crime and punishment

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."- Proverbs 31:8-9

I don't usually like to say that I am conservative or liberal because, depending on the issue, I can be all over the map. It is probably true that there are a lot more issues where I take a politically conservative position than a liberal one. Perhaps the issue where I am the least politically conservative, though, is as it relates to the criminal justice system. What's odd is that this is probably one of the issues where the conservative position is far more mainstream, what with the popularity of three strikes laws, sex offender registries, and even the death penalty for the most egregious of crimes.

The first reason I tend to be a bit more lax on my views of punishing crime is that I am always hearing stories about people who were wrongly convicted of a crime. One example from the past few months was a man convicted thirty-five years ago for raping a boy only to have DNA evidence exonerate him very recently. Another potential example that showed up in the news today is of a man who was driving his family home from church and his car accelerated into another vehicle, killing three people. He claimed the car accelerated on its own and he could not control it, but the jury did not believe him, so he was convicted in the wrongful death of those three individuals and sentenced to eight years in prison. Now the case is being reviewed because the man was driving a Camry that may have had similar electrical problems that other Toyotas have been having.

I do not know what percentage of people are wrongly incarcerated, but I personally believe it could be as high as ten percent. If that is anywhere near the case, even those who believe crime should be punished harshly have to give pause to the large number of innocents who are likewise going to be punished harshly. It is very easy for me to imagine situations where I would be wrongly accused of some crime and I cannot imagine the devastation that would wreak on my family, so people in prison should be provided dignity and not be punished beyond the level their crime demands if only for the sake of the wrongly convicted. Just as an addendum, if I were elected to high office (not going to happen) I expect that one of my first priorities would be to address the priority issues of the Innocence Project to reduce wrongful convictions.

Let's forget about the people who were wrongfully convicted for a moment, and focus on the 90%-95% (I'm speculating on the percentages) who are rightly convicted and look at the three policies that I mentioned earlier as being popular and a fourth policy that has wavering popularity.

Three Strikes Laws

In the nineties it was en vogue to pass three strikes laws to prove that we as a nation are tough on crime, and looking at a graph of violent crimes over time does imply that something that happened in the early nineties caused the violent crime rate to go down. I would speculate that it is much more related to a reversal of whatever was causing the rate to go up until that point, though, and that such a reversal may have been inevitable. This could be rationalizing in the face of good evidence, so take that with a grain of salt.

Furthermore, I have to believe that three strikes laws are contributing significantly to America's problem of overcrowded prisons. The United States actually has by far the largest per capita prison population in the world. This implies that we either have a more criminal population as a whole or a broken, inefficient, and ineffective system.

Sex Offender Registries

I have young kids, so I understand the appeal of a sex offender registry, but think it must be implemented properly to do good rather than harm. Only sex offenders who, by their crimes, offer a real threat to their neighbors should be included in a registry. An eighteen-year-old who has to register because he got his sixteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant probably is just adding clutter and administrative hurdles to actually protecting kids. Also, I have yet to hear anyone properly address what I think of as the nuclear waste issue of sex offender registries. No one wants them in their back yard, so they have nowhere to go and may be forced into a life of crime again. Either that, or they are forced to become concentrated into low-income areas so that, if they actually do present a threat, the threat is now greatly magnified for kids in poor families.

I am not going to pretend that I have a better way of handling sex offenders to present, but I do think that there is a better way out there that I simply have not discovered.

The Death Penalty

I have always favored the death penalty, largely because it figured strongly in the Old Testament. If the death penalty was fine for Israel it is fine for the United States. While I still favor the death penalty in extreme cases where the criminal's guilt is unquestioned, I believe those specific cases are rare. As one executioner I read about stated, "If you let the [jury] foreman be the executioner, then I think they'd give a second thought about execution. If you let the judge be the executioner, I think he would give a second thought about sending somebody to be executed." It is easy to support the death penalty in all violent murder convictions when you aren't the one to flip the switch and end the person's life.

Pardons

Specifically, I do not think that Mike Huckabee (or any other governor in a similar situation) was in the wrong to pardon a man who would later commit a violent crime. For all of the due diligence in the world some people who are going to commit more crimes are going to slip through the cracks. That should not handcuff executive leaders' ability to release people who appear to have been given too harsh a sentence.

Recidivism

What do you expect is going to happen to the guy who can't make ends meet because he can't get a job because he has a criminal record? If you want to reduce crime, you have to make it possible for former criminals to make a living so that they have the choice to not go back to their old habits.

Virtues and Vices

It took me long enough to get to it. I see much more in Scripture that would lead me to believe that we should take a more compassionate perspective on those convicted of crimes than that we should punish criminals as heavily as possible. Even the desire for revenge that drives so much of the crime legislation is specifically opposed by Scripture (Rom 12:17-21). I could go on, but I think I have said enough already.