A man found dead with a bullet wound Wednesday in a vacant rowhouse near the CVS pharmacy that burned during the city's April unrest brought Baltimore's homicide count this year to 211 -- matching the total from all of last year.
"Oh, Lord Jesus, there is always something going on around here," Karen Hughes, 56, said as she walked past the vacant homes in the 1500 block of Traction St., where a crime-scene technician was cleaning up. "They really need to tear [the houses] down, because there are people who use drugs always going in and out."
How's that? Drug use? Associated with murder? Must be a misprint. Don't I keep reading that drugs are the calling card of liberty?
Police did not release the victim's name, offer a motive for the killing or say whether they believe the man was shot in the home where his body was found. A police spokesman said all of the circumstances surrounding the incident remained under investigation.
Hughes, who has lived in the Penn North neighborhood of West Baltimore for three years, said she is tired of the crime and chaos.
During the riots in April, she said, she "stayed in the house the whole time" and now is "really trying to get out" of the area altogether.
"There is too much going on around here," she said.
Translation: People who seek decent, normal lives want crime suppressed, and will move to where it is suppressed.
City officials and police agreed, saying there is too much crime across the city -- too many robberies, too many shootings, too many young lives cut short -- and not enough community support to stem the tide of violence.
"We made so much progress in the city," said City Councilman Brandon Scott, vice chairman of the council's public safety committee. "To have all of that washed away and be back to the years we had utter chaos and utter disarray, it is something I never wanted to see again.
"If you remember what it was like in the 1990s, you should be waking up with it on your mind and have a feeling in your gut," he said. "I don't want to be having this same old conversation."
Sentencing reformers, are you listening? The country increased incarceration, and incarceration for drugs in particular, for a reason. Crime in the early 1990s was out of control. The people doing it had to be taken off the street -- and, to a much greater extent than we had seen before in the What-Me-Worry days of the Sixties and Seventies, they were. We initiated more prison, more police, and more aggressive policing.
Sentencing reformers and police critics say that the result was "hollowed out" inner cities and America's developing a reputation as the world's racist jailer. But reality tells a different tale. What we actually got was what decent people like Karen Hughes yearn for: We got a civic culture in which -- ready now? -- black lives matter. And not just matter -- matter and are saved from the violent end so many of them had been meeting. In the last 25 years, the murder rate among blacks has plummeted dramatically in virtually every city in the country.Thousands of black lives matter today, indeed they exist today, because we sobered up.
That -- with this new resolve -- so many of those so severely at risk for so much violence had a better chance should have been the subject of a national celebration. Instead, in an exact inversion of the truth, it's being castigated as a racist cabal. And plans are afoot to go back to the old days of danger and violence. We are seeing it already, in one city after the next. We might also be seeing it in Congress.
I confess that I don't care if black lives matter in the tongue-clucking self-congratulation of the faculty lounge, or the finger-sandwich receptions in one flush DC think tank or the next. I care plenty if they matter where it counts -- on the street, in our homes, in our neighborhoods. That is where our policies insisting on, and exacting, accountability have worked. If black lives really matter, we will keep them working.
Bill, are you aware of Maryland having enacted significant sentencing reforms and can you link those reforms in any way to this uptick in homicide in Baltimore?
Notably, as stressed in a recent FreedomWorks paper, a lot of southern conservative states --- especially Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina --- have enacted sentencing reform in recent years. I am not aware of any significant uptick in murders in many (or really any) of these states. Indeed, the FreedomWorks paper notes that in states where these reforms have been in place the longest --- Texas and Georgia --- have seen decreases in both crime and the costs of the criminal justice system.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/275872308/Federalism-in-Action-How-Conservative-States-Got-Smart-on-Crime
To the extent you want to draw lessons about the relationship between certain sentencing reforms and crime rates, Bill, shouldn't we be looking closely at jurisdictions that have enacted those sentencing reforms?
The lessons from the uptick in Baltimore homicides, absent any evidence of Maryland being involved in major sentencing reform, would seem to be about the relationship between policing, communities and crimes.
Doug, your post constitutes ankle-biting. I don't want to speak for Bill Otis, and while he and I don't see eye-to-eye on all things criminal, your reply simply doesn't address what he's saying and attempts to show him as an ignoramus because he doesn't address tweaks to the justice system that seem to have benefits.
