Saunders: A Conservative Position On The War On Drugs
This is a blog item both about the War On Drugs and mandatory minimum life sentences for people who aren't violent criminals. More on that below.
Debra J. Saunders writes at SFGate:
"Mandatory sentences breed injustice," Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house.Note to D.C. Republicans: This would be a great time to take on the excesses of the war on drugs.
The Times was writing about conservatives, including Jeb Bush and former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, who advocate for smarter, more humane incarceration policies under the rubric "Right on Crime." In light of the GOP's need to woo more young voters, drug-war reforms offer an ideological good - limited government - and also might be politically savvy. Think: Ron Paul and his rock star status on college campuses.
Two areas cry for immediate action.
One: sentencing reform. The single mother, Stephanie George, had prior drug convictions, which contributed to her draconian prison term. Even she says that she deserved to do time, but not the rest of her natural life.
What's more, her costly incarceration won't do anything to dry up the nation's drug supply or scare kingpins straight. Career dealers, like George's ex-boyfriend, who was released five years ago, know how to game the system and reduce their sentences by testifying against amateurs and patsies who think they can win at trial. As the judge explained, the guiltiest parties "get reduced sentences, while the small fry, the little workers who don't have that information, get the mandatory sentences."
When the federal government imprisons small-time criminals for life, the system has grown too costly and too ineffective. It embodies the definition of big government. University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt found that American penal policies decreased crime in the 1990s. Since then, incarceration rates have risen so steeply that Levitt told the Times he now thinks that the prison population - more than 2 million people are in prison or jail - could be reduced by a third. If he's half right, Washington should act.
President Obama was critical of mandatory minimums before he was elected to the White House. But he has failed to use his presidential power to pardon as he should. Obama has commuted only one sentence to date, and right now, a commutation is George's only hope of release.
Julie Stewart, who founded Families Against Mandatory Minimums, knows Democratic and Republican politicians who have issues with the war on drugs. Congress should not wait for the White House to enact sentencing reform; GOP members should lead the way.
"Should." But, they pander just as well as the Democrats, and are highly unlikely to.
John Tierney has an article in the New York Times rethinking sentences of life behind bars for lesser crimes mentioning the woman Saunders mentioned above, whose name is Stephanie George:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Stephanie George and Judge Roger Vinson had quite different opinions about the lockbox seized by the police from her home in Pensacola. She insisted she had no idea that a former boyfriend had hidden it in her attic. Judge Vinson considered the lockbox, containing a half-kilogram of cocaine, to be evidence of her guilt.But the defendant and the judge fully agreed about the fairness of the sentence he imposed in federal court.
"Even though you have been involved in drugs and drug dealing," Judge Vinson told Ms. George, "your role has basically been as a girlfriend and bag holder and money holder but not actively involved in the drug dealing, so certainly in my judgment it does not warrant a life sentence."
Yet the judge had no other option on that morning 15 years ago. As her stunned family watched, Ms. George, then 27, who had never been accused of violence, was led from the courtroom to serve a sentence of life without parole.
"I remember my mom crying out and asking the Lord why," said Ms. George, now 42, in an interview at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. "Sometimes I still can't believe myself it could happen in America."
Her sentence reflected a revolution in public policy, often called mass incarceration, that appears increasingly dubious to both conservative and liberal social scientists. They point to evidence that mass incarceration is no longer a cost-effective way to make streets safer, and may even be promoting crime instead of suppressing it.
..."It is unconscionable that we routinely sentence people like Stephanie George to die in our prisons," said Mary Price, the general counsel of the advocacy group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "The United States is nearly alone among the nations of the world in abandoning our obligation to rehabilitate such offenders."
The utility of such sentences has been challenged repeatedly by criminologists and economists. Given that criminals are not known for meticulous long-term planning, how much more seriously do they take a life sentence versus 20 years, or 10 years versus 2 years? Studies have failed to find consistent evidence that the prospect of a longer sentence acts as a significantly greater deterrent than a shorter sentence.
