Tough Crime Questions Hard to Answer in a Sentence

Open letter to San Juan Capistrano Mayor Collene Campbell:

Like everyone else who either knew beforehand about your family’s tragedies or learned about them from your front-page interview in The Times Tuesday, I lament what you’ve been through. To lose three relatives to murder, including a brother and a son, is more than anyone should have to bear. The closest I can come to sharing your pain and anger was the murder of an elderly uncle a dozen years ago or so. He answered the front door and was shot dead by a stranger, while my aunt was on the phone with one of their children.

That’s the trouble with crime. It seems to hit just about everyone; if not directly, then as a ripple effect from being the relative of a crime victim. Because it hits us all, it seems to me that we have to take a society-wide look at it and try to figure out a way--for everyone’s sake--to reduce it.

You formed a group called Memories of Victims Everywhere (MOVE), described as a victims’ rights group. One of the stated goals is to pressure legislators who you depict as “soft on crime.” That, obviously, is a term whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder and is much in vogue these days, what with “three strikes and you’re out” legislation vying with “one strike and you’re out” legislation.

Crime, especially when it arrives at our doorstep, makes us all emotional. I wonder if the solutions need be. Cynical lawmakers and politicians will tell you to your face that they support you, even while knowing behind your back that what you want is impractical.

Perhaps it satisfies some anger or frustration you and others feel to lock people up and throw away the key. Perhaps, too, state Sen. Marian Bergeson and Gov. Pete Wilson really believe that first-time sex offenders ought to be imprisoned with no chance of parole.

What does any of that have to do with “victims’ rights”? Who are the victims you’re talking about? Are they the people directly victimized by the criminal, or are they the victims’ friends and relatives, wanting to exact revenge to ease their suffering?

If it’s the former, we already have a system to address victims’ rights. The system says that criminals will serve time. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, it is not a token punishment to serve eight or 10 or 15 years in prison. It is not token punishment when murderers serve a life sentence or decades in prison. I agree with you that repeat violent offenders have forfeited their right to freedom, but do you really want to send a three-time cat burglar to prison for life?

Too often, victims’ rights end up being the “rights” of the surviving relatives. Yes, they are secondary victims of the crime, but how can justice be dispensed fairly to address them?

Should a robber or drunk driver who traumatizes a large surviving family get a harsher punishment than one who harms someone with no family? While one family pleads with a judge to show no mercy to a killer, what if a family asked the judge for leniency? Should a judge then take into consideration how the respective families feel before handing a sentence? The answer for a judicially fair society has to be, no.

No one with a brain or a heart sympathizes more with the criminal than with the victim, but whether we like it or not, criminals are people, too, with families and relatives. Pretending they aren’t is the ultimate cynicism behind the “one-strike” legislation, even for crimes as distasteful as sexual assaults or child molestation. If the perpetrator were our brother or uncle or best friend, can we really say with honesty we want them incarcerated for life?

What about the parent whose son kills in the heat of the moment? Does that mother’s son deserve the same fate as the methodical killer?

You also condemn the catalogue of prisoners’ rights. Doing so hits a nerve, but does it help protect our society?

Unless you’re prepared to keep everyone who commits any crime in jail for life, most prisoners someday will return to society. What purpose does it serve to dehumanize inmates? We all have to live with the consequences when they get out of prison. Wouldn’t we be safer if that person was the semblance of a thinking, feeling human being?

In your heart of hearts, how do you think that can best be done?

If your answer is that we should imprison every felon for life or some “tough on crime” variation, you know the next question. It isn’t one that can be wished away.

Where do we build the new prisons, and who will pay for them?

You hate crime and so do your constituents. Yet, if the Board of Supervisors announced tomorrow it was building a jail in your community, your constituents would demand that you stop it.

None of us can do the thing we want most: to undo the crime. All we can do is hold the guilty responsible, make sure they serve their time and hope that when they get out their impulse isn’t to go looking for another victim.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.