North Carolina's hypocritical approach to criminal sentencing continues to produce bad results

Few things are more irresistible to a politician contemplating reelection than a good old "get tough on crime" bill. Whatever your political party or constituency, there's something intoxicating about having one's name attached to a new law that "cracks down" on a particular class of criminal offenders. It's almost like pulling a string in front of a cat: Shop such an idea around the legislature and chances are that you'll have a dozen lawmakers begging to be your champion.

This is mostly because such proposals are often political magic. Anyone who pays attention to the North Carolina General Assembly (and just about every other legislative body) knows that it has long been standard practice for the party in power to bestow such bills upon new and/or vulnerable legislators who face tough re-election battles. Want to toughen up the image of an allegedly "liberal" representative or senator? Then give them a bill to fight "drug kingpins" or "criminal gangs" or, better still, "sexual predators."

The flip-side to this, of course, is that lawmakers rarely have the courage to oppose such bills – even if they know better – for fear of the inevitable campaign attack ad. You know how these go:

[Cue the ominous music] "Senator Blank claims that he's tough on crime, but if that's so why did he oppose efforts to stop criminal gangs that terrorize innocent citizens? Call Senator Blank today and tell him to stop coddling criminals."

None of this is to imply that we don't need strong criminal laws that deter anti-social behavior – we do. The problem, however, is that at some point, unless you want to start jailing half your population, you pretty much run out of laws to make tougher. This is essentially what has happened throughout the United States over the last quarter-century: We've added so many new crimes to the books and enhanced penalties so many times that we've really painted ourselves into a corner.

The results can be seen in our exploding and unsustainable criminal justice and prison systems. At this moment, the General Assembly is wrestling with how to make significant funding cuts to a system that's already stretched beyond its limits. Sadly, many of the proposals under consideration – most notably cuts to the successful Sentencing Services program that saves money by keeping offenders out of prison and on the road to rehabilitation – will only make matters worse.

A secondary effect of the deluge of anti-crime zealotry is that many of the "get tough" laws simply go too far. Whether it's throwing troubled kids into state prison for selling drugs (and thereby converting them into career criminals) or simply making it almost impossible for offenders to rebuild their lives after jail, North Carolina has many laws on the books that sounded good in a campaign ad, but that have produced extremely poor results when it comes to fairness, affordability and overall societal good.

Hitting too close to home?

One of the most interesting and ironic results produced by all of these years of anti-crime pandering is an increasingly common phenomenon in which normally "tough on crime" lawmakers take on the cause of someone (usually a constituent) who has run afoul of a particular "get tough" law.

All of a sudden, what seemed like a good idea for "those people" – that faceless rabble of no good "criminals" – is seen in a different light:

"I've known this boy and his family for years. They attend my church and it's clear to everyone that he's profoundly sorry for his actions and is doing everything possible to get his life back together. I'm as tough on crime as anyone, but in this case, the law is clearly having an unintended impact."

A great example of such a situation is a bill sent to Governor Perdue this week. The proposal was sponsored by one of the legislature's most conservative lawmakers (former Locke Foundation employee, Rep. Marilyn Avila) and co-sponsored by several of her most conservative pro-punishment colleagues. It concerned a "get tough" law passed two years ago that increased some of the punishments for drunk driving.

One provision of the 2007 law upped the waiting period for those who had their driver's licenses taken away for having committed an offense that involved "impaired driving and a fatality." Though the license in such situations is "permanently" revoked, the offender can reapply later and reacquire a license if they put their lives back together. The 2007 law upped that waiting period from three years to five years. Rep. Avila voted for the change.

This year, however, Rep. Avila was forced to confront the real world impact of the tougher law when a constituent (who had committed his offense before the 2007 law went into effect) ran afoul of its new five-year waiting period.

As Avila explained with some emotion to a House committee last month, the constituent had gotten his life together and had expected to be able to apply to get his license reinstated in three years. Indeed, he really needed the license to keep his new job. Now, however, the new five-year wait was a huge problem. It was for that reason (and the fact that the person in question has been "punished enough") that she was sponsoring the bill that would spare him from the new rule.

Under the bill, the five-year wait requirement will only apply to those who committed their offense after the 2007 law's effective date. Offenders like Avila's constituent will still only need to wait three. Avila's plea was seconded by some of her fellow conservative lawmakers. Ultimately, the bill passed both houses by large margins and now awaits Governor Perdue's signature.

Setting the record straight         

The point of this story, of course, is not to question the humanity and compassion displayed by Rep. Avila and her conservative colleagues in the case of this particular bill. Good for them. Let's hope it's the first of many such instances.

The point is to illustrate how inconsistent and even hypocritical lawmakers can be when it comes to the real world impact of "getting tough on crime."

While almost everyone is all for getting tough in the abstract, it's a lot tougher when one digs below the headline or the 30-second campaign ad and genuinely tries to understand the real world impact of such policies. Though the vast majority of criminal offenders are probably not terribly different from Rep. Avila's constituent, most do not hail from comfortable suburbs stocked with affluent churches, understanding business owners, and conservative legislators standing ready to help them reconstruct their lives. For them, the "tough on crime" approach continues unabated.   

The result of all this, of course, is the dysfunctional criminal justice system that is now cracking up before our eyes – a system in which lawmakers pass ever-tougher laws for "them" and rue the "unintended" results for the people from families they know; a system in which leaders vastly underfund services that help prevent recidivism and lack the courage to enact even modest sentencing reforms that could save billions of dollars and produce better, safer, more humane results for everyone.

Going forward

Earlier this year, experts at the Council of State Governments made a brief presentation to a legislative committee in which they offered to show North Carolina leaders how they have helped a number of other states including Texas (Texas!) to shift resources away from building more and more prisons and toward a smarter, cheaper, more effective community corrections system that emphasizes things like drug treatment and mental health services. 

This is an offer that North Carolina lawmakers should seize upon and run with as fast as possible. Especially in light of the current budget crisis, it is simply inexcusable for us to continue with "business as usual" when it comes to criminal justice system. With any luck, Rep. Avila's bill indicates that this idea may be a light bulb that's starting to flicker to life above the heads of a number of lawmakers of all ideological stripes.