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Gore replied to Alenia Fowlkes' question about action by pointing to the omnibus crime bill in Congress. Next month a joint congressional committee will try to reconcile bills passed separately by the House and Senate last year, an amalgam of potentially helpful measures and predictable grandstanding. Both include money to help states pay for more police officers -- 50,000 more in the House version, twice that in the Senate's. The Senate calls for the construction of 10 federal prisons and designates the death penalty for 52 more crimes, many of them the marginal ones that federal law tends to cover. Kill somebody on an oil-drilling platform, and you're in big trouble.
The Senate bill includes two versions of a three-strikes-you're-out measure, which would establish a mandatory life sentence for a third serious felony. At least 30 states are examining the same idea, backed by Governors as disparate as Republican Pete Wilson of California and Democrat Mario Cuomo of New York. The number of felons convicted a third time is relatively small. Only about 70 each year are expected to be covered in the State of Washington, where the first such law just went into effect. For New York, the estimate is 300 criminals a year.
And what would be the impact on crime? Not much. Most felons are not convicted a third time until late in their crime career, which is at its peak between the ages of 15 and 23. Three-time losers will see out their retirement years in taxpayer-supported lodgings, taking up the very space that jumpier characters ought to occupy.
But chances for passage are good in most places. When told it will cost + $460,000 to keep a prisoner behind bars from age 50 to 70, an aide to Texas Senator Phil Gramm said, "This is what the public wants." In the view of one potential three-timer, it might even have some effect. Randy Berg, 33, a crack addict who is serving a seven-year sentence in Minnesota for his second violent assault, says, "I know that if this goes through there is no chance . . ." His voice trails off -- then he adds, "If I was on the streets and had my rights, I would vote for this law."
BUT THERE IS ANOTHER THING that worries Berg. "People can just get caught up in things, you know, or be framed or set up for a third violation. Where do you draw the line then?" That also worries judges, who generally dislike mandatory sentences of any kind. They tend to prefer laws that leave to them the discretion to lengthen the sentences of the repeat felons.
In the view of police, prosecutors, judges and many academics, trying to control crime through tougher sentences is a doomed effort because the law- enforcement system can never be made large enough to solve the problem. Just a fraction of all criminals pass through it. By some estimates, roughly a fifth of all crimes result in an arrest, only about half of those lead to a conviction in serious cases, and less than 5% of those bring a jail term. Even that number leaves prisons so overcrowded that the average convict serves just a third of his time. And while prison has the advantage of taking criminals off the streets for a while -- no small virtue -- it does little to stop new ones from coming up through the ranks.