Jim Webb on the Incarceration Crisis

By: Catzmaw
Published On: 3/18/2007 5:27:21 PM

Cross-posted at Catzmaw's Commentary

This comes a little late, but a week ago Senator Jim Webb was on the ABC show This Week with George Stephanopolous and said something which took me by delighted surprise. 

We've -- this is a chance to put a lot of issues on the table. One of the issues which never comes up in campaigns but it's an issue that's tearing this country apart is this whole notion of our criminal justice system, how many people are in our criminal justice system more -- I think we have two million people incarcerated in this country right now and that's an issue that's going to take two or three years to try to get to the bottom of and that's where I want to put my energy.

Yesterday I had the chance to thank Senator Webb in person for bringing up this virtually invisible issue at Brian Moran's pancake breakfast and told him how grateful I am as a criminal defense attorney to see a United States Senator calling attention to this enormous crisis.  He immediately (and impressively) off the top of his head started reciting the facts and figures of incarceration and expressed dismay that an entire segment of our sociey, the young black male, is growing up incarcerated or under court supervision.  He said "it's terrible that you can make a mistake when you're 18 years old and have it follow you around for the rest of your life. We have to change that."  He added that this issue is as important as the war and economic fairness.  For information on some of those facts and figures see this New York Times article Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn

There's more
Senator Webb mentioned an article he wrote for Parade Magazine in 1984 on the Japanese prison system.  What We Can Learn From Japanese Prisons.  While I would never endorse the Japanese practice of interrogating prisoners and having them sign confessions without a lawyer present, we could learn something from the Japanese sense of fairness and honesty in dealing with prisoners.  An American former prisoner told Webb

he prefers Japan's legal system to ours. Why? "Because it's fair," he says. "They never tried to trick me, even in interrogation. They were always trustworthy. I could have got five years and they gave me two. The Americans who were helping them wanted me to get 20. The guards at Fuchu were hard, but they never messed with you unless there was a reason. You didn't have to worry about the other prisoners coming after you, either. And the laws of Japan are for everybody. That's the main thing. The laws in this country depend on how much you can pay. I'd rather live under a hard system that's fair."

Having represented dozens of people suckered by detectives and private security personnel into confessing, usually on the promise of release or of lenient treatment, I say a change would do the entire system good.  The bitter fact is that the police lie.  They lie all the time.  Their lying is trained into them at the academy and accepted by the courts with nary an eyelash batted.  They lie about the evidence; they lie about the statements of suspected co-defendants; they lie about the legal effect of a conviction; they lie about their power to affect the outcome of the case once it has gone to the prosecutor.  Having been forbidden to use force on criminal suspects they resort instead to interrogation techniques designed to elicit confessions, but not necessarily the truth, and they have little understanding of just how their techniques can in fact result in injustice.  It is the poor and uneducated who are most susceptible to these techniques, which can account at least in part for the feeling among many of my young, poor, uneducated, and minority clients that their involvement with the system is an inevitability, perhaps even a rite of passage.  Moreover, there is a sense among them that the only difference between their dishonest approach to life and the government's is that the government has power and that is why cops can lie to get what they want while the suspect is punished.

On top of this is the acceptance within our society of brutality and rape of prisoners within our prison system.  People talk of such things with a smile and a wink instead of as the appalling thing it is.

Added to this are the extraordinary rates of incarceration, often for decades, for crimes which often involve only dishonesty or non-violent drug offenses.  I asked Senator Webb to look into the skewed results produced by mandatory minimum sentencing in which all the power rests with the prosecutor - who chooses what charges to bring against defendants in order to bring about particular dispositions - and reduces the judges to mere clerks imposing sentences based on worksheet calculations.

I asked the Senator to consider the problems of the mentally ill.  Few services are available for the mentally ill and they are often incarcerated for crimes committed while in the grip of their delusions or their compulsions.  Many of them have fallen through the cracks and are off their medications when they commit their crimes.  Don't get me started on how much of this is related to unavailability of mental health treatment services even in so-called "good" health benefit plans.  We are warehousing the mentally ill in our jails and prisons.

Last, in a zero-tolerance state like Virginia, where possession of any drug but marijuana is a felony, I have seen long time resident aliens and undocumented aliens either deported for their drug felonies (one ecstasy pill is all it takes for a felony conviction) or denied the ability to apply for citizenship because of their status as felons.  Senator Webb replied that he hopes some day soon to hold hearings on this issue and I wished him success.

Looking back, I realize I piled a lot on his plate in a two minute conversation, but at least he's willing to pay attention to this crisis.  Once again, thank goodness  that Jim Webb won that election instead of George Allen.

Comments



He won (CommonSense - 3/19/2007 7:25:25 PM)
because we knew he had the same values and visions as those of us who worked so hard to get him elected and plenty of attitude to back them up.

I commend you for speaking to him about these issues and hope that everyone who gets a chance will follow your example and speak freely to him about issues that are important.

He can't do anything if he doesn't know what we feel strongly about. I am sure "they" are coming at him from all sides while he strives to "hit the ground running". A gentle, concise reminder from a supporter/constituent should, and I feel always will be, important to him.



Wow (railfanbob - 3/19/2007 7:29:51 PM)
When Webb first announced for the Senate I recognized right away he was just the sort of guy we needed in the Senate.  He was speaking my language on a lot of things.  He was speaking my language back in the 80s too during my Reagan-fan period, which I got over but Webb's status as a Reagan Democrat was another selling point for me.  Now I am sure of it.

We do have an incarceration crisis in this country.  The prison population, I believe has jumped to 10 times what it was in 1970.  This is not the sign of a healthy society.  And I don't have a lot of answers.  One of them may be the war on drugs has to come to an end.  I don't necessarily mean legalizing them but putting an end to incarceration as a punishment of choice for simple drug offenses such as possession.  Another is - and Webb is right on the money on this - anyone who made a mistake at one time in their life deserves the right to pick up with their life and move on.  Without roadblocks constantly being put in their way.

We don't allow this in our society right now.  And this problem is growing worse, not better, with ubiquitous "background check" mania after 9/11 among other things.  African-Americans are the hardest hit and I don't want to hear the "don't do the crime if you don't want to do the time" rhetoric - somebody who is 18 or 19 is not the same person they are at 30.  They are in many ways not fully matured; many do not see a bright future ahead, especially in the African-American communities.  Some make mistakes.  The problem is one that is ingrained in our society, a systemic one.

If Webb is making this a priority issue then I just have to say we could not have elected a better person to the Senate to represent Virginia.  Jim Webb rocks!



Jim Webb doesn't know me from Adam (Catzmaw - 3/19/2007 8:31:52 PM)
but on the few occasions I've encountered him he has taken time to listen to each and every constituent who approaches.  He responds with intelligent, informed comments or questions.  During our recent conversation he was animated, engaged, and pleased to hear the subject being broached.  He's passionate about this issue.  I thought of some of the characters in his books, for instance Snake in Fields of Fire, who starts out as an abused, neglected, and thuggish street kid and blossoms into the platoon's protector and guide who puts the welfare of his platoon mates above all.  Someone like Snake would be locked up in our current system for ten or twenty years and thrown away like yesterday's garbage.  Senator Webb  understands this very well, and he's right - if we make it impossible ever to come back from a wrong turn early on, what hope is there left for those who screw up?  Why aren't there more opportunities for the kids who are taking wrong turns to turn themselves around?  Why isn't our society trying to salvage and integrate such people rather than demonize and ostracize them for the rest of their lives? 

Kudos to Senator Webb.  He deserves our support.