DRUGS AND PRISON CROWDING

Re "Taking on a crisis," editorial, Feb. 12: Modifying California's
"three strikes" law is hardly the "best" way to address our prison
overcrowding.

With more than half of the inmates incarcerated because of "drug"
crimes (many of which carry mandatory, often ridiculous, sentences),
rather than release criminals who have demonstrated their inability
to obey the law by committing at least three distinct crimes, surely
it would be better to overhaul the sentencing laws so as to permit
release (on parole, of course) of relatively harmless druggies and
other non-violent prisoners.

It's time we start punishing criminal conduct rather than the results
of that conduct, and tailoring the punishment to fit the criminal
rather than the crime.

Sentencing a hardened criminal to 90 days for leading a high-speed
chase resulting in no "casualties" (assuming that to be the maximum
allowable sentence) makes no sense, when we give a non-criminal type
who leads exactly the same kind of chase a life sentence if someone
is killed. In both cases, the results of the chase are strictly fortuitous.

- - Gene C. Sproul

Orangevale