I'll start with Bill's main point--that the soft-on-crime crowd is engaged in a multi-front attack on the criminal justice system. One part of that attack is sentencing. The people that are attacking sentencing aren't interested in tweaks that allow users to take control over their lives--they want people who sell drugs to kids to get easier treatment. They want the people who are part of a ruthless business to get off easier. In other words, Bill is commenting on the movement as a whole (cheerleaded by the Democrats' president) to be nice to criminals. Your sniping comment so misses the point.
Weak.
The title of this post is about the BLM movement which has engaged relatively little with the sentencing reform movement. The BLM movement has been mostly focused on police abuses, and the stats Bill cites come from a jurisdiction that has been an epicenter for police/citizen problems and that has not, to my knowledge, engaged in significant sentencing reform outside of its recent repeal of its death penalty. Ergo, I struggle to see how these developments provide many lessons for sentencing reformers
Meanwhile, the sentencing reform movement, which now has widespread support from many political leaders, left and right, state and federal, has been working hard for more than decade to achieve an improved set of sentencing policies and practices that would better balance public safety, fair and effective sentencing practices, and public fiscal needs. That movement has found expression in many state and federal laws --- in Texas, in Georgia, through the Fair Sentencing Act and in many other forms --- that experiences to date suggest have improved many lives, black and white, while saving taxpayer resources and reducing recidivism rates.
Bill consistently ignores these data and experiences because they do not fit his narrative of more prison always meaning less crime. Furthermore, the uptick in crimes we are seeing in various cities seem mostly linked to policing problems AND to increased gang/drug activities spurred by the opiate/heroin problems that, notably, emerged without any obvious connection to any sentencing changes.
I share Bill's interest in learning lessons from changes in crime rates in various locales in recent years. But linking the recent BLM movement and the long-running sentencing reform movement conflates and confuses criminal justice reform efforts in ways that do a significant disservice for anyone truly serious about achieving improved public policies that could enhance public safety at a lower cost to taxpayers.
The movements to reduce sentencing and to attack the police grow in exactly the same petri dish: The view that Amerika is a racist nest, callous toward the "disadvantaged," and too punitive. Not surprisingly, they have closely related targets -- the police, who initially incapacitate criminals by arresting them; and the sentencing system, which continues their incapacitation by keeping then away from civil society.
Yes, I have a "narrative," which I will repeat, since it's true. For fifty years, when we have had more reliance on prison we have had less crime, and when we've had less reliance on prison, we've had more crime. The numbers are not ambiguous.
By contrast, the counter-narrative -- that prison is criminogenic (i.e., breeds crime) -- is not only untrue but, with all respect, unhinged. It simply cannot be squared with reality. This is true going back decades, and also true as I type.
Exhibit A: California's disastrous results with its version of reduced sentencing, a/k/a Prop 47. As (maybe) two dozen entries on this blog uniformly have shown, including ones yesterday and today, the promise that Californians would increase public safety by dumbing down sentencing is just breathtakingly false. Now, the idea that we'll fare better if we call that same misbegotten California impulse by a different name, gussy it up with fuzzy language, and place it in federal law, is baloney.
We've already had sentencing reform -- the kind that works. It's called the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. Its central ideas (getting tougher, eliminating parole, cabining one-sided judicial "discretion") have succeeded well for ordinary citizens. I confess they haven't worked too well for drug pushers and other violent criminals sentencing reformers (now) admit they aim to unleash on the public by the thousands. (Your own blog has been admirably candid in this regard).
What is going on now, in related movements to intimidate the police and give breaks to the miscreants they arrest, would better called "sentencing un-reform."
Finally, it has zip to do with lowering taxpayer costs. The same people who tell us it's imperative to spend less on building prison cells tell us in the next breath that we need to spend a great deal more on indigent defense, improving the quality of prison life, re-entry programs, vocational education, counseling, family re-unification, mental health services, post-release housing, medical care and (to name one of your favorites) more plush sentencing commissions.
As I say, it has nothing to do with saving money. It has everything to do with WHERE we SPEND the money. We can spend it on what we know works to reduce crime victimization of ordinary citizens, or we can spend it on the liberal wish list.
To me, this is not a difficult choice.
