Have you ever been the victim of a crime? Was an arrest made? Could you even get the police to take a report?
These are not questions that concern the Commission on Public Safety. What they want to know is: How can they persuade ordinary citizens in Oregon that crime is all in their heads?
This commission is laying the groundwork to overturn Measure 11, Oregon’s minimum-mandatory sentence law approved by voters in 1994.
At its first in-person hearing last week in the State Capitol, the commission left no doubt where it’s headed. The all-day hearing was a rehearsed event. Even the 11 citizens who spoke under the public comment portion were all on the same page.
The only peculiarity was the repeated praise for Texas and suggestions that Oregon should follow that state’s lead by spending more on treatment and less on incarceration. (Nobody mentioned the high execution rate in Texas.)
Here’s the storyline that the commission is pursuing: Prosecutors have too much power, judges not enough power, and the people who support Measure 11 are afraid of crime that no longer exists.
Craig Prins, one of the commission’s advisors, read — almost mockingly –from an old voter’s pamphlet argument in favor of Measure 11:
“It is time to put justice back into the criminal justice system. … Current criminals will learn that crime does not pay in Oregon. … Everyone will know the exact minimum sentence which must be served.”
State Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul De Muniz, who chairs the commission, asked “What science says these sentences are the minimum required for justice and for the victim?”
Prins replied, “I believe it was intuitive reaction, not science.”
He skipped back and forth among charts and graphs in a PowerPoint presentation designed to show that crime has decreased dramatically in Oregon and the nation, suggesting that this is primarily because there are fewer males ages 15 to 39.
Yet a 2010 Gallup Poll showed 66 percent of Americans still think there is more crime than a year ago.
Former Gov. Ted Kulongoski and state Sen. Jackie Winters (whose late husband was an ex-felon) blamed the media for warping the public with excessive news coverage of crime.
How, commission members wondered, can they change that public perception?
One way to alter perception is to change the public’s priorities, Prins suggested. While they want to be kept safe, in this economy they also want jobs, jobs, jobs, he said. (He’s probably now calculating how to use the “Occupy Wall Street” protests to drum up opposition to Measure 11.)
There’s something else at work here besides a desire to move money from corrections and spend it on other programs. Prins let it slip when he noted that most crime victims are poor: “The poor and destitute … have received the benefit of this drop in crime,” he said.
No wonder the prosperous men and women inside the State Capitol hearing room want to dismantle Measure 11. They – and their friends – live in good neighborhoods. They have excellent insurance. People like Kulongoski, Prins and Winters don’t feel like they have benefited from the drop in crime. They’ve lost revenue to play with, and they want it back.
In its attempt to change public perception, the Commission on Public Safety wants the public to become less sympathetic towards crime victims. “Those people are not you,” Prins is essentially telling the middle class. “You’re safe.”
Oregon has enjoyed a long transit through the Age of Aquarius. The Commission on Public Safety and its advisory staff don’t acknowledge this. They act like the trouble began with the passage of Measure 11.
Consider this quote: “It’s a billion dollar business in our country – and the biggest and greatest in the world – American corrections.”
That could’ve been Prins, Kulongoski or De Muniz complaining. It was Thomas E. Gaddis, Portland resident and author of “Birdman of Alcatraz,” writing in the Sept. 30, 1973 issue of The Oregonian’s “Northwest Magazine.”
Gaddis had been involved with Oregon’s Project NewGate, which welcomed incarcerated prisoners onto college campuses in the 1960s and 70s. Some prisoners made better lives for themselves. Some didn’t.
By 1985, Oregon’s crime rate was one of the highest in the nation after two decades of steady increases. In 1989, the state legislature finally roused itself and established new felony sentencing guidelines requiring, among other things, that a judge’s sentence would more closely reflect the actual time served.
Those new guidelines weren’t enough. Judges, who are used to others standing when they walk into the room, don’t take kindly to mere mortals telling them what to do.
That’s what voters did in 1994 when they passed Measure 11. Since then, other crime-fighting measures have followed.
“Our system is layered with initiatives,” Prins charged.
No, the system is layered with political promises, and when the politicians failed to deliver on public safety, citizens stepped in.
In the coming months, the commission will feed a lot of numbers to the media and public to persuade them that the state doesn’t need to spend so much money on incarceration (even though only serious felons go to prison in Oregon; even Prins acknowledged that).
