Citiwire.net

For Release Sunday, January 22, 2012
© 2012 Washington Post Writers Group

“You’ll be woken in the morning by a convicted murderer.”

It was some years ago (1982), and the governor of Mississippi — William F. Winter — was talking. He’d graciously invited me to spend the night at the Governor’s Mansion. As he predicted, the next morning I was indeed politely awakened by a convict serving as a trustie at the mansion.

So earlier this month, when outgoing Gov. Haley Barbour stirred up a hornet’s nest with his pardon or clemency for over 200 offenders, I wondered if mansion trusties were among the bunch. And indeed, five — including four convicted murderers — were included. I checked with my friend former Gov. Winter (now 88), and he confirmed it was long-standing Mississippi custom — not just to assign several well-behaved and stabilized criminals from the state penitentiary to the mansion, but to suspend their sentences at the end of each governor’s term.

Barbour said he’d had so much confidence in the mansion trusties that he’d let his grandchildren play with them. Winter told me there’d even been one occasion, when other staff was off duty and he was obliged to be out of town, that he’d felt free to leave his wife, feeling ill, to the care of a single murderer trustie.

The Mississippi custom raises an intriguing question: What ever happened to the idea of rehabilitation in American justice as a whole? Historically, notes Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, it was common for governors to issue a significant number of pardons and commutations — typically just before Christmas, in a spirit of mercy and forgiveness.

But since the 1970s and the “get tough on crime” crusade, we’ve focused almost exclusively on punishment and retribution. We’ve increasingly spurned the idea of possible parole or pardon as an incentive for prisoners’ self-improvement — notwithstanding convincing research showing that even perpetrators of the most serious crimes often mature and become a radically reduced threat to public safety.

In fact, there’s been a virtual explosion of sentences for life imprisonment without parole — up to roughly 140,000 nationally, a doubling as a percentage of all prisoners since 1992. Most of the sentences are for murder, but many also for burglary, robbery, carjacking and the like.

Included are offenders we have reason to fear and want to keep off the streets for several years. But forever? Do we really want to leave all of them with zero hope of ever going free, so that there’s no incentive for reform and good behavior?

Then there’s the cost issue. Increasingly, with life sentences, we’re seeing 50- and 60-year old convicts behind bars. Statistically, they pose scant threat to public safety. But as they age and their health deteriorates, the cost to the public of holding them runs as high as three times that of incarcerating younger convicts.

Is gritting our teeth and being vengeful worth $75,000 a year to hold a mature man who’s already spent many years behind bars? Couldn’t we toss away mandatory sentences and trust parole boards to make sensible case-by-case judgments?

And to speed our rethinking, couldn’t our state governors — and the president — show some initiative through their power of pardon and commutations?

President Obama — surprisingly — is failing miserably on this score. He’s issued just 22 pardons and one commutation, barely exercising his important executive power to correct injustices and excessive sentences. African-Americans, heavily overrepresented in prisons (in comparison to crimes they actually commit), have special reason to be disappointed.

In 2010, for example, Congress reduced penalties for crack cocaine possession (most frequent among blacks) to 18 times the comparative penalty for powder cocaine (more popular among whites). Before, the crack penalty had been 100 times higher. But the change wasn’t made retroactive.

“With a stroke of the pen,” Mauer notes, the president could reduce existing crack sentences to conform to the new standards. Such a move, he said, would represent “justice and fairness” and could even include checks to exclude any convict corrections officials identify as “a terror in prison.”

Governors, Mauer suggests, could also respond to growing public belief that our “war” on drugs is excessive by reducing sentences by some set percentages — from five to three years, for example. Released earlier, prisoners can more easily rebuild their ties to their family and community. The reduced sentences can also deliver substantial economies for hard-pressed state budgets.

The good news is that the politics of reduced sentencing has become less partisan. Some conservative politicians are joining reformers on the left to question our massive incarceration numbers and look for ways to let up on harsh and long sentences while saving public funds.

In that sense, Gov. Barbour has done the nation a favor by reminding us that the broad powers of our elected officials can be used not just to punish wrongdoers, but to help redeem those ready for a new life.

Editor’s Note: In a guest column for the Washington Post, Barbour Jan. 19 elaborated on his decision to pardon or grant revocable, indefinite suspensions to five inmates who worked at the governor’s mansion. Excerpts from that column:

“Historically, most of the inmates sent to the mansion, known in Mississippi as trusties, have been murderers, convicted of crimes of passion. Experts agree that these inmates are the least likely to commit another crime and the most likely to serve out their sentences well. My experience has been that this view is correct. About a third of the inmates sent to the mansion were returned to prison because of rules violations or infractions, but most worked there successfully during my terms. All but one of these mansion trusties had been convicted of murder.”

“The criteria the Corrections Department uses to select the prisoners who work at the mansion narrows the pool to those convicted of terrible crimes, almost always crimes of passion.”

“These crimes must be punished, but these offenders are not hard-core, cold-blooded criminals. In fact, to work at the mansion, an inmate must be classified as minimum-security by the Department of Corrections.”

“I always intended to follow the tradition of gubernatorial clemency for the mansion inmates. When I did so at the end of my first term, I was criticized for pardoning murderers. I never made any secret of the fact that I would again pardon those who successfully completed work during my second term.”

“The mansion inmates I fully released are not threats to society. They have paid the price for their crimes, having served an average of 20 years’ imprisonment.”

“In Mississippi, the constitutional power of pardon is based on our Christian belief in repentance, forgiveness and redemption — a second chance for those who are rehabilitated and who redeem themselves. Other great religions have similar tenets; so does the U.S. Constitution.”

“Mississippi spends about $350 million a year on our corrections system, much of it aimed at rehabilitating those who went wrong. Regrettably there are bad actors who will never be rehabilitated, but many who go to prison can be helped. Our state recidivism rate is just above 30 percent, far below the national average.”

“For some who are rehabilitated and redeem themselves, the governor is the only person who can give them a second chance. I am very comfortable giving such people that opportunity.”

Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.

For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.