MANSFIELD: Lock ‘Em Up! (Just Don’t Throw Away the Key)

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Republicans in the Ohio Legislature have proposed tougher new laws to get violent felons off the street, but Senate Bill 97 probably is in need of some tweaking. The bill, which would classify any adult convicted of two violent felonies as a “violent career criminal” has too many loopholes local prosecutors could exploit when and if they have a mind to do so.

Any sane person would readily agree that persons bent on doing physical harm to others should be locked away from society until they clearly demonstrate by their behavior behind bars that they have learned their lesson and are ready to be a contributing member of the brotherhood of man. Allowing truly dangerous individuals to be paroled back onto the streets absent such a change in mindset is foolish in the extreme. Lawmakers have an absolute right and duty to promulgate legislation that protects the public from predators.

But the catch, of course, is what will be the true definition of a “violent” felony? When California instituted its dreaded “three strikes” legislation a couple of decades ago, individuals wound up being given life sentences for sometimes innocuous crimes, such as stealing a slice of pizza. No kidding.

The current Ohio bill would add two to 11 years to the sentence of someone deemed to be a repeat violent offender (with an additional 50 percent increase in the sentence if a gun was involved in the crime), which, on the surface, seems reasonable and logical. The problem that arose in California is that overzealous prosecutors increasingly twisted the tougher law into convenient knots, and used it to lock away people who posed no danger to society … except for maybe stealing a slice of pizza.

It resulted in a state that almost went bankrupt building more and more prisons (but no new universities) to accommodate all of the prisoners that were never going to return home. And as prison officials eventually found out, older prisoners are sometimes four to five times as expensive to house, feed and provide for their basic medical needs as younger prisoners. When the state began making too many economies in terms of care, prisoner rights groups sued and won in the U.S. Supreme Court.

If Ohio’s proposed new law is not very carefully crafted (and as any criminal defense lawyer will tell you, most of them are not) an 18-year-old — let’s make him a black, unemployed high school dropout — who snatches a cell phone from someone, gets convicted of the crime, and then repeats the behavior say six months later (maybe this time is taking someone’s $200 Jordan tennis shoes), could — if a prosecutor so elects — he be placed in the “repeat violent offender” category?

Now, let’s take a young white dude (he’s employed, and taking night college classes in the evening) who gets drunk and breaks someone’s nose in a bar fight, and gets convicted of a violent crime. Then, six months later, due to his problem with alcohol, his girlfriend calls the cops and files charges that he choked her during an argument. Would he be facing the same “repeat violent offender” label as the black kid?

It all depends. Can he afford a good lawyer? Does he have a relative, or a friend of a friend who knows someone at the prosecutor’s office? The point is, when laws that are well intended are used in too Draconian of a manner, fairness and justice is kicked to the curb. One of the hallmarks of our flawed criminal justice system is its ability to brutally target one segment of the population, while going easier on another.

With that said, I have little problem with using the law to address the obvious family and society failure in regards to the 18-year-old. Once he’s gotten himself caught up in the maw of the criminal justice system we, as a society, have a right — nay, an obligation — to correct the failures of his past. He should be required to complete high school, and real assistance should be offered in terms of getting him into the job market, since we know (or at least should know) that absent him obtaining gainful employment he’s going to sooner or later commit that second “violent” … maybe this time using a gun.

And if he refuses to cooperate with the probation program, I have no problem with locking his ass up in one of Ohio’s prisons until he changes his mind, and hopefully his heart as well. Instead of simply making sentences longer, being smart on crime requires more thoughtful processes, such as the reinstitution of “indeterminate” sentences, meaning that a prisoner can return home after they’ve demonstrated they are ready to abide by the rules. Some will get the message in 18 months, while others might take years and years. But why should we sit back and wait until some thug earns their second strike before addressing the problem?

Adding two (or even 11) years to a sentence that only means a convicted person knows when they enter prison the date of they will be able to return to society — all they have to do is wait it out — does nothing to live up to the name of our state prison system: The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

Given how “crime and punishment” is all too often used as a political/economic football, the only result of Senate Bill 97 will be to further enrich those who already profit off of America’s criminal/industrial complex.

Once Senate Bill 97 is passed (and trust me it will be) the same private prison lobbyists that encouraged politicians to enact it in the first place will rush right in and offer to build more prisons to alleviate the problem they helped to create.

And who foots the bill? You and me, the sucker taxpayers.

[Photo: Michael Coghlan]
From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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