Posted on 07/21/2009 3:31:51 PM PDT by MitchellC
Suppose someone breaks into your home during the day when you're away and steals everything of value that you own. You later learn that this person was convicted of breaking into four other homes before yours. Should he spend a couple months on probation, or be eligible for eight years in prison?
In several jaw-dropping editorials in recent weeks, The Charlotte Observer, Raleigh's News & Observer, the Asheville Citizen Times and the Winston-Salem Journal attempted to hoodoo their readers into supporting changes to the habitual felon law that would allow those who repeatedly break into people's homes to walk free with little time in prison.
For months, these papers have uncritically spun the talking points of state legislators who want to gut North Carolina's habitual felon law. Our "three-strikes" style law makes those convicted of their fourth felony eligible for years and sometimes more than a decade of extra prison time after their fourth felony conviction in addition to the time served for their latest offense.
These papers claim the state's habitual felon law wastes money by putting people convicted of low-level Class H and I drug felonies away for years, and that's essentially true. Their stories spun heart-wrenching tales of drug-addicted inmates arrested for possession and locked away for decades and made the case for exempting Class H and I felons from our habitual felon law.
What they didn't tell their readers -- can't let the facts ruin a good story -- is that these same felony classes also cover the crimes of breaking into people's homes and stealing their things. Not one article or editorial has clearly explained this, an oversight that is journalistically inexcusable.
In an editorial reprinted in The Charlotte Observer last week, the Winston-Salem Journal editorial board claimed that the money we could save by exempting Class H and I felons from our habitual felon law could be better spent locking away those who "truly threaten" our society.
Mecklenburg County District Attorney Peter Gilchrist recently explained this in an editorial that attempted to fill in the gaps in the newspapers reporting.
"A defendant convicted of the Class H offense of housebreaking and found to be a habitual felon must be sentenced to prison for between 44 months and 210 months, depending upon his prior record level," Gilchrist wrote. If the habitual felon law no longer applied to this crime, a felon would get a four to 30 month sentence. But there's a catch: Without the habitual felon law, much of that time is served on probation rather than in prison, unless the repeat house breaker qualifies for active time under the state's structured sentencing law, which many don't.
North Carolina's already lax laws on housebreaking have lead to North Carolina having the highest home break-in rate (the FBI calls it "burglary") of any state in the nation according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. This is because in North Carolina, for breaking and entering to count as a higher level "burglary" felony carrying far more time, the crime must occur at night when the victims are home. The penalty for most daytime break-ins is probation. Criminals know they can be convicted of breaking into homes at least four times without ever serving a day in prison, which has lead to a free-for-all on North Carolinians' property.
If anything, we need to toughen our breaking and entering laws. Currently, the only way for a prosecutor to put a repeat house-breaker away for a significant amount of time is to use the habitual felon law. It's frightening to ponder how much our already atrocious home break-in/burglary rate would rise if certain legislators and the state's newspapers succeed in gutting the habitual felon law.
Somehow I doubt readers of the state's newspapers would be eager to let habitual house-breaking felons off the hook, especially given that the crime can be a gateway to more violent crimes. Other crimes covered by the H and I felony classes, as Gilchrist wrote in his editorial, include car break-ins, felony larceny and embezzlement of less than $100,000.
Rep. Phil Haire and the co-sponsors of the bill to alter the law know darn well that they could merely exempt low-level drug crimes from the habitual felony law -- which I would support -- without exempting the whole H and I felony classes and house-breaking along with it. They're just hoping the public doesn't figure this out. Given the level of journalistic malpractice on this issue, the public might not.
I very much like the three-strikes laws as written.
Very much.
Much of the success of NYC's anti-crime efforts under Giuliani was the recognition of this, and the determination to put away habitual criminals. Another big part was arresting and booking people for seemingly mild offenses like turnstile-jumping: they found that they were getting a large number of people who were wanted for other things, as the same personality-type that engages in big crimes also engages in small crimes.
Wow! I’ll have to contact Rep. Blackwood and Sen. Goodall, not that they aren’t already law-and-order guys.
I’m sorry; if a guy has got three felony convictions and he just can’t control himself, and he’s headed for yet another felony, he needs to go away until he’s too old to have the energy to cause trouble.
Think about it; if you’ve got three convictions would you not dummy up, if you were capable of dummying up?
If knowing full well that getting into trouble yet again is going to send you away for life, and you just can’t stop yourself even knowing whats coming, then prison is exactly where you belong. It was built for people exactly like you.
I remember a time when you couldnt use the waiting room in Grand Central Station because of all the bums sleeping there. The solution under Dinkins was to close the waiting room and make everyone stand. God forbid that they should shovel out the bums, er, homeless.
It seems better than California's three-strikes law. Three felonies meant life in prison. Some criminals with two strikes realized that they would be no worse off from killing all witnesses.
I would be in favor of not waiting for the third conviction. Have the second offense bring a penalty somewhere between the first offense and third offense penalty.
I like the life in prison thing. Yes, there are risks, but if the fear of life in prison isn’t enough, they are just popping at a different point. They simply should be permanently removed from society.
NC homeowners never heard of Benielli shotguns for protection?
They're NOT locking the guy up for stealing gum....they're locking him up for being a habitual offender. BIG difference.
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