aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, February 04, 2006

More damaging pandering in the guise of toughness

Remember last year when the Georgia Parole Board - THE GEORGIA PAROLE BOARD for crying out loud! - proposed reducing mandatory sentences and allowing earlier parole for convicts including sex-offenders? I asked then, “have you met any parole officers lately? They’re not the liberal elite!”

Of course it was defeated. Another victory for retributive justice - still the thinking man’s vengeance if you ask me. Well this week we’ve topped ourselves here in Georgia. We’re going to have the biggest, baddest, toughest sex-offender law on the nation whether it’s effective or not:

The Georgia House declared war Thursday on sex offenders who prey on children, passing mandatory 25-year sentences for some crimes and requiring lifetime electronic monitoring for the worst violators.

The bill, which its sponsors say could lead to the nation’s toughest sex offender law, passed 144-27 after nearly four hours of contentious debate.

It’s harshest on attacks on children, mandating a minimum 25-year sentence for a new crime of aggravated assault with the intent to rape a child under 14. Kidnapping a child in that age range also carries a sentence of 25 to 50 years.

That “with intent to rape” is a little vague if you ask me. How exactly do we prove that? Does anyone know how many children “under 14” are raped in Georgia? It’ll cost $1 billion over 10 years to implement and what do we get?

“You’re going to mandate building prison beds, and when you do that, you’re going to take away monies for education and schools,” said state Rep. David Lucas (D-Macon). “And I will tell you right now jails at their best are not better than schools at their worst.”

Critics also pointed out that the bill could punish some teen offenders as harshly as it would adults. Teenagers 13 through 16 who are tried in adult court for serious violent felonies of rape, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation and aggravated sexual battery would face a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years. The current penalty for such teens is at least 10 years.

State Rep. Stephanie Stuckey Benfield (D-Atlanta) criticized a change that she said removed a judge’s discretion to grant first-offender status to some suspects 21 and younger.

“What we’re doing is unduly harsh, I believe, for the juveniles,” Benfield said. “I do not believe it’s appropriate to sentence a 17-year-old to 25 years minimum mandatory in prison for aggravated assault with the intent to rape. There may be a case where that would be an appropriate sentence, but let’s let a judge decide.”

Ah, yes, what we get is we criminalize the kids we’re claiming the bill will protect. I spoke with a family therapist yesterday who is gathering data on adolescence and pleading with elected officials to stop hurting these kids.

I’m so blue today because I believe it’s futile. This bill hurts our culture and hurts our society and does not protect us but it hurts Georgia’s young people most. And as with the Bible bill, these legislators are hard-pressed to vote against stiffer penalties for child molesters. Even as they have to know it does nothing, nothing at all to solve the problem. In fact I believe it makes it worse.