Crime and Punishment Ideas Matter!

Ideas Matter! – Volume 3

One side effect of writing this series of blog posts is that I have found myself digging a bit deeper into the history and written record of candidates that I normally wouldn’t have taken the time to examine.  This presidential election, the second in the twenty-first century, is the first election in which regular citizens have access – in their homes – to information that normally would be ‘locked up’ in libraries and newspaper archives.  in 2004, only paying users had access to the New York Times archive. 

Every year more of our political history as a nation comes on line.  This should allow us, in theory, to make choices that are better informed and also allow us to pinpoint which candidates express ideas and values that most closely align with our own.  There are plenty of websites out there that make this possible but most are based on Minnesota Public Radio’s excellent  Select A Candidate  system.  An acquaintance of mine took that test and her best match was someone she hadn’t even really been aware of as a candidate. 

This election is still being run by the mass media.  They are the ones who determine how much press coverage each candidate receives and how big a role each plays in the debates.  Maybe by 2012, we will see more direct exchange of information between the candidates and the electorate.

On to the quotes! 

Today I am focusing on quotes from a candidate on the subject of crime, prisons, and criminality in general.  This candidate has a long track record when it comes to outspoken positions on these issues.  Because I feel these are related matters, I will be pulling position information from a variety of topics.

We are losing an entire generation of young men & women to our prisons. Our nation’s ineffective & wasteful "war on drugs" plays a major role in this. We must place a greater emphasis on rehabilitation & prevention. We must de-criminalize minor drug offenses & increase the availability & visibility of substance abuse treatment & prevention in our communities as well as in prisons.

We must increase the use of special drug courts in which addicted offenders are given the opportunity to complete court supervised substance abuse treatment instead of being sentenced to prison. Drug defendants convicted of nonviolent offenses should be given alternative penalties [instead of] mandatory prison sentences. We should emphasize the criminalization of the importers, manufacturers, and major distributors, rather than just the street venders. Prisons in this country should be a legitimate criminal sanction — but it should be an extension of a fair, just and wise society.

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Russell G. Oswald, Commission of Corrections of NY State, pinpointed the problem: "Society has done damn little in ending poverty illiteracy that provide the seeds of unrest and problems that lead people to prisons.".    The lesson is clear. More police, more jails, more tough talk will not help. None of these traditionally instinctive reactions to crime can stem the rising tide. So long as injustice and inequity in larger society exist on the gross scale that they do today, all the reasoning and rhetoric and police clubs in the world will not stop the have-nots from going after the goods they seek through the only avenue they feel is open to them–crime. So long as we delay the basic reforms, that long will our cities continue to half-exist, in fear, behind locked doors.

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Because so much crime is the product of people who were in prison, an obvious means of reducing crime is to drastically reduce our prison population. That can be done, at no danger to society, almost overnight. How? By eliminating a whole host of common social activities from the law’s list of "crimes."

Common activities for which we now punish people–so-called "victimless-crimes" because they affect no one but the participant–include drinking, prostitution, gambling, homosexuality, & use of certain drugs. What is the point of jailing people for these practices? What more towering hypocrisy, what more potent breeder of total disrespect for the law can there be than these "crimes," which are practiced by millions of citizens, but for which only a few are singled out for punishment?

Victimless crimes are a peril to our health only in so far as they are classified as crimes. Some 51% of criminal arrests in ____ were for victimless crimes. We could very nearly empty our jails by abolishing them.

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We have to address the whole drug issue. I see no reasonable difference between marijuana and booze or alcohol, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to go to a liquor store and buy marijuana. It has recuperative powers.

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With hard drugs, what you should do is you decriminalize it. You turn around and treat it like a health issue that it is. And so people who want hard drugs — let them go to a doctor; let them get a prescription. Then we can record them and be ready to help them when they’re ready to be helped. The way it is now, we fill up our prisons. It’s the shame of this country that we have 2,300,000 human beings in prison. Half of them shouldn’t even be there.

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Is there anybody that doesn’t know the social failure of Prohibition in the 1920s that criminalized our society, that caused people to lose respect for the law? That’s what we’re doing all over again. It’s been 25 years that we’ve been waging this war on drugs, and it’s an absolute failure.

What’s ravaging the inner cities? It is the drug war–not the drugs–the drug war & all of the [associated] activity. Where is the leadership to end this? FDR had the guts to end it back in 1933. I will end it now. 

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While _________ fully supports the 2nd Amendment, he believes that fundamental change must take place with regards to gun ownership. The ______ advocates a licensing program where a potential gun owner must be licensed as well as properly trained with a firearm before they may own one.

On a side note, this candidate’s background is fascinating.  He’s the child of immigrants, who joined the miliary and made it up to 1st Leutenant.  After leaving the military, he earned an degree in economics while working as worked as a bar boy and cab driver.  He’s been a  railroad brakeman, a state Senator, a US Senator, a real estate developer, and he founded non-profit think tank.  At one point, he filed for personal bankruptcy due to medical expenses.  

His history and actions show he has a strong faith in the American people’s ability to best govern themselves when given full access to information.  In order to make people aware of what was going on during the Vietnam War, he helped facilitate the release of  "The Pentagon Papers" and read 4100 of the 7000 pages into the Senate Record.  That event eventually led to a Supreme Court decision that  ruled the senator did not have the right and responsibility to share official documents with his constituents.

EDIT:  The candidate highlighted was Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska.