Getting tough has a price

Kay Mclff is right. The state lawmaker and former judge told a legislative committee this week that a "get tough" attitude among politicians has led to longer prison sentences and is overcrowding state prisons, often needlessly. The number of reported crimes in the state is declining while the number of felony sentences handed down is increasing.

This is not a popular political position to take, so we admire his honesty. No one feels particularly kindly toward criminals. On the contrary, people generally want to punish them until they scream for mercy. But laws based on emotion seldom take into account the overall costs to society, nor do they accomplish much good.

Not only should penalties make sense, the state ought to put more resources into rehabilitation. Like it or not, nearly every inmate in the state prison system one day will be released.

The irony is that Mclff's comments come at the same time some people are criticizing the Legislature for not passing a version of Jessica's Law, which would provide minimum-mandatory sentences for people who commit sexual acts against children. Minimum-mandatory sentences take away a judge's ability to determine the severity of crime, and they can create terrible inequities. For instance, federal minimum-mandatory laws recently led to a Utahn being sentenced to 55 years for selling marijuana while having a pistol strapped to his ankle. Someone convicted of detonating a bomb in a public place, however, would have been sentenced to about 19 years.

Nor has anyone ever demonstrated the practical value of Jessica's Law. People convicted of child sexual assault already face stiff sentences in Utah, as well as a lifetime on a public registry that includes their address.

Through the years, other people have advocated catchy get-tough strategies based on slogans or sports analogies. Among these are the "three strikes" laws in California and elsewhere — anyone convicted of a third felony automatically receives a stiff sentence, such as 25 years without the possibility of parole. It makes no difference whether that third felony is a case of shoplifting or murder.

Speaking on this subject a few years ago, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said, "A people confident in its laws and institutions should not be ashamed of mercy." They also should not be ashamed to resist the urge to simply lock people away without any pretense of justice.

Utah has about 6,500 people imprisoned for various crimes. That qualifies as one of the lowest incarceration rates in the nation. But rates are not as important as a commitment to rehabilitation. A growing state can't ignore the need to build new prisons, but it gets much more value out of programs that change lives and sentences that fit the crimes committed.