Gerth: Why the Republican crime bill won’t result in a ‘Safer Kentucky’

It seems like every time Republicans name a bill, the bill does just the opposite of what it says it's going to do. Or at the very least, it doesn’t really make a new effort to do what it says it does.

The “No Child Left Behind Act” left plenty of kids behind because it put such a premium on standardized testing that many teachers were simply teaching kids how to pass the dang test.

And the “Clear Skies Act of 2002” actually allowed polluters to dump 42 million more tons of toxins into the air than under the previous law.

And so it is that last week, the Republicans in the Kentucky General Assembly introduced House Bill 5, or what it is calling its “Safer Kentucky Act,” which as far as I can tell, doesn’t really make people safer. It's just going to mean we’re going to have to pump millions more dollars into our prison system.

Sure, on the surface, some of the stuff sounds like it will help.

Who wouldn’t be for a bill that says people who commit three violent felonies should be locked up for the rest of their lives?

They’re obviously incorrigible criminals? Right?

Until you learn that states stopped adopting three-strikes laws back in the 1990s because most studies found they were costly and didn’t work.

Sure, some studies found there was a slight reduction in things like assaults and robberies, but for the most part, it just caused the states’ corrections budget to increase. And it proved to be more dangerous for police.

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A study in 2016 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that police were more likely to die in the line of duty in states with three-strikes laws.

The study found that three strikes laws were “associated with a 33 percent increase in the risk of fatal assaults of law enforcement officers” because people who already had two felony convictions were more likely to use lethal force.

“In the case of three-strikes laws, it appears that chronic offenders may be killing officers to evade capture and possible life imprisonment,” Cassandra Crifasi, the study’s lead author, said at the time it was released.

A study by the California Legislative Analyst’s Office in 2005 found that state’s crime rate began to fall before the law was passed and continued to fall by 43% after it became law – but that the decrease was more part of a national trend in falling crime rates.

On the other hand, the analyst’s office found California’s law caused the state’s prison population to soar until a court ruling allowed judges to use discretion in deciding if they would impose a life sentence for those convicted of three serious or violent felonies.

The Kentucky bill is a bit different, calling for life sentences only for those convicted of a handful of violent crimes, but it has a provision that requires a judge to sentence a three-striker to life behind bars, no matter the mitigating circumstances.

Ugh. That kind of rigidity always leads to injustices. Just look at the number of people rotting away in federal prisons because of the sentencing requirements in the federal system.

In 2018, Congress recognized this problem and created a “safety valve” allowing judges in some cases to impose penalties lower than the mandatory minimum penalties allowed. Then-President Trump signed the bill into law.

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The Republican crime bill in Kentucky increases the penalty for people convicted of tagging, or putting graffiti on someone else’s property. I’m not sure how this makes people safer, but it’s not as if police really have the time to go around arresting kids with spray paint.

But where this provision really goes astray is that it also applies to landlord-tenant disputes and gets rid of the lower limit for the amount of damage a tenant has to cause before a landlord can seek criminal charges against them.

C’mon.

Someone can get mad and put a fist through the wall of their apartment and they’re now doing a year in the county lockup? Are you kidding me. This type thing should be in small claims court, not clogging up our criminal court system.

The bill criminalizes the homeless by creating the crime of “unlawful camping” and sets a punishment of up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine for a second violation of the statute.

Why don’t we just build places to house the homeless rather than put them in expensive jail beds?

Republicans claim they are trying to “help” the homeless with this provision. That’s laughable.

The crime bill creates a two-tiered system of justice in which the rich are entitled get out on bail while the poor aren’t. It prohibits nonprofit groups from posting bail over $5,000 for people who are accused of most crimes and prohibits them from posting any bail for those accused of violent crime or domestic violence.

And it gives civil and criminal immunity to private security guards who injure someone who they believe has shoplifted – even if they are wrong.

That does not make anyone safer.

We’re not solving problems like drugs abuse and mental illness, which often lead people to crime.

We’re not doing anything to stop the easy access to guns, which is a primary driver of violent crime.

We’re just locking people up – as if that were the solution.

If it was, Kentucky would be the seventh-safest state in the country – behind only Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama, which according to the website prisonpolicy.org, are the only states that lock up a higher percentage of their population than Kentucky.

As of now, before the crime bill takes effect, we lock up 903 out of 100,000 of our brothers and sisters.

Do you feel safer?

The Legislative Research Commission hasn’t determined how much the legislation will cost because of provisions that increase prison sentences and require that those convicted spend a higher percentage of their sentences in prison.

It hasn’t figured out what the additional cost will be to keep prisoners sentenced to life in prison without parole when those prisoners hit their 70s and 80s and 90s and need expensive medical treatment to stay alive.

That said, the bill isn’t all bad.

It increases penalties for drug dealers who sell fentanyl if the drugs they peddle cause someone to overdose and die.

And it allows for families of homicide victims, anti-gun groups and anyone else (except for government agencies) to purchase weapons used in homicides and have them destroyed.

It would be better if the state just destroyed all guns used in murders and manslaughters or, at the very least, allow the families to purchase the weapons without making them win an auction for them.

But again, the bill does absolutely nothing to address the root causes of crime – like poverty and drug addiction. And it does absolutely nothing to address the issue of guns, which have flooded our streets.

And no bill that ignores such things should ever be called “the Safer Kentucky Act.”

It should at best be called “The Citizens of Kentucky Wanted Something Done to Stop Crime, But the State Legislature Did This Instead Act.”

Joseph Gerth can be reached at 502-582-4702 or by email at jgerth@courierjournal.com.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Three-strikes Safer Kentucky Act does little to stop crime