People are More Than the Sum of Their Crimes
To add to TChris' excellent post about this yesterday: For any variety of reasons, good people can commit bad, even horrible crimes. The question is, if they have demonstrated real reform in prison, should the parole board be allowed to deny them release solely because of the severity of their crime?
The New York Times explores this issue today in To More Inmates, Life Term Means Dying Behind Bars.
....driven by tougher laws and political pressure on governors and parole boards, thousands of lifers are going into prisons each year, and in many states only a few are ever coming out, even in cases where judges and prosecutors did not intend to put them away forever.
Indeed, in just the last 30 years, the United States has created something never before seen in its history and unheard of around the globe: a booming population of prisoners whose only way out of prison is likely to be inside a coffin.
Many lifers aren't in prison for murder, but for lesser crimes:
Some critics of life sentences say they are overused, pointing to people like Jerald Sanders, who is serving a life sentence in Alabama. He was a small-time burglar and had never been convicted of a violent crime. Under the state's habitual offender law, he was sent away after stealing a $60 bicycle.
Fewer than two-thirds of the 70,000 people sentenced to life from 1988 to 2001 are in for murder, the Times analysis found. Other lifers - more than 25,000 of them - were convicted of crimes like rape, kidnapping, armed robbery, assault, extortion, burglary and arson. People convicted of drug trafficking account for 16 percent of all lifers.
Violent crime is committed mostly by young people, whose violence declines as they age in jail. When they get really old, the taxpayer is stuck with the costs of paying for their medical care and operations. Is their continued incarceration really necessary? Often, the answer is no.
Life sentences certainly keep criminals off the streets. But, as decades pass and prisoners grow more mature and less violent, does the cost of keeping them locked up justify what may be a diminishing benefit in public safety? By a conservative estimate, it costs $3 billion a year to house America's lifers. And as prisoners age, their medical care can become very expensive. At the same time, studies show, most prisoners become markedly less violent as they grow older.
Other countries do it differently. It's time we did too.
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