Orville Taylor | Minimum sentences and minimal thinking

Imagine a 15-year-old boy, who lives in a garrison community, whose only influence are road scullers; not Rhodes scholars. There is a firearm placed in the house shared with his uncle or placed in one of those blue shipping barrels in the backyard.

He knows of the gun, and understands that if it goes missing, he is dead. In a sick version of the law, he has possession as far as his criminal uncle thinks. The youngster has never touched the weapon and doesn’t even know how to use one. He glues his lips as if coated with cyanoacrylate; because being an ‘informer’ or ‘snitch’, especially in betraying his blood, is a capital offence.

Like a blood hound, acting on a tip from the uncle’s enemy, Detective Corporal Dibble sniffs out the pistol while on an operation. Youthman is scraped away, in the middle of his preparation for his CSEC examinations. Uncle is of course missing, and the cops will not leave with an empty bag.

For all of the knowledge among the senior members of the judiciary, the expert opinion of social workers, and their advice to the contrary, it will be after his 30th birthday that he will see road again.

Our chief justice might not be a behavioural scientist, but he eponymously understands psyches. Somehow, Parliament or rather Cabinet, assuming that the limited knowledge they have about behaviour change and child welfare was sufficient, showed no evidence of consulting with the Office of the Children Advocate or any other experts in the area, and are pressing for mandatory minimal sentences for teen criminal.

From his seat of wisdom, the chief justice outlined remarkable progress in clearing up a large portion of the backlog of cases in the courts. Yet, one simple consequence of the recent legislation, which imposes compulsory sentences and essentially eviscerate judges, is that many persons who otherwise would have pleaded guilty to illegal possession of firearm or even homicide, are now willing to take their chances with a trial, assuming that they are caught.

DISTINGUISH

As horrific as murder is, any fool can distinguish between a boy who drives a getaway car in the furtherance of a murder, and a man who turns up in his house and finds an intruder who attempted to flee. Certainly, a father in the advanced stage of depression, who confronts the rapist of his child, is a different kettle of fish from someone who kills his friend in a jealous rage.

But given the unacceptably high levels of homicide and the sheer brutality of some of these crimes, one empathises with and truly appreciates the efforts of our justice minister. However, knee jerks or other unilateral action have to be avoided in favour of research.

Just as we clamour for the resumption of the death penalty to make a major dent in the level of violence., no one seems to be interested in what goes on in the minds of the very same individuals who we are trying to have change from their wicked ways.

The reality is that for most offenders, the greatest disincentive is the likelihood of being caught. True, no one wants to be killed by the state. However, a large number of persons convicted and given long paragraphs and sentences, commit suicide, rather than ride out a lifetime of confinement.

In might surprise, but death row inmates and lifers are several times more likely to commit suicide than the rest of the prison population. Indeed, within the American prison system, the largest per capita in the world, suicide for non-lifers and non-death row inmates is actually lower than the general population.

Social anthropologists and other behavioural scientists, who bother to find out what goes on in the minds of violent offenders, have consistently found that the severity of state punishment, and in particular death sentences, has a causal relationship with the level of savagery by the perpetrators. An individual who understands that he is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, even in circumstances where a judge could have exercised discretion, is far more likely to use extreme measures to elude capture. And where capture is likely, suicide by police is a viable option.

LOOK AT DATA

But perhaps, given the fact that we have treated much of what our Big Brother up north does as exemplary, we should simply look at the data regarding extreme measures such as ‘three strikes’ and minimum mandatory sentences. Two very salient findings emerge. First, they disproportionately affect minorities, especially blacks. Within that subgroup of black Americans, the impact increases as the social and economic status of the individual decreases. Second, and most important for the policymakers, is that they do not work and, ironically, exacerbate the very problem they are trying to address.

Taking a ‘tough stance’ against crime has a sexy appeal and maybe a great political cry, because the idiotic criticism from those who think with other parts of their anatomy, rather than their brains, is that ‘government and/or the courts are “soft on crime”. What nonsense!

Ask the chief justice himself and his PhD level director of research, if data regarding sentencing support this narrative. Not even the commissioner of police can provide any data that demonstrate that the laws are soft or that his foot soldiers are not working hard enough to enforce these very statutes.

The evidence is at best anecdotal because, no government since the Suppression of Crime Act was repealed in 1994, has been ‘soft on crime’.

Our policymakers have been soft, in the head maybe or perhaps paradoxically, hard-headed; because they keep doing the same things over and over and expect different results.

Talk, yes! But converse with the experts who spend years studying crime and violence.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.