I was disheartened and frustrated when I found out that John T. Earnest, the then-19-year-old who murdered Lori Kaye and injured three others, including the rabbi, at the Chabad of Poway in San Diego, received a sentence of life imprisonment for his hate crimes.
He should have been sentenced less harshly.
As a Jew, it upsets me to the core when people rear anti-Semitism’s ugly head, especially in such heinous ways as murder in a synagogue. I am heartbroken, and I worry for my safety and the safety of my community every time something like this happens. The Anti-Defamation League’s most recent audit of anti-Semitic acts in the U.S. logged over 2,100 incidents, the largest number in a year since the founding of the ADL in 1979. That is an average of five acts of anti-Semitism per day, not including the all-too-regular anti-Semitic “jokes” and slurs thrown around in casual conversation. John T. Earnest’s act of anti-Semitism was one of the most horrific in recent history.
But he still should have been sentenced less harshly.
There are two facets of mass incarceration in the United States: unnecessarily or unjustly sentencing people to prison or jail in the first place (judicial mistakes, war on drugs, tough on crime narratives, etc.), and sentencing people for too long (mandatory minimums, culture of revenge, etc.). This piece focuses on the latter, though both are of great import.
Data show that longer prison sentences do not necessarily decrease recidivism and may actually pose a higher risk to society. The Sentencing Project cites a few reasons for this: Keeping people in prison for too long leads to diminishing marginal returns, as people are less likely to commit crimes as they get older. Second, longer sentences are particularly ineffective for drug crimes, as drug dealers are easily replaceable. Third, increased mass incarceration costs money that could be going to community programs with a greater impact on public safety.
Notably, Daniel Nagin, a leading scholar in deterrence, concludes that the deterrent effect of punishment is not based on length of sentence, but rather certainty of punishment. That is, a person out to commit a crime is more likely considering how probable it is that they will be caught, rather than how long they will spend in jail if they are caught. Additionally, if someone is already going to jail for 30 years, the addition of five more years does not serve as such a deterrent. So what really is the purpose of a 40, 50, or 60 year sentence besides keeping someone off the streets?
Additionally, it appears that there is a peak age range for crime, after which an individual is biologically less likely to commit offenses. That range is between mid-teens and mid-twenties, after which rates of involvement significantly decline. In contrast, the median age range in federal prison is 36 to 40 years old. Therefore, while length of sentence can serve to represent the severity of a crime, it has less of an effect on recidivism as the 43 year-old in jail is less likely to commit a crime due to their age.
There are financial concerns regarding long sentences as well. The longer someone is in jail, the more likely they are to need medical attention or increasingly complicated care, a burden which falls on the taxpayer. Surprisingly, as criminal justice reform is often considered a leftist cause, one factor which explains the growing push for criminal justice reform is right-wing concerns about higher taxes, as it is not cheap to keep someone in jail.
Although not the focus of this piece, it is important to note the significant racial disparities in sentencing. According to a report by the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School on racial disparities in the Massachusetts criminal system, “Among those sentenced to incarceration, Black and Latinx people sentenced to incarceration receive longer sentences than their White counterparts, with Black people receiving sentences that are an average of 168 days longer and Latinx people receiving sentences that are an average of 148 days longer.” A worthy endeavor would be another entire column devoted to this topic.
So what is the solution to this facet of mass incarceration? The U.S. prison population has increased by 500% over the last 40 years, making it the world’s leader in incarcerated people with 639 incarcerated per 100,000 people. I would argue that we need to shift our understanding and implementation of the legal system from a system of punishment to one of rehabilitation.
Some say that this is indeed the current goal of our system, but if that is the case, we are falling short. Instead, we are incarcerating more folks, and while there have been significant reform efforts, we have a lot of work to do. One may look to Norway for example. Norway’s system focuses on restorative justice, a philosophy designed to rehabilitate and facilitate the reintegration of prisoners into society. Because of this, Norway’s maximum prison sentence is 21 years.
Norway is often cited as having the most humane prison system in the world. Prisoners have windows in their cells, as well as TV, radio, and Skype access. They are provided with cleaning and personal hygiene products free of charge, four meals a day, and an hour outdoors each day. All prisoners are allowed to work, which cannot be a punishment, and they are paid for their labor. They also have access to education, the right to join trade unions, and vocational training. While most of these services would be considered luxuries in the U.S., they are bare minimums in Norway and have helped Norway become the country with the lowest recidivism rate in the world at 20%.
Prisoners often report on the positive impact these programs have on their lives. In a study on prison education in Norway, a prisoner named Maria shared: “Education has made all the difference in my life, because if I had not taken the education, I would have had nothing to go to every day.” Thanks to the shorter sentences and opportunities for growth and change, those in Norway returning to society have a real second chance at life, emerging more educated and more ready to change their ways. “It has helped me to get a life that I want to live,” Maria emphasized.
Imagine if John T. Earnest could go to prison in Norway. He very clearly needs to be educated; his manifesto written before the shooting includes horrifically anti-Semitic declarations such as the following. “Every Jew is responsible for the meticulously planned genocide of the European race,” he wrote. Earnest went so far as to accuse Jews of “[enslaving] the other races around him” and claimed that for their crimes, Jews “deserve nothing but hell.”
He is also only 22 years old. In the American prison system, to put it simply, he will spend the rest of his life doing essentially nothing — which we will fund — and then he will die. Perhaps he will come to regret his crime and unlearn the horrific anti-Semitism with which he is clearly indoctrinated, and perhaps not. In Norwegian prison, though, he would be treated as the human being that he is. He would attend classes and participate in work opportunities. He would be in an environment of restoration and learning, where he would hopefully one day look back on his manifesto and feel ashamed of his ignorance. And then, he would be released, hopefully as a functional member of society ready to contribute and educate. And if he was not ready, the judge could always add a few years onto his sentence to give him the chance to learn more.
Why does Earnest not deserve this chance? His brain is not even fully developed yet. He has taken a life that cannot be brought back, but will essentially taking his life repair that? Granted, our current system is not yet set up to facilitate this rehabilitation as Norway’s is. But educating him, leading him to realize his mistakes, and giving him the chance to contribute to society — that could perhaps help heal these permanent wounds.
And the change should not start and end with Earnest. One out of seven U.S. prisoners are serving sentences of 50 years or more. One out of seven people are therefore being deprived of their chance for education, rehabilitation, and reintegration. These individuals deserve a second chance, because they are human. Sentencing reform is one of the many changes our criminal justice system needs. To learn more, visit https://www.sentencingproject.org/.
Image by Joe Gratz is licensed under the Public Domain.
