Bill James is the father of sabermetrics, a numerical analysis of baseball that has revolutionized the way statistics are used to predict player performance and manage the game.
More recently he stepped into another arena with “Popular Crime,” a book that leans on statistics to postulate whether resolution of major crimes — mostly murders — over the last century and a half reached logical conclusions. He thinks JonBenet Ramsey’s parents are innocent of her murder, and O.J. Simpson was guilty, saved by an inept prosecutor and shower of media attention.
James, 67, and a resident of Holton, also thinks the nation would be well served if it did away with large prisons holding thousands of inmates, and replaced them with smaller ones of 20 or so.
IN HUGE prisons the most heinous, most violent prisoners hold sway. They dictate from a position of strength gang behavior, drug distribution and violence.
Those at the other end of the spectrum gravitate to experienced and accomplished criminals — albeit not so much so to escape arrest — for two reasons: They have little choice in the social strata of a prison and the saw plays true: “You are a product of your environment.” Also, departments of corrections today aren’t eager to spend money — often it isn’t available — to rebuild the lives of inmates in preparation of their return to society.
James’s idea is to segregate inmates by their crimes, perhaps into 10 tiers with one small prison set aside for the most violent and irretrievable.
At the harmless end, inmates would be permitted to hold jobs and check in to their prison quarters each evening. More perks — educational opportunities and freedoms of several forms — would graduate from the tier holding the worst offenders.
In some respects, it would be similar to Allen County’s drug court, where people arrested for certain drug offenses are permitted to meet regularly, learn the advantages of righting their lives and then graduate without jail time.
County jails today are somewhat similar to what James envisions.
Allen County’s, for example, allows some inmates privileges, depending on why they are incarcerated. They don’t have classes to improve their lives educationally — although it’s likely Sheriff Bryan Murphy would look favorably on such a program — but they do work in laundry, kitchen, do other chores and before this year cultivated a garden north across Jackson Avenue. They also have some freedom within confines of the jail.
BREAKING the law must have consequences.
Those convicted of the most violent crimes — murder, rape and offenses against children — should be punished commensurately.
The state’s Department of Corrections is short of beds. A suggestion has been made to use county jail space. Perhaps doing so would lead to an outcome similar to what James proposes.
It’s worth a try.
— Bob Johnson
