Pubdate: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 Source: News-Press (FL) Copyright: 2003 The News-Press Contact: http://www.news-press.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1133 DON'T EASE UP ON CRIMINALS With tight budgets, many state legislators are reviewing their tough sentencing laws from the past decade. Those inmates cost money, and letting them out early could save some. It's a temptation, but lawmakers beware. news-press.com MyStory: Your chance to join the debate With the states facing budget diffculties, should mandatory criminal sentencing laws be changed to allow earlier release for some convicts? To review mandatory sentencing with new information about crime or rehabilitation is one thing. If mandatory sentences are in the way of rehabilitation that can return inmates to the streets as good citizens, then consider revision. The huge increase in the number of inmates brought down crime because it kept criminals off the streets, not rehabilitated drug addicts. But if the legislatures are letting criminals out just to save money, and because they can get away with it with crime being low, that's a bad gamble for the people. The lesson of the 1990s was that the most effective single way for the criminal justice system to reduce America's brutal crime rate was to lock up as many dangerous people as possible and keep them behind bars for as long as reasonable. It took 30 years to absorb that truth. It cannot be allowed to slip away now. State budgets should not be balanced on the backs of the crime victims. But tough sentencing was never meant to exclude rehabilitation. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake