SHARE THIS SHOW:
RELATED CONVERSATIONS:
RECENTLY ON TOL:
TOL Our Town
- A tumblr site dedicated to the people and places that make up Oregon and Southwest Washington.
TAGS:
Measure 73 increases mandatory minimum sentences for some repeat sex offenders and imposes mandatory minimums for some repeat drunken drivers. Proponents say it is necessary to put certain repeat sex offenders and certain repeat drunken drivers behind bars. Many opponents argue that the cost to the state is too high at this time.
The measure comes at a time when FBI crime statistics show that the crime rate in Oregon is the lowest it's been in 40 years. Kevin Mannix, chief petitioner of Measure 73, says that has everything to do with laws and measures he's supported in the past, both as a former state lawmaker and backer of initiative petitions that impose mandatory minimum sentences for certain crimes.
Regardless, Measure 73 has garnered plenty of opposition in editorial pages and from a citizen review panel. And Mannix is himself facing his share of challenges, including the loss of his long-time financial backer and a state investigation into his finances.
Do you have experience with crime — as an offender, survivor or law enforcement officer? What do you think works to discourage repeat offenders? Are mandatory minimum sentences effective in reducing crime? What have you personally seen or experienced that influences your beliefs on this subject?
GUESTS:
- Kevin Mannix: President of the Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance, sponsor of Measure 73.
- Arwen Bird: Crime survivors advocate.
- David Rogers: Executive director of the Partnership for Safety and Justice.
Tagged as: 2010 election · crime · measure 73 · sexual offenders
Photo credit: fanfan2145 / Creative Commons
-
Certainly I would like to see repeat sex offenders and drunk drivers removed from the population. However, as Bluewater42 points out, Measure 73 has several shortcomings.
The more the statutes require us to spend on prisons, the fewer funds there are to spend on education and other important programs. Just as mandatory sentencing limits judicial discretion, it also limits the Oregon Legislature's budgetary discretion.
Frankly, I would rather see the funds spent in preventing these crimes. Ask the victim of a rapist. Would she rather have her offender jailed? Or never to have been attacked at all?
My grandparents were killed by a drunk driver. Incarcerating the man wouldn't have brought back my grandparents. Preventing his behavior may have given us a few more years with my grandparents. In this case the drunk driver was so badly injured in the accident that he removed himself from Oregon's roads.
Once again Kevin Mannix has given us an unfunded measure that stirs an emotional response without solving the problem. I'll likely vote against Measure 73 for budgetary reasons.
-
"Kevin Mannix"
Nuff said.
Vote no.
-
I'm curious as to why Measure 73 is directed at sex offenders AND drunk drivers. Why were these two crimes grouped together?
Also, a year ago the Oregon Supreme court ruled that some Measure 11 sentences were too harsh in certain cases. How will this ruling impact possible sentences under Measure 73?
-
There is a powerful tool that is critical when it comes to nailing a conviction in a rape or murder. Even victim testimomy is not bullet proof, witnesses are biased, and fingerprints are unreliable. But DNA evidence is specific, reliable and water tight.
Small children, women and vulnerable persons should be taught, that if they are being vicitimized by a terrible crime, they are not helpless. God gave us fingernails, use them. A kitten scratch gathers enough skin cells for a DNA sample to convict. A hair follicle, cigarette butt, or even a used toothpick has enough DNA to be detected in a modern lab.
It is difficult to construct an alibi for a criminal with a pattern of finger nail scratches on his forehead and cheek, and explain away the skin cells, blood, hair, and parts of his flesh under the corpse's broken fingernails with his identical DNA match.
Kicking and screaming are ok. But kicking, screaming and scratching are best. When vitimized, Women and Kids should be trained to SCREAM AND SCRATCH.
-
I'll be darned. For once I agree with you. Who'da thunk.
-
You state DNA evidence is specific, reliable and water tight. What if DNA samples are taken and there is no forensic evidence that a crime was committed...no DNA found, no tears, no blood. It is the accusers word that takes the case to Grand Jury...before the DNA test results are completed. Based on her testimony, it goes to trial. When presented with no evidence of any activity and her testimony that there was three minutes of painful penetration which she did not stop, the jury convicts. Remember...no evidence. Measure 11...8 years in prison, lifetime registration. Many times over other attorneys, investigators, police stated that if this happened in another county, there might have been probation...no evidence...her word.
I think there should be some focus put on how charges are put forth in each county. If we are to standardize, why not standardize charging? What county has the highest conviction rate?
-
Why does Kevin Manix and the other sponsors of this bill feel they need to do the judges job? Why do we hire judges... just to sit there and spout minimum sentinces? I would much rather see the finds spent on enforcing this minimum sentencing on education or social services.
-
Yes, it is quite curious, why Measure 73 is directed at sex offenders and drunk drivers. What about naked hula hoopers? Or, how about pedophile priests? Gosh they sure annoy me, so self-righteous on one hand, and so wonky on the other---don’t they need a special mandatory sentence? In general, it seems overly undemocratic, to cherry-pick which crimes we deem worthy of special care, and to then interfere in how those particular criminals should be punished. It seems pretty pompous to suggest we have the magic recipe on when enough is enough. Or when we just can’t take it anymore, because they are just too upsetting to deal with.
-
Talk about repeat offenders: how long must Kevin Mannix continue to muck with our legislative process by putting emotionally charged issues before the public vote -- issues which should more properly be considered by the legislature. We elect our legislature to consider and maintain the big picture of our laws, and we hold our legislators accountable when we elect them (or not).
No one is accountable when issues like the penal code and tax policy are decided by the public at large. These issues cannot be decided piece-by-piece through the ballot. Rather than resulting in sound policies, this process just feeds the political egos of personalities like Mr. Mannix who can't get his extreme ideas passed by the Senate and House and signed by the governor.
-
Wouldn't it be simpler and more effective to just suspend and/or revoke someone's driver's license after two convictions for drunk driving? Driving is a privilege. If people can prove they've successfully completed an addiction treatment program and maintained a drug-free state for a set period of time, then give them back a provisional license. If they drive without a license, then put them in jail.
-
Mannix is the typical Conservative fear-monger working to keep their base pumped up with fear and so easily manipulated.
Like Stephen Colbert says (but with tongue in cheek):
"Keep the Fear Alive!" -
Ask Cui Bono? Who Benefits?
Does Mannix or any of his associates own stock in any corporation related to prisons? Who will make more money by keeping more people in prison? What other government program is this money being diverted from?
Years ago a Conservative told me that their strategy is to drive the government so far into debt that it has to cut "social" programs, like public schools, medicare, social security, safety net, etc, so is this part of that strategy?
Cui Bono?
-
I would like to know how Mr Mannix intends to pay for this bill. It is the sort of unfunded mandate that he railed against when his issue was taxes, not crime. Is he content that Oregon can't fund schools in part because of our too -ull jails?
-
Where is the money coming from to fund this ballot measure? Is any of it from private businesses that benefit from the correctional system?
-
I have a question/comment about an Oregon public school student who is 17 years old. His 15 year old girlfriend text him a picture of her naked, which he forwarded to his friends at school so he could brag. The boy was arrested for sharing child pornography. Now in this case, if he had two pictures of her from different occasions, or had taken naked pictures on his own phone of two different girlfriends and sent them to his friends, is this boy going to serve a mandatory 25 year sentence? I think as disgusting as child pornography is, in this case it's clearly age appropriate as far as the the kids concerned in participation in these events. I would NOT qualify this boy as a sex offender by any stretch of the imagination. I would not date him anymore if I were in high school, send him to some therapy to learn about respect and self-esteem if I were his mother, but in no way can I classify this normal 17 year old as a sex offender.
In addition, on the addiction side of this argument, I think if Mr. Mannix actually wants to make a difference, he should look into making drug and alcohol treatment available for people BEFORE they commit crimes. The poor are unable to access treatment, and eventually they commit crimes under the influence, or in order to maintain their addiction. Over 80% of incarcerated Oregonians are in prison for either committing drug related crimes, like selling or using in public, or for committing other crimes while under the influence like violent crimes and robbery. Instead of sending them to prison where they are violated and tormented and learn to be worse criminals, we need to treat them!
I value safety in my community so much that I am extremely opposed to this measure. Incarceration, especially longer incarceration, does not "teach the lesson" you want anyone to be learning... especially people who are already not doing so well in life.
Mannix tied these two together to try and pass longer incarceration and felony status to drunk drivers, thinking Oregon voters would have to pass it if sex-offenders were attached. He is wrong. Oregonians are too smart for this nonesense.
-
I argue for full legalization AND NO regulation. Let me explain why:
1st off, to hear that sheriff say there is no money in the drug war is ridiculous, considering all the black helicopter fly overs I get here in the country.
I am a medicinal herb grower of all types. Thanks to the attitude that plants are dangerous drugs, even though they have been used by humanity for pleasure and pain safely and successfully for thousands of years, now the entire medical and prison industrial complex want to treat them as drugs.
Plants are NOT drugs. They ARE tested. Time tested. Regulation breeds corruption and corporate control. Black markets and illegality breed crime. My entire herbal extract business has been shut down by ridiculous laws the FDA implemented this year. I am an acupuncturist who is arguabley the best qualified to use herbs, and now doctors, who get ZERO training in herbs in school, want to regulate them along with corporate pharmaceutical interests. IT ALL MAKES ME SICK!!!
-
Comments are now closed.
Mandatory minimums are bad idea because judges lose control over sentencing and cannot apply discretion based on the facts or circumstances of the case. Locking people up for decades for minor or repeat offenses because of some mandatory minimum rule or “three strikes and you’re out” law doesn’t help us at all. How does locking a person in a cage advance our society? Prison should be about rehabilitation, not punishment.
Let’s not ignore the facts here, our crime rates have been going down yet our prison population keeps going up. The USA currently has the highest incarceration rate in the world. We have the highest number of people in jail of any country in the world: 2.3 MILLION people as of 2008 (http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=35912). With 5% of the world's population, but 23% of the world's prisoner population (http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/law/research/icps/downloads/wppl-8th_41.pdf), it's easy to see that we’re doing things wrong. This problem is caused by our “war on drugs” and insane sentencing laws.
Thanks to all these mandatory minimum laws (Measure 11), Pew reports (http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedfiles/one%20in%20100.pdf) that Oregon spends more on "corrections" as a % of its general fund than any other state: 10.9% (pg. 14 of the .pdf) of our general fund goes solely to that. The report shows that we’re 1 of the 4 states that spends more on corrections than on higher education and we have endless increases heading our way thanks to these measures.
We currently have about 14,000 people incarcerated in Oregon and that might hit 16,000 by 2015 (http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/post_102.html) thanks to Measure 11 and 57. The Governor’s Reset Report (http://governor.oregon.gov/Gov/docs/rc_fullreport.pdf) notes that we spend $84 per day on every prisoner. $84 x 365d x 14,000 prisoners = $429,240,000 annually. With 16,000 that will jump by over $60 million more every year to $490,560,000 annually.
This unnecessary incarceration is bankrupting our state and needs to stop. I'm against any mandatory minimum measure. I will vote against Measure 73 and I think we should repeal all mandatory minimum measures that were passed in the past (Measure 11, 57, etc).