The commission wants to avoid “anecdotal” evidence, possibly because it rings more truthful than a numbers game. Here’s an anecdote they should keep in mind anyway.
In the late 1990s, a criminal defense attorney in Southern California told me he was looking forward to retiring because the job had gotten so much harder. It wasn’t just the three-strikes-and-you’re-out rules that made going to trial riskier.
When this attorney was a young man, it was possible to seat a jury of men and women who had never been the victim of a crime. Now it was increasingly difficult to find jurors who had not been robbed of something, even if it was just a wallet. And if they hadn’t been a victim of a crime, then a friend, coworker or relative had. Often no arrest was made. Somebody had gotten away with a crime.
It isn’t just fear of crime that drives Americans to vote for get-tough-on-crime measures. It’s their strong sense of justice.
– Pamela Fitzsimmons
And in a democracy what does it say that we are not to beleive the voters when they sau over and over and over again what they want.
Measure 10, 1986 – Victims Rights – we were told civil rights would end if victims had a right to be present
Measure 11, 1994 – we were told there would be 6000 new inmates by 2000, there were haldf that
Measure 69, 1999 – See Measure 10 except in the Oregon Constitution and all the same argumnents, mostly by then Rep. Floyd Prozanski, who claims to be a victim but acts like an “offender” (don’t call them criminals)
Measure 57, 2008 – Gave judges the ability to imprison repeat burglars and car thieves, no mandatory sentences – legislature suspended it lmost imediately
Measure 73, 2010 – Was supposed to make 3rd DUII in ten years a felony but then Kevin Mannis claimed later that 13 months in prison would mean “that his measure unintentionally would have required too severe sentences for some drunken drivers.”
What’s next?
Now we have 14,000 prisoners in Oregon. In the US, we have 5% of the worlds population,and 25% of the worlds prison population. That makes us the worlds leading police state, with the harshest sentencing in the industrialized world.
On top of this, the crime rate is exactly the same now as is was 40 years ago. Except 40 years ago we had a fraction of the prisoners at a fraction of the cost.
Our criminal justice system has been diluted by people who would be better served by non-prison programs. Bar fights and pot growers for sure. DUI offenders and other behaviors that we have deemed criminal but do not necessarily have a conscious criminal intent need to be re-examined as candidates for prison.
Non-predator sexual offenders need a different set of punishments and less intermixing with the general criminal population. In addition, as a rule they need a different type of supervision following their release if they are going to be successfully reintegrated into society.
The same goes with ultra-violent and schizophrenic individuals who for some reason or anther we refuse to properly label as criminally insane.
Allowing all criminal types to intermingle in prison results in a cross training of criminal behaviors and a high level of criminal networking. Ultimately we may not be able to control the networks springing up in the vast populations that we have created. The aryan brotherhood is only the tip of the iceberg.
Given how poorly our system reforms – 45% recidivism at 5 years – I don’t think anyone can honestly say that our system is successful. Getting 55% correct on a quiz or exam is an “F”. That would actually suggest if you crunch the numbers, that once someone goes to prison the likelihood that they will go on to lead a criminal lifestyle increases by about 25 time that of the non-prison going population. Prison begets prison. Who would have thunk.
Hello, No_comment: You’ve made some statements that are untrue, but it’s not surprising since they are made repeatedly in the established media.
As Craig Prins (who wants to overturn Measure 11) has said, Oregon does not imprison anybody on drug possession alone. For that matter, most felonies don’t lead to prison.
You need at least three DUIs in Oregon to face a possible prison sentence, and considering the death and damage that drivers under the influence cause, that’s not unreasonable. (In my own family, I had a cousin driving drunk who killed an 8-year-old boy. I have a friend who lost his wife to a drunk driver who had multiple prior convictions.)
You might say drunk drivers simply need treatment. I say substance abuse treatment has turned into a big business in this country. A lot of this treatment is expensive and has few results to show. Facing the music is sometimes the toughest, and most effective, treatment; after spending some time at Oregon State Penitentiary and breaking bread with “Happy Face” Jesperson, my cousin never drove drunk again.
