Ex-Lawyer, Now Pastor Says Truth in Sentencing "Evil"

Madison.com ^ | March 10, 2006 | Rob Zaleski

[Diana in Wisconsin]

It had been gnawing away at him for years, especially after the Wisconsin Legislature passed the "truth in sentencing" law in 2000.

"I became concerned about the legal system's obsession with fairness, which is very different from justice," Jerry Hancock, a former attorney in the Dane County District Attorney's Office, noted during an interview at a west side coffee shop this week. "I mean, people can get a fair trial. But the results may be unjust."

Fairness, he adds, "is very important. But a system that ends up with more than half the inmates being African-American and Hispanic is not just. And I wanted to deal with those issues from a whole different perspective."

So in 2001, Hancock, who had spent three decades in the criminal justice system, pointed his life in a new direction. With the encouragement of his wife Linda, he started taking classes at Chicago Theological Seminary so that he could become a minister and provide spiritual guidance for prisoners and their families, as well as for victims of violent crime.

And don't misunderstand, says the engaging 58-year-old Hancock, whose first day as a minister at First Congregational United Church of Christ, 1609 University Ave., was Feb. 1. He's not suggesting that hardcore criminals don't deserve to be behind bars. Heck, in his previous career he put a lot of them there.

"But they don't need to be forgotten in prison," he says. "They don't need to be in there for as long as they are under truth in sentencing, which is a perfect storm of injustice that just creates hopelessness."

Truth in sentencing, Hancock notes, eliminated parole and early release for inmates. As a result, "there's no incentive for them to change, there's no recognition of even the possibility of human transformation."

And that, Hancock asserts, "is evil."

But that's not the only problem with the longer sentences that have resulted from truth in sentencing, he contends.

It's a big reason why, even though crime rates have been falling for 17 years, Wisconsin's prisons are now operating at 120 percent capacity, Hancock says. And why the prison system continues to be an enormous drain on taxpayers.

As defense attorney Steve Hurley pointed out in a recent speech to the Dane County Bar Association, it now costs an average of $25,000 a year to keep an inmate in Wisconsin's prisons, Hancock says. Which means there's little money left over for schools and health care and other social needs.

Of course, the hard-liners would argue that tougher and longer sentences are a key reason the crime rate has plummeted.

Balderdash, says Hancock.

Minnesota, he points out, has a crime rate comparable to Wisconsin's. Yet it incarcerates roughly one-fourth as many people as Wisconsin does, and it spends about one-fourth as much money on prisons.

"So obviously there are other ways of controlling crime than simply locking everybody up," he says.

In his speech to the Dane County Bar, Hurley suggested that the system won't change until judges "face the facts" and think about the consequences of the sentences they're handing out.

"That would be great," Hancock says. "But the ultimate solution is to change the law and bring back good-time credits and early release so that prisoners have some incentives" to improve.

"Now, that would also involve a shift in resources," he says. "You'd need more probation officers, more bracelets, more monitoring. You'd need more re-entry programs and you'd need jobs for people.

"So it's a complicated business. But the fundamental fact is that the system as it works now is unjust."

Hancock, who lives on the near west side, in the same house that he and his wife purchased in 1973, says he won't be surprised if the right-wingers who dominate the Legislature scoff at his remarks or suggest that his brain's gone soft.

Not so, he says with a laugh.

"I know - perhaps better than most - that a lot of people in prison need to be there. But they don't need to be forgotten. Their families don't need to be punished.

"And we have a responsibility to make sure they're better human beings when they come out than when they went in."

[TXnMA]

"So obviously there are other ways of controlling crime than simply locking everybody up,"...

Yep!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

You made an interesting point; one I've not thought of before.

"The rich can insulate themselves, in their exclusive neighborhoods, gated communities, and with their expensive alarms systems. The poor have to count on the state to fund the aggressive law enforcement and long prison sentences that help keep them safe."

In my case, I have none of that. I would, however like it if my d*ckhead socialist Governor would stop VETOING Concealed Carry so I could at least go down fighting if I were a victim of crime away from my home. (He hasn't sent his jack-booted thugs in to yank our guns from our homes...yet!) Grrrr!

[arthurus]

Black criminals should be convicted and sent to prison only in the same proportion that blacks are of the population. If it is deemed necessary to imprison a larger proportion of blacks because a larger proportion of blacks commit crimes then a compensatory number of nonblacks must also be convicted and imprisoned. That is, of course, axiomatic. The responsibility of the legislature is to enact laws that criminalise actions that are more characteristic of nonblack populations or to randomly arrest, try , and convict sufficient nonblack persons to normalize the proportions in the convict population. That would be only fair.