Lock Them Up

Regarding the May 7 commentary, God save us from the self-appointed lobbyists for the criminal subculture. Like Ellen Geis, the author of the commentary “More Efficient Use of Jails Needed” (May 7), they use any and all issues to argue for reduced penalties for criminals. Now they have the audacity to argue that it is up to the individual citizen to protect himself . . . they claim that government has no responsibility. Well, I assert that the government does have such a responsibility, and, as a law-abiding citizen, I want to see all violent criminals (and most of the others) locked up.

The author asserts that we have enough money to keep up with the growth of the prison population. Not true! Prisons are overwhelmed with inmates, and this is after performing a sort of triage in which only the more violent offenders are incarcerated. Today, the percentage of violent, hard-core inmates is higher than ever before.

The author also raises that old, fake claim that jails and prisons do not reduce the crime rate. They certainly do reduce the rate if there is a reasonable expectation of being caught and the penalty is more than a slap on the hand. A prison sentence certainly does eliminate the crimes that would be committed by that one person.

Like it or not, America has a lot of criminals, and we need a way to remove them from society, because whether Ms. Geis knows it or not, they cause a lot of pain and we have an obligation to try to prevent that.

I agree that conventional prisons are very costly, but the alternative is not to “release” every criminal back on the streets. The sensible alternative is to find less expensive ways of segregating criminals from society. Work camps where inmates help to pay for their upkeep is the direction we ought to go in.

In publishing a commentary like this, I think you ought to identify just who Ellen Geis is representing. “Plaintiffs” does not tell us who they are.

JENNIFER MARKS

San Diego