Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Mandatory Sentencing

Holding an inmate after he has completed his sentence would be a denial of liberty without due process and thus unconstitutional. It can be done for particularly dangerous inmates under unusual circumstances, but even then they are transfered from prison to a mental hospital and can petition for release.

I applaud your goals, but I don't think you're being very practical. Prison terms vary quite a bit in length, and inmates have varying educational backgrounds. The idea that they should all complete degrees before being released is hard to picture; what would you do with a high school dropout whose sentence is only a year? Or one who recently arrived from a country where he was schooled only through the fourth grade? For that matter, what do you do for inmates who don't speak English?

Then there is the problem of forcing inmates to attend such a program if they don't want to. I'm not up on the pertinent law, but I doubt you could require something like this.

Even if you could, how would the program be implemented? You couldn't just have inmates go to their local community college campus, and even if there were multiple classrooms available in each prison you couldn't get many insturctors to teach there. This is especially true of high-security prisons, which is where the people you most want to help will often be. The frequent transfer of inmates from one prison to another would be another problem.

Getting the government to pay for your program would also be a challenge, unfortunately. California isn't even willing to build enough space for its inmates, let alone enroll tens of thousands of them in degree programs.

Re: Mandatory Sentencing

My perspective of the situation is much different than Mr. Nelson. One of the major problems is that they are not reintegrated into society. That is they are released without a sufficient means to obtain employment and housing. This approach will work only for those individuals that want out of the system and restore their lives to normal.

Re: Mandatory Sentencing

Mr. Hoffman's answer covers the legal, I'll focus you on the practical and pragmatic: If you want to reduce recidivism, force police, prosecutors and judges to vigorously enforce the laws, so that wanna be criminals would be discouraged from breaking the laws. Currently we have a revolving door justice system that does not effectively punish; deals are cut for pleas to reduced charges, jail sentences are exchanged for probation, and restitution is virtually never enforced. That means that the thugs get turned back onto the streets to do it all over again, with contempt and no fear for the system. I've seen studies that say inmates commit probably 25 - 100 crimes for every one they are caught for. It's the liberal 'they're just deprived' attitude that got the system so screwed up, more of the same is not a remedy.

Re: Mandatory Sentencing

Mr. Hoffman's answer covers the legal, I'll focus you on the practical and pragmatic: If you want to reduce recidivism, force police, prosecutors and judges to vigorously enforce the laws, so that wanna be criminals would be discouraged from breaking the laws. Currently we have a revolving door justice system that does not effectively punish; deals are cut for pleas to reduced charges, jail sentences are exchanged for probation, and restitution is virtually never enforced. That means that the thugs get turned back onto the streets to do it all over again, with contempt and no fear for the system. I've seen studies that say inmates commit probably 25 - 100 crimes for every one they are caught for. It's the liberal 'they're just deprived' attitude that got the system so screwed up, more of the same is not a remedy.

Secondarily: if you want to reduce crime, stop disarming the victims. Criminals fear victims who can defend themselves. Had the students at Virginia Tech not been denied their Constitutional right to bear arms to defend themselves, the evil/lunatic shooter could have been stopped in his tracks, just as the shooters at the Appalachian Law School and the Pearl City massacres were stopped by armed students.