The Atlantic - Latest Comments in An issue close to my heart

Re: An issue close to my heart

Thomas R — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:00:02 -0000

"The purpose of prison, hell, of the whole criminal justice system, is to protect people from criminals."

I don't know if I'd say this is THE purpose, but it's certainly quite high on the list.

Oddly what we should maybe look at is the imprisonment of car thieves and assaulters. Car thieves have the highest recidivism rate of any crime, at least so far as I recall. Assault has the highest recidivism rate of violent crimes. I'm not sure what we should do differently with those two though.

This sounds more like "sentencing reform" than prison reform though. I thought "prison reform" was more about making prisons work better at keeping dangerous people away and helping others straighten out their lives.

Re: An issue close to my heart

BG — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:54:31 -0000

THE SYSTEM HAS LONG SINCE STOPPED BEING PRO-ACTIVE. That is the problem. You cannot suck the money out of public schools,higher education, job training,the arts, and the community at large and then expect kids who come from nothing, have even less,and are constantly exposed to crime way more than any positive structure existing in society, to view prison as an opportunity for change. That's just ridiculous.

Spend a day working in urban America--spend an hour in an inner city school--and come back here and discuss what works. Jails are meant to be punitive.

Keeping kids out of gangs, off drugs, and channeling that energy into positives takes creative thought and long-term persistance at solving the problem of youth crimes, most of which are gang related.

If schools worked and marijuana--the economic backbone of gangs-- were decriminalized, society would go a long way to stopping gangs violence, but for too long politicians have selfishly ignored solving the problem in lieu of serving their own interests.

Re: An issue close to my heart

anonymous — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:49:59 -0000

I think y'all have a serious misconception, which I don't think Webb shares: the purpose of prison is NOT punishment.

The purpose of prison, hell, of the whole criminal justice system, is to protect people from criminals. When we forget that, we get a system that doesn't do it well.

Punishing bad guys can protect us, ONLY if 1) those who are punished are kept from hurting the rest of us, and 2) those who have been punished don't hurt anybody afterwards.

Prison is supposed to do that through the first method. It fails, so it helps to ask: how?

Many people who serve time come out to go straight -- but not all. Many more people -- especially those who go in young and come out before they are old -- are worse, more violent, when they get out.

Why is that? There are a lot of reasons -- hard time makes you hard, if you went in a 17 year old with no skills and come out a 20 year old with less, you're not magically employable as an ex-con when you'd never had a job before making license plates, especially in a tough economy full of cheap illegal labor that is far more work-oriented than your sorry ass -- but the simplest is: because prison fails in its purpose.

I think Webb will focus on the metrics, on measuring what works and what doesn't. Maybe the data says that locking up young people for a short time, then giving them just one more chance, is the best way to rehabilitate as many as possible. Maybe the data will also show that when a young thug is caught for a second offense, locking him (or her, I suppose) up until they are old, is the best way to protect the rest of us: I don't know. Still, I wouldn't recommend assuming that there is no place for mandatory minimums, nor that whatever Webb comes up with can only be kinder and gentler: it might well be forgiving to the young and the old, and utterly hardcore inflexible to criminals in the middle.

But mucking up the argument with "punishment", etc., just confuses the issue, Punishment, like rehabilitation, is just a means to the end: which is PROTECTING the rest of us from the bad guys.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Ben Thelen — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:10:06 -0000

It's good to see Webb doing this. I haven't always been thrilled with him, but somebody needs to take up this issue.

It's funny, when people engage in intellectual debates about why we punish. Some people argue for deterrence, others for retribution, others for rehabilitation. But none of these philosophical perspectives actually informs the way we now punish: our prisons have just become places where we warehouse people, without any concern for helping them become better or even for proportional justice.

And for people who complain about prison conditions becoming, I don't know, humane, I think we all need to remember what Alexander Paterson said, that we send people to prison as punishment, not for punishment. In this country, of all places, we place a premium on liberty. We should all recognize how high a price we exact when we take it away.

Re: An issue close to my heart

BG — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:14:56 -0000

Ta-Nehisi

Jim Webb is one of those rare cats with brains, integrity and the knowledge to use power to achieve. For him to get passed the GI Bill of Rights with enough votes to override the theat of a Bush veto was magical. I had the great opportunity to listen to him speak and meet him afterward.I was inspired to write this piece; if the pasting is verbotin then delete.

