Political Courage....

There was a post (via Glenn Greenwald) I intended to write about a couple of weeks ago on Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and the statements he made about reforming the American criminal justice system a few weeks from the floor of the Senate. Here is the text of the speech here.

This is not a sexy topic, in this day and age. We as a society have particularly harsh and uneven criminal justice system in place now. Our current system, by design does not encourage rehabilitation. It also disproportionately afflicts the lower rungs of our economic hierarchy as well as minority groups (Mr. Coates post dovetails nicely with the subject matter of Greenwald's). This post and these studies (here, here, here and here) speak to this predicament. But more insidiously, our current system and our current dialog unfairly stigmatizes those communities.

So what Sen. Webb did was take an issue, not on any one's radar, an issue that opens him up to all sorts of attacks. Predicated on the false, "Tough on Crime", meme that is often trotted out versus democrats (especially in a state such as Virginia that has a large prison industry complex and lobby). Yet despite all that, it is an issue the senator clearly cares deeply about and sees as huge inequity. In particular there was one quote that caught my attention, that I feel needs to definitely be highlighted. When speaking on the senate floor, Sen. Webb, had this to say:

Let's start with a premise that I don't think a lot of Americans are aware of. We have 5% of the world's population; we have 25% of the world's known prison population. We have an incarceration rate in the United States, the world's greatest democracy, that is five times as high as the average incarceration rate of the rest of the world. There are only two possibilities here: either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States; or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice. . . .

This is a profound statement. The debate that should be being had over these findings alone could fill thesis from here to Kathmandu. But this is never talked about, not even discussed. It is an article of faith, in this country, that tougher penalties and harsher sentencing requirements deter crime. So by extension incarceration rates should go down, under that belief framework. That this is not the case does not seem to get a lot of coverage.

Yet despite all that, Sen. Webb still made his comments, in about as public a forum as one can make in this country. The silence from the media or the cable shows was almost deafening.

This issue has so many larger policy implications from the war on drugs, to prisoner treatment, to even restitution for victims. And none of that was deemed news worthy.

Further Sen. Webb went on to talk about the conditions in prisons and how they only further 'criminalize' its members. From the rigid hierarchies that can form inside those walls to prisoner abuse and sexual victimization. The very system seems to work against itself.

I do not have any real solutions to offer, but it is nice to know that there are those who think it is both a real problem, and that it needs some serious solutions to address it.

And that takes real political courage to stand by your convictions like that. Especially when no one is clamoring for that change, and there is very real political jeopardy. Now I do not agree with everything Sen. Webb says. He has made some truly horrible votes and policy statements in his relatively short tenure in the Senate. But I do have a deep amount of respect for an individual that speaks with sincerity and passion on an issue that may not be part of the conventional wisdom, and for that Sen. Webb should be applauded.

-Cheers.