TOUGH SENTENCES

Americans favor tough criminal sentences, especially when they come
with mandatory minimums. But those sentences are very expensive to
taxpayers, and they don't always provide society with the best protection.

That is the conclusion of a study conducted by the American Bar
Association over the past year and released on Wednesday. The ABA
conducted the study in the aftermath of U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Anthony Kennedy's rebuke last year of the criminal sentencing systems
in effect at the federal and state levels. Kennedy appropriately
charged that mandatory minimum sentences are often too harsh and that
they take away a judge's flexibility to match punishment and offense.

At the crux of the ABA report is the determination that resources are
being wasted on lengthy, costly incarceration for people who do not
need to be locked up for long terms. The ABA correctly argues that
many convicts can be punished with shorter sentences or alternatives
to incarceration.

Judges have the sense to appropriately sentence offenders, but their
authority to do so has been steadily eroded over the past two decades
by laws with mandatory minimum sentences. North Carolina's criminal
sentences, for example, are established on a grid with judges given
little leeway within a very small range of sentences.

Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, argued that justice is not being served
by harsh sentences and that the country has become morally blind on
the topic. He has been especially critical of mandatory minimums for
some drug offenses.

As state legislatures and the Congress have moved to more and more
mandatory sentencing, the nation's crime rate has steadily dropped
while the prison population has skyrocketed. The president of the ABA
recently noted that there are 2.1 million people in American prisons.
That's one quarter of all people in prison worldwide.

North Carolina has seen its prison population double in the last 20
years, and steps taken by the General Assembly this year are almost
certain to create more demand for prison space. The legislature is
moving to toughen penalties for production and possession of
methamphetamine and it has already toughened domestic-violence laws.

Meth production and domestic violence are crimes that should be
punished severely, but some North Carolina lawmakers have argued for
years that the state has long sentences for some non-violent crimes
that could be reduced significantly.

Those sentences mean a continuing drain on taxpayer resources and,
most likely, a shortage of funds to fight crime in other ways.

Legislators should take the ABA report, and Kennedy's remarks, very
seriously as they face the growing demand for new prisons.