Over the past few months there have been movements to recall Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, Cuyahoga County District Attorney Tim McGinty, and now Judge Aaron Persky. While the individual reasons behind the recall efforts are justified (the shooting of Laquan McDonald, the shooting of Tamir Rice, and the Stanford rape scandal), the overall implication is that America has a leniency problem.
Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.
We didn't become the most incarceratory country on the planet by being too lenient. There is no dogma of under-prosecution driving American criminal justice. It is quite the opposite. We love to punish. We are literally addicted to incarceration. We thirst for it. It is our answer to everything.
So, if you call for more punishment, make sure to contextualize the rarity of that call. And get indignant about oversentencing, too.
Anyone working to recall Florida Circuit Court Judge Matthew Destry? He sentenced a 23-year-old black kid to 60 years in prison for driving with a suspended license and having bullets in his car.
Or what about New Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro? He wants a man to serve 20 years for stealing $31 of candy.
Or Judge Jerri Collins in Florida? She sentenced a domestic violence victim to three days in jail for not attending her abuser's trial because she was too terrified.
In North Carolina there’s District Attorney Billy West, who piled five felony counts on a 17-year-old, charging him as an adult for having sexually explicit pictures of himself—because he was a minor. Yes, you read that right.
These stories are remarkably common. Leniency, on the other hand, is rare. It is so, so rare. (Anita Alvarez spent eight years terrorizing black and brown people, prosecuting anyone and everyone, and stuffing people into prison. The irony is that the backlash came the one time she didn’t prosecute.)
This doesn't mean Stanford rapist Brock Turner should be let off the hook—or McGinty or Alvarez or Persky. But don't let these other judges and prosecutors off the hook, either.
The truth is, you cannot fight mass incarceration through more incarceration. So when we call for more punishment in the (very rare) times that more is deserved, we must also constantly call for more leniency. If you care about mass incarceration, you must also care about these stories. You must fight these elected officials, too. You must. You must. You must.
Just your weekly reminder that America suffers from an oversentencing epidemic.