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Notes from the “Justice Reform” Bandwagon
Yesterday, Mona Charen posted some skeptical thoughts on justice reform. I’ve been working on this subject for a few months now, so I thought I might offer some responses to her queries. The short of it is: she’s right that there are reasons to be cautious about reform, but there really are problems that need addressing. Furthermore, some reasonable answers have already been offered to many of her questions.
First of all, I should commend Mona for correctly debunking the oft-cited but highly misleading “two thirds of inmates are non-violent drug offenders” claim. As she reports, that is only true of Federal prisons, which represent a very small minority of America’s inmate population. The make-up of state prisons is quite different, and a majority of inmates have been convicted for violent crimes. So no, it isn’t the case that most of our nation’s inmates are basically harmless people who maybe used (or sold) a few drugs. The majority are there because they’ve hurt people, and it would be quite foolish just to release them en masse.
Republican presidential candidates should not be talking about “the new Jim Crow.” That phrase is pulled directly from Michelle Alexander’s foolish, irresponsible book (of the same name), and we shouldn’t lend it any credence. Incarceration is not the new Jim Crow, and approaching it that way will only precipitate a different kind of broken system.
Nevertheless, we should be looking for ways to help impoverished communities rebuild themselves. We should, as well, be interested in finding more effective, and less expensive, methods of crime control and rehabilitation. Speaking as someone on the justice reform bandwagon, I’m very motivated by the thought that it’s essential to offer a counter-narrative to the sweeping “racial justice” demands of Black Lives Matter. I don’t support their proposals, but social angst about an ill-functioning justice system may well precipitate such irresponsible changes if we can’t offer a more appropriate remedy to real problems.
Mona poses some good questions. How should we handle parolees who continue to offend? How do we reassure the public that the system is fair? Will we undermine people’s respect for law if we don’t respond aggressively enough to offenses that are still serious, even if not violent?
Serious, responsible people have been working on all of these questions. A few short answers: yes, there are better ways to make use of parole and probation. Programs like HOPE (using swift and certain sanctions to motivate parolees to follow the rules) have gotten excellent results, and are being modeled in many places around the country. One nice thing about probation is that it often enables offenders to pay restitution to their victims, and both of these options are safer and more feasible now that we have technology that enables us to keep tabs on an offender’s location and monitor his alcohol use. That’s not going to be safe for hardened, violent criminals, but for many smaller-scale lawbreakers it’s effective and considerably cheaper than years’ worth of incarceration.
Concerning “suites and streets,” the biggest two points of concern are probably pretrial proceedings and prosecutorial power. I don’t believe that the system is awash in bigotry. But I do believe that large-scale incarceration has created some “efficiency” of a kind that often undermines real justice, and no one should be shocked to hear that people are more likely to get squashed by the justice machine if they’re too poor to afford good legal help. I have a piece in the works right now (meaning, finished but not published) on bail reform and helping the indigent get better legal help. But if you really want to know right now, you can read the book on it. Excellent, feasible suggestions (most of them already tried in particular locales) are already out there, and they don’t call for a massive relaxation of law enforcement generally.
It’s challenging to make justice reform into a sexy topic, because the actual problems in the system don’t lend themselves to top-down, grand-gesture reform. They’re more the sort that call for psychiatrists and policy wonks to put their heads together, developing practical solutions that ideally should be tailored to the needs of particular states and regions. From a journalistic standpoint, it’s a little bit hard to sell that, while it’s much easier to sell the sweeping, dramatic narrative of Black Lives Matter. Pragmatic nuts-and-bolts reform can seem kind of boring to outsiders (though not to, say, the indigent defendant who gets to watch his kids grow up instead of spending several years in prison), but it’s often the thing that’s actually needed.
At the very least, though, we should avoid broadcasting the message that conservatives are embracing this issue just because they want to jump on the liberal racial justice bandwagon. That’s not true. They’re embracing this issue because they realize that law enforcement and corrections are not immune to the sorts of problems that arise in every large-scale system that’s funded by taxpayers and administered by bureaucrats. Sometimes the system needs some restructuring. Conservatives are working out ways to make it better.
Published in Law, Policing
I didn’t say that the marriage contract was exclusively about sex, but that sex is involved.
Marriage is an institution created for the purpose of producing and raising children, the former of which definitely involves sex. Marriage traditionally forbade infidelity and required each party to fulfill their husbandly/wifely duties (failing either was legitimate grounds for divorce in many times and places). Let’s reiterate: never did I say marriage was exclusively about sex, but to say it doesn’t involve sex is beyond silly.
