A Grand Rapids man released from prison last summer for a November 1998 murder pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal cocaine trafficking charge following his arrest in Southeast Grand Rapids with more than a pound of cocaine.
Keith Vonta Hopskin appeared in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids where he admitted to having at least a pound of cocaine he planned to distribute....
Hopskin told police he had been receiving several ounces of cocaine about two times a month since July, court records show. He was released from prison July 5 on a second-degree murder conviction.
The 38-year-old, who has a prior federal drug conviction, told investigators he paid $10,500 for the cocaine and was able to sell three ounces before police stepped in.
Now just to head off the coming furrowed brows, this is not an argument that we should send people to prison forever; the first principle of sentencing remains just punishment. It is, however, an argument against the delusion that, when we release criminals, we can expect them to become productive members of society. It is not impossible that that will happen, but the decided likelihood is, instead, that the Hopskin story happens. We need to bear this in mind when we told how much society will "benefit" from shorter sentences.
You have got this entirely wrong Bill. Here you have a murderer, a violent criminal, who after serving his time has become a non-violent offender. Just a low level drug dealer. If the Congressional sentencing reform bill passes, this guy should qualify for the "safety valve".
I stand corrected!!!
And I'll bet that murder conviction didn't have anything to do with drug dealing, either!
You ledt out some interesting details from this notable story, which prompts lots of questions from me:
1. FROM ARTICLE: "[Keith Vonta Hopskin] admitted to beating the victim over an unpaid drug debt and was sentenced to between 12 and 37 years in prison."
WHO DECIDED A MURDERER SHOULD GET OUT SO QUICKLY? COULD THERE HAVE BEEN PRESSURE TO RELEASE HIM EARLY BECAUSE MICHIGAN'S PRISONS ARE OVERCROWDED, WITH "nearly 10,000 [prisoners who] were sentenced for nonviolent offenses, including driving while intoxicated, breaking and entering and home invasion." http://bridgemi.com/2015/08/43000-michigan-prisoners-who-should-we-cut-loose-first/
2. FROM ARTICLE "In exchange for today’s guilty plea, federal prosecutors will not charge him with being a repeat felony drug offender. Hopskin faces a minimum of five years and up to 40 years in prison when he returns to federal court for sentencing in August."
WHY IS THIS GUY GETTING A SWEETHEART PLEA DEAL FROM FEDERAL PROSECUTORS? AND WHY ARE YOU NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS PROSECUTORIAL LENIENCY IN THIS CASE?
-- You press continuously for early release of inmates, and for shorter sentences. Yet when you get what you seek, with disastrous results, it's always someone else's fault.
Under what version of consistency is it possible to say that mistakes in early release are unavoidable, then turn around and condemn those who do what you said they can't avoid doing?
-- If you have any actual evidence that this hoodlum was released early because of overcrowding, you are welcome to produce it. Insinuation and speculation ("COULD THERE HAVE BEEN PRESSURE...") convey no information and require no thought. Where is the EVIDENCE?
-- You also complain continuously that federal prosecutors use tough sentencing to extort guilty pleas, but now turn on a dime to complain that said prosecutors are handing out "SWEETHEART PLEA DEALS"!!!
I think you're getting Defense Lawyers' Disease: Whatever happens, complain about what DIDN'T happen and blame the other guy. Blame them especially loudly if they give in to something you've spent years campaigning for.
-- You are quite correct in saying that I did not repeat everything in the story.
Remind me to imply that you're steering around uncomfortable points when, in your own SLP posts, you do not repeat every word in the stories you link.
Of course, if I did that, I'd be on here every day, twice a day, since, like anyone who blogs, it's extremely unusual and almost always silly for you to repeat every word in a story you've linked.
-- Now back to the main point: Recidivism is at such stratospheric levels that early release is a virtual guarantee of more crime faster.
Do you want more crime faster?
Bill, I am not trying to attack you here, nor am I asserting that you were trying to misrepresent in how you summarized this case. Rather, what I keep trying to highlight here (and elsewhere re the Callahan case) is that, while you highlight troublesome examples of early released prisoners who go back quickly to committing serious crimes, you consistently fail to grapple with the broader structural problems with modern sentencing systems that fester beneath these anecdotes.
As a number of red states have already helped demonstrate, If we had less incarceration of lower-level offenders and less monies spent fighting costly and conunter-productive wars on drugs, we could free up limited resources at the state and federal levels to focus on more serious offenses and offenders.
Put most simply, I want less government because I thinking smaller government is much more likely to do its limited job well in the criminal justice arena. As a big government guy in the arena of criminal justice, I understand why you see more good than harm from modern mass expenditures in the criminal justice arena. But experiences to date in states that have taken careful/measured/proactive the first steps to cut back on the size and expenses of its criminal justice systems have proven pretty good.
So, to answer your question: I do not want more crime faster, but I do want less government faster. And I genuinely believe less government can and will contribute to less crime over time.
Douglas stated: "If we had less incarceration of lower-level offenders and less monies spent fighting costly and conunter-productive wars on drugs, we could free up limited resources at the state and federal levels to focus on more serious offenses and offenders."
Same, tired old argument that has already been dealt with.
Prove to me that letting out the "low level offenders" will "free up limited resources."
