“The world abounds with laws and teems with crime”
Anonymous
In early January, pollsters released their latest findings outlining America’s prevailing attitudes. Off the radar screen a year earlier, crime had vaulted into first place as the nation’s main problem.
Members of Congress predictably began “talking tough” on crime. The President, not to be upstaged, used his state of the union speech as a bully pulpit to urge Congress to pass his $22 billion omnibus anti-crime package.
This bill proposes to underwrite some 50,000 additional state and local police and construct 10 new federal prisons, while authorizing the death penalty for 52 additional crimes. Its centerpiece, “three strikes and you’re out”, would require a mandatory life sentence without parole for a third serious felony conviction.
Regretfully, there is little evidence any of these remedies will significantly reduce crime!
Beefing up police forces sounds great. Yet one wonders whether such an effort will have any measurable impact on crime or become a glorified public works project. Several of our biggest cities, employ some of the largest police forces, yet lead the nation in violent crime statistics.
Fueled by anti-drug hysteria and stepped-up efforts to enforce victimless crime statues, scores of federal and state laws have mandated harsh minimum penalties for such activities. The result, America has become the world’s most prolific jailer with an incarceration rate exceeding that of our nation’s population.
Meantime, recidivism remains staggering and, with 40 states under court order to relieve prison overcrowding, wardens are constantly releasing prisoners, including many violent offenders, to make space for newly sentenced “criminals”, some only guilty of smoking pot, placing a bet or soliciting a prostitute.
Lengthening the list of federal crimes permitting death as a penalty is more “feel good” legislation. Ignoring such dicey issues as whether the death penalty deters crime or runs the risk of executing an innocent person … who can name the last poultry inspector gunned down or anybody murdered while aboard an oil drilling platform?
Finally, there’s the popular “three strikes and your out”. While it will remove a handful of “bad guys” and responds to public outcries for retribution, the policy is unnecessary, unlikely to have any appreciable impact on crime and potentially expensive as today’s youthful offenders live for decades after being any threat to society. This policy also opens the pandora’s box of adding other, less serious, crimes to the list accruing to a mandatory life sentence.
If such concerns seem alarmist, one should reflect on recent polls indicating an increasing readiness to limit such basic constitutional guarantees as protection against unreasonable search and seizure and due process, in the name of law and order.
Tough sentencing laws already exist. They simply must be imposed and carried out to be effective!
Persons convicted of committing serious or violent crimes must be incarcerated and serve their sentences. Concurrently, we must eliminate the climate which permits too many of today’s prisons to be dangerous institutions, where rehabilitation has given way to advanced degrees in antisocial behavior.
Upon entering prison, inmates should be entitled only to a Spartan, but safe existence … neither cruel nor unusual. They should be encouraged to continue educational studies and required to work, while being paid a minimum wage … from which they should contribute toward all but their basic subsistence. The lives of those inmates who choose otherwise should remain devoid of all but the barest essentials.
Judges must retain flexibility in sentencing nonviolent offenders and those convicted of victimless crimes. Non-confinement penalties, including fines, the use of electronic bracelets and significant commitments to meaningful community service can free up valuable prison space and save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars annually.
Beyond creative and predictable enforcement of existing laws, America must embark on a new approach to reducing crime … one targeting the root causes which encourage criminal activity.
More attention needs to be paid to such difficult issues as a lack of education, substance abuse, unemployment, disintegration of family units and disrespect for the persons and property of others. To its credit, president’s bill has earmarked $1 to $2 billion for job retraining, a small but necessary ingredient.
Unfortunately, if the “feel good”, frontier justice at the heart of the omnibus anti-crime bill again fails, Americans may become increasingly willing to trade freedom for safety … forgetting that societies which do, ultimately have neither.
