Jim Webb hasn’t given up on sentencing reform. He did announce in February that he’s retiring from the Senate when his term ends next year. In June, however, he published a Huff post essay reiterating the case for fundamental changes iu criminal justice policy and practice.
The talking points are painfully familiar to anyone who follows this under-reported issue. For example, let’s start with this: Why does a country with 5 percent of the world’s population hold 25 percent of the world’s prison population?
As Webb has pointed out, this figure could be taken one of two ways. It could be that we have a disproportionate share of bad actors in America. Or it could be that our criminal justice system is badly broken, so that is no longer able to distinguish between good and bad as it once did.
Which, dear reader, do you think it is? I’ve stated my view repeatedly in this blog for 2 ½ years. But I’d like to know your thoughts too.
Showing posts with label sentencing reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sentencing reform. Show all posts
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Changing Minds About Sentencing Policy
How does significant change in a society’s operative perceptions come about?
Heuristic devices for explaining this are not in short supply. A generation ago, Thomas Kuhn talked of the structure of scientific revolutions. More recently, Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the notion of a “tipping point.”
And then there is the noted educator Howard Gardner, who published a book called Changing Minds seven years ago. He offers seven “levers of mind change,” of which the fourth is “representation redescriptions.”
The reason I originally launched this blog 2 ½ years ago was to focus on such redescriptions of a reformed criminal sentencing system. Now real world events (another Gardner lever) like gaping budget deficits increasingly call costly incarceration into question.
Heuristic devices for explaining this are not in short supply. A generation ago, Thomas Kuhn talked of the structure of scientific revolutions. More recently, Malcolm Gladwell has popularized the notion of a “tipping point.”
And then there is the noted educator Howard Gardner, who published a book called Changing Minds seven years ago. He offers seven “levers of mind change,” of which the fourth is “representation redescriptions.”
The reason I originally launched this blog 2 ½ years ago was to focus on such redescriptions of a reformed criminal sentencing system. Now real world events (another Gardner lever) like gaping budget deficits increasingly call costly incarceration into question.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Indiana Considers Sentencing Reform
In 1999, the conservative scholar John J. Dilulio published a Wall Street Journal op/ed piece on incarceration rates. Its thesis was clearly stated in the title: “Two Million Prisoners Are Enough.”
Yet for the next decade, incarceration continued to increase. The figure of two million people in jail or prison grew by another 300,000 nationally, to a total of 2.3 million. The cumulative state tab for this has more than quadrupled since 2000, from $12 billion to $52 billion.
Add in those on probation or parole and the round number is now an astonishing 7 million Americans under correctional supervision.
In today’s straightened economic circumstances, keeping so many people under correctional control is becoming less and less sustainable. The Great Recession has already had a profound impact on American life, and is likely to continue to do so for a long time. Prison beds are by no means immune to the ongoing financial pressure states are under.
Developments in the state of Indiana provide a case in point. From 2000 to 2009, Indiana’s prison population grew by 41 percent. Analysis showed that the increase was due not to more violent crime, but to an influx of drug addicts and low-level, non-violent offenders.
Indiana is now trying to turn this situation around. Governor Mitch Daniel’s proposal to give judges more discretion to tailor shorter sentences for non-violent offenders was lauded in a New York Times editorial and is supported by the Pew Center on the States.
How this sensible proposal will play out in the rough-and-tumble of a legislative session is anyone’s guess. Could it be that financial necessity will be the mother of invention? We’ll have to stay tuned as the session unfolds.
Yet for the next decade, incarceration continued to increase. The figure of two million people in jail or prison grew by another 300,000 nationally, to a total of 2.3 million. The cumulative state tab for this has more than quadrupled since 2000, from $12 billion to $52 billion.
Add in those on probation or parole and the round number is now an astonishing 7 million Americans under correctional supervision.
In today’s straightened economic circumstances, keeping so many people under correctional control is becoming less and less sustainable. The Great Recession has already had a profound impact on American life, and is likely to continue to do so for a long time. Prison beds are by no means immune to the ongoing financial pressure states are under.
