FOLLOW THE LAW ON BOOT CAMPS
Fix the judges, not the law.
In 2006, Denzel Simons was young, just 19. But he was not nonviolent. When he robbed a Southwest Side homeowner and stood by while an accomplice pistol-whipped the poor man, he was behaving with utter violence.
Simons should have gone to prison, the kind with small cells and thick bars, not to a boot camp, a less severe form incarceration intended for young and nonviolent offenders.
Yet, Simons was indeed sentenced to boot camp. Where he served a piddling four months. And today he’s locked up again, this time charged with murder. So much for boot camp. Or, more fairly, so much for Cook County Judge Diane Cannon, who went soft, failed to follow the law, and sentenced Simons to boot camp instead of prison.
The mistake was not in the law or boot camp, but in the judge.
This editorial page has argued for years for enlightened alternatives to prison, such as boot camps and community-based drug treatment programs, for young and nonviolent offenders. Rehabilitation works best when you get them while they’re young. Prisons make soft men hard.
This editorial page also has argued against efforts to increase mandatory prison sentences for various violent crimes, our view being that the penalties on the books are stiff enough and judges must be allowed to use discretion. One-size sentencing does not fit all.
But public support for boot camps — an excellent rehabilitative alternative to prisons in concept — is undermined when judges send the wrong people — violent people — there. And public support for tougher mandatory minimum sentences, though a bad idea, grows stronger when judges exercise their powers of discretion poorly and go too easy too often.
On Friday, Sun-Times reporter Frank Main, having combed through thousands of court records, reported that Cook County
Public support for boot camps is undermined when judges send the wrong people — violent people — there.
judges since 2006 have handed down hundreds of improper boot camp sentences to violent felons. The judges did so despite explicit wording in Illinois law that boot camp and probation are not options in such cases. An armed robber like Simons is supposed to go to prison, not a boot camp.
Judge Cannon, in an interview with Main, admitted she had failed to strictly follow the sentencing law. “You got me,” she said. Between 2006 and 2011, she sentenced 13 convicted armed robbers, including Simons, to mere boot camp. In the future, she said, she won’t sentence such offenders to boot camp.
We find it tough to go too hard on Judge Cannon. As Main reports, court records show that she tends to go easy on first-time offenders but “drops the hammer when they blow it.” And we’re sure she couldn’t help notice that Simons had been the captain of his high school swim team and was a Park District lifeguard. You want to guess how many violent felons standing in front of a judge in Cook County can claim those kinds of accomplishments?
As we see it, the onus is on Chief Cook County Judge Timothy Evans, who declined to talk to Main on the record, to set things right. When criminal court judges routinely ignore the law and legislative intent in setting sentences, their boss — the chief judge — is failing to do his job.
It’s essential that Evans order all judges to abide by the state’s sentencing laws and adhere to strict guidelines.
When judges fail to work within the bounds of reasonable laws, unreasonable laws are sure to follow.