Mandatory Sentencing?
By Steve GillmanI just got a “robo-call” from Rudy Guiliani on behalf of John McCain. He (or at least his recorded voice) just wanted to let me know that Obama is against mandatory sentencing for sex offenders and other violent criminals. I don’t really want to vote for Obama, but McCain keeps convincing me how bad a choice he is too.
Mandatory sentencing is a classic reactionary measure that allows us to relieve our fears and “do something” without much real thought. Unfortunately, it is true that there are judges who sentence criminals too lightly, but the solution is to get better judges, not to make the whole process into nothing more than a formula. Otherwise why not replace judges with computers!
Look, a suppose an older man attacks a young woman in a park. Now, can you honestly say that this is the same crime as an eighteen-year old young man sleeping with his sixteen-year-old girlfriend? Of course it isn’t. But it is legally the same crime in many states, and if those states have mandatory sentencing, the young man will be treated the same as the serious criminal.
In fact, we just watched a tragic case on television the other night about a young married couple who had to wait seven years to marry because he was in prison for having her as a girlfriend when he was eighteen and she sixteen. Seven years for doing what most of us did as teenagers! And now he is permanently on a sex-offenders list making it hard to get a job and support his family. That isn’t justice.
I recall another case years ago, where at the time the law called for mandatory life in prison for possession of a certain amount of cocaine (I believe it was in Michigan). Now suppose a stupid twenty-old-kid makes the stupid mistake of holding a friend’s drug stash and is caught. Tell me why we should never allow him to be a productive member of society, and spend our money to support him for all his remaining years, and more importantly, throw away his life in a cage when he may be a perfectly decent man?
I know some people will say, “The law wasn’t intended for first time offenders like him, but for the real scumbags.” Exactly! But it destroyed his life, because it was a law that allowed no thought. (By the way mandatory life sentences also encourage criminals to kill police officers to escape, since they won’t even get an extra day in prison for trying. They’re just wrong in every way.)
All crimes that happen to fall under a given law are not the same. We need better judges, and those judges need to have discretion in sentencing. Without it there is no way to have justice. As for McCain and others who favor these laws, they probably mean well, but it is a reaction that plays to fear (and the call was meant to instill fear as well - that’s the way of this campaign). It is not a well-reasoned position.
Tags: Guiliani, law, mandatory sentencing, mccain, obama