Don E. Siegelman
Governor of Alabama, 2000-2003
Lt. Governor, 1995-1999
Attorney General, 1987-1991
Secretary of State, 1979-1987
The Congress, the Department of Justice and the President refuse to see the Emperor has on no clothes. The U.S. is guilty of condoning and promoting a "Frankenstein system of injustice", shackling, chaining, handcuffing, forcing guilty pleas, giving draconian sentences that steal the lives of men and women, separating them from their families, and camouflaging from the eyes of the world the horrors of a system that has created the world's most egregious human rights abuses.
In this entry, I discuss how we created this "Frankenstein Mass Incarceration Monster" and, in folowing posts, I discuss ways to reset our country's moral compass.
See how we must reverse this mass incareration mandate ... below the fold:
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Musical Selection: Bob Dylan's
"Song To Woody"
REVERSING THE MANDATE
As most of you might agree, a key cause leading to "mass incarceration" is the mandate created by the "War on Crime" which gave rise to "overcriminalization". Deliberate acts of Congress and state legislatures directed severe punishment. New sentencing laws discarded rehabilitation for increased prison time. Prosecutors were directed to seek the harshest charges and federal prosecutors happily took to this task with uncommon zeal, converting state crimes to federal offenses. To end "mass incarceration" and "overcriminalization" we must change the mandate.
While it's politically popular to declare "War" as a policy statement, it takes thought to employ the right personnel and policies to fight the right enemy. The War on Crime, like the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, requires an army of ideas.
A majority of prisoners are nonviolent, many first offenders, and most crimes are committed by recidivists. To win the battle against recidivists, it must be fought when a inmate enters prison, not when they leave.
If we declared a "War" on recidivism:
There would be pretrial diversion and drug treatment programs for first time, youthful, and nonviolent offenders. Probation offices would have personnel qualified to help those seeking to re-enter society. In prison, there would be more job skills, more math, reading, writing, and language skills being encouraged, and Human Resource officers linking inmates, before release, to specific jobs in their home communities.
While prison is not the ideal place to address the problems that lead a person to prison, the reality is that prison is the last resort for society to change the pattern, to change the outcomes. Attitudinal barriers created by The War On Crime, a "lock um up and throw away the key", "tough on crime" mentality, must give way to new mandates.
The harsh realities are that prosecutors and investigators may have a political bias, may believe or want to believe that a citizen is guilty and make the facts fit their theory. You may remember the abuse of Senator Ted Stevens ... or ask Governor Rick Perry.
Prosecutors can investigate a person, not a crime. They have unchecked power to seek indictments with the knowledge that they are immune from civil liability even if they get a conviction using false evidence. Prosecutors have the power to covertly threaten, pressure, cajole, intimidate or bribe a target with a recommendation of "no time in prison" if the target will be a witness for the government. Arrests and convictions are sometimes made on the basis of stings, and on the testimony of paid informants, who, like bounty hunters, do it for the pay.
For that reason, prosecutors and investigators should be required to take notes or record interviews of targets or witnesses. The FBI is required to do so, but do not. Why? Because prosecutors instruct agents not to record or take notes so there will not be a record of the pressure or promises used to get the testimony they need to convict.
U.S. Attorneys, who are political appointees, get financial rewards, bonuses, and promotions for their success in securing convictions. At both the state and federal level, seizures and forfeitures of private property is plowed back into law enforcement to make more arrests and seizures, assuring another federal drug grant for the next year.
Elected district attorneys, state attorneys general and elected state judges advance their careers by being "tough on crime". In states that elect judges, like Alabama, trial judges can impose the death penalty, overriding a jury verdict of "life in prison". A recent study by the Equal Justice Initiative, found that in 2008, an election year for Alabama judges, "judicial overrides" to impose death, rose to 30%, whereas in the previous non-election year, overrides accounted for only 7% of death sentences.
Judges add years to defendants' sentences if a defendant goes to trial and testifies. Their justification being that if the jury convicts, the defendant must have committed perjury or was obstructing justice.
They even add years to a defendant's sentence for "acquitted" conduct, for which a jury found the defendant "innocent". Years are added for "relevant" conduct that was not a part of the trial, the evidence, nor the indictment. In drug cases, judges determine the amount of "ghost" drugs for which a defendant may be sentenced through testimony of felons seeking a reduction in their own sentence. The amount of drugs charged to a defendant may have nothing to do with the actual amount of drugs ever in the
defendant's possession.
Moreover, a judge can set aside a citizen's Second Amendment Rights and add time to a nonviolent, first offender for a handgun found at the defendant's home in a nightstand. This occurs even though the weapon was legally purchased, licensed, not used in the commission of a crime, was not charged in the indictment, or raised through testimony at trail.
If prisons are full, everyone involved in criminal "justice" keeps their job. Our criminal justice system has an insatiable appetite for new inmates because it's incentivized to get indictments and convictions, seemingly at any cost, and by any means necessary.
In following posts, I'll propose solutions to the following broken parts of our criminal justice system:
The Grand Jury: Prosecutors can get what they want
Prosecutorial Abuse: Ways to curb government misconduct
How Plea Bargains are coerced, are not a "bargain" and how to fix it
How and Why to stop draconian sentences
Prisons as Human Warehouses: How to end recidivism and help the economy
Why we must end the "Frankenstein Federalization of Crime" and How
There are reasons the United States has the largest prison population in the entire "civilized" world...our system is based on the wrong mandate.
Don E. Siegelman
Governor of Alabama, 2000-2003
Lt. Governor, 1995-1999
Attorney general, 1987-1991
Secretary of State, 1979-1987
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