Once again, Bill, your narrative focuses on only the crime data and straw men that serve your screed. Why isn't Texas exhibit A? Georgia? Ohio? Or all the other states that, via sentencing commission and/or expert planning aided by good modern data, have reduced reliance on incarceration and reduced taxpayer costs?
I concur that there are important sentencing lesson to draw from sentencing reforms in California and elsewhere. That was the only key point I was seeking to make in my first comment: for folks seriously interested in serious sentencing reform lessons, it is unclear just what the increase in homicides in Baltimore should tell us. Helpfully, as I meant to highlight via my cite to the FreedomWorks paper, there are at least some true small government conservatives who are seriously looking at all modern state-level crime and punishment developments to help folks not already committed to a narrative to sort out how best to improve sentencing law and policies for the 21st century.
Doug, you are being obtuse. And "experts" got us a lot of crime that wouldn't have happened but for Plata.
Bill's attacks appear to be the soft on crime crowd as a whole and the mischief which seems to be against cops, prosecutors and sentencing. You want to get bogged down in details about whether some apparently good programs work. You think that "sentencing reform" is an unqualified good. It's not, and Bill nails it.
federalist --
Doug, being nobody's fool, has long known how to take a microscope to nicely selected trees, then feign distress that his worthy opponent lacks his own precision instrument, so gets stuck writing "screeds."
At the same time, Doug takes care to point the microscope at the pre-selected shrub, thus simultaneously missing both the less welcome forest view and the equally unwelcome conditions on the other side of the particular tree he's examining.
Case in point: The southern states Doug notes. It is true that there have been modest sentencing reforms and crime has continued to decrease (if their figures are honest, which I will assume they are, without knowing). But, as I explained months ago at the Fed Soc Convention, this is exactly what we should expect.
Imprisonment alone is but one contributor, albeit an important one, in the decrease in crime. It gives us roughly a quarter of the decrease. Others are, e.g., more police, more aggressive policing, more effective private security, and the aging of the most crime-prone component of the population.
It follows -- and this is obvious to Doug and everyone else who follows this subject -- that a state can indeed marginally reduce its prison population in the short run and still see crime decrease AS LONG AS THE OTHER CRIME SUPPRESSING FACTORS REMAIN IN PLACE OR ACCELLERATE. Particularly in the Southern states Doug notes, that's exactly what is happening. So crime overall continues to decrease in those states, but at a slower rate as one of the important suppressors (incarceration) has been diluted. Thus reformers, hoping you're not watching too closely, and have missed the other factors, will chirp, "Hey, look, I told you, we could take a bit off the prison population and still see no spike in crime."
Myopia is a great thing, I tell you. Plenty useful, too.
Meanwhile, the disastrous and increasingly prominent results from California's version of sentencing reform -- Prop 47 -- become clearer and more depressing everyday. Understandably, these get shuffled off to the side, ever with the intellectual-sounding brushoff, "ummmm, yessss, we'll have to keep an eye on those. Most curious."
Let me return to the main, obvious, and unrefuted point: We have two slogans ("Hands Up, Don't Shoot" and "Incarceration Nation"), but they come from the same borrowed-from-each-other bullhorn; have closely related targets ("you Establishment people better ease up"); they view Amerika in the same sour way; and they seek the same result: Authority needs to back off.
Normal people like Karen Hughes (see the entry) don't see it that way, but normal people don't pour over the latest from Mother Jones at the faculty lounge.
We are getting somewhere finally, though I also see import tension in these responses. It seems now (1) federalist is suggesting I am noting here that the sentencing reform movement has shown that "some apparently good programs work" to improve public safety at a reduced cost, while (2) Bill is suggesting reforms in Texas and Georgia and elsewhere have actually hurt public safety, but not as much as other programs help public safety.
It is this exact debate and discussion I am eager to engender with the help of FreedomWorks, which does not seem to me to be a group of folks eager to spell America with a K or eager to help people sell drugs to kids. Most critically, federalist, I wholly recognize and fully agree that not all sentencing reform is an unqualified good, and the early data coming from California suggests that Prop 47 was a possibly harmful follow-up to realignment (and I am especially eager to hear what Newt Gingrich has to say about these data in the wake of his vocal support for Prop 47).
