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October 18, 2008
VA: Editorial: A sensible call for sentencing reform
"The cost to build and operate the prisons needed to hold all of these people is enormous: States spent about $2 billion on construction alone in 2006."
Editorial: A sensible call for sentencing reform
Virginia's junior senator insists on taking an honest look at the high cost of the war on drugs.
Sen. Jim Webb will be moderating a symposium Wednesday on illegal drug trafficking and the nation's hugely expensive fight against it.
The symposium at George Mason University could not be more timely for Virginians and their policymakers, who last week heard Gov. Tim Kaine's latest -- but by no means last -- budget cuts to match steep shortfalls in state revenues.
Webb's interest, of course, is at the federal rather than state level, but the concerns he has been raising -- during two earlier Senate hearings and now at the upcoming symposium -- apply equally in both spheres.
Webb is gathering law enforcement and criminal justice experts, along with advocates of sentencing reform, both to collect facts and to educate the public about a policy failure most politicians consider too politically dangerous to broach:
The so-called war on drugs has produced the highest incarceration rate of any nation in the world -- 750 inmates for every 100,000 people. Most criminal justice experts attribute a leap in imprisonments since 1991 to tougher sentencing laws, particularly for drug offenses, that have ensnared a whole lot of low-level, nonviolent offenders.
Webb cites statistics that show four out of five drug arrests in 2005 were for possession, one out of five for drug sales.
The cost to build and operate the prisons needed to hold all of these people is enormous: States spent about $2 billion on construction alone in 2006. And the cost to society is compounded by the loss at an early age of lives that might have been productive, but end up in a cycle of sharply limited opportunities, recidivism and reimprisonment.
In a phone interview last week, Webb was careful to state, "I'm all for incarcerating violent offenders and people involved in gang activities." Given the electorate's enthusiasm for tough-on-crime rhetoric, he knows his congressional colleagues will be loath to take up sentencing reform: "People running and in office get nervous.
"But we have to be able to address the dynamic in some way because it's all so skewed."
Webb has no legislative fix in his back pocket, but insists on having the conversation to get the country working toward one. That's necessary and brave.
In the midst of painful budget cuts, Virginia lawmakers should ponder the problem and heed Kaine's pointed suggestion to look for policy changes that would yield long-term savings, such as prison reform.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/180264
Posted by lois at October 18, 2008 10:53 AM