The Huffington PostDecember 29, 2008

Jim Webb Wows Democratic Partisans In L.A.

B.G.Rhule

Senator Jim Webb, author of A Time to Fight: Reclaiming a Fair and Just America, touched on a variety of political, social and economic issues while speaking to a largely partisan crowd at the Beverly Hilton Hotel last Sunday evening, Originally scheduled to speak at UCLA, the venue was changed at the last minute because Webb, not unlike former President Bill Clinton, who canceled his planned UCLA commencement speech the prior week, did not wish to cross the picket lines of the striking hospitality workers there.

Webb first spoke of the Bush administration's claims that the Iraqi War surge was working. Webb intimated that it was premature to judge its merits, but that, instead, he would utilize the surge "as a sort of Rorshark test." In essence, questions he felt that needed to be asked at this juncture were: How should we use this information to determine issues such as possible relocation of combat? What can be done to stabilize Iraq? What are the larger strategic issues that come into play?

He then turned to economics in a broad-ranging discussion of Jacksonian Democracy as it related to the current transparency of economic inequity. At the core of this issue was the Bush

administration's lack of responsiveness to Hurricane Katrina, which Webb stated "connected the dots" for him in formulating the notion that fairness was simply not part and parcel of the current Executive landscape. He spoke of having campaigned about fairness in government, which allowed him election success, despite being outspent 2-l by his opponent. Economic success is at the heart of American capitalism but Webb insists it "must be done fairly."

Webb further stated that while John Edwards spoke of "two Americas," he believed there were actually three, in referring to what he perceived to be "economic Darwinism" as the top l% has achieved its own category. He espoused the notion that governments have the capacity to create and sustain economic aristocracies, and worries that those at the bottom are in real danger of permanent entrenchment. As "Exhibit A", Webb detoured only slightly off the path of economic principles in reeling off the poignant statistics of the predominantly low-income, American incarcerations; 5% of the world's population is American; 25% of the world's reported prisoners are in prison in America; 2.38 million are in jails, the highest incarceration rate in the world.

After eliciting audible gasps from the crowd with this information, he asserted, "Either we have the worst people in the world or our prison system is terribly broken."

Returning to the notion that fairness and the U.S. economy appear to be mutually exclusive at this interval in history, Webb offered four explanations for the current sorry state of economic woes:

l. Executive compensation is "off the charts," as the typical CEO makes 400 times what a worker makes at this corporation. He stated that when he graduated college this figure was 20-l, and in Europe, as well as other countries, it is still within the modicum of this range.

2. Capital gains is wrongly applied

3. Windfall profit tax is badly needed

4. Speculation as we are seeing it bloat the cost of oil.

Segueing into briefly addressing the oil crisis, he noted Newt Gingrich's urging Bush to urge Congress to drill for more oil and thus lift the off-shore oil drilling ban. Webb argued that it is the need for increased oil production that is necessary, as many of the areas currently leased by oil companies for drilling purposes are inactive at present.

Webb was asked a question about the climate of negativity in the recent campaign. He stated that Karl Rove was the chief architect of the worst aspect of political campaigning that America has ever seen. He said that Rove's model, which the RNC is expected to employ again this year, is to destroy the opponent's credibility while creating fear and suspicion about him. He attacked this methodology as poisoning the environment in so much as issues and ideologies should be discussed instead of false characterizations and fear-mongering.

Finally, he appeared immensely proud of the passage of his G.I. Bill of Rights and stated that Bush has basically thrown up his hands and will sign it as opposition to the bill is slim and

weak. Webb criticized the Pentagon's continuous deployment of enlistees in Iraq without substantial time back in America with their families. He said that this was the only war in our history that utilized this policy of "stopwatch" deployment, which he termed "backwards." This war, he said, was wrong because there was no thought to the endpoint.

"If you cannot articulate the endpoint of your strategy, you simply don't have one," he told the crowd which, broke into thunderous applause.