The concern I have is that Bill is much too quick and eager to develop a narrative that all sentencing reform is bad and that only America-hating radicals who read Mother Jones could support any sentencing reforms. But I do not see you, federalist, or GOP Senators Cruz and Paul and Flake and Lee or GOP Govs Kasich and Perry and Deal to be America-hating radicals. Rather, they strike me as sound and sober and sensible people who recognize that we may be able to improve our criminal justice system by giving attention to all sides of the "trees within the forest."
All I am seeking is a more fair and balanced discourse, and I think my initial question to Bill about the relationship of sentencing reform to what is taking place in Baltimore and a few other cities remains on point and important. I am sorry that you all see discussion of details crime facts and sentencing reform factors --- and GOP voices sharing my interest in this story --- to be a nuisance as you enjoy your own narratives. But I think my question helps advance understanding for all involved.
1. Previously convicted felons, when released, commit new crimes more than three-quarters of the time. That massively exceeds the crime rate of the general population.
2. Therefore, when we release convicted felons earlier, as proposed mass sentencing reductions would do, we will get more crime faster. See, e.g., the Sixties and Seventies.
3. That's just numbers. It has nothing to do with "narratives." You just look up the relevant sites and start reading the tables. Math is wonderful!
4. We can help counteract the more crime faster we're going to get (and in California, are getting) by other crime suppression measures, such as more police and more aggressive policing. I hope we do -- but that's just me. I am not the one who decries the police as a racist occupying army. That would be a large segment of the BLM, not to mention a goodly chunk of your SL&P commenters.
I am disinclined toward the pretense that the movements to make authority back off and trash the United States as a punitive, callous country have zip to do with one another. And I seriously doubt you buy the pretense, either.
5. Would you tell Karen Hughes that the answer to her problems is to release more convicted drug dealers?
Bill, can you identify examples of SL&P commenters who "decry the police as a racist occupying army"? I cannot recall seeing this phrase or it's equivalent in any recent comment on my blog, but perhaps I do not read the comments as closely as you do.
1. Were you going to tell me if the answer to Karen Hughes's problems is to release more convicted drug dealers?
Just asking!
2. I interpret the Eighth Amendment narrowly, as Justice Thomas does, but, even so, going through the comments section at SL&P is a violation.
(Actually, about a third of your commenters have something thoughtful to say, a third are just meandering, and a third need to get basic manners. There are a few who are flat-out sicko, let's face it. My hat is off to federalist for being willing to wade through it).
Bill:
1. I would be inclined to repeat to Karen Hughes what was said yesterday by Patrick Purtill Jr., director of legislative affairs for the Faith and Freedom Coalition, to room of GOP lawmakers attending the annual GOPAC State Legislative Leaders Summit here in Ohio: “We’re sending too many people to prison. We’re spending too much money to keep them there for far too long. And we’re doing too little to re-enter them into our communities. It’s becoming increasingly clear that over-criminalization and over-incarceration are making our communities less safe.”
If I ever have a chance to meet, Mr. Purtill (whom perhaps you know because I believe he worked like you inside the Beltway during the GWB administration), should I press him about why he thinks "Amerika is a racist nest" that is "run by a racist cabal"? Should I ask why he is expressing views that, according to Bill Otis (and federalist?), puts him in close alliance with those who "decry the police as a racist occupying army"?
2. Your eagerness to throw around rhetoric, Bill, without backing them up with sound data or rigorous evidence to support your assertions --- as well-demonstrated by your comments here in response to my sincere effort to see if you had any means to link sentencing reform efforts to the Baltimore crime trend you justifiably bemoan --- is why I consider some of your comments to be a "screed."
That said, I always find your rhetoric important and interesting: it is often powerful, always provocative, and sometimes insightful --- and it's surely especially effective when presented to those disinclined to dig into what lies beneath. But as I dig in order to see what lies beneath, you generally are unable to provide serious and sober support for some of the rhetoric. (Still, as GOP Prez candidate Donald Trump is effectively demonstrating for all to see at the national level, sometimes forceful rhetoric and aggressiveness can garner more converts and move policy discourse as well if not better that sober policy analysis of data and evidence.)
1. So you would repeat to Ms. Hughes, who has to live in this nest of drug-driven crime, the pre-packaged statement of a lobbyist at one of these finger-sandwich conferences??
