Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 14, 1994 TAG: 9409140017
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``I think the system tries to attack too many other things, such as drug crimes. Drugs cause violent crimes. Drugs are illegal. I'm not saying that other types of crime aren't bad and that we shouldn't police them, but let's work on violent crime first, and get rid of that 50 percent repeat rate.''
- Norwood Keel, 33, Arlington, engineer.
``I think it appears that a lot of the prison systems seem to be more like a motel or hotel arrangement than a penal system. I mean these people have air conditioning and cable TV and gymnasiums and everything that everybody else has and I think that's a problem.''
- Steve Sokol, 46, Newport News, contractor.
``I think that when someone commits a crime the punishment should be swift. We use too much of our money prosecuting these people for their crimes. I hate the death penalty. If there's some doubt about their guilt then, yes. But when you stand up there and actually videotape somebody shooting someone, it takes too long for a person to go through the system. And then, our parole system is too lenient. The reason for that is that they don't have anyplace to confine these people, because nobody wants one in their back yard.''
- Jim Reid, 51, Manassas, self-employed newspaper distributor.
``It's interesting, we've lived different places all over the world. We were able to walk on the streets at night, while moving back to the states you're cloistered again, you don't go outside.
``When I think of crime, I see a lot of `We reap what we sow' with our children, and we have to pay for it later. We pay four times as much later as we do now. When I think of crime, that's what I think of.''
Jan R. Ford, 41, Manassas.
``I've got an FBI record here - the guy that killed my father - that starts with felonious assault, fugitive from justice, felonious assault, murder, violation of national firearms act, unlawful concealment, assault with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, malicious maiming, murder in prison.
``They let him out. Six months later he killed my father. When you have violent crimes against people you need to put those people away and keep them away from the other people - the nonviolent people in the prison population.''
- William J. Smith III, Franklin, retail jeweler
``I've had someone close to me be the victim of a violent crime. It changes you, very much. It never goes away. It's an imprint on the person who's the victim. It's an imprint on the family of the victim. It's something that changes your life. I don't always think you can adjudicate that away.
``I really wouldn't be too concerned about justice, I would rather just have vengeance, but that's not the way it is. It's a tough thing.''
- Roland Lazenby, 41, writer and college instructor
``Rehabilitation, in my own mind, is a concept whose time has come and gone.''
- Johnsey L. Cabaniss II, 45, Roanoke, U.S. mail carrier
by CNB