Years ago, I accompanied former Wyoming Congressman Teno
Roncalio as we drove past Rawlins. From the interstate, we could see the
original prison in the heart of the town. From the late 1800s until the 1970s
it was Wyoming’s only prison.
Teno glanced at the aged facility and said, “They should
open the doors and let ‘em all out.”
That might shock those who didn’t know Teno. He was a
compassionate man who occasionally used hyperbole to make his point. He didn’t
mean “all.” He knew some couldn’t be released as a matter of public safety. A
former prosecutor, he also knew there were many who shouldn’t have been there
at all and others who had served more than enough time to pay their debts to
society.
We learned during law school that prison sentences have four
purposes; retribution, isolation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. In practice,
it’s retribution that underlies too many sentencing decisions.
As a result, the U.S. has the world’s 2nd highest
incarceration rate. Seychelles, an Indian
Ocean island archipelago is first. Wyoming does more than its fair share to
help the U.S. compete for the “incarceration-nation” trophy.
Prisons are extraordinarily expensive as Wyoming is learning
from the debate over whether to build another at a cost that could exceed a
quarter of a billion dollars. Maybe policymakers should ask themselves whether
the people filling our prisons are there because we’re afraid of them or
because we’re mad at them.
There are 2,116 men and 290 women imprisoned in Wyoming.
Thirty percent are there, not because their original crime warranted prison
sentences, but because they violated probation. Of those, 70 percent, languish
in expensive prison cells because their probation breach involved using drugs
or alcohol. That tells you that hundreds are incarcerated because the criminal
justice system is mad at them for failing an alcohol or drug test.
Most of them could be supervised less expensively and more
effectively with a much smaller investment in drug courts or by prioritizing
them in the community mental health system, which Wyoming already funds to the
tune of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Of the 2,116 males in prison, a third are there for violent
crimes. A slightly larger percentage is incarcerated for property and drug
crimes. Among the 290 women in Wyoming’s prison, 44.5% are there for drug
crimes, 26.6% for property crimes, and 19.3% for violent crimes.
There is another option, the one to which Teno alluded and President
Barack Obama took. Wyoming should consider how many of the current inmates the
taxpayers must continue to warehouse?
The former President reviewed the cases of thousands of
federal inmates. He concluded that about 12% of them, including nine from
Wyoming, could be safely released even though their full terms had not been
served. He granted clemency to 1,715 inmates. Another 212 received pardons. For
the most part, they were non-violent drug offenders. That totals 1,927 people
for whom the taxpayers no longer pay to house.
Mr. Obama considered the pardons and commutations a
recognition that the criminal justice system is broken and he felt he could,
thereby, restore a sense of fairness. Governor Matt Mead should consider taking
similar actions in order to restore some sense of fiscal responsibility as well
as fairness to Wyoming’s justice system.
The Governor is, however, a former prosecutor. This would be
hard for him to imagine. But sentencing is not a science and vengeance is
expensive. There are some whose sentences were wildly disparate from the crime
and others who received a fair sentence but their conduct has demonstrated
rehabilitation.
Eliminating those imprisoned for violent crimes, the Governor
should create a system designed to ferret out how many of the remaining 1,416
men and 234 women could be safely moved from costly prison cells and into the
community. Then the legislature needs to fix the system so that those who are
sent to prison are there because we are afraid of them and not because we are
mad at them.