Re: An issue close to my heart

MoeLarryAndJesus — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 22:14:12 -0000

Thomas R writes: "I'll wait and see what he means on it, but prison reform of some kind is needed. Webb is one of the Democrats I, mostly, respect so I think there's good reason to hope he'll be reasonable."

Sam Brownback made some noises about prison reform when he was running for president. As far as I can recall he's the only Republican in recent memory to give a damn about such things. And no, Chuck Colson doesn't count.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Thomas R — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:36:49 -0000

I'll wait and see what he means on it, but prison reform of some kind is needed. Webb is one of the Democrats I, mostly, respect so I think there's good reason to hope he'll be reasonable.

Re: An issue close to my heart

emma — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:32:46 -0000

@ rikyrah

This is exactly what I was thinking. A white male Southern senator starting this will give Obama great cover. It's the right thing to do and it has to look bi-racial. Maybe thay can get Ron Paul to help who also has very progressive views on this to help and make it bi-partisan.

Re: An issue close to my heart

KevDog — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:46:04 -0000

Shit, I'll move to Virginia just to vote for him on this. Then I'll fly to Phoenix just to vote against Joe Arpaio.

Re: An issue close to my heart

bread & roses — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:03:32 -0000

Everything I read about Webb makes me like him more.

I'll defend Playstations in prisons.

The people who are in prison spend time there, they form a society, and discipline is imposed on that society by the guards. The guards are outnumbered by the prisoners. Despite the advantage of force and power, the guards have to have some tools to encourage good behavior (within prison) and discourage bad behavior (within prison)- regardless of the fact that prison itself was invented to discourage bad behavior.

I think it would hard enough, as a prison administrator, to keep order, and keep your prison population simultaneously:

1. suitably punished

2. reasonably orderly

3. ready to rejoin society on release

It would be much harder to do that according to the whims of what the public thinks is "cushy" versus "inhumane". Look, if prisoners are allowed to use sports equipment, do you really think it's better that they use crappy sports equipment?

I just don't think the public has any insight into what prisoners ought to have and not have from little snippets of information like this. The prison administrators have to have some tools. If the prisoners have no reward (playstations), punishments for misbehavior within prison will be reduced to solitary time or violence. This population of people is hard to get to behave, obviously. Let the prison system to what it can to get there. Nitpicking exactly how isn't helpful.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Robert M — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:56:45 -0000

I apologize for dropping this in here but I know you're a fan of graphics:

http://natturnersrevenge.blogspot.com/2008/12/original-johnson.html

Re: An issue close to my heart

nina s. — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:42:24 -0000

As a paralegal at a non-profit that provided legal services to prisoners, I worked on a lawsuit regarding mental health neglect in state prisons. All I did for over a year was catalog records of mentally ill inmates. Whenever I met someone and got into a casual conversation about "What do you do?", I learned pretty fast that most people don't want even want to think about these types of issues. In fact, many people would ask why I would want to devote my time to helping criminals. I understand how this could be electoral poison, and I applaud Sen. Webb for taking it on.

Re: An issue close to my heart

MichaelOR — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:05:07 -0000

I think, by and large, we have become comfortable with the idea of prisons as a place to ensure vengeance/revenge rather than provide rehabilitation.

No amount of time behind bars will undo a crime, violent or non-violent. Unfortunately, we (voters) ask for stiffer sentences and harsher penalties and couldn't possibly care less about the rehabilitation aspect.

For my money, stop trying to make people suffer for what they've done wrong, and start ensuring they don’t do it again. Better yet, provide the skills and support for people to reenter society with the capability to support their communities in a way that reduces crime overall.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Domonic — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:34:35 -0000

Cheers to Webb,

It is essential that we do something about American prisons. Our current policy has created a real moral hazard for people returning to society. If you go to jail and then can not find a job because you have a prison record, the incentives are going in the wrong direction. People must be able to get on with their lives after jail.

Re: An issue close to my heart

rikyrah — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:28:59 -0000

If Webb will take up the mantle for this, then he will give cover to Obama.

There are a lot of things where Obama's ' rainbow' approach to solutions will do pretty much ok for the Black community.

But, there ARE certain things that won't, because he can't hide behind that rainbow mentality. There are certain topics that are of deeper concern to the Black community than the rest of America.

