THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 24, 1994 TAG: 9410220012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: ANOTHER VIEW
SOURCE: By JEROME G. MILLER
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
Gov. George Allen has made ``toughness'' the hallmark of his correctional policy. It's nothing new.
In fact, the governor's anti-crime proposals are uncomfortably similar to these from another era: Aggravated penalties are proposed for most offenses; sentences will be greatly longer; mitigation will all but disappear; attempts will be punished as harshly as accomplished crimes; drunkenness will be an aggravating rather than an extenuating circumstance; the death penalty will be liberally used; prisons will be made harsher with no amenities; and the discipline of inmates will be left to the discretion of prison administrators.
This proposal closed with these familiar words, ``It seems that the welfare of the criminal, and not the welfare of the people is the main purpose of the criminal law.'' It was, of course the anti-crime platform prepared by the minister of justice for the National Socialist Party and submitted to the German people in 1933.
I use this reference because it resonates with another time in the Virginia legislature comparable to the present moment.
In the late 1920s, Virginia lawmakers rushed to stem the tide of groups seen as threatening the state's stability - the retarded, the mentally ill and so-called criminal psychopaths. In the hysteria, Virginia set about sterilizing institutionalized inmates - disproportionately poor and black. Indeed, consultants to Virginia's legislature later provided assistance to the planners of the early Third Reich which came to base its eugenics laws upon the Virginia statues. Though racism drove these initiatives, race was seldom mentioned.
The current debate in Richmond carries no less ominous a potential and is driven by similar considerations. They rest in the fact that though in the past about 75 percent of prison admissions nationally have been white, in the wake of the drug war these ratios have been turned upside down. Now, almost three of every four inmates sent into our state and federal prisons are minorities - 56 percent black, 18 percent Latino.
In Virginia, the black-white ratios are even greater. This new reality has led us into the era of the ``rhetorical wink,'' whereby politicians can vow toughness on criminals while predominantly white constituencies understand that as the vicious rhetoric winds its way toward implementation, it will be directed primarily at black males. No one need utter race.
In this spirit, the debate in Richmond has been a patchwork of sound bites. We hear it's about stemming violent crime. However, violent crime has been falling in Virginia, and 73 percent of admissions to Virginia prisons are for non-violent offenses.
Then we learn that drug possession and burglary have been quietly transmogrified into ``violent'' crimes. In such an atmosphere, the fact that no one can point to any jurisdiction which has cut violent crime by abolishing parole or adding longer prisons sentences is beside the point. Why all this mindlessness? The debate is not about results.
Having had responsibility for state youth-corrections systems in three of the largest states in the Union (Illinois, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts), I am not naive about the politics of race and crime. The current signs in Virginia suggest that a self-fulfilling prophecy is being put in place which will guarantee prison unrest, thereby justifying retaliatory violence by the administration - all with no effect on lowering crime.
To this end, the governor has appointed a corrections commissioner who built his reputation upon his readiness to arm guards with buckshot-loaded shotguns and to use them liberally against inmates. The single most common medical emergency in the Nevada system which he formerly ran was for treatment of gun wounds to the legs and knees of inmates.
It is clear that Virginia is laying the track for a system of all-black camps and institutions which, in the traditions of the old South, will be held in place by dogs and shotguns - modified only with the addition of modern swat teams made up mostly of other blacks to give an impression of racial equality. The engineers on this train leaving Richmond might ponder the words of Winston Churchill written in 1911 when, as Home secretary he was responsible for running Britain's prisons. ``The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals'' he wrote, ``is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country. A calm dispassionate recognition of the rights . . . of the convicted criminal against the State; a constant heart-searching of all charged with the deed of punishment; tireless efforts toward the discovery of regenerative processes; unfailing faith that there is a treasure . . . in the heart of every man. These are the symbols which in the treatment of crime and criminals measure the stored-up strength of a nation and are a sign and proof of the living virtue in it.''
These days, there's precious little ``living virtue'' to be found in Richmond, and the thuggery is not confined to the prisons. MEMO: Mr. Miller is clinical director of the Augustus Institute in Alexandria.
From 1989-1994, he was jail and prison monitor of the United States
Court in the Middle District of Florida.
by CNB