As for the criminally insane, some are and some aren’t. I’ve written previously about how prison inmates have learned to game that system. (“The Appeal of Insanity”)
About three decades ago, a lot of well-educated “experts” decided that the insane should not be institutionalized. Some politicians leaning left agreed, saying it was cruel; some politicians leaning right agreed, saying those institutions cost too much. As a result, we now have paranoid schizophrenics on the street, freed by good intentions and a desire to save money.
We do not have the world’s leading police state. We have the freest, most heterogeneous nation on earth. We have more liberties than any other country, and some people can’t handle it. Increasingly, we give people handy excuses to misuse those liberties. Do you abuse drugs? (You’ve got a disease!) Drink too much? (You’ve got a disease!) Do you steal? (You’re needy!) Behave violently? (You were abused!) And if you kill, well, you were on drugs, or drunk, or abused, or you’re insane. Does anybody want to be held to answer?
Either we give up some of our liberties, or we stop making excuses for those who can’t handle too much freedom.
Thanks for writing.
Peace.
Pamela
Those commission people probably didn’t like a story I saw in the Oregonian couple days ago, something like, “Crime is going up in the Pearl District.” That’s supposed to be the upper case part of town.
I meant “upper class” part of Portland. I’m not “poor and destitute” … my opinion counts.
G. Sanchez: The Pearl District story is the kind of news that some of the commissioners would say was taken out of context. They could have a point. They might have a harder time with the story of the Oregon man and woman arrested near Sacramento who are wanted on suspicion of killing two, maybe three people here. The man and woman have lengthy criminal histories and have been given second, third and fourth chances. But at least they were not in an expensive prison.
Pamela
I’d love to hear which of my comments specifically are untrue. In the meantime I’d address some of the things you claim that are in fact untrue and misleading. I’ll try to address them as specifically as possible.
You have stated that “We have the freest, most heterogeneous nation on earth.” We are setting world records for the number of people who are not free every day. This makes us the least free country on earth. I don’t know if you have been living with your head in the sand, but we have 5% of the worlds population and 25% of the worlds prisoners. Whatever else you want to say, you are just going to get laughed at if you go around claiming that we live in the freest society.
China is a distant second with 1.6 million prisoners. Further, If they wanted to have the same ratio as us, they would need to have 10 million prisoners.
Our imprisonment rate is 10 times that of the industrialized nations. That is to say, nations whom we think of as peers.
There were about 2500 prisoners in Oregon 40 years ago. The population of Oregon has doubled since then, while the prison population, well, 14000/2500 = 5.6 times increase. The crime ratio is the same as it was 40 years ago, the inmate population and associated costs is growing at 2.3 times that rate. I’m not sure if you know how to read growth population data, but even rates of 1.2 can get out of hand very fast.
My next point to address is this notion that you have that drug users don’t go to prison for drugs alone, and most felonies don’t go to prison. You are quite right! Interestingly, I have never contended otherwise in my response. However you seem to think this is a good thing. Lets think about this. We have record imprisonment rates and most felons don’t go to prison. That means that the inmate population is out of control AND a huge – massive – like nothing we have ever seen before criminal population is in our society. Does this mean that we have 5% of the worlds population and 75% of the worlds probationers? That would be an extremely worrying number – indicative of a serious problem that we are not addressing and that we aren’t even talking about. I don’t think imprisonment of those numbers is even a viable economic option. We either figure out a successful reform policy or we drown under a sea of inmates.
This leads me to my next point, wrongful conviction rates and what happens when we have a huge inmate population. What do you think the wrongful conviction rate is?
0% ?
0 – 0.5% ?
0.5% – 5% ?
5% – 10% ?
>10% ?
0% is obviously an absurd number. No system is perfect. So lets consider the best cast scenario of 0.5%
0.5% of 14000 is 70 people who are locked up for years and years who have committed no crime at all. Keep in mind that I have given you the best case scenario. We are still talking about a system ruled by measure 11 in which very few cases ever go to trial – most people face incredibly harsh penalties if “they don’t take a deal”. Other people are convicted on nothing more than eye witness testimony. If we add those factors in and choose a conservative number still – 5% then we have 700 people in prison who are not guilty of anything.
Ok, now lets look at people gaming the mental system. I think that the greater success coming out of the state hospital speaks for itself. I would say that if they are gaming the system the state hospital is turning around and gaming them – because their reform rates are better.
