GARVIN COUNTY, Oklahoma -The two suspects in Monday's double shooting in Garvin County were arraigned Tuesday.
21-year-old Trevor Noland and 18-year-old Roger Arles both face charges.According to police, Noland and Arles stole a pickup from three of their friends, and shot two of them in the head....
Just 12 days ago, Noland was released from prison after serving just half of a three year sentence for illegally possessing a gun.
Garvin County Sheriff Larry Rhodes said Noland wouldn't have had the opportunity to shoot anyone if he had served out his full sentence.
But wait. It gets better.
Noland's mother said even her son said he shouldn't have been released early."He told me he felt like he should have not got out," she said. "He wasn't ... it's like he's so used to being locked up."
Carol Noland said her son suffers from schizophrenia and has bipolar disorder and refuses to take his medication.
For decency and for Mr. Noland's own safety, his mental problems should have been taken more seriously while he was in prison. For decency and for the safety of the rest of us, including the people he shot, he should never have been released after serving just half his sentence.
The Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 was adopted, among other reasons, to prevent just such a thing. If we go back to a system of early release, we can expect more episodes like this. Sentencing reform backers, including those in the Obama Administration, have promised that their legislation will release only "low level, low risk" offenders. This has the same ring to it as their promise that if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance. Why Republicans should trust Obama's Justice Department to keep this promise is mystifying. And even if DOJ and the courts make a good faith attempt to keep it, mistakes -- hundreds if not thousands of them -- are inevitable.
Who should have to bear the risks and costs of those mistakes? The next victim? Or the criminal whose own bad choices put him jail to begin with?
Is that a hard question?
When those given early release know it's a bad idea, one has to wonder why some members Congress can still be fooled.
Bill, do you genuinely believe any US prison system, even those that do not struggle with overcrowding and with the very best staff and ample resources, is well equipped to deal with a person with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and who refused to take needed medications?
This case strikes me is a GREAT example of prisons likely being criminogenic and the problems this creates for people likely to be dangerous because of mental conditions or substance abuse. The first critical mistake here, as I see it, was that this dangerous, disturbed person was sent to an Oklahoma prison for gun possession where he likely got worse (or at least creamy did not get better) rather than being identified and placed in a better environment for reducing his risk of being dangerous when back in society.
Notably, Oklahoma has resisted smart sentencing reform so that they are now in crisis mode having to do a kind of prisoner triage. The fact that the result of poor government efforts with prisons does not, at least for me, make a strong case for the idea that Oklahoma should be sending even more people to prison for ever longer periods of time.
Douglas,
You are right in part. He should have been treated for his mental illness before the gun crime that originally put him there. It is a legitimate hole in the system. However, once we get to the level of committing crimes, all bets are off. Allowing crimes to go unpunished just opens the door for you to accomplish your main objective, to line the pockets of your buddies in the bar with mental illness defenses.
Are there any legitimate proposals in the current criminal friendly proposals that overhaul the mental health system to treat mentally ill people before they commit crimes?
Doug --
1. This guy had problems BEFORE he ever set foot in prison. It is those original problems, not incarceration, that were "criminogenic."
2. Of course the central issue here is whether it was either helpful (to anyone) or wise as public policy to give Noland early release. Was it?
3. Is there ever a time when, in your view of the world, the individual is principally responsible for his own conduct?
I do not want to allow crimes to go unpunished, Tarls, and I think every individual is principally responsible for every bit of his conduct, Bill. You both make the mistake that I am arguing for no punishment or no responsibility, when my goal is always BETTER punishment and BETTER approaches to dealing with the public safety risks that dangerous people like Noland will always create.
I often stress drunk drivers in these conversations because it should be clear to you that I hold all drunk drivers principally responsible for their misconduct and I want to punish then all. But I think it would be inefficient and ineffective to put all drunk drivers behind bars for years or decades as a means of incapacition. Instead, it would be more sensible to take away their cars and/or permit them only to have cars with built in alcohol detection systems.
For mentally ill and drug addicted folks and others persons whose danger profile are more complicated, figuring out better forms of punishment is more challenging. And for some it may prove so hard we may be better off just locking them up as a means of incapacition. But, in a country committed to human freedom and limited government, I want the lock them up approach to be a last resort, not a first one.
You want to have your cake and eat it too, Doug.
In one breath you will state that prison is criminogenic and makes the mentally ill and addicted more likely to commit crime. In another thread, you even called for a "public health approach" to the problem. Yet when confronted, you say you do not want to do away with punishment.
Well, yes, Doug, you do.
Rehab is not "punishment." Neither is a mental institution. That is treatment.
You state: "But, in a country committed to human freedom and limited government, I want the lock them up approach to be a last resort, not a first one."
1) What is your "first resort?" Please be specific.
2) Who should bear the financial and physical risk involved with your first resort when/if it is not successful?
For example, you want to line the pockets of lawyers by suing the pharmaceutical companies because of side effects of using opioids. Can we write directly into any legislation enacting your "first resort" a clause that makes you and fellow members of the bar who support your initiative financially responsible for any cost overruns and physical harm caused to others by your program?
Didn't you tell me that would be the "libertarian" position?
Talrs: there is no inconsistency if you were to fully understand my basic libertarian instincts, which recognizes that the private market place can/will play a much larger role in how society deals with public/social harms when we make criminal justice a last resort rather than first resort. I will try to explain, while also highlighting where we agree on certain basic terms/ideas here:
1. And I agree 100% that sending an alcoholic to rehab or a schizophrenic, bipolar person to a mental institution is not punishment. For that reason, and others, I am often eager to have private market players run rehab facilities and other institutions, and to do so with all the market-based incentives that should lead to the failure of those programs that do not prove successful.
2. As I hope you can understand, in this arena and others, my "first-resort" will always be to look for non-governmental, market-based solutions to problems. The market, not government, solves most of Americas problems and continues to innovate looking for the next problems to solve. Meanwhile, the even the more "efficient" government still process most matters on papaer, and they are more often then not a brake on innovation.
3. We all bear financial and physical risks that come with the potential harms of a free and free-market society when it is not so successful, but those risks always seem to me smaller (and more readily mitigated) in a market-first country like the US than in a govt-first country like Russia or Cuba.
4. I do not want to line lawyers pockets by suing market participants, and that is a concern of tort lawyers, not criminal lawyers. Moreover, taxpayers are now lining the pockets of a lot more criminal lawyers (e.g., I think there are many more well-paid federal prosecutors and federal PDs now than a few decades ago).
5. I have long surmised that you think, Tarls, that I am not a real "libertarian," whatever that means. But I hope you understand that, as a matter of basic principle, I generally view private actors and free markets to be much more efficient and effective at achieving goals than generally are public actors and government institutions. And that view informs my disaffinity for a govt-controlled approach to the health harms created by both intoxicating substances and mentally unstable people.
I hope this addresses your questions in a comprehensible way. I am truly not trying to hide anything, nor am I trying to claim to a libertarian if I am really not. I do notice that most groups/people asserting libertarian affinities -- ranging from Cato to Heritage to the folks at Reason to Charles Koch to Ron/Rand Paul --- seem to have a similar disdain for the war on drugs and other aspects of a big-govt criminal justice system that America has come to embrace in recent decades. And I suspect the Doctors Paul and the brother Koch are not ultimately eager to line the pockets of tort lawyers. (And, for the record, I generally tend to be a fan of limits on extreme tort awards because, likely extreme prison sentences, they can sometimes be misguidedly excessive.)