Keep in mind that I do not want some silly study that merely subtracts the amount it takes to incarcerate these people and counts it as "savings." As educated people, we know it is hogwash. I want a scientific study that looks at the actual costs of letting criminals out of jail. Most inmates leave prison and soak up public resources such as employment counseling, government subsidized healthcare, SNAP, drug rehab, vocational training, disability, housing subsidies, parole supervision, adult education, etc. When they do commit more crimes, their is a huge cost to society and on the victims. That is not "less government" as you claim to desire, it is more.
As someone looking to change the system, it is your burden of proof to show that there will be actual savings and that it is not just another accounting trick.
To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, "Show me the study."
Let me add to what TarlsQtr says by quoting Doug's same line: "If we had less incarceration of lower-level offenders and less monies spent fighting costly and conunter-productive wars on drugs, we could free up limited resources at the state and federal levels to focus on more serious offenses and offenders."
The problem is that Doug's assertion flies in the face of 25 years of facts: As we have incarcerated many more of what are called "lower-level offenders," and continued to fight drug abuse, we have massively SUPPRESSED more serious offenses.
Those are the numbers. They are stark.
The explanation is easy. When we get serious and display an attitude of intolerance toward crime, it suppresses crime across the board. See, e.g., broken windows policing.
Drugs and the people who deal them are hugely associated with crimes of all sort, from murder down to minor property offenses.
We have had an entire generation's experience to tell us what works. We don't need academic projections. We need only look at history.
Prison works. Policing works. Getting tough works. It's not even arguable.
If we want to know what fails, that's easy, too: Magical faith in rehab, seeking "root causes" beyond selfishness and greed, and giving judges license instead of rules.
As TarlsQtr correctly points out, we aren't going to get frugality in any event. The only question is whether we're going to keep spending money on what works, or go back to spending even more of it on what fails.
Tarls and Bill, have you had a chance to review the new report from the While House Council of Economic Advisers, "Economic Perspectives on Incarceration and the Criminal Justice System"?
Here is part of the executive summary:
"We find that a $10 billion dollar increase in incarceration spending would reduce crime by 1 to 4 percent (or 55,000 to 340,000 crimes) and have a net societal benefit of -$8 billion to $1 billion dollars.
"At the same time, a $10 billion dollar investment in police hiring would decrease crime by 5 to 16 percent (440,000 to 1.5 million crimes) have a net societal benefit of $4 to $38 billion dollars."
Notably, many states and localities dealt with various recent budget issues by cutting police forces before cutting incarceration. That fact, in part, reasonably explains why crime is going up again.
Finally, Bill returns to his favorite saws: Hey, I can point to evidence that big government spending is working ... and government is always so wasteful, we ought not try to cut in areas that may be, in his view, less wasteful than others. Of course, this is what all big-government fans say --- e.g., "real" poverty is much lower now than in 1968; people live a lot longer now thanks to Medicare/Medicaid, and we cannot risk going backward --- whenever their favorite programs start being looked at for cuts.
Douglas,
I found the White House report worse than useless.
There is no indication at all that it accounts for any of the costs associated with keeping these people on the streets, just the costs of keeping them in prison.
1. My bet is still waiting. $500 says criminal justice budgets will go up with or without sentencing "reform." Are we on?
2. You're every bit as "big government" as you claim your opponents are. You don't want to save a dime, and you won't. You just want to shift the spending from programs we know work (jail) to ones we know fail (feckless "counseling," "anger management" and the rest of the boatload of meaningless catch phrases). (And shift funds away from programs that benefit law-abiding people to ones that benefit those who prey on law-abiding people).
3. This is one of the things you're missing: Police forces get cut FOR EXACTLY THE SAME REASON INCARCERATION GETS CUT. The reason is a view of the world that sees the criminal as the victim and normal people as punitive racists. On this view, those things that benefit normal people and burden criminals -- cops and jail -- should be cut back.
Tarls: Sorry that this report stuck you as useless. Am I wrong to suggest you, like most people, will question any report that does not reinforce your own personal cost-benefit analysis? I say this not to criticize, but rather that it will be hard for me to prove to you something that will lead to your discounting of any evidence I put forward.
That said, perhaps I should point you to evidence from Colorado where clearly a lot more public monies are available for fighting more serious crimes in the wake of marijuana legalization. Indeed, I strongly believe national marijuana legalization may now be the best/most important/realistic reform movement to try to reduce low level crimes and the expenses poorly invested in fighting them.
Bill: 1. I share your skepticism that the big government federal criminal justice will not shrink anytime soon. But we can and should all at least seek to slow its growth, no, if we care about limiting government bloat?
2. I very much would like monies to go back to states so they can make more accountable local decision about how to spend limited resources fighting crime. Notably, as one involved in criminal justice reform efforts in Ohio, I am much more confident in the politics and transparency and accountability we see in CJ reform here than I see at the federal level. So you are right that I am eager for money to shift, but the shift I want is from the Feds to the states.
3. You may be correct that historically cuts to police and prisons move together, but practically it is easier and more productive to reinvest in police and prevention than in prisons and post-crime responses. Indeed, if you and others were to get on board with de-coupling these realities, we could and should find a way to target savings from cost-inefficient cells to go to more cost- effective cops. That is a key point that this new data report suggests could be a setting for consensus.