Maybe This White Republican Congressman CaresMore For Us Than We Do.

Thursday, February 16, 1995

CRIMINALS ARE WRONGDOERS, NOT VICTIMS

By James M. Talent

U.S. Representative, Mo. 2nd District

Americans are alarmed at the high rate of violent crime, and justly so.Each year, nearly 5 million Americans are victims of murder, rape, robberyor assault. A murder occurs every 21 minutes, a rape every five minutes,a robbery every 46 seconds and an aggravated assault every 29 seconds. Evenworse, juvenile crime increased by 60 percent during the last decade. St.Louisans don't need to read statistics to know how bad the crime problemreally is.

We witness the results of violent crimes daily on the news, and too manyof us have been victimized. We also know things about crime that statisticscan't account for. The crime epidemic is demoralizing and disheartening.It erodes our confidence in law enforcement. It takes away jobs as businessesflee areas where crime and disorder are rife. It discourages us from participatingin activities we enjoy or going to places we want. Ordinary citizens knowthe system is failing and that it will continue to fail until individualsare held accountable for their actions and the harm they do to others.

For 30 years, leaders in Washington have had a different idea: that criminalsare victims of an unjust society. They tell us that individuals do not freelyand intentionally choose a criminal career. Instead, individual offendersare shaped by factors - whether social, economic, biological or psychological- over which they have no control. According to this mode of thinking, peoplebecome violent criminals because the schools fail them or they have troublefinding jobs.

The erosion of the idea of personal responsibility has had tragic consequences.It has created revolving-door justice where convicted offenders are ableto commit crimes over and over again. More than a third of all those arrestedfor violent crime are violent criminals who were on probation, parole orother forms of judicial custody. A Bureau of Justice statistics report indicatesthat in 1991, 94 percent of state prison inmates had been convicted of aviolent crime or had a previous sentence to probation or prison. For every100 crimes reported in 1986, only 4.3 percent of the perpetrators went toprison; when adjusted for unreported crimes, only 1.7 percent of offenderswere imprisoned.

Convicted criminals should spend their time in the penitentiary being penitent.Instead, our system encourages them to file grievances challenging the conditionsof their incarceration. In the past 20 years, the number of prisoner lawsuitshas skyrocketed and exceeded 33,000 in 1993. About one out of every sixsuits in federal court each year is filed by convicts.

Prisoner petitions have turned many prisons into "glamor slammers."As a result of court-ordered relief, many criminals have better living conditionsand opportunities than honest families. Felons in Pennsylvania exercisewith aerobic machines while watching HBO. Massachusetts life inmates, alongwith the invited guests, eat catered prime rib.

A provision [to the new crime bill] makes federal prison funding availableonly to states that agree not to provide inmates with such extravagances.Second, new truth-in-sentencing incentives would help lock the revolvingdoor of prisons. Currently, violent criminals receive an average sentenceof eight years but serve only one-third of the sentence. History shows thatafter incarceration rates increase, the crime rate moderates. Keeping violentcriminals in prison for at least 85 percent of their sentences - truth insentencing - is the surest route the criminal justice system can take toachieve safer schools, streets and homes. The crime bill authorizes $10.5billion for state prison cell construction but reserves half that moneyfor states that adopt truth-in-sentencing statutes. More prison cells andguarantees that prisoners serve most of their sentence means violent criminalswould be behind bars longer. Third, the crime bills return to the traditionalidea that, to reduce violent crime, punishment must be swift, certain andsevere. Today, a criminal can appeal his conviction an unlimited numberof times. Every year, inmates file thousands of habeas corpus petitionschallenging their incarceration. Virtually all such petitions lack merit,and they clog federal court dockets. This trend has made a mockery of thecriminal justice system.

The crime bill significantly reforms the system by limiting the number ofappeals and establishing time limits. Convicted felons would be able tofile only one appeal and would have to file that appeal within one year.This reform means that convicted murders on death row, like John Wayne Gacy,would not be able to delay execution for 10 or 12 years. Of course, stoppingcrime means more than criminal justice reform. It also means empoweringAmericans to rebuild the families and neighborhoods of our cities. But partof the overall solution is institutionalizing the idea that people mustaccept responsibility for their actions. That idea has tremendous power,and the legislation reincorporating it into our criminal justice systemrepresents a major step forward in restoring the basic right of our peopleto safe homes and neighborhoods.

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