there forever. Once someone has committed enough crimes that we’ve determined that he deserves life in prison without parole (and this would almost certainly have to involve multiple heinous crimes, so that the chances of an innocent man being wrongly convicted would be vanishingly small), I really don’t care if he gets education, TV, exercise equipment, etc.
On the flip side, when there are people who are in prison and will be released, it doesn’t make a lick of sense to treat them so cruelly that they come out of prison even more angry and screwed up than they were beforehand.
So maybe there could be some kind of multiple-strikes, with multiple levels of prison…
I suggest you go back and read the story, which heavily focuses on the case of one convicted murderer and how it is grossly unfair that he is still in jail 35 years after he shot and then drowned his victim in a river.
The Times story does not differentiate between murder and lesser offenses. Its thrust is that treating a life sentence literally is inhumane and that enlightened Europeans hardly ever jail anyone for more than a decade or so.
Consider this (it got one paragraph in the Times article compared the much greater ink devoted to the killer now seeking parole):
"Reginald McFadden is the reason lifers no longer get pardons in Pennsylvania.
Mr. McFadden had served 24 years of a life sentence for suffocating Sonia Rosenbaum, 60, during a burglary of her home when a divided Board of Pardons voted to release him in 1992. After Gov. Robert P. Casey signed the commutation papers two years later, Mr. McFadden moved to New York, where he promptly killed two people and kidnapped and raped a third. He is now serving another life sentence there."
Perhaps criminals like McFadden should actually stay in jail for their natural lives (gasp) or even be executed (beyond gasp).
Just remember that locking folks up is not cheap. It behooves us to select the population we are going to lock up for a long time very carefully.
And if you make prisons tougher and more punitive, and decide to restrict the health care they get, that not only has an effect on the inmates, but also on the staff that takes care of the inmates. It is not easy supervising and treating inmates to begin with. Make them angrier, more fearful, more debased, and you’ll not only have more violence, but you’ll have a negative effect on the staff who have to deal with them.
These days, sentences are longer than ever, with no time off for good behavior, no parole, etc. We’re still seeing the effects of less punitive sentences from decades ago however, when folks get out after 15-20 years for heinous crimes, which we now lock them up for 50 years. But as a result, in my state, the prison population has tripled in the last 15 years, and the cost to incarcerate all these people for longer periods of time has gone up more than 6 times!!
You should read more carefully (from the article):
A survey by The New York Times found that about 132,000 of the nation’s prisoners, or almost 1 in 10, are serving life sentences. The number of lifers has almost doubled in the last decade, far outpacing the overall growth in the prison population. Of those lifers sentenced between 1988 and 2001, about a third are serving time for sentences other than murder, including burglary and drug crimes.
You have a comprehension problem. I can help. I will try italics, as they save space.
The thrust of the Times article is that it is inhumane to sentence people to life in prison and then intend to keep them there. The article features a convicted killer. It does not feature the view that life without parole should not apply just to “lesser” crimes, but to all crimes.
Hope that’s clear now.
I drove through Newtown today. Something I’d never seen before in this little town-black ribbons on the front porches of homes and flagstaffs of businesses. Then again, Newtown never had an officer slain in the line of duty, and may they never again feel the pain.
The most recent information is chilling.
Sorry folks-call me vengeful if you will, but 3 hots and a cot is way more than this piece of shit deserves.