Tommy De Seno
Why do we care if some poor guy who needs a release and doesn’t have a companion buys that release?
How about men with money preying on drug addicted women, girls and boys? Using people for cruel economic purposes seems to be right up your alley. The Pope leaves town and your true colors seem to be coming out. Bad capitalist!
And I don’t want my tax dollars being used to combat prostitution. If legalizing something is supporting it, then I feel terrible for all the Mormons in my home state whose tax dollars are spent supporting alcohol and tobacco and taking the lord’s name in vain.
What you call exploitation, I call having a job. There are plenty of dirty, dangerous professions. Prostitution is just the victim of stigma.
Diseased customers are bad for business. How might a free market find a solution to such a problem? It doesn’t encourage violence against women (feminist buzzword alert).
Was it required that they become sex workers, or were they required to have a job, and sex work was the only position that was available and/or they qualified for? I’m sure they would be better off unemployed and on the dole. Or maybe the government should invent new jobs for them.
I didn’t say you did, explicitly or implicitly. Your tone doesn’t reassure me that you’re concerned about the issue. If justice reform is a worthy goal, then the sexual abuse of prisoners is not only a legitimate topic, but, I argue, a required one. Imagine discussing radical Islam without mentioning terrorism.
Also, you don’t support prison rape, but there’s plenty who do.
But it is in no way a contract. There is no external enforcement mechanisms for the agreed to behaviors. Moreso, marriage is not a quid pro quo arrangement. The vows are not contingent. Even apart from sex, there is social opprobrium for violation of the pledged covenants, but no legal enforcement like there is with contract. Divorce court doesn’t count, especially the way we’ve devolved divorce into a no fault arrangement. It’s a mere dissolution of legal standing and often a financial penalty (to the point of indentured servitude for men) even if the requesting party is the one violating the vows of the marriage. To say marriage is a contract is to severely malign contracts.
Not sure how this conversation spun off into prostitution, but that’s right. First it’s exploitative as you note, and second even if a woman consciously wants to prostitute it tears down the dignity of the human being, especially the dignity of womanhood.
I’ve corrected your statement in order to solve the problem.
Hope you don’t mind.
PS: I favor permanently banishing from the U.S. those found guilty of violent offenses. Think about those savings!
Been married much?
Just kidding with ya.
Good one. This thread could use some levity.
(Never been married, so technically no.)
No fault divorce has been around since, what, the 60s or 70s? Why doesn’t divorce court count? You even say that the court can penalize one of the parties with (sometimes exorbitant) financial burdens. The enforcement of marriage is a joke, but isn’t acknowledging that conceding that it should be treated like an actual contract?
Perhaps, but you said it was a contract. I’m simply contending that it is not in practice a contract. Plus, the lack of a quid pro quo arrangement in the traditional understanding of marriage prevents it from being treated or enforced like a contract. When we’ve tried doing that things went sideways. No one wants to go to court and work out the details of who owes whom when the roast gets burned or a couple hundred dollars gets lost at the track let alone when there’s been no sex for a few weeks.
Sure but if you try to walk away from one they will help you divide things up, there will be the possibility of alimony, and if there are children then there will be child support. If you try to violate any of that you will be made to feel like you were part of a contract. If people were rational they would be a lot more circumspect going in and would work a lot harder to keep that contract right. Alas.
Tom Leykis says all marriages should have pre-nups. Considering the high rate of divorce (Michael Medved disputes the 50% figure–I don’t know, but the rate is still high) it doesn’t seem like a bad idea that couples should work out an agreement beforehand. It would be a way of encouraging people to think seriously about marriage before jumping in.
Of course, there’s still the problem of enforcement. I’ve heard of judges throwing out pre-nups. That problem may be resolved if pre-nups became standard and lost the stigma of existing solely to protect the money of rich men.
These are state law issues, by rights.
I think you can release these folks but you’ll soon be seeing most of them again, that they are career screw ups and will merely lower their behavior to where you set the bar. Sounds harsh, I know, but it’s true. In many cases it was simply easier to prove possession or soliciting than to pursue them as shoplifters, or prove public intoxication or nuisance. Certainly, it’s hard to get their fellows to testify to assaults.
As for the “mental health” approach, that connotes a return to State Hospitals run by people who can tell inmates not to do things. Won’t happen.
The ankle bracelet thing may work, if they check in like a watchman with a key-clock. If the welfare check depends on showing up so many times in a week, that’ll do for a kind of intervention. They do get it at a certain level. As my old supervisor said, “they may be crazy, but when you yell ‘chow,’ they line up.”