TheAgitator.com
Prison Reform on Senate Agenda?
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008Good on Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.):
This spring, Webb (D-Va.) plans to introduce legislation on a long-standing passion of his: reforming the U.S. prison system. Jails teem with young black men who later struggle to rejoin society, he says. Drug addicts and the mentally ill take up cells that would be better used for violent criminals. And politicians have failed to address this costly problem for fear of being labeled “soft on crime.”
It is a gamble for Webb, a fiery and cerebral Democrat from a staunchly law-and-order state. Virginia abolished parole in 1995, and it trails only Texas in the number of people it has executed. Moreover, as the country struggles with two wars overseas and an ailing economy, overflowing prisons are the last thing on many lawmakers’ minds.
But Webb has never been one to rely on polls or political indicators to guide his way. He seems instead to charge ahead on projects that he has decided are worthy of his time, regardless of how they play — or even whether they represent the priorities of the state he represents.
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Webb aims much of his criticism at enforcement efforts that he says too often target low-level drug offenders and parole violators, rather than those who perpetrate violence, such as gang members. He also blames policies that strip felons of citizenship rights and can hinder their chances of finding a job after release. He says he believes society can be made safer while making the system more humane and cost-effective.
I find Webb’s economic populism wrongheaded and grating. But there isn’t a more authentic, no-bullshit member of Congress. Which is why it isn’t terribly surprising to see him take on an issue like this, despite its political risks. The guy doesn’t worship power, and doesn’t seem to base his priorities on getting reelected. Here’s hoping he fosters some genuine discussion on this issue, and perhaps creates room for more politicians to take a more skeptical look at the criminal justice system.
Sadly, the general population seems to ENJOY the idea of prison rape so I doubt they’ll be much movement on this.
I’d be a lot less sympathetic to prison abuses myself if our legal (not justice) system weren’t so f’d up.
Webb will eventually have to deal with the “homeless” problem if he’s going to reform prisons, meaning that he may actually start a fire to rebuild and use psychiatric treatment facilities.
That would be a good thing, as Clay Cramer will attest.
This is really good. I’m sure that in his heart Obama agrees with everything Webb is saying here, but it may be too soon for him to jump into this issue. If Webb can get a real discussion going on this issue it would be easier for Obama to follow in and then lead it. I think Obama has shown a strong ability to persuade the public away from some long-held ideas by speaking pretty intelligently on them. (I think the stupid “meeting without preconditions” notion one was one of these one he successfully countered with clear reasoning.)
Speaking of primarily imprisoning violent criminals, I know a lot of people here think that only violent criminals should ever serve jail time. i certainly agre when it comes to things like drugs, but I wanted to ask what people thought of the Madoff situation and if you can properly punsih someone like that WITHOUT making them serve jail time. Seems like fines or a ruined reputation when run through the risk of getting caught is not likely to discourage folks like him.
I would also like to see him take the bold step of working on a follow up bill that nationalizes the prison industry. I am a die-hard capitalist in almost every way, but I would shed no tears for the property rights of an industry that grows by encouraging the imprisonment of more Americans. I have a feeling that nothing short of a Chavez-style seizure of its assets and personnel would be enough to drive a stake through its heart.
Realistically, someone like Madoff is worse than a serial killer. If you were to weigh the amount of damage he did to his victims in light of how many victims he had, it would come out to far more than even a Manson, Dahmer, Son of Sam or BTK Killer sort of guy. Logically, subjecting such a white collar criminal to the same sanctions as a violent criminal is entirely justified. Even life imprisonment or execution would be justified for someone like Madoff.
Nick, the distinction is not between violent and non-violent criminals, the distinction is between those who engage in consensual activities and those who violate the rights of others. Madoff committed fraud on an epic scale, and no one will argue that he doesn’t deserve a great deal of time in a PMITY prison. The government exists to protect citizens from force and fraud.
[...] (via The Agitator) [...]
Brandon, I think people WILL argue he does not deserve time behind bars. There many people, usually in the libertarian camp, or at least staunchly anti-prison-industrial complex camp who believ that you should only ever serve actual time if the crime you committed had a violent aspect to it. I think we can all agree to the logic of that for things like petty theft or drug possession, but I think madoff is a real test of that philosophy. Again i think many would draw a line at violent/non-violent as opposed to consensual/non-consensual.