The words Prison Industrial Complex pretty much top that list.

And, I believe the Black community has earned the right - with their 95% support of Obama, to demand that something be done about it. Period.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Tyler — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:26:16 -0000

@Moe

I sure hope you're right. This is one of those situations where I'd be absolutely elated to be proven wrong.

Re: An issue close to my heart

BlueIA — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:22:09 -0000

@fightingwords - I'm with you about your two points, in addition to medical care. Desperately needed is mental health care, too many offenders are mentally ill. When they've served their time and are released, no amount of voc training will help them if they haven't gotten treatment and get referred for continued mental health services on the outside.

Re: An issue close to my heart

MoeLarryAndJesus — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 17:20:35 -0000

Tyler writes: "Ending the absolutely calamitous War on Drugs would do more to advance prison reform than anything else - period.

Of course, if there's anything more politically toxic than prison reform, it's the War on Drugs. "

I think that's the conventional wisdom, but I think it's wrong. As an example, marijuana decriminalization proposals do very well with voters. I think a case could be made - especially in these disastrous economic times - for the fact that the WOD is a completely insane waste of money and resources.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Tyler — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:59:26 -0000

Ending the absolutely calamitous War on Drugs would do more to advance prison reform than anything else - period.

Of course, if there's anything more politically toxic than prison reform, it's the War on Drugs.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:58:08 -0000

I think you'll find the number of people defending playstations in prison to be fairly small. More to the point, I highly doubt that when Webb--or anyone serious for that matter--is talking about prison reform, they're talking about making prison more country-club-like. Making prisons softer would still leave us with that astonishing per-capita rate. The salient questions are, when is prison the answer and when isn't it? And have we leaned too far in one direction, or not?

Re: An issue close to my heart

Scott — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:51:42 -0000

I'm not saying they aren't so bad, Karen. I know enough about even the country-club minimum security prison I dealt with to know I wouldn't want to be sent to one. Frankly, for whatever reason, the Suck of prison itself is a deterrent to me.

However, I don't believe they should have TIME for playstations and TV, except in very limited quantities and only then if their relatives get them or they earn them through good grades or staying straight, etc. I'm just saying, let's clean it up from the psycho-creating machine it is now, but not loose the sight of the fact that prison is supposed to be punishment for not playing nice within the social contract.

Re: An issue close to my heart

KarenZ — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:36:28 -0000

I don't think Jim Webb is afraid of losing his Senate seat over this issue. It may happen; but he ain't afraid of nuttin' nor nobody.

This Virginia voter totally supports Webb's attempt to return sanity to our criminal justice system's sentencing guidelines.

I'd also like to see conditions in U.S. prisons improved. Most inmates will get out someday, yet we persist in treating them like animals (or really worse--at least animals have PETA) while they're locked up. What's truly grotesque, though, is that we let MSNBC send in TV cameras, record the depravity, and call it "entertainment."

Yes, some inmates have games and free weights, but to anyone who thinks prisons aren't so bad -- would you volunteer to spend a night in one?

Re: An issue close to my heart

sue — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:33:49 -0000

I hope Senator Webb includes a review of the prison industrial complex, the corporatization of prison operations, and the effects of lobbyists representing prison business interests on crime and sentencing legislation. Time to shine a big bright light into these dark closets.

Re: An issue close to my heart

Scott — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:11:25 -0000

"What is this talk of "electoral suicide"?"

Because it's considered to be a political third-rail. Much like welfare reform was leading up to it's overhaul in the mid-90's. That ended up working out better than it's proponents had planned, so maybe this has a prayer too. Maybe the paradigm needs to be cutting the juice off from all the third-rails as we move into post-Boomer politics. I don't and would never advocate change for change's sake, but it's necessary in SO many areas of public policy, on both sides of the ideological see-saw.

Re: An issue close to my heart

geo — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:09:17 -0000

@Connor-

it's possibly political suicide cause the general population, especially VA, isn't supportive on crime policy that deviates from "lock em up and throw away the key". people like you and i will encourage webb to re-consider the prison system, but i'm not sure we are in the majority in the US and VA. yes Obama took VA, but it was a struggle. so let's not become cemented to the idea that VA has turned a new leaf just yet.