You facetiously pointed out to G. Sanchez that the two people who just went on a murderous rampage were not in an expensive Oregon prison. I would counter that if we weren’t wasting our time on people who don’t deserve prison that we would be able to focus on these truly dangerous criminals. David was out for 134 days before he murdered someone. If the person that we hired to watch David wasn’t overloaded with 5 times the number of cases that he could handle, may he would have noticed on day 10 that he was dealing with a murderous animal. If our jails weren’t full of 80% reform candidates who don’t belong in long prison terms, maybe we would have a cell to toss him on day 10 instead of day 134. The monstrous failure of our system, of mandatory sentences, of out of whack prosecutorial power really is driven home by cases like these. There was a case recently in california where a parolee kidnapped and raped a woman for 18 years. That is 18 year of rape. While on parole. Can you really sit there and tell me that that parolee’s supervisor would not have caught them sooner if the california prison system hadn’t swelled to vastly unsustainable levels?
Who would you rather have in prison, David on day 133 (the day before he killed anyone), or your cousin who probably felt terrible about killing someone after driving drunk and would have fixed the problem with the help of prison.
David and those types of criminal are not the type that we miss when we do away with mandatory sentencing. Those are the type of people we find huddled around pools of blood. These are the type of people that we have been locking up since the inception of the criminal justice system.
When we let people like you influence policy we end up with loads of false assumptions, crumbling logic foundations, out of control costs, and laws dictated by feelings rather than results.
No_Comment_or:
I don’t worry about getting laughed at.
We are, in fact, the freest nation on earth. Want proof? Millions of people try desperately to get into this country every year. If we were, in fact, a police state (one of your untrue statements), people would not want to come here. You and I would not be having this debate.
We have a lot of prisoners in America because we have a lot of crime. Why do we have so much crime? Because we have a lot freedom, including the freedom to abuse drugs, booze and guns. We have the freedom to mess up our lives and harm others. We have a lot of crime because (for some people) crime feels good. We have a lot of crime because, despite what some of our parents told us, crime pays.
Another untrue statement: All criminal types intermingle in prison. No, that’s why we have minimum-security to maximum-security prisons. Criminals don’t need prison to teach them how to be criminals; they may pick up a few pointers there, but nothing they can’t hear on the streets or see on TV. What prison does is restrict criminals from acting on the general public.
Also untrue: We have the harshest sentencing in the industrialized world. You have to work to get into prison here because first you have to be arrested, and then you have to be convicted. I don’t think you fully appreciate how many crimes go unsolved. I could spend most of today just listing all the people I know who have been victims of property crimes, and none of those crimes were solved.
You can dismiss property crimes as unserious, but when I was a reporter I met career criminals who got their start with a string of successful property crimes. It gives a guy confidence. He moves on up.
Also untrue: “The crime rate is exactly the same now as (it) was 40 years ago.” Nothing, absolutely nothing (not even Mt. Hood), is exactly the same as it was 40 years ago. How many gang-related shootings did we have in Portland 40 years ago?
Especially untrue: “Our criminal justice system has been diluted by people who would be better served by non-prison programs. Bar fights and pot growers for sure.” Unless they’ve got priors or extenuating circumstances, nobody goes to prison in Oregon just for a bar fight or growing marijuana. (Did you know that it is possible to be in a bar fight and end up in a coma? Did you know there is a difference between growing marijuana for your own use or for a handful of medical patients, and maintaining a million-dollar grow guarded by men with guns?)
If you study a little history, you’ll know that Oregon went through two decades of embracing non-prison programs. The result: One of the highest crime rates in the country. Now maybe that’s just a coincidence. Or it could be that those non-prison programs, combined with the culture of the day (sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll) fed that crime rate. We’re still receiving residuals from those decades.
I’m not sure what you mean by “non-predator sexual offenders.” Many sexual offenders are predators because they think they’re surrounded by prey for the taking.
I’ve already addressed what you call the criminally insane, who may in fact be insane or may simply be criminal. But landing in a mental institution vs. a prison is considered a victory for many defendants and their attorneys. Like I wrote elsewhere: You get better drugs and a shot at some pussy. (To quote someone who has been there, done that.)
