Posted on 08/24/2007 5:39:54 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley.
Last month, federal judges “ordered the creation of a three-judge panel” to address the overcrowding crisis in California’s prisons. One possible solution is a cap on prison population. That could force the state to release up to 35,000 inmates.
Sounds drastic, doesn’t it? It’s a shame that no one saw it coming—no one except people who work in and around the criminal justice system, including Justice Fellowship, the criminal justice reform arm of Prison Fellowship.
California’s prisons put the “crowd” in “overcrowded.” There are 173,000 inmates in a system designed to hold about half that many. That’s why Governor Schwarzenegger issued an emergency order last year transferring 8,000 inmates to private facilities in other states.
As states often do, California is trying to spend and build its way out of the problem. Last spring, the legislature agreed to spend $7.8 billion on 53,000 new beds. But if past history is any guide, this won’t work. Since 1980 California has built more than 30 prisons, and the system is more overcrowded now than it was when they began.
Naturally, legislators have vowed to fight any order to release inmates. But some of the energy being used to oppose the panel should be directed at understanding and addressing the causes of California’s crisis.
This crisis stems from what Berkeley Law professor Jonathan Simon calls California’s “indiscriminate” use of incarceration. According to Simon, “the real problem lies not in our prisons but in our Legislature and our courthouses.”
At the same time California was building all those prisons, legislators were busy amending the state’s sentencing laws. It may be debatable whether the massive increase in incarceration reduced crime, but there’s no debate about where the overcrowding crisis comes from—increased incarceration.
California’s “three strikes” law and other “get tough” gestures made lifers out of many non-violent drug and property offenders and extended the prison terms of many others. In addition, many California inmates are in prison for technical parole violations.
In the early 1990s, Justice Fellowship predicted the disastrous effects of “three strike” laws and urged California to rethink the way it dealt with parole violations and non-violent offenders.
The warnings were drowned out by a cacophony of “get tough on crime” rhetoric. Now, the bill for shortsightedness has come due.
To make matters worse, this warehousing, as the governor acknowledged, has done nothing to prepare inmates for life after release. The governor has just appointed Justice Fellowship’s Pat Nolan to a 14-member rehabilitation strike team to help the state develop policies to prepare inmates to reenter society.
Don’t get me wrong. We need prisons, but for dangerous criminals who pose a threat to community safety. But for nonviolent offenders, more appropriate punishments such as restitution and community service make so much more sense—for our communities, for victims, and for the overcrowded prison system. Visit the website of Justice Fellowship for more information.
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Amen!
I visited 4 prisons and was appalled by what I saw. We are making things worse, and people worse. We must change our system!
Good op-ed, until the 2nd-to-last sentence. Those non-violent offenders (as he reference earlier) are mostly folks with drug-possession convictions. Some are lifers because they’ve had three convictions on minor war-on-drug offenses. They’re not pushers, or folks who provide drugs to get kids hooked. Instead they are victims of the latter-day Prohibition, except without Prohibition’s attention to Constitutional niceities.
“Three strikes” is not the biggest problem with prison overcrowding; the unconstitutional War On Drugs is.
Oh just shoot the damn things!
However;
But for nonviolent offenders, more appropriate punishments such as restitution and community service make so much more sense—for our communities, for victims, and for the overcrowded prison system."...is a statement I can, in general, agree with.
If your back is against a wall and the choice is to let repeat nonviolent offenders go vs even one time violent offender it is, GENERALLY SPEAKING, a no-brainer.
Not to say that violent offenders should not be punished, but if they are ever going to be let out into society again they need to be rehabilitated too. Not doing so practically guarantees they will victimize someone else.
Ah, the typical response = F’em.
The point is that if these guys are going to be released back into society, why are we making them worse?
You see, Chuck Colson is a Christian, as am I. We have a different view....we want to make things better.
As we sit around, there are special needs children and elderly who need care. I suggest we use some of the non-violent types to help. Just throwing them in the same bucket as the violent criminals and then forgetting about them is not an intelligent act; vengeful, yes; but not intelligent.
YEP....I thought it was a stupid waste to send MARTHA STEWART to prison.....just give her a big ole fine, a really big one!
YTou’re not going to get a prison approved for some of the most valuable development land left in socal.
If the guard union could be told where to go, we'd have a bunch of private prisons in Cal run at lower costs.
There are only two solutions- build more prisons, and release a small number of non-violent marajuana offenders.
No reply? Thought so.
Kinda shortsighted don’t ya think????? Or is superfluous vengeance now a plank in the conservative movement??? Give the one’s who want it training, then maybe they won’t go out and steal a car again and become guests at the Graybar Hotel to the tune of $45,000 a year with the bill going to John Q. Taxpayer.
"Superfluous vengeance"? And all this time I thought it was called justice.
I have news for you. We have a major recidivism problem in this country and regardless of how pleasurable you wish the criminals stay in prison to be, the FEAR of going back is the single most likely thing to keep them from repeat offenses.
Shortsighted.
> I visited 4 prisons and was appalled by what I saw. We are making things worse, and people worse. We must change our system!
I too am not convinced that Gaol is an appropriate remedy for all crimes. Warehousing people for extended periods of time is really only effective if the criminal presents a clear-and-present threat amongst the community. But as a punishment, and as a rehabilitation, it doesn’t seem to do much.
I *would* be in favor of the return of Corporal Punishment. Forty-strokes-save-one with the cat o’nine tails is sufficiently unpleasant that it would not be something most people would want a second helping of, and yet it is over-and-done-with in an afternoon, plus a day or two in sick bay thereafter.
A day or two in the pillory, similarly, would be sufficiently unpleasant and embarassing that most folk would not come back for a repeat dosage. And if they did, there’s always the Cat. Or the Rotan.
Most offenses could be easily, cheaply, efficiently and swiftly dealt to with these remedies: there is no reason why most judicial punishments could not be dispensed within a week of passing sentence.
I am opposed to Community Service as a sentence because all good Citizens should serve their communities as a matter of course. It should be a pleasure to do so, not a punishment. And fines are just money, and they land heavily on those who can least afford them, and are ignored by those who can.
And of course there is the Death Penalty. It is cruel and unusual punishment to expensively warehouse people in a Gaol until they rot, and equally it is unsafe to release some people back into Society. Death by hanging is still a very swift and humane way to launch a crim from this mortal coil, whereas lethal injection takes much longer. DNA and forensic science make the Death Penalty a much safer sentence than in times past, meaning that the likelihood of hanging an innocent is extremely unlikely.
Should any of these remedies be judicially applied, they should naturally be done in full public view as a matter of accountability and good governance.
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