Community Comment : Crime Bill: ‘Too Many Prisons, Not Enough Prevention’

KEVIN ROSS, 31, is a South Los Angeles native and deputy district attorney in Inglewood. He is chairman of the Political Action Committee of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP and co-hosts “People’s Connection,” a Sunday morning community talk show on 103.9 FM., with Isidra Person-Lynn. He talked with Erin J. Aubry about ramifications of the $30-billion crime bill passed by Congress.

I think the crime bill is a triumph for politicians. What they’re fighting about has nothing to do with issues that affect individuals on a day-to-day basis. They’re saying, “Crime is a problem, it’s a priority and people want it to be solved.”

The public wants it out of their lives. Ideally, they don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about it. When they go out to their car in the morning, they don’t want to be attacked. They just want to be safe and they want their car to be there.

What disturbs me most about the crime bill is the disproportionate number of prisons that will be built, the chipping away of crime-prevention programs.

People are saying we need to focus more on locking criminals up rather than prevention, but it’s really not either/or; it’s both. Initially, crime prevention was a bigger part of the crime bill, but what ultimately came down from the House was, “OK, we’ll give you some crime prevention, but we want you to spend a lot more than what was originally intended for more prisons and police.”

I think for people who are really trying to change young people around, it’s going to be harder. Most non-white-collar crimes, in my opinion, are being committed by people between 13 and 25, mostly males, and a disproportionately high number of them are black.

Midnight basketball leagues got going in Maryland because it was determined that most crime and gangbanging occurred at night between Thursday and Sunday. The leagues are great just in terms of getting guys off the street and into something positive. And when you’re looking at $40,000 to house someone in jail, we need to be open to something that only requires something like a basketball and a court.

That’s why I say the crime bill is really for politicians. If they were really interested in changing things, they would look at what’s working. The number of people being incarcerated in proportion to the number of crimes being committed was going up, which suggests to me that the whole goal of deterring crime is not being fulfilled. If we’re not succeeding there, then let’s go back to crime prevention.

My biggest concern is the boys. They’re lost in many respects. And what’s happening is that girls are starting to come into their own as criminals since they want to be with the boys, who are committing crimes. The perception of crime is greater than the actual incidence of it. Roughly 70% of crime is drug-related or property crime--vandalism, petty thefts, graffiti; 30% involve some sort of physical attack.

If someone has prior felony convictions, according to California’s three-strikes law, if they’re found with rock cocaine, they’re sent away to prison. They may have been clean for 25 years, but it doesn’t matter. If you file for a fake driver’s license with the DMV, that’s your third strike. And it costs up to $45,000 a year to imprison each one.

You may have an 18-year-old who’s committed two felonies. He steals a car, which is a felony, and he’s gone for life. But this is an election year. We’re not seeing politicians talking to prosecutors, talking to judges, saying, “OK, here are the dynamics of what’s going on: What do you think?” They’re looking at as “What can I sell in 30 seconds?”

I went to talk at a juvenile camp to 125 boys in a county facility in San Dimas. This is the last stop before Youth Authority, which is essentially a state prison for people their age. One Latino guy who was 13 said he was making $1,000 a week before he was 12. He had his own place, he was driving. He was saying, “I want to turn myself around, but when I get out, I’m going right back to that environment.”

Ironically, jail is a safe haven for 14-year-olds. In some ways, for some of these kids with prior felony convictions, having the threat of prison over their heads is good. But the reality is, some of these individuals can’t be reached. Some have never had someone say to them, “If you’re a man, it’s not about strapping on a gun.” Even though I was raised by a single mother, I always had an uncle, a friend, someone who I could look at and say to myself, “That’s my goal; that’s who I want to be like.”

In his book “Search and Destroy: The Plight of African American Males in the Criminal Justice System,” Dr. Jerome Miller said a study concluded that the odds are great that young men living in large cities will get arrested before the age of 25. Of that group, 51% are nonwhite.

When I see who is really going to be affected by provisions in the crime bill, I understand the dynamics of what this means for men who look like me. Many of these men will never experience what it’s like to accomplish goals because they’ll be incarcerated forever.