Mandatory sentence law is a mistake

There are times when “confounding” doesn’t quite do justice when it comes to describing the actions taken by the 253 men and women of Pennsylvania’s General Assembly.

Consider, for instance two seemingly unrelated votes taken by the state House last week.

On Tuesday, the Republicancontrolled chamber voted 11484 to send a stripped-down version of Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed 2017-18 budget to their colleagues in the Senate.

The $31.5 billion spending plan the chamber approved was slightly lower than the $32.3 billion proposal that Wolf unveiled last month.

Notably, the House plan trims state spending on such items as pre-kindergarten and state assistance to child-care expenses for low-income families. It also sliced $12 million from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, which Wolf says will hamstring efforts to fight the state’s opioid epidemic.

Republicans said their intent with the budget plan was to inject a little “sanity, predictability and affordability” into state spending.

Which makes Wednesday’s vote restoring a host of mandatory minimum sentences, which have been unenforceable since 2015 because of state and federal court rulings, all the more mystifying.

In one fell swoop, and over the counsel of Corrections Secretary John E. Wetzel, the House wiped out that savings gleaned by their action just 24 hours earlier, by re-imposing those sentences.

They are expected to cost the state some $85.5 million a year.

In a March 21 op-ed for PennLive, Wetzel and Corrections Department Research Director Kristofer “Bret” Bucklen argued that, based on the most current research, the harsh sentences do not deter crime.

Nor are they an adequate predictor of whether someone will offend again.

“This one-size-fits-all approach does not work when it comes to health care or education policy, so why should we think it works in criminal justice?” they wrote.

Instead, the swiftness and certainty of punishment, is a far more effective deterrent, they noted.

And “judges in Pennsylvania sentence within the recommended guidelines 90 percent of the time, and the seven percent of cases where judges depart below the guidelines is mostly due to a recommendation by the prosecutor. Sentencing guidelines render mandatory minimum sentences unnecessarily rigid,” they wrote.

Pennsylvania’s move back toward mandatory minimum sentences comes even as 30 other states have now reconsidered mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Such conservative group as the American Legislative Exchange Council and Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Foundation here in Pennsylvania, who are hardly spendthrifts, oppose the re-imposition of mandatory minimum sentences.

The House passed similar legislation in last year’s session.

The Senate did not act upon it. Thankfully, that appears to again be the prevalent sentiment in the upper chamber, according to those close to the matter.

But we’d also note that no one has ever lost re-election by being tough on criminals.

And with what is likely to be a hard-fought 2018 gubernatorial election not so far away, the GOP-majority Senate could be tempted to stray from its commonsense stance in the name of short-term political gain. That would be a mistake. Voters want two things from their elected leaders: Sound stewardship of their tax dollars and a guarantee that their homes, lives and property will be safeguarded.

The bill that came out of the House accomplishes neither goal. The Senate should again let it wither and die.

In one fell swoop, the House wiped out the savings gleaned by their action just 24 hours earlier.