Monday, January 05, 2009
Editorial: The criminal justice system needs help
Sen. Jim Webb demonstrates political courage in his push to reform a system that 'tough-on-crime' politicians have made expensive and ineffective.
From the RoundTable blog
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Sen. Jim Webb is not a typical politician, and he wants to bring an atypical approach to criminal justice reform in America.
The typical political fashion of treating crime and punishment has created an America that imprisons a larger percentage of its population than any other nation. It has created a justice system that is erratic, arbitrary and, well, unjust.
Webb plans to introduce legislation in the spring that would create a national panel to recommend ways to overhaul the criminal justice system.
Some may scoff at the notion of a panel, a time-honored way of deferring hard decisions and projecting the illusion of action.
But Webb knows that expert panels, if properly set up and conducted, can provide valuable political cover for elected representatives fearful of looking anything less than tough on crime.
Webb has already spent considerable time studying the issue and gathering evidence. He's held several hearings and a symposium on the effects of the drug war.
In a recent Washington Post news story, he laid out the problems: People with substance abuse problems and mental illness fill up cells that should house violent criminals. Young, black men make up a disproportionate share of those who are locked up, and they struggle to reintegrate into society when they get out. Politicians fearful of the "soft-on-crime" label have made the problem worse.
"I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken, unfair, locking up the wrong people in many cases and not locking up the right person in many cases," Webb told The Post.
Some partisan critics are already taking shots at the effort, well before Webb has even discussed concrete ways for reforming the system.
Republican attorney general candidate and state Sen. Ken Cuccinelli said he thought Webb was "out of line" with Virginians on criminal justice issues. He told The Post he wasn't surprised by that, since Webb "is more emotion than brain in terms of what leads his agenda."
Cuccinelli, it appears, will continue to be part of the problem.
His criticism of Webb, an author and a very thoughtful man, is totally unwarranted. In fact, appeals to emotion rather than intellect tend to come more from Cuccinelli's tough-on-crime crowd.
This nation is spending billions upon billions of dollars on a flawed and ineffective criminal justice system.
Webb is performing a service in his attempt to find ways to make the system more humane and cost-effective, while keeping truly dangerous criminals locked up.