I know that's just what she's looking for!
2. "It’s becoming increasingly clear that over-criminalization and over-incarceration are making our communities less safe."
Flat-out false. Our communities are massively MORE safe than they were a generation ago, when we made much less use of incarceration. No one even disputes this.
They're about to be made less safe, however, by the hate-the-cops campaign sponsored by BLM. Baltimore is a prime example of a community that is becoming less safe for that reason.
It might help if a prominent advocate like you would condemn in explicit terms the fabricated calumny that drove Officer Darren Wilson out of a police career. Would you consider doing that?
3. "If I ever have a chance to meet, Mr. Purtill (whom perhaps you know because I believe he worked like you inside the Beltway during the GWB administration), should I press him about why he thinks 'Amerika is a racist nest' that is 'run by a racist cabal'?"
Yes.
And if you have a chance to meet Rand Paul, I hope you'll ask him why he thinks ISIS was created by the Republican Party.
Kids say the darndest things.
4. "I always find your rhetoric important and interesting: it is often powerful, always provocative, and sometimes insightful --- and it's surely especially effective when presented to those disinclined to dig into what lies beneath."
What lies beneath are decades of BJS crime statistics, the DOJ recidivism study, the Levitt and Spelman reports on the causes of crime and reductions in crime, widespread media reports of a spike in heroin use and murder, and many other sources that the Brennan Center, et al., choose to walk past.
Who's using rhetoric and who's using research?
5. "Still, as GOP Prez candidate Donald Trump is effectively demonstrating for all to see at the national level, sometimes forceful rhetoric and aggressiveness can garner more converts and move policy discourse as well if not better that sober policy analysis of data and evidence."
As I have said before, the unfortunate support for Mr. Trump seems to me to stem from the public's anger that proposals like sentencing "reform" get pushed by plush, cozy interest groups like FAMM, rather than by any desire among ordinary citizens to go easier on the people who victimize them. See http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2015/08/what-the-donald-trump-phenomen.html
Good grief--Doug's main points seem to be that (a) conservatives can and do have open minds when it comes to tweaking sentencing policies to ensure efficient use of resources and a reduction of opportunity costs and (b) that there may be additional tweaks that may make sense. He then tries to portray the soft-on-crime crowd as just wanting to make data-driven tweaks and trogs like Bill (and me) rely on our gut.
And this is supposed to undermine Bill's points?
Hardly.
Doug, you admitted in your blog that we can learn from anecdotes like Kenneth Macduff, Komisarjevsky and Jennifer Hudson's cousin (after, of course, ragging on me for using anecdotes). What do those anecdotes show--that often sentences are far too lenient for the gravity of the crimes committed. No sane person would ever have let a Macduff out of prison, yet out he came. No sane person would think that Jennifer Hudson's cousin should have only served 7 years for a carjacking/attempted murder. And no sane person would think that Komisarjevsky's paltry sentence for a dozen home invasions was appropriate. But yet each of these outcomes happened. And the price in blood--11 dead people-at least. And all you have to do is pay attention to the papers and TV, and you'll see example after example of far too lenient sentences resulting in appalling criminal behavior.
The soft-on-crime crowd (whom you lionize as the smart-on-crime crowd) has nothing to say about this sort of thing--rather they just say we lock up too many criminals for too long, and oh by the way, the criminal justice system is racist. Without thinking about drug crime too much, it seems to me that there are four types of drug criminals:
(1) users (who may or not be casual sellers) who commit nothing more than petty offenses ;
(2) sellers who are "in the game";
(3) users who are also serious criminals (muggers, burglars); and
(4) high-level dealers.
Obviously, any sane system is going to differentiate between the categories. But we never even see that level of understanding from the soft on crime crowd. Burglars with a meth habit are dangerous and that's why they need to be locked up if the pop positive. A casual prostitute--not so much.
Doug's pas d'enemis a gauche approach allows him to take niggling shots at you Bill, and bog down your general points while ignoring the President's race-baiting on Darren Wilson. Doug will also support laugh out loud dumb statements in SCOTUS opinions about "some evidence" supporting the idea that releasing criminals from California prisons would enhance public safety.
Doug is engaging in sophistry--and that's not how law profs are supposed to behave.
