Ward Connerly
Imagine you decided to draw a bath, turned on the water, and then left the room to answer the phone. When you returned five minutes later the tub was overflowing. What would you do first? Turn off the water streaming into the bath or open the drain a crack? Of course, you’d turn off the water to stop the flooding from getting worse.
Now, imagine a corrections system overflowing with prisoners. How much good is releasing prisoners early without doing something to slow down the flood of people entering the system?
This scenario describes the problem and choice confronting California. Laws requiring lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, and mindless minimum sentences imposed under the state’s “two-strikes” and “three-strikes” laws, have contributed to an overcrowded prison system. Confronted by a court order to reduce its prison population and a budget crisis requiring steep spending cuts across the board, California has made the mistake of opening the drain a crack while leaving the spigot wide open.
A new state law will provide for the release of approximately 6,500 prisoners over the next year. Local officials must recalculate how they plan to shorten sentences for good behavior and other credits. These recalculations will lead the state to release eligible offenders early. Offenders convicted of serious, violent or sex crimes are not eligible. The measure will purportedly save the state more than $100 million.
California’s secretary of corrections called the law a “win-win situation” because it will cut down on recidivism and allow parole agents to focus attention on more-dangerous former convicts. Sentencing-reform advocates, including Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonpartisan advocacy group that opposes one-size-fits-all sentencing laws, could only shake their heads at such a statement.
If the secretary is right, then why were these 6,500 people sentenced to such long terms in the first place? Wouldn’t it make more sense to assess risk and recidivism factors and make those part of the sentencing calculation? Unfortunately, California’s mandatory-sentencing laws prohibit such sensible reckoning.
Mandatory minimums in California, as elsewhere, impose mandatory prison time on offenders who might be better served by shorter sentences, drug treatment or other graduated sanctions.
There are more than 41,000 prisoners serving time under California’s “two-strikes” and “three-strikes” laws; two-thirds of whom did not commit crimes against people. Many are housed in maximum-security prisons that cost taxpayers an average of $31,000 per prisoner per year. It is these laws that created California’s prison morass and led to the current attempt to address it through the early expulsion of prisoners.
But some California law enforcement officials don’t see early release as a way out of the crisis. They are expressing (and stoking) fears that the release will lead to a new crime wave. They quickly found their poster child in Kevin Peterson. Peterson was charged with attempted rape just 12 hours after being released.
“Our greatest fear has been realized,” said the head of a crime victims’ advocacy group. And the Sacramento County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association seized on the Peterson arrest and filed a lawsuit to stop further releases.
Those of us who support reform of California’s harsh sentencing laws appreciate the concerns raised by law enforcement and victims-rights organizations.
The problem, however, lies not in the fact that some people will serve shorter prison sentences, but rather in California’s motivation, approach and execution. Hasty action in the throes of a legal and budgetary firestorm is not the way to make sound policy.
To be fair, the alleged new crime of Kevin Peterson cannot be blamed on the new law. After all, Peterson’s release was accelerated a mere 16 days by the new program. But his case raises questions about whether the law should have applied to someone, like Peterson, who had previously committed violent felonies but was serving his current sentence for violating parole, which is considered a nonviolent offense.
Questions also have arisen about how to implement the law. In the wake of Peterson’s latest arrest, Attorney General Jerry Brown suggested the law should not be applied retroactively, a view that seems likely to reduce the savings the law was expected to achieve.
California’s release program, however necessary and well-intentioned, is not going to solve the state’s prison-overcrowding problem. It’s the equivalent of trying to stop the tub from overflowing by slightly opening the drain.
The state (and the federal government) must enact permanent, front-end reforms that will reduce the flow of prisoners into the system. At the top of that list should be repeal of all mandatory-minimum-sentence laws, including the fatally flawed “three-strikes” law.