Developments in the state of Indiana provide a case in point. From 2000 to 2009, Indiana’s prison population grew by 41 percent. Analysis showed that the increase was due not to more violent crime, but to an influx of drug addicts and low-level, non-violent offenders.
Indiana is now trying to turn this situation around. Governor Mitch Daniel’s proposal to give judges more discretion to tailor shorter sentences for non-violent offenders was lauded in a New York Times editorial and is supported by the Pew Center on the States.
How this sensible proposal will play out in the rough-and-tumble of a legislative session is anyone’s guess. Could it be that financial necessity will be the mother of invention? We’ll have to stay tuned as the session unfolds.
Monday, February 1, 2010
A Blue Ribbon Silver Lining?
It takes time to turn the Titanic around. And when a country has 2.3 million people in jail or prison, that's a Titanic-size problem.
Last March, Senator Jim Webb introduced a bill to create a national blue-ribbon commission to examine possible sentencing reforms. Ten months later, it has passed the Senate Judiciary committee on voice vote.
Doug Berman, the dean of criminal justice blogging, sees a possible silver lining in the chnaged power dynamics in the Senate following the special election in Massachusetts. It may be that, with health care no longer so front and center, other priorities may get the attention they have long deserved. If so, criminal justice reform should certainly be at or near the top of that list.
Last March, Senator Jim Webb introduced a bill to create a national blue-ribbon commission to examine possible sentencing reforms. Ten months later, it has passed the Senate Judiciary committee on voice vote.
Doug Berman, the dean of criminal justice blogging, sees a possible silver lining in the chnaged power dynamics in the Senate following the special election in Massachusetts. It may be that, with health care no longer so front and center, other priorities may get the attention they have long deserved. If so, criminal justice reform should certainly be at or near the top of that list.
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Time to Fight for Sentencing Reform
In late March, when Senator Jim Webb introduced a bill in the Senate calling for sentencing reform, Doug Berman’s sentencing blog was brimming with comments. Not surprisingly, a number of them reflected the reflexive vitriol that for too long has passed for discourse on criminal justice in America. Others, however, saw Webb as that exceedingly rare figure: a politician of genuine courage.Tonight I went online to learn more about Webb’s background, and Elizabeth Drew’s article in the June 26, 2008 issue of The New York Review of Books did not disappoint. It was chuck full of information − such as Webb’s legendary boxing match at West Point against Oliver North, the famously gung-ho figure in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.
Though he grew up as a Democrat, Jim Webb broke with the party over President Carter’s grant of amnesty to Vietnam War draft evaders. Webb was a Marine rifle platoon commander in Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts, and later served as President Reagan's Secretary of the Navy. His military upbringing is also reflected in a plainspoken manner and a strong personal code of honor. That code of honor helps him recognize when the military is being misued, and led to his opposition to George W. Bush's war in Iraq.
"Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight," the Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn sang in the 1980s, after a visit to Central America when it was besieged by civil wars. As we look to the fall, and battles in Congress over health care reform and so much else, there will be ample occasion to put that notion to the test, and to apply the title of Jim Webb’s 2008 book: A Time to Fight.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Beyond the Politics of Fear
No one wants to compromise public safety. A government’s most fundamental duty, after all, is to protect its citizens. Quite appropriately, then, Senator Jim Webb and other legislative leaders chose a law enforcement official to lead off the first hearing on Webb’s proposal to create a national criminal justice study commission charged tasked with recommending comprehensive, system-wide reforms.
Chief William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there would be more, not less, public safety with a proper reform of the justice system. “It is not enough,” he said, “to continue to churn people through a broken and ailing system with no forethought and no long-term solution.” America has been doing that for three decades, giving a country with five percent of the world’s population a bloated prison system with 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
How did it happen? In his chapter on “The Politics of Fear” in his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore asks why we have become so vulnerable to appeals to fear. Though he does not deal with domestic criminal justice issues directly, his reasoning applies equally as well to them as to the Bush Administration’s “war on terror.” Gore argues that our democracy’s immune system — its ability to neutralize falsehood by exercising reason — has become weak. A free press is a crucial part of this system, but it has failed just as miserably in questioning America’s incarceration policies as it did in questioning the war in Iraq.