Let me try to go through this as much as I can late in a long day:
1. I condemn all lying, whether the liar is a Clinton or a Libby or a BLM advocate. Thus, I am happy to condemn expressly here or anywhere else you'd like, Bill, any and all fabrications about police behaviors, whether by protestors or the police themselves.
2. I agree, Bill, that you repeatedly cite the few pieces of data that you think provides support for the wisdom of tough-and-tougher sentencing and that you think justifies aggressive criticism of any and everyone (including many prominent GOP leaders) who advocate for what federalist calls "tweaking sentencing policies." I am not saying you need to embrace or believe all the other data that is out there, but I do think you should at least try to acknowledge that lots of people who obviously do not hate America --- folks like GOP Senators Cruz and Flake and Lee and GOP Govs Christie and Kasich and Perry and Deal --- see the value and virtue at looking at all the data. More to the point, I am troubled, Bill, that you are so committed to your narrative that you come use rhetoric suggesting that only folks who claim "Amerika is a racist nest" could possibly support sentencing reform.
3. I agree with federalist that "any sane [sentencing] system is going to differentiate between" different types of drug offenders, and that is why I criticize mandatory minimum sentencing statuts that do not, legally speaking, incorporate these distinctions into sentencing law. And discussing these matters rigorously and accurately, federalism, is what law professors do, and it is not "sophistry." (It is also not sophistry when I have tried to explain to you, repeatedly and extensively, how what SCOTUS was saying in Plata. Your silly penultimate statement here makes plain that I was clearly wasting my time in trying to have a reasoned discussion with you on a case you seem so eager to misconstrue and misportray.)
4. In the end, what I find most useful and notable, Bill and federalist, is that discussion has highlighted that federalist understands (and seems to embrace) my main points, but it seems neither federalist or Bill want to confront how this main point undermines Bill's persistent aggressive criticisms of any and everyone who supports any kind of modern sentencing reform. Let me explain:
My first comment reflected the fact that for those of us who see some endemic societal/economic problems linked to an over-use of incarceration and thus support sentencing reform, it is especially significant that "(a) conservatives can and do have open minds when it comes to tweaking sentencing policies to ensure efficient use of resources and a reduction of opportunity costs, and (b) that there may be additional tweaks that may make sense."
Critially, the JSVA, the SSA, the SAFE Act and lots of other proposed bipartisan federal sentencing reforms and most enacted state reforms --- many of which have been pushed by ALEC and the Right on Crime crowd --- are not much more than "additional tweaks that may make sense" (and they are light years away from a return to 1960s policies). But according to Bill's rhetoric, all such proposals are radical, elitist ideas being foisted on society only by folks who say "Amerika is a racist nest" while riding in limos on their way to the next Soros/Koch fundraiser.
Since Bill has and continues to spend much more time inside the Beltway than I ever will, I will defer to his take on DC elites. But his rhetorical effort to paint all persons interested in sentencing reform as America-haters just does reflect reality.
Doug --
Please quote where I said, anywhere in the hundreds of entries I have made on this blog, or in any statement anywhere, that "only" people who hate America support sentencing reform, or that "all" those who support sentencing reform hate America.
Actually, I never said it, never implied it, don't believe it and don't know anyone who believes it.
But I will wait for the quotation.
UPDATE: Now that I think of it, I -- little ole' me -- am one of the people who has enthusiastically supported sentencing reform, and I don't think anyone believes that I hate America. Specifically, for years I have supported the restoration of mandatory guidelines -- a move more structurally significant that what's on the table now, and one that -- dare I say it -- would, if done rigorously, allow us to consider the relaxation of some MM's. Indeed, in exchange for more judicial discipline and rectitude, I could well be enticed to consider a degree of substantive sentencing cuts. That I support a different sort of reform than you is hardly to say that I support no reform at all, and still less is it to say that I regard my own (for the right mix pro-) reform self an anti-American.
federalist --
The shake-and-jive retrospective repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut (by judicial fiat, of course, since it could not have passed the legislature) was breathtaking. But bad as it was, it cannot compare to the misery further inflicted on Dr. Petit, who can now look forward to a lifetime of complaining about prison conditions from the two fellows who raped and burnt to death his wife and two young daughters.