Longer sentences undoubtedly keep criminals off the streets. But researchers question whether this incapacitation effect, as it is known, provides enough benefits to justify the costs, especially when drug dealers are involved. Locking up a rapist makes the streets safer by removing one predator, but locking up a low-level drug dealer creates a job opening that is quickly filled because so many candidates are available.
There's a huge cost to keeping people in prison as well. I think prisoners should be made to earn their keep, but that's not the way it works.
And here's a sickening bit from Tierney's piece that Saunders touches on above:
Because the government formally credited the other defendants with "substantial assistance," their sentences were all reduced to less than 15 years. Even though Mr. Dickey was the leader of the enterprise and had a much longer criminal record than Ms. George, he was freed five years ago.Looking back on the case, Judge Vinson said such disparate treatment is unfortunately all too common. The judge, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who is hardly known for liberalism (last year he ruled that the Obama administration's entire health care act was unconstitutional), says he still regrets the sentence he had to impose on Ms. George because of a formula dictated by the amount of cocaine in the lockbox and her previous criminal record.
"She was not a major participant by any means, but the problem in these cases is that the people who can offer the most help to the government are the most culpable," Judge Vinson said recently. "So they get reduced sentences while the small fry, the little workers who don't have that information, get the mandatory sentences.
>> I think prisoners should be made to earn their keep, but that's not the way it works.
And it's a damn good thing too. Imagine if the government could incarcerate you and then make you its unwilling slave and income generator for life, with no long term costs or budget restraints on the part of the bureaucracy. Do you see the unlimited potential for abuse there? Do you think the rate of false imprisonment would go up or down?
Assholio at December 17, 2012 9:00 AM
I'm not talking about generating income through enslavement; I'm talking about not rewarding people for, say, murdering somebody, by having taxpayers fund their entire existence.
Amy Alkon at December 17, 2012 9:59 AM
Mandatory sentences were a response to judges imposing their own views on sentencing - with the severity of the punishment being entirely dependent upon the judge's point of view, his attitude, and whether he'd had his bran muffin that morning.
The thing is, we hire judges to judge. It's in the job description. Some of them did it poorly, so we fired the lot and replaced them with wage slaves who went to law school.
Conan the Grammarian at December 17, 2012 10:27 AM
>>I'm not talking about generating income through enslavement;
Of course you're not. But if you give the government incentives to do a thing to the people, the government tends to do that thing to as many people as possible, regardless of whether the people affected deserve it or not. Make it cheaper to lock up people and more people will get locked up. For less and less cause, guilt optional.
I will say that in a perfect world where the innocent never go to jail and the government never abuses its power, I agree with you. We just don't live in that world.
Assholio at December 17, 2012 10:27 AM
Good point, Assholio. I hadn't thought of it that way before.
Every dollar that a prisoner contributes to his own upkeep is another dollar for bureaucrats and politicians to spend on something else, probably on expanding the institutions they control.
Ken R at December 17, 2012 10:50 AM
It pains me greatly to type this, but A**holio has a point.
I guess blind squirrels do find acorns once in a while.
Don't make it profitable for the government to lock people up. Don't give the government free labor.
And we dare not let prisons become something society can ignore because they no longer show up as an expense item on the taxpayer ledger. As much as we'd like to ignore them, we need to be aware of how many people are being locked up, and why.
If prisons became self-supporting through prisoner labor, where is the incentive to rehabilitate (or release) prisoners?
Don't let mandatory sentences become devices by which the government increases its indentured labor force. More and more laws will come with mandatory sentences.
Conan the Grammarian at December 17, 2012 11:09 AM
Don't make it profitable for the government to lock people up. Don't give the government free labor.
If prisons became self-supporting through prisoner labor, where is the incentive to rehabilitate (or release) prisoners?
It already is profitable for the government and they already do get free, or close to free labor out of it.
