WaPo editorial writer Charles Lane has this article on sanctuary cities:
In reality, there is no free lunch. In the alternate reality known as the American political debate, however, that's the only kind on the menu.
Conservatives say tax cuts boost economic growth, which yields higher revenue. No need to worry about bigger budget deficits.
Meanwhile, over on the left, we have laws and policies in more than 200 jurisdictions, including some of the largest cities and counties in the country, that are meant to protect immigrant communities by preventing local authorities from cooperating with federal deportations of undocumented immigrants who have run-ins with the law.
Advocates claim that "sanctuary," as they call it, achieves a moral goal -- peace of mind for people who, whatever their immigration status, are often longtime residents, leading productive lives -- at little or no practical risk or cost to anyone.* * *
The ordinance states that "a law enforcement official shall not detain an individual on the basis of a civil immigration detainer after that individual becomes eligible for release from custody" unless that person was currently charged with a violent felony and had been convicted of another within the past seven years.We see much the same free-lunch mentality in the headlong rush to dismantle the tough sentencing policies of the 1980s and return to the Age of Aquarius when criminals were thought to be sick rather than evil, and we had infinite confidence in our mental experts to fix them.* * *Alas, like many win-win scenarios, the one propounded by West Coast sanctuary advocates was a bit too good to be true. This should have been obvious even before the seemingly random alleged murder of Kathryn Steinle by an illegal immigrant, Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, whom the San Francisco authorities had recently released from jail pursuant to the Due Process for All ordinance, despite an urgent request from the Department of Homeland Security that he be held for deportation -- it would have been his sixth -- to Mexico.If proponents of sanctuary had been more candid, they would have acknowledged that their policy carried risks as well as benefits. It inevitably raised the chance some dangerous individual would wind up back on the streets, and that, however remote the probability of such an event might be, it could be catastrophic to the unlucky victim.
Political activists don't do nuance, though -- especially not when discussing immigration. In that polarized debate, everyone has to be either a sainted Dreamer or, to hear Donald Trump tell it, Mexican riff-raff.
Well-funded think tanks gush out glossy reports to convince us that we can unleash hordes of criminals without consequence. It is mere coincidence, we are told, that a sharp increase in crime followed the adoption of lax sentencing and a sharp drop followed the adoption of tough sentencing. Even some people on the right side of the aisle are so anxious for any way to cut government spending that they are lining up to drink the soft-on-crime Kool-Aid.* As we have noted many times on this blog, the further down this road we go, the more obvious it will become that common sense was right and the glossy reports were wrong. We are starting to see this already.
There are, to be sure, some instances where ill-conceived laws were passed and need to be modified. The infamous law that said possession of 5 grams of crack was equivalent to possession of half a kilogram of powder cocaine is the best-known example. See this post from 2010. But the soft-on-crime stampede is going way beyond that, with disastrous measures such as California's realignment law and Proposition 47, both enacted with profuse assurances that they will enhance rather than diminish public safety, very similar to the nonsense spouted by the sanctuary advocates that Lane notes. There are trade-offs and costs, and when we go beyond the needed tweaks into dismembering our justice system, as the more radical measures do, the costs are paid in the blood of innocent people.
I've been waiting to see which Republican candidate of the crowded field will be the non-Kool-Aid candidate. Which one will step forward and say no, we shouldn't drink. The notion that anyone who is not convicted of a crime classified as "violent" is harmless is a disastrous delusion. For the most part, prosecutors have been seeking prison sentences and judges have been imposing them on people who really do need to go to prison. Letting dangerous criminals out to commit more crimes to save the money on their incarceration is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Government budgets are not the only expenditures that count. The harm to the victims of crime, financial, physical, and mental, counts just as much. We must also consider the long-term corrosive effect on the fabric of our society when people live in fear, put bars on their windows, and believe, correctly, that the government will not protect them and will not effectively punish the predators.
President Obama has become the cheerleader-in-chief for the soft-on-crime movement now. Which Republican is going to point out all that is wrong with this movement? It isn't that hard.
* For the young'uns who don't remember and may not know the history: In 1978, when the walls started closing in on the Jonestown cult, which had moved to Guyana from San Francisco, leader Jim Jones directed a mass suicide of drinking a fruity drink mixed with poison. Astonishingly, the members did drink the poison themselves and fed it to their children. When some of the members and children started crying, Jones said, "Stop these hysterics. This is not the way for people who are Socialists or Communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity."
The drink wasn't really Kool-Aid brand, the maker of that brand was quick to point out. Even so, "drinking the Kool-Aid" came to refer to meekly going along with a disastrous idea because of peer pressure or an authority figure's direction.
"There is no free lunch" is the very first thing I learned in my Macroeconomics 101 class as a freshman in college. It is truly astonishing how vanishingly few people in the political realm are willing to acknowledge this truism, on both sides of the aisle.
My sense is that economic ignorance is far more pronounced on one side of the aisle. "Cash for Clunkers" was economic ignorance in action, rather than just red meat for the faithful.
Lane also takes an unfair swipe over tax cuts. If tax rates are too high, cutting them can increase revenues.
This is a strong post, Kent, and I would be especially curious to hear if you think any of the serious current federal sentencing reform proposals gets anywhere close to "dismembering our justice system."
