The chronically overcrowded and abysmal condition of the Harris County Jail has been a frequent topic on this blog (most recently here), so this Bill Murphy/Houston Chronicle article from over the weekend caught my eye because it concerned the changing views of one of the formerly toughest sentencing judges in the Harris County District Courts:
State District Judge Michael McSpadden once believed that long sentences would deter drug sales and drug use.
But after more than two decades hearing felony cases in Harris County, the former prosecutor is calling on the governor and Legislature to reduce sentences for low-level drug possession.
“These minor offenses are now overwhelming every felony docket, and the courts necessarily spend less time on the more important, violent crimes,” he recently wrote to Gov. Rick Perry.
Nearly twice as many defendants in Harris County were sent to state jails last year for possessing less than 1 gram of a drug than in Dallas, Tarrant and Bexar counties combined.
McSpadden recommended making delivering or possessing a small amount of drugs a Class A misdemeanor carrying no more than a year in county jail. [. . .]
The judge said the Houston Police Department and District Attorney’s Office are clogging court dockets and causing crowding in the county jail and state jails by bringing so many drug-possession cases against those found with pipe residue or a sugar packet’s worth of cocaine.
Scott Henson over at Grits for Breakfast recently touched on the overcrowding issue and the related waste of resources issue in connection with the arrest in the Houston area of Doug Supernaw, the Bryan-born Texas country and western music star, for possession of a roach clip with a small amount of marijuana. Scott also blogged a post on the McSpadden story, and he has compiled a valuable series of posts on why Texas prisons are overcrowded, what counties can do about it, and the particular reasons why the Harris County jails remain such a mess.
Meanwhile, Doug Berman over at the Sentencing Law and Policy blog posted this piece on this Fact Sheet from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that compares United States incarceration rates with those of other countries around the world. The data does not reflect well on the U.S.:
The U.S. has less than 5% of the worldís population but over 23% of the worldís incarcerated people.
The U.S. incarcerates the largest number of people in the world.
Some individual US states imprison up to six times as many people as do nations of comparable population.
The incarceration rate in the U.S. is four times the world average.
Crime rates do not account for incarceration rates.
The U.S. imprisons the most women in the world.
Professor Berman observes: ìAnd we are supposedly a country founded on freedom? We may talk the talk about liberty, but we certainly do not walk the walk in the way we approach and apply our criminal justice system.î
The overly-harsh and wasteful sentences handed down to businessmen such as Jamie Olis and Jeff Skilling tend to receive the most publicity, but the equally harsh sentences meted out in Texas and much of the rest of the US over minor drug offenses and the like is a national disgrace. As the late Milton Friedman observed in this letter to former drug czar Bill Bennett, we all should be “revolted . . . by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
As the late Milton Friedman observed in this letter to former drug czar Bill Bennett, we all should be “revolted
But we seemingly are not, suggesting that may be a “fault” of our democracy.
I get the critique from libertarian-leaning intellectuals and indeed have some sympathy for it, but ultimately they have to convince more people than themselves of the rightness of their view.
Kevin, yes, I do perceive the situation with our prisons as partly the result of democracy’s failings, namely the tyranny of a powerfully-funded majority in favor of such oppressive measures (i.e., police unions, prison building contractors, feckless politicians and mainstream news media) that often overwhelms a politically-weak minority (prisoners and their families).
Nonetheless, you are correct that the ultimate battle is to persuade more people to the rightness of the view. That’s why blogging on issues such as this is so important — it can highlight and persuade on issues that other mediums ignore.
Tom,
As a Brit living in the US I have seen both sides of this argument. The US adopts harsh measures as you point out. But the benefit to me personally is the low crime in the community in which I am fortunate enough to live – a suburb of 100,000 people not far from Chicago.
Contrast that to London where the police do not bother with ‘low level’ crimes such as public drunkenness, robbery, shoplifting, drug possession, and burglary. If somebody has an iPod or cellphone snatched the police blame the victim for carrying it in public. Burglary is investigated by the victim filling out a form to get a crime number for the insurance.
For a flavour of what life is like in the UK check out these BBC news reports.
Schizophrenic stabs innocent man to death in the middle of the day and receives 7 years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4089876.stm
Two convicted criminals murder respected banker in his own home
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4541794.stm
Three sadistic robbers given minimum sentence of just seven years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/6143734.stm
These are just recent cases I can remember. Tom, I feel sorry for people in prison, who in many cases are not bad, but who had a lousy childhood and lack of direction.
But I know under which system I would prefer to live.
Rcx, I don’t think anyone is suggesting that violent crime should not be prosecuted and punished severely. But I’m not following how deploying a huge amount of resources to incarcerate people who are guilty of relatively minor and victimless crimes has any meaningful bearing on punishment of criminals who engage in violent crime. Indeed, to the extent that resources are ultimately limited and the system is clogged with such minor and non-violent offenders, the risk increases that truly violent prisoners will be pushed toward release from the system before they should be.
It’s down to quality of life, Tom. In the suburb in which I live, my parents were struck by how pleasant the streets and parks are. Their comment was “It’s like England when we were young”.
Contrast that with the UK in 2006. My parents don’t visit their local park, because there are usually crowds of teenagers sitting around smoking, drinking, or high, not necessarily being violent (although altercations do sometimes flare up) but generally making the place unpleasant to be.
As far as crimes are concerned, all those kids are guilty of is likely underage drinking and possession of small quantities of dope. Are they worth burdening the courts with?
In the US I found it ridiculous to be “carded” when buying alcohol at the supermarket (I am in my 40s). But thinking about it, the intent of that law is to prevent the local parks being full of drunk teenagers. And it seems to be very effective at it. Our local police would never tolerate the situation I described in the UK. And because these laws against low level crimes are enforced, quality of life for the law-abiding is improved!
Rcx, I know of suburbs of London that are as nice and safe as the best of American suburbia. And I know of some American suburbs that have problems such as the ones that your parents describe in their hometown in England, even after application of the far more draconian American criminal laws.
These types of problem areas are caused by host of demographic, economic and sociological problems, of which petty crime is certainly one. But it is illogical to expend an extraordinary amount of resources addressing one of the problems while ignoring other problems — such as lack of jobs — that have a far greater impact on the the types of problems that we are discussing here.