Bratton: We Cannot Arrest our way out of these problems

Senator Jim Webb continues to press the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009, which he first announced in Parade Magazine in an article Why we must fix our prisons.

Testifying at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on June 11, Los Angeles Police Commissioner William Bratton made some key points:

* "We cannot arrest our way out of these problems, including the national gang crime explosion."

* The war on Drugs must be replaced by a treatment and interdiction-oriented approach.

* We must abandon the policy of jailing the mentally ill.

Bratton is the man who deserves the credit claimed by Rudy Giuliani for reversing the crime rate in New York City. Bratton replaced random, reactive patrols with targeted-community-based preventive police work. The result: reducing the jail population in New York City's Rikers Island from 22,000 to 11,000.

The hearings were held in support of Senator Jim Webb's proposal to overhaul our criminal justice system. We hold 25% of the world's prisoners, yet have only 5% of the world's population. We imprison more people, longer, and in more harsh conditions. Our relentless "get tough" policies have done and are doing enormous damage to minority communities, as Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree testified:

As overall numbers of individuals imprisoned or monitored by the government have grown, so have racial disparities among this population. African Americans make up only 13 percent of the overall population, and Latinos 15 percent. However, 40 percent of the prison population is African American and 20 percent is Latino.

One in every 8 black males in their twenties is in prison or jail on any given day, as compared with 1 in 26 Latinos, and 1 in 59 white males. Black males have a 1 in 3 chance of serving time in prison, and Latinos 1 in 5, as compared with 3 in 50 for white males.

According to Harvard sociologist Bruce Western, the U.S. penal system has become ubiquitous in the lives of low-education African American men, and is becoming an important feature of a uniquely American system of social inequality.

These large disparities are due to a constellation of complex and interrelated factors that include poverty, high rates of joblessness, low levels of education, and the clustering of African Americans and Latinos in concentrated urban areas. They are also related to very deep, systemic flaws within the criminal justice system.

The testimony and webcast of the Senate hearings can be found here.

U.S. holds 25% of world's prisoners. Sen. Webb: Overhaul Crim. Justice System

The unnecessary use of the death penalty in China - a more civil society in many ways than ours (they lack the 2d Amendment) distresses me. I want them to be better. But it doesn't matter as much to me as the sickening facts about ours. The waste of youth, the appalling statistics about more black men in jail than college, etc.

In Sunday's Parade magazine Senator Jim Webb (how lucky we are that this former Reagan Sec'y of the Navy joined us) is talking seriously and urgently about criminal justice:

"America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace," said Senator Webb. "With five percent of the world's population, our country houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison population. Incarcerated drug offenders have soared 1200% since 1980. And four times as many mentally ill people are in prisons than in mental health hospitals. We should be devoting precious law enforcement capabilities toward making our communities safer. Our neighborhoods are at risk from gang violence, including transnational gang violence.

Webb continued: "There is great appreciation from most in this country that we are doing something drastically wrong. And, I am gratified that Senator Specter has joined me as the lead Republican cosponsor of this effort. We are committed to getting this legislation passed and enacted into law this year."

Here's the link to the information page about the measure The National Criminal Justice Act of 2009