DON'T EASE UP ON CRIMINALS

With tight budgets, many state legislators are reviewing their tough
sentencing laws from the past decade. Those inmates cost money, and
letting them out early could save some. It's a temptation, but
lawmakers beware. news-press.com MyStory: Your chance to join the
debate With the states facing budget diffculties, should mandatory
criminal sentencing laws be changed to allow earlier release for some
convicts?

To review mandatory sentencing with new information about crime or
rehabilitation is one thing. If mandatory sentences are in the way of
rehabilitation that can return inmates to the streets as good
citizens, then consider revision.

The huge increase in the number of inmates brought down crime because
it kept criminals off the streets, not rehabilitated drug addicts.

But if the legislatures are letting criminals out just to save money,
and because they can get away with it with crime being low, that's a
bad gamble for the people.

The lesson of the 1990s was that the most effective single way for the
criminal justice system to reduce America's brutal crime rate was to
lock up as many dangerous people as possible and keep them behind bars
for as long as reasonable.

It took 30 years to absorb that truth. It cannot be allowed to slip
away now. State budgets should not be balanced on the backs of the
crime victims.

But tough sentencing was never meant to exclude rehabilitation.