Does getting tough work in legal system?

Get tough on crime laws aren't making the nation safer. They are instead sending an increasing percentage of Americans to jail for small-time drug offenses and other nonviolent crimes. That's the conclusion of a new report by the American Bar Association. The lawyers group supports an earlier warning from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy that mandatory minimum sentences give too much power to prosecutors and too little latitude to juries and judges.

Such rigid rules also unfairly target minorities, the poor and the undereducated, the lawyers said.

The ABA contends mandatory sentences should be abolished. But that's not likely to happen given a “grab 'em and jail 'em” mentality in America today. Oregon, a late comer to the “get tough” movement of the 1980s, passed Measure 11 in 1994 that established mandatory minimum sentences for 21 felonies. The law also required any youth age 15 or older charged with certain crimes to be automatically prosecuted as an adult.

In sponsoring Measure 11, then state Rep. Kevin Mannix asserted that the justice system molly coddled juveniles who commit violent crimes. Probation or a few months in a juvenile facility won't reform them. It's best and safer to lock them up, he said. There are really two issues here. One is the effect of mandatory sentences on litigation. The other is the bias against certain classes of defendants.

A League of Women Voters Update Committee asked prosecuting and defense attorneys their evaluation of Measure 11. District attorneys believe mandatory sentences give them greater bargaining power to negotiate pleas and avoid prolonged trials. Defense attorneys say such intimidation puts immense pressure on defendants to avoid a jury trial and even to plead guilty to an crime they didn't commit.

Racial disparities in sentencing are other concerns, the ABA said. A black male has a 1 in 3 chance of being imprisoned in his lifetime compared with 1 in 6 for Latinos and 1 in 17 for white males. In 2002, 45 percent of prison inmates were black, 18 percent were Hispanic. Most of these inmates had not completed high school and had monthly incomes of less than $1,000.

Also, 1 in 4 inmates was in jail for a drug offense. Fifty-five percent of federal prison inmates and 20 percent of state prison inmates were drug offenders.

According to The Sentencing Project, a think tank in Washington, D.C., there are more than 2 million Americans in federal and state prisons today. That is a six-fold increase over the last 30 years. Of that growing number, it is clear that most are poor, uneducated minority inmates who are drug offenders — in other words, victims of America's social ills. (bc)

1 July 2004

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/argus/index.ssf?/base/news/108854465771100.xml

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