To recap, we've seen that the "tough on crime" attitude that began in the early 90's has indeed reduced "normal" crimes, but it has had a disastrous downside...

1. A shameful number of Americans in prison.
2. A cost that threatens to be the straw
   that breaks our economic back.
3. A far larger and more threatening criminal justice system
   than any civilized nation should need or have.

I'm going to put the blame for this where it belongs, and that includes accepting my own share of it. The "tough on crime" position was an important part of a Republican party drive to capture political seats.

It was the typical political "Scare them and promise you'll protect them" charade... and it worked.

Before you Democrats decide to pat yourselves on the back, understand that it didn't take long for your politicians to jump on the bandwagon. Soon, we had politicians from both major parties battling to be tougher on crime, and accusing each of other of being soft on crime. I can't think of one issue that seemed like it might be politically successful that wasn't slathered over by both parties. As proof of that, please note that this whole "tough on crime" madness did not moderate at all during the Clinton administration. In fact, it became more federalized, culminating in the  insanity we now refer to simply as WACO.

Like a majority of Americans, I fell for it. Like many still do today, I thought of "criminals" as "them"... as different from me and other good, law-abiding citizens, and that if they broke the law, they should be punished... and punished hard. That was before I discovered how many bad laws we have. It was also before I became aware that severe punishment compounds problems instead of solving them.

I want to present 4 areas in which we can greatly improve our monstrous criminal justice system:

1. Eliminate all "three strikes" laws
2. Eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing.
3. Eliminate laws that create "victimless" or "consensual" crimes.
4. Look to restitution rather than punishment
   as a means to reduce crime itself.

Today, I'll deal with the first 2 of these:

1. "Three strikes and you're out" legislation has been a disaster where it has been applied.

This from Friction magazine:

While half of the states in the US have Three Strikes laws, only California and five other states (Georgia, South Carolina, Nevada, Washington, and Florida) have been applying this directive with jurisprudential force. California, like many other states, is taking an aggressive stance toward violent, habitual criminals by initiating this law which was initially designed to remove violent criminals from the streets. It is becoming more evident, however, that this law is not as efficacious as its supporters assert. Research has shown the Three Strikes law is inconsistently applied, costly, and targets more non-violent, low-level felons than violent career criminals, resulting in life sentences for offenses that would otherwise be billed as short-term county jail time.

and from the California Legislative Analyst's Office:

• Less than one-fourth of second-strikers were admitted to prison for a violent or serious offense.
• The most common second-strike offenses are possession of a controlled substance, petty theft with a prior theft, and second degree burglary.
• Slightly more than half of third-strikers were admitted to prison for a violent or serious offense.
• The most common third-strike offenses are robbery and first degree burglary (both are considered violent or serious offenses), followed by possession of a controlled substance, second degree burglary, and possession of a weapon.

It's clear that three-strike laws are putting the wrong people in prisons for long terms.

2. Mandatory sentences (and sentencing guildelines)... have a long history, and have been closely related to narcotics enforcement since the 50's.

The political battles over mandatory sentences are far too numerous to cover here, but there is a superb History of Mandatory Sentences on the Families against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) website.

Mandatory sentencing laws have filled prisons with low-level offenders, resulting in over-capacity prison populations and higher costs for taxpayers.

Sentencing guidelines afford judges some discretion by providing a "range" of prison time within which to sentence, and even allow the judge to violate the range in unusual cases. But, if a case falls under the rules of mandatory sentences, it takes precedence over the guidelines.

There are only two ways to avoid a mandatory minimum sentence. First, the defendant may provide "substantial assistance" to the government by turning in other defendants (perhaps the most common way that innocent people become felons). Second, some defendants qualify for the "safety valve" that Congress passed in 1994.  If the judge finds the defendant is a low-level, non-violent, first-time offender who qualifies for the safety valve, the defendant may be sentenced under the sentencing guidelines instead of the mandatory minimum sentence law. The criteria for eligibility is very narrow so thousands of nonviolent drug defendants are still sent to prison for decades under mandatory minimum sentencing laws.

We can study and discuss these subjects until we're blue in the face, but we're talking about REAL PEOPLE, not statistics. These are people WHO SHOULD NOT BE IN PRISON at all. Even if you think they've done something that should be penalized in some way, serving long terms in federal prison is a ludicrous punishment... in fact, I consider such sentences to be "cruel and unusual" as defined in our Constitution.

The horror stories are purely disgraceful. I invite you to read about just a few real people now in prison for non-violent crimes... people whose lives, and those of their families, have forever been damaged, if not completely destroyed. Doing so will give you a more clear idea how bad legislation can pervert justice. These are all drug cases, only because they happen to illustrate better than others how absurd the system can be.

DENISE CALIXTE - 10 years 
MARSHA CUNNINGHAM - 15 years
LORI GIBSON - 10 years, 6 months
SUSY JANNETTE GUTIERREZ - 7 years, 3 months
KIMBERLY MCDOWELL - 10 years, 6 months
CHARLES FRED CUNDIFF - Life in prison
BRENDA VALENCIA - 10 years
PATRICIA YOUNG - 24 years, 8 months
JOANN ZEDLER - 10 years mandatory minimum
DR. WILLIAM POLAN - 12 years, 7 months

After you've read about some of these people, consider what long prison terms is likely to do to them. Notice how many of them were arrested because someone in custody traded their names as part of a deal to reduce their own sentence. Do you think we've been helped in any way by locking these people up?

What both "three-strike" and mandatory minimums do is take away the ability of a judge to do what they are supposed to do... to JUDGE each case on it's merit... to consider the circumstances of each case, and render a verdict appropriate for that case.

I'll grant you that judges are imperfect, and that a verdict can vary from judge to judge. I can live with that, but dictates from political legislators that force judges to ignore circumstances and instead drive cases into one of several tidy categories is the worst of all judicial "solutions".

It's another case of politicians trying to FORCE a destructive one-size-fits-all scheme on us... just to make others think they're doing something useful.

Tomorrow: Consensual or victimless crimes.