My last blog post was on Inmate Treatment and Inmate accountability, strongly encouraging them to be productive with their time in prison. This one is on sentencing reform for non violent first and second time offenders. A huge issue, very complex, and with so much judge discretion its unequally and often times unfairly administered.
A major requirement to get inmates buy-in to follow the rehabilitation program I outlined is for them to believe they got a “fair sentence”. Otherwise anger at the “system” is the long term result, and I can attest to seeing a lot of that inside here. Without getting into a philosophical debate on fairness, I think we can all agree a 20 year sentence for a non violent first time drug offender(without even a gun in possession and no one dying) is excessive. Especially when compared to what other developed Western civilizations like Canada or the EU countries do. I could cite many more examples but won’t(including my own). I just finished reading Bad Blood, written by the Wall Street reporter, John Carreyrou, on Theranos and all the lying of over 1 million+ fake patient test results and ensuing investor fraud on $1B. Elizabeth Holmes got 11 years, and her #2 Balwani got 12 years. What they did as opposed to the drug offender I reference above is so much worse in my view, yet basically half the sentence. And I compare my sentence getting more than them in a case with no patients and less $$ which is exactly my point of creating a sense of both anger and unfairness.
A second major issue is the disparity between like offenses and the resulting sentences from different judges. I’ve seen 2x the length between 2 inmates just here at FCI Lompoc II. This disparity erodes confidence in the system(by inmates, family, friends) and certainly contributes to an inmate’s anger at the system and lack of desire to rehabilitate when their sentence is double a similar offense , and now 20 years altogether vs. 10 years for example. As bad, these long sentences help assure the inmate will have hardly any relevant skills when they are released, nor financial means, nor probably any outside support. The exact opposite of the BOP’s mission and major problem in increasing recidivism, or repeat offenders.
One of the contributors to this entire sentencing issue is the misbegotten concept by prosecutors and judges of “deterrence”. The tougher the sentence the logic goes, the less crimes will be committed. Rest assured there is not one inmate who has ever read a DOJ press release or news article successfully highlighting total sentences issued and extra length of incarceration. For drug and sex offenders, these are behavior driven crimes, drugs for money as well, and the risk of 10,20 or even 30 years will have zero deterrence in the their risk/reward calculation. One might argue white collar crimes are also behavior driven, but the standards for intent and knowledge of a crime are so low that everyone can be accused at some point, so no one pays attention to those press releases either. I know I never even heard of those press releases let alone read them nor took them into any consideration of my actions. Criminal law never even crossed our minds, always the SEC civil rules, that’s it.
So what to do about this? Unfortunately we have an incredible maze of sentencing laws and guidelines/ amendments and “comments” to guidelines, judge bias both ways(high and low) as to length of sentence, and prosecutorial bias to maximize sentence length for their career aspirations, all which contribute to the current dilemma. I personally don’t even know where to begin to address and fix so I won’t. What I can do is discuss shifting the paradigm for first and second time non violent offenders. As far as I’m concerned, if someone can figure out how to fix the sentencing “morass” that’s great, otherwise all the violent and repeat non violent and other types of offenders can continue to get these inconsistent,often unfair long sentences. Lets focus on the 50%+ low risk , non violent,first and second time offenders again.
Proposed Solution
Simply put, we need to cap the sentence of a first time or second time offender. Let the judges do what they normally do, and decide a sentence per their normal process, and restitution, if any, (until Congress fixes this once and for all 🙂 ). Then make their sentence subject to a cap. I’d suggest:
* First Time- 7 years
* Second Time -12 years
Coordinated with the other START proposals, inmates would be subject to the same credits for reduction of time, as well as accountability for achievement during their “Military High School” pathway as I laid out in the last blog. I’d propose that if an inmate has disciplinary issues resulting in going to the SHU twice, the cap is removed, and they are automatically moved to medium security and their original sentence length governs the remainder of their time. Consequences for behavior are important and no need to waste rehab dollars on those who won’t even try.
This provides a first time offender sufficient time to show remorse and be rehabilitated and return as a contributing citizen, still subject to their 3 years+ supervised release. Sometimes it takes twice, I get it. If they relapse a third time, then between the 2 times in prison, they will have had 19 years(less credits) to rehabilitate. If that hasn’t worked their third sentence will likely result in a “remainder of life” scenario in a medium security facility due to their recidivism history. To me this is much more reasonable than a first time offender getting 19 years.
Separately from the inmate’s focus, I think this approach has a lot of other benefits relating to our justice system:
1) Disincentives prosecutors to over aggressively chase first time offenders with extreme sentences
2) Should reduce recidivism and costs to taxpayers
3) Frees up time in courts used to prosecute, sentence and then deal with all the inmates Habeus Corpus filings and “unfair” treatment on credits, sentences, even ineffective counsel etc.
4) A good work around to the BOP’s mentality of not wanting to release inmates on time by just making the time period shorter
With all the other START Plan initiatives, I sure hope someone is Congress reads this and runs with it, as its crucial to the START Plan success! BJ