Monday, April 13, 2009
IT IS NOW TIME TO CONSIDER THE IDEA OF PRISON REFORM
The following letter was published in The Post and Courier in response to this Editorial:
The prisons are the last step in a very broken system. There are too many things you can go to prison for, there are far too few options for judges to use outside of incarceration, and there is too little recognition of the damage our criminal justice system does to offenders who pose little danger to others.
Though Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's comparison between Japan, a homogeneous, fairly static society with very little immigration, and the United States, a heterogeneous, mobile country with a large number of immigrants, breaks down, he is correct that putting people into prison for anything that does not threaten another's safety is damaging to both the public who pays and the offender who is forever changed by the experience.
Prostitution, gambling, drugs, writing bad checks and shoplifting are just a few of the crimes that society should not endorse, but prison is not the correct response.
However, what actual sanctions will our society accept?
In the end, to fix the corrections system, we must start with the lawmakers who feel prisons are the only way to be tough on crime.
Then the courts need more options for sentencing and a changed outlook on the law being only a revenue source for lawyers. Saying prisons are broken because of the high numbers in them is the same as saying graveyards are broken because of being full of dead people.
Stan Burtt
S. Laurel Street
Summerville
We do not wholly embrace Mr. Burtt's belief that "the law [is designed] only [to provide] a revenue source for lawyers." Still, we think the ideas expressed by The Post and Courier, Mr. Burtt, and Senator Webb all have some merit. We believe however, that the suggested "dispassionate analysis of what the public is getting for [its] money, and how outcomes could be improved by making changes in the way it is spent" should extend to the areas of Civil Contempt and incarceration for what in many cases amounts to imprisonment for debt.
Labels: Civil Contempt, Family Court Reform
