The longer I am around public officials, the more convinced I am of one simple truth: Sixty-percent of the truth is worse than 100 percent of a lie.
On Tuesday, 16th Circuit District Attorney Forrest Allgood was the guest speaker at the Columbus Rotary Club, dispensing his 60 percent before a crowd that, by the end of his 30-minute talk, seemed poised for action. If there had been tar, feathers and a rail handy, you suspect that some of the Rotarians would have been tempted to give a few judges and Department of Corrections officials a ride out of town.
I am not suggesting that Allgood’s assumptions and over-simplifications were a deliberate attempt to beguile the Rotarians. Rather, I suspect that the District Attorney is sincere in his convictions, if you will pardon the expression.
Nor was I particularly surprised by much of what Allgood said. His views were the sort you would expect a district attorney to have. For the most part, anyway.
He did say he favors sentencing people on the basis of crimes they weren’t convicted of. Call me a flaming liberal, if you must, but I can hardly approve of that sort of thing.
The main thrust of Allgood’s speech was that criminals are serving only a fraction of their sentences. Some of the blame, he places at the feet of judges who — for some reason — do not accept the district attorney’s sentencing recommendations about 25 percent of the time. I’m guessing maybe that has something to do with the fact that the D.A. wants to sentence people for things they weren’t convicted of. But this is just a guess, of course.
My attention during the speech was divided between Allgood and the Rotarians, who slowly began to rouse from their post-lunch stupor as Allgood’s righteous indignation approached its crescendo.
Allgood directed most of his scorn toward the Mississippi Department of Corrections and an internal memo that was leaked a while back that indicated that the MDOC was doing everything it could to keep folks out of its care. The memo proposed that offenders on probation or parole who commit violations of their release agreements should be given a second and third chance.
Allgood at least acknowledged that the motivation behind the MDOC’s policy wasn’t that they simply liked criminals. Jails and prisons are overcrowded. Federal laws dictate that you can’t simply stack prisoners like cord wood because of the unpopular belief that they are, in fact, human beings.
There is also the reality that keeping people locked up costs money. A lot of money. You know the budget is tight when Mississippi doesn’t even have enough money to lock up folks. So the MDOC’s approach is to clear out some non-violent offenders to make room for the violent criminals.
This seemed like a poor excuse to Allgood, who doesn’t have to worry about those costs or federal laws governing prison conditions or even, we can presume, whether people are actually proven guilty.
Finally, Allgood put on his psychologist hat. Allgood is not a real psychologist, of course. He just plays one at Rotary lunches.
Allgood allowed that the whole idea of a causal relationship between low self-esteem and criminal behavior is a myth. He said that, in fact, criminals think they are better than everybody else. That’s why they take other people’s stuff.
And then Allgood said something that I really found interesting. He said, criminals believe prison is better than life on the outside.
Do you see the implications?
If what Allgood says is true, the MDOC’s efforts to keep people out of prison is actually punishing the prisoners — who are so very fond of prison, after all. Meanwhile, Allgood is playing right into the criminals’ hands when he recommends long sentences. Now, if you punish people by doing to them what they want you to do, that’s really no punishment at all.
Yes, if you follow Allgood’s premise to its natural conclusion you discover that the best way to punish a criminal is to deny him all the joys of prison life.
This is a problem, obviously.
Fortunately, Allgood has a solution: Prisons need to be more degrading, horrible, miserable, oppressive and cruel. That way, prisoners will prefer to stay out of prison.
Of course, this is nonsense.
Because, on this point at least, Mr. Allgood has strolled over to my personal area of expertise.
As some of you know, I spent four months in jail and prison in Arizona. I met hundreds of inmates during that time. But I never met one who really preferred prison to freedom. It wasn’t a tough choice, either. I don’t recall any convict ever scratching his head as he weighed the relative merits of prison and freedom.
Allgood is right about a lot of things. I certainly believe that criminals should face vigorous prosecution. Allgood has the necessary zeal for that.
But on some other things, he’s just plain wrong.
At least 40 percent of the time, I figure.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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