By Matthew G. Bisanz
Recently, the prison system has come to the forefront of American political talk. The reason: some terms sentenced to criminals are disproportionate to the crime committed.
For example, a person committing security fraud serves a 20-year-term under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, while a person guilty of manslaughter may serve less than 10 years. This is further compounded by the fact that the terms a judge orders have little relation to the term a person serves. For instance, in New York all prison terms under a year are automatically slashed by a third if the prisoner does not commit another crime in prison. Therefore, if a judge wants to send someone to jail for a year, they must sentence him or her to 20 months. The problem continues, because county jails cannot hold someone serving over a year-that person must be sent to the state prisons.
At the other end, judges who hand down a sentence of 20 years to life may expect the person to be released in 20 to 25 years. However, once a judge has ruled, it is up to a parole board to decide when the person leaves prison, and parole boards are little more than projections of a governor’s political views. No governor wants to be seen as weak on crime, because most voters do not support crime. Therefore, governors have strong incentive to appoint parole board members who grant few paroles, thus making the governor look tough on crime. The problem with this is parole boards are supposed to be neutral arbiters of fact. As soon as politics are brought into the system justice goes out the window. This is not to say all prisoners should automatically be paroled; neutral judges, not politically motivated governor appointees, should make the decision.
One idea is to eliminate parole boards altogether, and force judges to give exact sentences that cannot be changed by extraneous circumstances. This plan would prevent large gaps such as 20 to life or five to 10 year sentences that are common in courts today. It would also force judges to consider how dangerous a person is and factor that information in when deciding on a prison sentence.
Recently, the Supreme Court struck down the Federal Minimum Sentencing Guidelines as restricting judges’ discretion, saying judges must have discretion to hand out punishments. Further, in New York there has long been a movement to repeal laws that are based on temporary public clamoring, such as the Rockefeller drug laws. No one wants to let criminals run wild, but punishment must be proportionate and exact in order to be uniform. Uniformity is desired as the Constitution guarantees equality and non-partiality before the law in the 14th amendment.
It is safe to say that a white collar criminal who stole $10 million is less dangerous to the public, than someone who commits vehicular manslaughter. Sending a white collar criminal to jail for 20 years while letting a rapist go free after seven mocks the concept of punishment based on severity of the crime and danger of the person. Politicians need to stop creating laws every time a crime grabs the headlines and instead create a uniform system of justice.