The only way to move forward is to regain a better balance between fear and reason. Let's start by admitting that the capacidty for fear is hardwired in the brain, with reason centered in the parts of the brain that evolved more recently. Accordingly, there will always be a strong emotional element in society's response to crime. This is not only due to the “fear factor," a tabloid tendency to focus on serial killers and notorious incidents like the Texas cop who tasered a great-grandmother during a traffic stop. It's because when people are harmed by crime, or there is a threat of harm, it naturally elicits an emotional response.
To reform the criminal justice system properly, we need to stop relying so h eavily on heuristic shortcuts like “three strikes and you’re out” and reclaim the capacity for both empathy and rational problem solving. Those qualities, no less than fear, are fundamental human capacities. Fascinating brain research continues to emerge, for example, about how "mirror neurons" contribute to feelings of empathy.
In July 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherthoff claimed he had a “gut feeling” that there might soon be another terrorist attack on American soil. Well, he was wrong, and his statement played into the hands of the terrorists by making many Americans more fearful than was really necessary. As a friend put it to me yesterday over lunch, you can’t keep the threat level on orange for eight years; it just wears you out, and you become the boys who cried wolf.
Today, in national criminal justice policy, the Webb proposal offers a chance to look critically at what the threats really are. They are indeed real, but an over-reliance on prison to produce public safety has arguably made us − as a book on Bush’s response to 9/11 was titled − “less safe, less free.”
Chief William Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department told the Senate Judiciary Committee that there would be more, not less, public safety with a proper reform of the justice system. “It is not enough,” he said, “to continue to churn people through a broken and ailing system with no forethought and no long-term solution.” America has been doing that for three decades, giving a country with five percent of the world’s population a bloated prison system with 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.
How did it happen? In his chapter on “The Politics of Fear” in his 2007 book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore asks why we have become so vulnerable to appeals to fear. Though he does not deal with domestic criminal justice issues directly, his reasoning applies equally as well to them as to the Bush Administration’s “war on terror.” Gore argues that our democracy’s immune system — its ability to neutralize falsehood by exercising reason — has become weak. A free press is a crucial part of this system, but it has failed just as miserably in questioning America’s incarceration policies as it did in questioning the war in Iraq.
The only way to move forward is to regain a better balance between fear and reason. Let's start by admitting that the capacidty for fear is hardwired in the brain, with reason centered in the parts of the brain that evolved more recently. Accordingly, there will always be a strong emotional element in society's response to crime. This is not only due to the “fear factor," a tabloid tendency to focus on serial killers and notorious incidents like the Texas cop who tasered a great-grandmother during a traffic stop. It's because when people are harmed by crime, or there is a threat of harm, it naturally elicits an emotional response.
To reform the criminal justice system properly, we need to stop relying so h eavily on heuristic shortcuts like “three strikes and you’re out” and reclaim the capacity for both empathy and rational problem solving. Those qualities, no less than fear, are fundamental human capacities. Fascinating brain research continues to emerge, for example, about how "mirror neurons" contribute to feelings of empathy.
In July 2007, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Cherthoff claimed he had a “gut feeling” that there might soon be another terrorist attack on American soil. Well, he was wrong, and his statement played into the hands of the terrorists by making many Americans more fearful than was really necessary. As a friend put it to me yesterday over lunch, you can’t keep the threat level on orange for eight years; it just wears you out, and you become the boys who cried wolf.
Today, in national criminal justice policy, the Webb proposal offers a chance to look critically at what the threats really are. They are indeed real, but an over-reliance on prison to produce public safety has arguably made us − as a book on Bush’s response to 9/11 was titled − “less safe, less free.”
Sunday, April 5, 2009
On a Moving Train
Though I majored in history and later earned a master’s degree in it, I did not hear of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States until 2000. I can, however, recall the exact moment when I did. Along with several other members of a research and evaluation team from the Minnesota Department of Corrections, I was returning to St. Paul from a site visit to the sex offender treatment center at Moose Lake. A colleague of mine happened to mention Zinn’s People’s History as a remarkable book that every American should read. After mentally filing her recommendation away, my interest was piqued years later when I noticed my wife had added You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train — a documentary about Zinn and his work — to our Netflix queue.
