Can bankruptcy bring more justice to the legal system?

by Wendy McElroy
Sep. 16, 2010

St. Louis Today reports on what may become a national trend for cash-strapped states, "Justice in Missouri now comes with a price tag. It is the first state to provide judges with defendant-specific data on what particular sentences would cost the taxpayers, and on the likelihood that the person in the dock will reoffend."

SLT also offers the explanation, "The state is going bankrupt, and ... we're spending millions and millions on prison sentences that have proven not to work."

The prison and legal systems are overflowing with innocent, non-violent people who have committed no real crime but have merely exercised specific rights that the state is denying to them. First and foremost among such innocent 'offenders' are those people who consume and/or sell 'illegal' drugs. On Feburary 7th, William Ray Price Jr., chief justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, stated in an address before the General Assembly,

"Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders. It is costing us billions of dollars and it is not making a dent in crime. Nonviolent offenders need to learn their lesson. I'm not against punishment. Most often, though, they need to be treated for drug and alcohol addiction and given job training....Putting them in a very expensive concrete box with very expensive guards, feeding them, providing them with expensive medical care, surrounding them with hardened criminals for long periods of time, and separating them from their families who need them and could otherwise help them does not work. Proof is in the numbers: 41.6 percent are back within two years. ..."

Not only are these non-violent non-criminals "expensive," while in prison they are also being taught how to become violent criminals not only because of the brutality of their experiences but also from the 'tutelage' of others in the prison population. This tendency is exacerbated by the fact that, once a drug-user becomes a felon, his or her chances of employment in the outside world plummet; even renting an apartment can be difficult.

Price's cost-benefit analysis of incarcerating non-violent drug-users is hardly a rousing defense of their rights but, hopefully, it is an indication that the government can no longer afford all the 'justice' it shovels down society's throat. Moreover, even on such unprincipled grounds, it is good to read a judge who openly questions the wisdom of throwing someone in jail because he grows a plant under a sunlight in his own home.

Price attacked zero tolerance, as well. "What we need, again, are evidence-based strategies tailored to produce results. A person with a blood alcohol content over .20, arrested for the second time in one year, is different than a person with a blood alcohol content of .081 arrested for the second time in 10 years. One size doesn't fit all."

Who knew that poverty could bring sanity? Although when you think of it, an excess of funds is what allowed the legal system to afford its binge of insanity.