Criminal justice reform wheels start turning again
If it’s January, it must be time to get ready for the special session of the legislature. The only focus, as everyone probably knows, is how to fix the state’s criminal justice system which is so horribly broken. I mean, it’s in tatters. So much so that it’s almost a miracle that the wheels haven’t come off, inmates aren’t roaming the streets of our city in packs hunting little babies for Satanic rituals and the plague isn’t upon us.
So the Democrats released their proposals yesterday and the Governor followed up with her own today. I’ll mention the choice ones:
1. A new crime of home invasion, which would be a violent crime. It basically reads like this: “A home invasion occurs when an individual unlawfully enters or remains in a dwelling which is occupied and such dwelling is located in any of Connecticut’s affluent suburbs. For the rest of you, it’s still a burglary.”
2. Re-working the “three strikes law” to make it more…workable. The Governor goes further and provides for a mandatory life sentence for third time violent felony offenders, which cannot be reviewed until 30 years have passed. The Dems want to make it a 25 year minimum, putting it on par with murder. There goes incentive not to kill.
3. The Dems want to establish tougher and more secure re-entry procedures for offenders returning to the community as they complete their sentence. The Governor doesn’t think re-entry is important enough to be considered during the special session, so she leaves it for the regular session. Good job. If we don’t ever let ‘em out, we don’t have to worry about re-entry!
4. The Governor then goes overboard with some bizarre victim amendments, like victims have to be notified before a plea offer is made and family members of the victim are also now officially victims. Whatever.
By the way, I don’t see a single proposal for increasing funding for Corrections (not that it isn’t the biggest money hog ever) or Correctional officers or more training or… I know…prevention. No, no. That’s too damn liberal. Sorry.
So there you have it. A whole lot of nonsense that still leaves a horrible taste in my mouth because this “urgency” came about only because three white people from an affluent suburb were killed. Yeah, I said it.*
I’m considering turning comments off for this post, but I’ll leave them on for now. Be warned, though. I have an itchy trigger finger on this one. I will close comments if I feel like it, without warning. It’s my blog. Deal with it.
*Now before any of you go saying “Oh you don’t care about people you killerhugger” and “how can you say that. three people died! it’s horrible!”, let me re-iterate (meaning I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again) that I don’t condone violence or crime. Obviously. No one does. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. So please understand that.
Well, here goes . . . .
The Petit murders demonstrated that a certain class of offenders, namely thouse who break into dwellings that have people in them, are dangerous. It takes a lot of balls to break into a house that you know people are in. And criminals like that need to be dealt with. Harshly.
In any event, the system that let the two animals free after their lives of crime does need fixing.
You know, it’s late, and I’ve had a few beers. You know, sometimes I wish that we could pick 100,000 prisoners, really bad guys, with long records and simply execute every last one of them. That, in Stalinistic fashion, would solve a lot of problems in America.
Gideon, Gideon, Gideon…
How right you are, and on so many counts.
As a personal anecdote, when I left my last job, my boss at the time was on trial. I’m not super clear on the details, but here are the broad strokes: Turns out some kid had broken into a dwelling at night (which he allegedly knew to be occupied). When he got caught, he set fire to said dwelling, killing the couple who lived inside. Sad. Tragically so. The guy who did this was on either probation or parole (I don’t remember which).
But you never heard about it.
‘Cause it happened in a poor city and the victims were black.
Here’s another story that adds, I think, some legitimate “urgency” to sentencing reform efforts. And remember, these snippets we see (Cheshire, or the story I link to), are only 2 stories in what is surely a sea of like-stories.
http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/2008/01/the_human_consequences_of_soft_1.html
I think Gid’s point is that the reason for the “urgency” in this situation is for political reasons. A white family was slain. This happens all the time to poor people in the city, and no one cares. But when it happens to one of their own (after all, legislators don’t tend to be poor), reform becomes “urgent.” Hence his statement: “A home invasion occurs when an individual unlawfully enters or remains in a dwelling which is occupied and such dwelling is located in any of Connecticut’s affluent suburbs. For the rest of you, it’s still a burglary.”
We can all point out specific instances of soft sentencing, and the injustices of it. And for every story like that, we can also point to stories like this, http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/272.php — where a man served more than sixteen years for a violent crime he didn’t commit. But such things miss the purpose of what Gideon was really saying. (At least that’s my sense of it; I’m sure he’ll correct me if I’m wrong.)
Channon Christian and Timothy Newsom are a counterexample to the idea that black victims are ignored vis-a-vis white victims.
You miss my point. I did a very VERY brief search (as I have work to do) on Ms. Christian and Mr. Newsom and found this:
“On Saturday January 6, 2007 Hugh Christopher Newsom, age 23 and Channon Gail Christian, age 21, both students at the University of Tennessee went out on a date.” References were made to the 4Runner they were driving.
I realize that I was not clear, so permit me to clarify: Political moves like this tend to be less about race and more about money. And Ms. Christian and Mr. Newsom were not some poor kids from the ‘hood.
While poverty tends to run along racial lines, it’s the affluent folks (the voters) that the legislators care about when they talk about being tough on crime.
I’ll not comment anymore on this one. Over and out.