As shown in the film, Zinn has few illusions about the difficulty of challenging the powers that be on issues like racial injustice, prolonging the Vietnam War, or invading Iraq. Over and over again, history has been written by the winners, those who subscribe to some variation on Frederick the Great’s theme that God is with the big battalions. Yet Zinn still finds history hopeful, because it shows us that even the most unjust structures are not forever. Who would have thought a generation ago, for example, that apartheid would crumble, with Nelson Mandela released from prison and lionized around the world? Seen not from the perspective of the dominant groups but from below, history also contains many “fugitive moments of compassion,” Zinn says — moments that can inspire us to laudable acts of our own.
A recognition of our role as citizens in the unfolding story of American democracy is a good place to start as our cash-strapped nation grapples with the consequences of the past generation’s prison boom. An ever-rising tide of incarceration is not inevitable. History teaches at least that much, and each of us has a part to play in creating the future. That is why I sent an e-mail last week to U.S. Rep. John Kline, encouraging him to offer companion legislation in the House to S. 714, the bill sponsored in the Senate by Jim Webb, Arlen Specter and others to create a national criminal justice commission. The commission's task would be to study the issues in depth and recommend reforms in America’s sentencing laws and correctional policies.
Laws like those that impose Draconian penalties for low-level drug possession are not immutable holy wit. They are made by humans and can be changed by humans. Indeed, the process of doing so can itself be empowering. I'm not so naive as to think that writing to my congressperson (a cliché of civics 101) will change the world all at once. Maybe it will help to do that, maybe it won’t. After all, the prison industrial complex is a powerful force, and the political dynamics of any meaningful sentencing reform are unpredictable. The point is that, as psychologist Diana de Vegh says, "taking action frees you from the paralysis that comes from accepting what is called reality." Rep. Kline, if you happen to read this post, you can consider the note I sent about Sen. Webb’s bill a declaration of epistemological independence.
As shown in the film, Zinn has few illusions about the difficulty of challenging the powers that be on issues like racial injustice, prolonging the Vietnam War, or invading Iraq. Over and over again, history has been written by the winners, those who subscribe to some variation on Frederick the Great’s theme that God is with the big battalions. Yet Zinn still finds history hopeful, because it shows us that even the most unjust structures are not forever. Who would have thought a generation ago, for example, that apartheid would crumble, with Nelson Mandela released from prison and lionized around the world? Seen not from the perspective of the dominant groups but from below, history also contains many “fugitive moments of compassion,” Zinn says — moments that can inspire us to laudable acts of our own.
A recognition of our role as citizens in the unfolding story of American democracy is a good place to start as our cash-strapped nation grapples with the consequences of the past generation’s prison boom. An ever-rising tide of incarceration is not inevitable. History teaches at least that much, and each of us has a part to play in creating the future. That is why I sent an e-mail last week to U.S. Rep. John Kline, encouraging him to offer companion legislation in the House to S. 714, the bill sponsored in the Senate by Jim Webb, Arlen Specter and others to create a national criminal justice commission. The commission's task would be to study the issues in depth and recommend reforms in America’s sentencing laws and correctional policies.
Laws like those that impose Draconian penalties for low-level drug possession are not immutable holy wit. They are made by humans and can be changed by humans. Indeed, the process of doing so can itself be empowering. I'm not so naive as to think that writing to my congressperson (a cliché of civics 101) will change the world all at once. Maybe it will help to do that, maybe it won’t. After all, the prison industrial complex is a powerful force, and the political dynamics of any meaningful sentencing reform are unpredictable. The point is that, as psychologist Diana de Vegh says, "taking action frees you from the paralysis that comes from accepting what is called reality." Rep. Kline, if you happen to read this post, you can consider the note I sent about Sen. Webb’s bill a declaration of epistemological independence.
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