I believe that if the crime you commit is consensual (i.e. personal drug use or an 18 year old having consensual sex with a 17 year old), then no prison time should be involved. However, if you’re the drug dealer that dealt to a man who OD’d or a scam artist who rips old people off, then I believe you should be locked up. The same goes for Drunk Drivers after their first offense (first offense should probably be a huge fine, loss of license for a year, driving school, and community service with parole).
Madoff deserves to be thrown in jail. The kid caught with a joint doesn’t.
Can someone fact check this bullshit from Tom Riley?
But the movement is alarming to drug enforcement advocates. Tom Riley, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Policy Initiatives, said it has become an “urban myth” that the nation imprisons vast numbers of low-level drug offenders.
People are often surprised to learn that less than one-half of 1 percent of all inmates are in for marijuana possession, he said. And those offenders were caught holding, on average, 100 pounds.
However, if you’re the drug dealer that dealt to a man who OD’d
Hell yeah! And if you sell someone a car and they wreck it into a school bus full of nuns, you should totally be liable for the actions of another person, too.
Oh, wait, no, that’s utter bullshit. Sorry, I just got caught up in the moment.
MikeT: I’m not sure simply imprisoning Madoff is the best use of his skills. Clearly, at the very least, he’s got a head for money. It might make a lot more sense to have him work at something, (under stringent supervision, obviously) at, say, a 75% “tax” rate (so he still has some incentive to do well) with the proceeds going to reimburse his victims.
Restitution would seem to be a more logical goal than simple punishment, and Madoff is likely to be able to better compensate his victims doing something productive in the real world for 20 years, than spending 20 years making license plates.
Yes, obviously, there are holes in this plan large enough to drive a supertanker through, (where’s he going to get seed capital, for one) butI think the idea potentially has merit.
Mike T,
Are you serious? Madoff is worse than a serial killer? WTF is wrong with you! He certainly committed an epic crime of fraud, but holy shit dude! Would you really weigh the theft of billions as worse than one sadistic murder, as if you can really put a price on anyone’s life? I hope you don’t really believe that and that it was just an ill thought out statement.
Brandon, I’m sure you were using hyperbole to emphasize your point, but I certainly hope that any prison reform includes some effort to prevent prisoners from being “pounded in the ass.” That this aspect of prison life has somehow become a celebrated part of our popular culture represents, to me at least, a fundamental problem in the way we address the penalties of criminal activity and the state’s role therein. You could argue that some criminals certainly deserve such treatment for their crimes (at least in terms of vengeance), but the fact that rape/torture has become the de facto treatment as dictated by the state, which takes very little pains to prevent it, is a travesty of an already deeply broken “justice” system.
It’s far more than enough that the state can strip you of your property, your freedom, your future employability, your family’s security, etc. To say that state-sponsored rape should be part of the state’s purview and, even worse, to laud that fact as a “feature” of the system is utterly base and vile.
#3:
There’s a significant segment of the mainstream criminal justice theorists that outright reject the idea that deterrence is a legitimate goal (in and of itself) of the criminal justice system. At its worst, deterrence theory is rank consequentialism. Taken to its logical extreme, you can justify punishment of an innocent person provided the deterrent effect to others is significant enough. On a more pragmatic level, it can be used to give legitimately “guilty” people disproportionately harsh sentences. Presumably, if imprisonment is justified at all, it’s justified entirely by (and only to the extent of), the crime actually committed. To add an additional period of imprisonment for the purpose of deterrence is to overpunish.
On a less mainstream note, there are some, notably (but not at all exclusively) Randy Barnett, that favor collapsing the crime-tort distinction. On this view, the only legitimate “crimes” are those which involve violations of the personal rights of others, and which are more accurately characterized as torts now. Usually bundled with this idea is the idea that punishment, the deliberate infliction of suffering on another person, is philosophically unjustifiable, and the only legitimate form of “punishment” is in fact restitution.
On the latter view, if Maddoff is guilty of actionable fraud, the legitimate course of action would be to allow his victims to obtain as much financial restitution from his property as is possible, and that’s pretty much it, as far as legitimate coercive responses go.
“ Can someone fact check this bullshit from Tom Riley? ”
http://blog.norml.org/2008/09/15/872721-marijuana-arrests-in-2007-up-52-from-2006/
“I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken, unfair, locking up the wrong people in many cases and not locking up the right person in many cases.”
