Procrastinet

What the Heck is the Justice Kennedy Commission?

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

Until this morning in the car, when Max allowed me to hold off on playing The Fountains for long enough to listen to Morning Edition, I had no idea there was such a thing as the American Bar Association's Justice Kennedy Commission. On a larger scale, I had no idea there was a debate going on over our national policies on sentencing and incarceration. It turns out there is, but it's getting relatively little national attention.

So I've founded a new Procrastinet category, "Hey, What's The Big Idea," to do my teeny tiny part to introduce this particular Big Idea into the group brain.

Turns out, conservative Reagan-appointee Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy made a big speech at the ABA conference in San Francisco last year. In it, he questioned our national approach to criminal justice post-conviction - including mandatory sentences, the prevalence of incarceration without rehabilitation, and the racial imbalance in our prison population.

Some gems: in countries like England, France and Germany, 1 in 1000 are in prison. In the U.S. it's 1 in 143.

The whole speech is only ten pages long, with big margins. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Here is a pdf of it, broken into Part I and Part II.

The ABA set up a special commission to study these issues, and this week they submitted their report, which recommends sweeping reforms.

It's all way, way too dense to summarize here, but if you're interested, go poke around on the links on this page - it includes summaries of the recommendations, plus the full text, under "Reports and Recommendations."

Morning Edition touched on what I consider the most key element of this whole thing: mandatory sentencing laws have become so prevalent mostly because they have become a simple, cheap and politically risk-free way for legislators to appear tough and strong to their electorate.

Let's say Congressman A knows his consituents are worried about crack. So Congressman A introduces a bill to impose Tough New Penalties on the use or possession of crack.

If Congressman B opposes the Tough New Penalties, he is derided as "soft on crime" or "weak in the war on drugs." So the Tough New Penalties pass into law, and some kid with a couple grams of crack in his car goes to jail for a five year minimum sentence on his first offense. And the judge can't change the sentence even if he wants to.

The only way this changes is if the idea starts to take hold that Tough New Penalties not only don't help the problem they're trying to address, but harm society as a whole. This is the idea that Justice Kennedy introduced and the Commission has now upheld.

Keep an ear out for this debate. If anyone decides to try to put these recommendations into practice, they're going to have a long, uphill slog against prevailing public opinion. They'll need our help to spread the word.

Posted by rjt at June 24, 2004 11:31 AM