Though this might surprise Bill and federalist and others, my advocacy for modern sentence reforms generally involves calls for "needed tweaks" than anything that strikes me as radical reform. For example, the JSVA simply authorizes federal judges to sentence below applicable mandatory minimum, but only if/when the sentencing guidelines recommend a lower sentence and the judge explains the justification for his decisions subject to appellate review. This kind of reform, in my mind, is more of a tweak than a radical reform. Same goes for the SSA, which merely calls for the reduction applicable mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug offenses.
Similarly, calling for the elimination of LWOP (but not life with parole) for juvenile offenders or for those who have not directly physically harmed another seems again to be a needed tweak, not a readical reform, in a country committed to liberty and freedom. And my broader advocacy against heavy federal involvement in criminal justice enforcement in ways opposed by states (e.g., marijuana prohibition, one-size-fits-all sex offender rules) is, I think, a needed modern tweak called for by our constitutional structure.
I surmise, Kent, from this post and others that you see California's realignment law and Proposition 47 as examples of radical reforms, and I am not sure I would disagree. (I also think you might share my view that the voter-approved reform of 3-strike in California in 2012 was more tweak than radical reform.) I would say the more radical reforms in California came to pass largely because, as the state had significant sentencing/prison problems developing through the 2000s, the folks in control failed to come together to make "needed tweaks" (such as the creation of a Cal Sentencing Commission) that could and should have helped the state more forward with cautious and empirically sound reforms (coupled with good reentry programming) rather than with blunderblus approaches forced by Plata and initiatives. (Texas and Ohio, as good recent red-state contrasting examples, have done this kind of proactive tweaking to seemingly good effect.)
I have written at great length here, Kent, because post like this one confirm my sense that serious people with a serious understanding of these issues can and should be able to come together to engineer serious (and I think seriously needed) tweaks to our modern sentencing systems that ought to have a decent chance to improve key metrics on both crime and punishment. Do you share any of my optimism, or do you fear that (less-serious often self-serving) extremists will continue to distort how reforms can move forward?
Please Douglas, enough of the insinuations in almost all of your posts that only those who agree with you are committed to the goals of "liberty and freedom."
It is contemptible and beneath you. It is also Obamaesque in its dishonesty and use of the false choice fallacy (either agree with his foreign policy or you must want war).
Criminals infringe on the "liberty and freedom" of others either directly (kill, maim, steal, etc.) or indirectly (people do not feel free to go where and do what they want) because they fear crime.
In any society, someone's "liberty and freedom" will be infringed upon. I just prefer that those committing crimes bear the weight instead of some poor black woman who is afraid to go to the corner store because of the drug selling hoods on her front stoop.
Doug,
I have not examined the federal sentence proposal. I have far too much on my plate with other matters, and I leave that to others.
Yes, realignment and Prop. 47 were radical changes. No, they were not caused by failure to create a sentencing commission. The notion that a sentencing commission would have been a solution implies that the problem was that we were oversentencing in California. We were not to any degree that had a major impact on prison population. The main thing the people in charge (i.e., the Legislature) failed to do was follow through on the prison construction plan that had been started earlier.
Another thing that needed fixing was how to deal with parole violators, but the realignment bill's cure was worse than the disease.
Yes, the Three Strikes reform passed by the voters was a tweak. I had to ponder some time to decide which way to vote on that myself. The earlier Three Strikes proposal rejected by the voters was more than a tweak, and they correctly rejected it.
Tarls, I do not think I have ever claimed --- nor have I meant to insinuate --- that only those who agree with me are committed to the goals of "liberty and freedom." I will readily priase you and Bill and Kent and federalist and others for a being committed to the goals of "liberty and freedom" but with a different vision of how those goals should be advanced.
More broadly, I share your interest in working especially hard to secure the "liberty and freedom" of a poor black woman afraid to go to the corner store because of the drug selling hoods on her front stoop. But the history of alcohol prohibition (not to mention other mass government programs like the Iraq war) suggests to me that governments too often do more harm than good when it readily embraces brute force to try to increase "liberty and freedom." In other words, Tarls, I do not mean to question your values or to dishonestly attack those who disagree with me. Rather, my goal is to highlight my belief that those with a serious commitment to "liberty and freedom" need to consistently question the use of force by governments claiming to further these values.
That said, it remains my sincere belief that the regular imposition of LWOP for acts committed by teenagers or for low-level crimes is inconsistent with a serious commitment to "liberty and freedom," especially because I am aware of no evidence that this kind of use of LWOP (as opposed to, say, just life with parole) really advances the liberty of the poor black woman afraid to go to the corner store.
Douglas stated: "That said, it remains my sincere belief that the regular imposition of LWOP for acts committed by teenagers or for low-level crimes..."
Huh? In an "incarceration nation", as you might say, of 2.2 million, 1200 or so juveniles is considered "regular imposition of LWOP?"
What do you consider a "low level crime" and do you have any data regarding your claim that teens with low level crimes are seeing a "regular imposition of LWOP?"
The truth is surely a lot less sensational than your words. I will say quite confidently that those teens receiving LWOP for crimes less than murder are overwhelmingly close to the age of majority. There is little or no difference between a 17 year and 10 month old "child" and a 19 year old "adult."
Those much younger (13-14) with LWOP received it because their crimes were grisly.