The snickering callousness of those who claim Holier-Than-Thou moral high ground is something to behold.
"And discussing these matters rigorously and accurately, federalism, is what law professors do, and it is not "sophistry." (It is also not sophistry when I have tried to explain to you, repeatedly and extensively, how what SCOTUS was saying in Plata. Your silly penultimate statement here makes plain that I was clearly wasting my time in trying to have a reasoned discussion with you on a case you seem so eager to misconstrue and misportray.)"
Hokum.
Kennedy said, stupidly, that "some evidence" supported the idea that the Plata order would enhance public safety. That's BS, and whether or not some expert said it (and that's open to debate, since they were talking about overcrowding and recidivism generally, not whether releasing prisoners from an overcrowded population would increase public safety) is supremely besides the point. The fact is that there was no evidence showing that the crimes caused by the reduced incapacitation would be outweighed by the predicted recidivism decrease. None. You know it, and I do too. But you like Plata, so it's all good.
And as for agreeing with you---well, gee, you make some niggling point--so what? You are trying to undermine Bill's point about the general assault on treating criminal behavior seriously. And you're doing so by pointing to here and there tweaks and not looking at tweaks to make sentencing harsher where required.
So Doug, where was that "some evidence" that, specifically, in Plata, the increased crimes caused by the reduction in incapacitation would be less than the crimes prevented by predicted smaller rates of recidivism? Where was it?
Couple of quick responses:
Bill: You very often use the term "sentencing reformers" without a qualifier like "some" or "certain" or "most." I apologize for assuming you were speaking to all of us who are supportive of the kinds of modern sentencing reforms --- tweaks, to use the term embraced by federalist --- promoted by the FreedomWords and Right on Crime and folks at GOPAC. Similarly, when you say "movements to reduce sentencing ... grow [from the] view that Amerika is a racist nest, callous toward the 'disadvantaged,' and too punitive," I suppose I wrongly assume you are talking to all of us involved in sentencing reform movements.
In my subsequent reading and review of your commentary, Bill, I will in my head add the qualifier some or certain when I see you refer to "sentencing reformers" and I will thereby better understand that you mean to attack only some (large?) portion of those who advocate for modern sentencing reforms.
federalist: I am not going in this space to waste everyone's time (yet again) trying to explain the accuracy of a single sentence in the lengthy Plata opinion that, for some strage reason, you keep wanting to bring up and that seems to drive you to distraction. I will readily reprint on my blog or elsewhere anything you want to write that fully and carefully details your view that this single sentence shows that Plata is wrong. But especially because you constitently misquote and misrepresent that single sentence, I am not going to use tis space to go batty over it with you again.
As for tweaks to make sentencing harsher where required, I trust you know of my persistent advocacy for (1) tougher drunk driving sentences, (2) widespread GPS tracking, (3) red-light camera, (4) significant shaming sancions, and (5) an array of technocorrections (including smart-gun technologies and chemical castration) that all should help enhance public safety (at a much lower cost) than long prison sentences for lower-level crimes.
Candidly, I often come to the view when having extended conversations with serious people that I am much more committed to treating criminal behavior seriously than lots of others --- e.g., I would apply harsh economic, shaming and GPS sanctions to all drunk drivers and all who run red-lights; I would apply harsh economic and shaming and GPS sanctions to all "Johns" who create a market for the sex trade; I would apply harsh economic and shaming and GPS sanctions to all persons who fail to use guns safely --- but what distinguishes my sentencing philosophy is that I think traditional imprisonment --- a 19th century innovation in leniencty --- is not the most efficient and effective punishment in the 21st century for a lot of economically motivated crimes (such as most drug offenses and white-collar crimes of all sorts).
Doug, I haven't misquoted the offending quote. The Court said:
"Some evidence indicated that reducing overcrowding in California’s pris- ons could even improve public safety."
But there was no evidence that this was true, other than the fact that some "expert" said so. But if you look at the opinion, you'll see that the experts were saying that overcrowding in general is a problem, not that releasing a bunch of prisoners to reduce it would increase public safety. The bottom line is that the statement doesn't take into consideration the effect of reduced incapacitation.
I ask again, Professor, where's the evidence that the increased crime due to decreased incapacitation will be outweighed by the predicted savings.