Absolutely! Good for you, Sen. Webb. There is no inherent contradiction between supporting fairly aggressive, smart law enforcement tactics (decoy operations, crime suppression stakeouts, “bait car operations,” monitoring of career criminals, fugitive apprehension squads, etc) as I do, and pointing out aspects of the system (the war on drugs/vice, police militarization, a narrow-minded focus on incarceration over community based alternatives, such as restitution) that don’t work, damage our civil liberties, and call into question the legitimacy of the criminal justice system. The “tough on crime” movement is a sham and I thank Mr. Webb for calling bullshit.
I’d find it very believable that only a fraction of inmates are there for marijuana possession alone.
I’ve been practicing criminal defense law for 6 years now, and the only time I’ve ever seen someone spend any time incarcerated was a single case of a guy who was on probation for distribution violate his probation twice. Wait, I take that back, there was a kid who was charged with felony distribution and was offered probation, but we negotiated it to a misdemeanor plea but with 30 days in jail.
I can pretty much guarantee a client that if they are charged with distribution of marijuana that they won’t see a day in jail unless they have some serious criminal history, or they violate probation.
As for the feds, they won’t even touch marijuana cases. Its not worth it to them. The federal sentencing guidelines (http://www.ussc.gov/guidelin.htm) require either a serious criminal history or a staggering amount of marijuana (100 pounds sounds about right) to trigger any incarceration. Round here, the feds don’t want em if its not crack or meth; anything else doesn’t trigger enough time in prison for them to bother, so they leave it to the state level prosecutors.
Thats just my experience. I’m staunchly opposed to the drug war at all levels and would favor ending prohibition 100%. But I’ll be the first to point out that marijuana possession or distribution will (at least round here and at the federal level) not merit any jail time barring some significant contributing factors.
Bravo for Webb, this guy is the real deal and even managed to surprise and buck Ronald Reagan to some extent. Here’s the thing though – until we stop spending about as much money on jails, prisons, prison guards and as we do on schools not much is going to change. America has created a huge industry on the backs of those in the criminal justice system. Don’t believe it? Propose modified early releases for offenders and watch the guard unions howl. What Webb grasps, and others don’t, is that the vast majority of offenders are released. And plenty of them have been in for a pretty substantial amount of time due to mandatory sentences. There is an entire group of citizens being created and relegated to second class status in our country. Wanna bet that doesn’t have some unknown impact down the line?
What ever happened to paying your debt to society? I thought prison was also supposed to be a way back. It is no longer that way. When the least of the felons (now potential employers even check misdemeanor convictions) is delegated to a lesser job pool, for the rest of his life, he can’t get ahead, (or better said, catch back up). This occurs, even after “paying your debt”! Our society is on a roll and I can’t see that it will get ever better or, just, dissolve in to anarchy! With it being stated that “one in three in this country is in prison or jail or on parole”, I would put us in line for a revolution of some sort.
Oh, Radley’s rose-colored glasses.
“reforming the U.S. prison system”
HOPELESS. J. Edgar Hoover said, ““The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”
In the case of the U.S. prison system, the conspiracy is easily believed — it consists very publicly of legislators and judges of all levels of government, state-licensed attorneys, unionized law enforcement officers, unionized prison guards, and favored corporations who are granted government contracts to build and supply prisons.
Jim Webb is going to “reform” this system. Good fucking luck. I’ll be he gets to define his level of success too. And if it’s abject failure, well, he’s always got his good intentions to rest on. Motherfucker.
Reform changes nothing. Abolition is change.
Webb is a statist like any other. They are all power-hungry by the definition of their actions.
Brandon wrote, “The government exists to protect citizens from force and fraud.”
Insert “ostensibly” in between “government” and “exists,” and you have a true statement.
Government exists to institutionalize the power and wealth of the ruling class. It is a protection racket on the grandest scale.
Please wise up.
Michael wrote: “Our society is on a roll and I can’t see that it will get ever better or, just, dissolve in to anarchy.”
Change “or” to “and” and you have a true statement.
The next person that conflates anarchy with chaos is going to get an eyeful from me.
For the sake of all rational people here, please read about anarchy before posting the word. PLEASE.
Reforming prisons is a good start. Removing more prisons would be better. Start with the “private for profit” ones first. Of course if there were fewer stupid laws we would not need so many prisons. 2.5 to 3 million prisoners in the land of the free…ludicrous! Remember the Bastille!