California Trend-Setting

Draconian sentences have crippled the state corrections system so much that judges had to threaten mass releases and take over the prison hospitals, so why not take that model nationwide:

The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals.

Republicans are seizing the administration's crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue for 2008.

And yes, these are the the same Republicans that want to pardon federal criminal Scooter Libby and claim that his sentence is too harsh for such an upstanding individual.

But aside from the hypocrisy, it is a stunningly dumb idea to mimic the mandatory sentencing laws in California that have produced a prison crisis, the highest recidivism rate in the nation and the virtual elimination of all rehabilitation services due to overcrowding. This is the kind of bass-ackwards logic they're relying on here:

The Justice Department wants to return to the old system of mandatory minimum sentences, under which judges could grant leniency only in special cases. Without those required floors, Justice officials maintain that different judges could hand out widely varying penalties for the same crime.

Justice officials also point to a growing number of lighter sentences as possible proof that crime is rising because criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties.

If there's one thing I know about criminals, they always spend a lot of time checking Justice Department flowcharts to see if they'll get a couple less years for their crime before they go commit them. Actually, the only trend that seems to correlate with the recent rise in violent crime is the increase in income inequality, but nice try on that one.

The punishment should fit the crime, but the professionals who actually hear the cases should make that judgment. And this "tough on crime" pose to lock people up to rot simply makes this a more dangerous country as unequipped jails lose their sense of mission and become human waste dumps instead of rehabilitation and treatment facilities.

I'm little surprised that national Republicans are borrowing from the fearmongering used in California the past 30 years. What bothers me the most is how the Democrats are likely to go along with it.