State politics over cycling on sunny Seattle day

When my body hurts from working out or just plain fatigue, I sometimes prefer to lounge around on my day off. And as much as I love my daughters, I need a break from them too. So what better motivation than to attend a town hall event for my local state legislative district -- the fighting 37th. It was not exactly an overflowing crowd on such a sunny Saturday, Feb. 24th, so I got to personally meet both state reps: Eric Pettigrew and Sharon Tomiko Santos. They seem like passionate advocates for residents of our South Seattle district. Eric is down to earth, easy to talk to, and seems to exude a common sense about him. Sharon comes across as poised, articulate, and friendly.

I haven't followed state politics as closely as I used to when I was a journalist and was required to go to such events and seem "objective." But now I am happy to show up as a citizen and say whatever I want. When Eric and Sharon opened it up to the floor for questions, I was first with a question that I believe will only increase in importance and gravity: the staggering amount of money spent on jail and prison beds. It costs about $30K to house a prisoner for a year. Can't we take money away from jails and prisons and direct it to more productive uses? Of course, you want your serious and dangerous offenders off the streets. But many inmates are serving disproportionately long sentences as a result of determinate sentencing -- the mandated minimums for specific crimes.

My question sparked a discussion and the chair of Seattle's Human Rights commission commented how the states 3 strikes law calls for a mandatory life sentence even for someone committing the crime of burglary in the second degree, which could simply involving snatching someone's purse, without physically harming them. Locking such offenders up and throwing away the key is not only a human rights offense but a prescription for spending more and more taxpayer dollars in a misguided bid to build our way out of crime. We simply can't afford it anymore and we must come up with better solutions.

Eric responded how his Senate colleague had sponsored a bill last year to remove the category of second degree burglary from the list of "3 strikes" crimes. But the bill failed. Eric thought the bill could probably pass the house if legislators "really tried to do it."

Several days later, an article appeared in the New York Times revealing how 1 in every 100 adult Americans are now behind bars, an extraordinary statistic that seems like it belongs in a dystopian novel. The report by the Pew Center quoted Susan Urahn, the center’s managing director, “we aren’t really getting the return in public safety from this level of incarceration.”

The nation cannot afford the incarceration rate documented in the report. “We tend to be a country in which incarceration is an easy response to crime,” she said. “Being tough on crime is an easy position to take, particularly if you have the money. And we did have the money in the ‘80s and ‘90s.”

Now, with fewer resources available, the report said, “prison costs are blowing a hole in state budgets.” On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.

We can do better.

As a side note, I see the Seattle P-I reported last week how the King County Jail erroneously kept a homeless man in jail for three months before someone realized a clerical error was to blame. That cost Seattle taxpayers $100 for each night's stay.