OPINION

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Legitimate … and arguable


It's a legitimately arguable need, meaning Republicans' vast new prison so that we can enforce a new law declaring that a serious felon must serve every day of his sentence without any of this early parole business for good behavior or overcrowding.

And it's a legitimately arguable point, meaning Democrats' counter- assertion that big prisons don't stop crime--otherwise prison-rich Southern states would have wiped out lawbreaking long ago--and that we instead need sensible gun laws and holistic approaches with better schooling, better mental health services, more opportunities and better alternatives to incarceration for drug offenses.

Republicans are right that many of the crimes in the current wave have been committed by early parolees, or by people who'd have been in the local jail if it wasn't backed up because the state prisons are backed up.

Democrats are right that many if not most of these local shootings are being done by children not yet in prison who now have social media to ignite their feuds and sophisticated assault-style weaponry with which to conclude them.

Republicans cite common sense that criminals in prison can't terrorize on the outside. Democrats cite expert analysis that an angry, violent man in prison with a "flat" sentence and no hope of early release is an angrier, more violent prisoner making for a more dangerous prison.

We face a cancer that political rhetoric can't address and political partisanship won't cure. We need a treatment plan that is not either/or.

We can use the big new prison for today's need. We must apply the holistic approach for tomorrow's.

Letting one of those schools of thought exclude the other--as each side currently insists--keeps us from developing a full and vital policy.

What we need is a small facility to jail politicians without parole until they emerge with a collaborative multi-pronged plan on crime.

So, what would we do with an expensive 3,000-bed prison if we then found success in reducing the need through concurrent and longer-term holistic approaches? Well, you could shut down an old prison and consolidate into the new one, enhancing efficiencies and saving ongoing operations costs while less crime is occurring in the community.

For now, the undeniable problem is social decay and the political rot of partisan rivals exploiting that decay and avoiding serious pursuit of solutions.

Just the other day, Gov. Sarah Sanders crowed in praise of herself. She said she was at last showing the political courage to build a gigantic new prison unlike those before her--all since her daddy, anyway--who had been political cowards shrinking from that call for her caliber of courage.

Only an honor graduate of the school of Trumpian nonsense could say with a straight face that it takes political courage in Arkansas to throw more people in prison and keep them there longer. Saying simplistically popular things in self-congratulatory language and manner is not courage. It is demagoguery.

Real political courage would rest in saying the "Field of Dreams" crime-and-punishment plan--if you build the cells the convicts will come--is, standing alone, a mere compounding of the problem. It's a doubling-down on insanity that can lead only to a tripling-down.

Real political courage would rest in saying let's build a new prison now and work hard not to need it very long.

For their response, the state's Democrats put out a statement emphasizing only the more holistic approach, avoiding the immediate problem. And they said Sanders' plan is so unjust that it treats a marijuana user like a serious felon. It most certainly does not. Its very purpose--its very central and essential element--is to apply a bigger hammer to the violent.

Now, to close on a rare positive note: I initially found myself slightly irked or amused by Attorney General Tim Griffin's rhetoric on the issue. He complained that he'd been at a Chick-fil-A and seen un-helmeted kids on dirt bikes popping wheelies in the street. I asked his office to identify the Chick-fil-A in question and make clearer the supposed relevance of such misbehavior to the need for a 3,000-bed prison.

The attorney general responded promptly and on point.

Griffin said, "Criminal justice is not just about violent criminals. It's about a spectrum of activity. In order to deal with more serious violent crime, you must deal with lawlessness on our streets and in our communities, including drag racing, graffiti, et cetera. The point is when you pack our local jails with violent felons who belong in state prison, you eliminate misdemeanor justice, and you get more lawlessness ... . The Chick-fil-A that was referenced is the one that is a few blocks from the mayor's office."

That would be the mayor in Little Rock. The little political dig was tame by modern standard.

And, really, flouting traffic law shouldn't be tolerated just down busy Broadway from City Hall--or anywhere, for that matter.


John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.



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