OPINION:
The failure of the Bureau of Prisons to implement two major federal laws mandating sentence reductions for nonviolent and first-time offenders costs taxpayers billions of dollars annually even as it increases recidivism risk and the crime rate — never mind the human misery such malign neglect entails. This is the most pressing of the many problems I’ve observed as a prisoner of conscience from inside the walls of a federal prison.
In any fair and efficient criminal justice system, a prison sentence must be long enough to match the crime while sufficient to deter future criminal behavior. Based on my conversations with nearly a hundred fellow inmates and supplementary research, the United States justice system wildly over-sentences and significantly delays releases and thereby misses this mark.
Here’s Prisonomics 101: We must be as “smart on crime” as we are “tough on crime.” Every inmate costs taxpayers $60,000 a year, and the costs of over-sentencing and the Bureau of Prisons’ failure to release inmates in a timely manner run well into the billions.
America’s over-sentencing for first-time and nonviolent offenders begins with a large roster of “hanging judges” fearful of a political backlash from a citizenry rightly angry with the breakdown of law and order in our society. However, far too many of these black-robed czars have little concept of what it means to be behind bars, and it means nothing to impose sentences twice or more as long as might be needed to adequately punish and deter.
Here, the significant variance across judges in sentences for the same crimes is both well known and troubling. In my own dorm, one inmate got a soul-crushing 150 months for embezzlement while his co-defendant got a mere 30 months for a much larger role in the scam.
Second, over-sentencing has been institutionalized through outdated “mandatory minimums,” which regularly put first-time, nonviolent offenders in prison for 10 to 15 years or more. Mostly, these are young men, often with wives and young children. They will go from youth to middle age in our prison system at a per capita cost to U.S. taxpayers approaching $1 million. In prison, their skills and employability will deteriorate. Tragically, their children will go from babies to teens without a male parent.
Third, there is the “RICO wing” of the Department of Justice, now exploiting and often abusing the broad powers of federal racketeering laws. Indeed, DOJ prosecutors routinely use overly broad “conspiracy” charges to threaten defendants and their family members with ridiculously long sentences if the defendants refuse to plea bargain and instead go to trial. When the inevitable plea comes, coerced defendants are often still saddled with eight-, 10- or 15-year sentences for white-collar crimes that, absent the RICO gambit, would be settled through civil rather than criminal prosecutions.
Through such coercion, DOJ prosecutors act more like racketeers than those they are prosecuting. Their goal is not justice but simply another scalp to take for their resumes and professional advancement. I have met numerous men in prison who had their lives, families, and job-creating, tax-generating businesses ruined by DOJ’s RICO wing and who never should have been put behind bars.
Congress has sought to address this over-sentencing epidemic through the Trump-era 2018 First Step Act and the 2008 Bush-era Second Chance Act and its 2018 reauthorization. Yet the Bureau of Prisons has largely ignored the mandates Congress has given it.
For example, during my prison stay, I have worked with dozens of first-time and nonviolent inmates. I have discovered case after case where prerelease custody into a halfway house and home confinement had been delayed for months and sometimes more than a year. I had this happen even in my own case, which has lengthened my prison stay by more than one-third.
One of the biggest reasons the Bureau of Prisons fails to release inmates in a timely manner is its failure to follow a 2022 directive mandating full forecast release credits under the First Step Act and the Second Chance Act. An equally big reason is simply bureaucratic inertia, which causes many inmates who fail to speak up to fall through the cracks.
One of the most economically perverse problems I have observed is the refusal of the Bureau of Prisons to allow inmates into prerelease custody because of the closing of some halfway houses and a lack of halfway house capacity. This is not just inhumane; it is fiscal insanity.
It costs taxpayers half as much to support an inmate in a halfway house. So when the Bureau of Prisons closes halfway houses to save a few dimes and inmates have to stay in prison longer, the total cost to the Bureau of Prisons — and taxpayers — goes up.
Finally, while Congress has significantly relaxed the rules governing compassionate release, time and again, the Bureau of Prisons and wardens at prisons like mine in Miami won’t approve such releases. In my prison dorm alone, there is a 66-year-old in deteriorating health in a wheelchair, an 80-year-old in even worse condition, a guy with what is likely terminal cancer, and a 40-something suffering from the aftermath of a stroke and related spinal surgery. All should have been sent home months or years ago.
This is not what Congress intended, and the Bureau of Prisons’ failure to obey the laws of our land — irony noted — is needlessly costing taxpayers billions annually while increasing crime and recidivism rates. This travesty is happening on President Biden’s watch. It’s well past time to add “smart on crime” to the political mantra of “tough on crime.”
• Peter Navarro served for four years as a senior White House adviser to Donald Trump. He is currently a prisoner of conscience in a federal prison for defending the constitutional separation of powers and honoring his oath of office. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The New MAGA Deal: The Unofficial Deplorables Guide to Donald Trump’s 2024 Policy Platform.”
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