No, our system is not successful. But you cannot divorce it from the culture we are living in. We make heroes and heroines out of the wrong people. We don’t hold parents accountable for what their children learn at home. We make a lot of excuses for crime, and we end up with a substantial criminal population. (Do you know what you get when you marry a meth epidemic with a “pro-life” culture? Babies.)
It isn’t prison that begets prison. It’s prisoners who beget a second generation, and a third.
Again, thanks for writing.
Pamela
Professor Samuel Gross of the University of Michigan and a team wrote a paper about wrongful convictions published in the Journal of Criminal Law of Northwestern Law School in 2005. He included cases where the defendant was cleared by DNA and acknowledged errors in eyewitness identification but he also included cases where the DA simply chose not to re-prosecute after a reversal and even acquittals – not the same thing as an exoneration (see OJ Simpson, etc)
He used the time period of 1989-2003. He also postulated that the actual number was under-counted because just “had to be more out there.” In that time period the FBI reports 1.5 million forcible rapes (not statutory) and willful homicides (not vehicular manslaughter) Assuming – and this is a BIG leap – that Gross’s numbers were in fact a magnitude larger – 10 times – then the error rate or wrongful conviction rate would be .26 of 1 percent nationally.
Rate that against almost any other serious human endeavor – surgeries, deaths from pharmacy mistakes – and you are about 10 times more likely to be killed by your family doctor (inadvertently) than wrongly convicted in America.
Please point to actual cases of people doing Oregon prison time who “don’t belong there.” Oregon judges have almost complete discretion, except in Measure 11 cases to NOT send someone to prison and in fact in over 70% of felonies sentencing guidelines actually forbid them from doing so, even if they think that’s a just sentence.
So no-one, as in zero inmates, are in Oregon prisons for simple possession of drugs, even their 10th conviction. No-one, again as in zero, first time car thieves, ID thieves, even residential burglars go to prison. MAYBE on the second conviction but overall less than 75% of convicted felons in Oregon go to prison.
Oregon and the US are a much safer place now than 25 years ago when hug-a-thug was the official policy. You don’t want to know the murder rates in Central or South America (even lovely peaceful Costa Rica), or South Africa (the most modern of African states) or almost anywhere else outside western Europe.
I don’t know about this debate your having. What I want to know is did you ever find out what Jackie Winters husband did? He’s dead, I realize, but he was in prison and you can’t but wonder.
I’ve got no gripe with her, just curious. A family member used to know her and said it was not brought up.
Sorry, Trina, I was unable to find details about Marc “Ted” Winters’ criminal history. I didn’t have a chance to chat with Sen. Winters at the hearing. I prowled around The Oregonian’s historical archives but found nothing about the circumstances of his crimes. He was released and later went to work at the state Capitol. He wrote a book called “Lifer,” but I couldn’t locate a copy.
I did find a 1973 story in The Oregonian’s old Northwest Magazine in which the author of “The Birdman of Alcatraz” complains about the costs of U.S. prisons. People have been complaining about prison costs for more than 40 years.
And I found a 1977 story by Oregonian reporter Les Zaitz, calling into question whether Jackie Winters, then the state ombudsman, had a conflict because her husband was running a business that relied on state contracts. The business trained people for sales jobs, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the trainees were ex-felons (not that there is anything wrong with that).
But the same people who criticize the prison-industrial complex apparently haven’t noticed that post-prison employment services and substance abuse treatment have also become a big business.
Sen. Winters’ personal connection with corrections could give her a deeper perspective. I learned a lot about corrections from jail and prison inmates. They aren’t always sympathetic towards their cohorts.
Pamela
Pamela,
You make some really interesting points. I disagree with the premise of many of those points and feel that we should weight the results more than the process, but I respect your stance and hear where you are coming from.
Winters’ convictions were for Attempted Murder of police officers as a juvenile and then Life in prison for Armed Robbery.
He did NOT serve a Life sentence….
Thanks. Someone also sent me an obituary written by Peter Wong of the Stateman-Journal that included this: “Ted Winters had spent much of his first four decades in and out of institutions, including MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn — where he was sent at age 15 — and the Oregon State Penitentiary. He was sentenced to prison in 1952 for the attempted killing of two police officers, released in 1960, then sentenced to life in 1962 on a charge of first-degree armed robbery.
“While contemplating suicide in prison in 1963, Winters wrote later, he turned his life around because of religion.”
Pamela
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