You ever wonder why some companies phone tree tells you not to give any info to the phone tech answering your call? Becuase they are prisoners.
Prisoners already do their own laundry and mop their own floors. They assist in construction and maintenece. We've already set sail on that ship, more than 10yrs ago
lujlp at December 17, 2012 11:36 AM
I admit I do support mandatory minimums; but with a qualification. A judge should have the ability to lower the sentence based on submitting the proposed sentence to a judicial panel or superior court prior to issuing the sentence.
So in a case like Ms. George's the judge would be able to write up a five year sentence and submit it to the review panel explaining that the real bad guys got 10 years and this poor schmuck would be doing life.
The stats on lowering the sentence could be studied. The judge that knows the sentence is wrong has a way out. And that keeps the American public from paying $30K per person to incarcerate them.
Jim P. at December 17, 2012 7:33 PM
>>It pains me greatly to type this, but A**holio has a point.
>>I guess blind squirrels do find acorns once in a while.
You're too kind Dickwad.
>>I admit I do support mandatory minimums;
Sorry, didn't read the rest cause you've just proved you're a moron.
Assholio at December 17, 2012 10:16 PM
What is really disturbing is the way the criminal justice system, and social services, and welfare feed off each other.
Get put in jail for a minor crime or on probation for a minor crime? It cost you all your income to a lawyer or the fines, and you lose your job. You then may lose your ability to keep any other job, and become a ward of the system, where you will find yourself either on parole, or back in jail for a parole violation. A lot of minor drug abusers and alchoholics get caught up in the merry go round and never get off. Meanwile the public servants in both social services and criminal justice have no vested interest in letting anyone out of the system, where you are initially punished, and then repunished in perpetuity for the same underlying non felony.
Isab at December 17, 2012 10:57 PM
Meanwile the public servants in both social services and criminal justice have no vested interest in letting anyone out of the system, where you are initially punished, and then repunished in perpetuity for the same underlying non felony.
Not on the county level -- at least not around these parts. The only merry-go-round is that alcoholics, drug abusers, and drug dealers get thrown in the county jail for public intoxication, burglary, assualt, elder abuse, drug selling, etc. for a night or two, and then it's back out on the streets because the jail is plumb full. Then they are back on the sauce in a bad way again. If they wanted to learn from their mistakes, they could get out of "the system".
Jason S. at December 18, 2012 12:08 PM
Thank you for proving you aren't worth listening to for anything.
I suggested a solution that allows a judge to change mandatory minimums. But they have to justify why the mandatory minimum is wrong. If a lawyer or the judge can realize a life sentence i wrong for the individual, they can make a case for it. As it currently stands a judge is forced to do life without parole.
You are a jackass Assholio.
Jim P. at December 18, 2012 9:00 PM
That's "Mr. Dickwad" to you.
Conan the Grammarian at December 18, 2012 10:00 PM
>>Thank you for proving you aren't worth listening to for anything.
After this reply, I wasted my time by reading the rest of your post.
Yep, you're still a complete fucking moron.
>that's "Mr. Dickwad" to you.
Likewise.
Assholio at December 18, 2012 10:38 PM
>>What is really disturbing is the way the criminal justice system, and social services, and welfare feed off each other.
You nailed it.
Assholio at December 18, 2012 10:43 PM
>>I suggested a solution that allows a judge to ...
Oh yes, you are looking for the magical solution, that completely denies the reality of the situation. Do you really think more bureaucracy will be the answer?
Assholio at December 18, 2012 10:54 PM
Not really -- but the old jurisprudence system would let judges -- with no review -- sentence a person to 30 days for murder.
And once a judgement is passed, there is no way to up it. So giving a mandatory minimum with a judge allowed to lower it with a review by someone else gives the option for justice. Sentencing a minor included party to life without parole costs about $30K * (30+) years is stupid.
A judge needs to have judgement, but he is not a god.
Jim P. at December 19, 2012 10:22 PM
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