Letters

Wednesday, March 11, 1998

Letters

More is not less

While leaving my cell and heading to the law library, I was
given an article to read from the Daily Bruin by a fellow convict.
After reading an article Alex Balekian wrote titled "When punishing
criminals, less is not more" (Feb. 18), I felt compelled to respond
in an effort to present the other side of the story. As I begin my
19th year in prison for second-degree murder, I too have come to
believe that sound measures should be imposed to make sentences on
crime more austere. However, unlike Balekian, who didn’t do his
homework thoroughly in his article, I’d like to refresh Balekian’s
memory with the fact that it was Gov. Pete Wilson who, in the first
place, along with Ronald Reagan, passed the so-called inmate bill
of rights. One of the reasons for the bill’s being passed was due
to the extreme amount of violence in prisons among prisoners and
between prisoners and guards. At this juncture in prison history in
California, both the sentences and the prison conditions were
draconian.

Prison sentences were indeterminate and there were no beards or
long hair allowed back then. Prisoners could not purchase their own
TVs or radios, and access to the courts was very limited. The
milieu in prison became filled with rage and violence. Upon
release, for those who were not killed in the daily violence of
prison life, these prisoners were turned into monsters by the
monster factories they were released from and reeked violent havoc
on society. I can assure you that the prisoners of today are not
even half as violent or intrepid as the prisoners were in the ’60s
and ’70s when treatment of prisoners was austere.

I wrote all of the above to convey this point: All Balekian is
asking for is a repeat of history from the way California prisons
were in the ’60s and ’70s. And we all know that those who don’t
learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Besides, as someone
long ago once said, "If everyone believed in an eye for an eye, the
whole world would be blind." As Californians, we should shy away
from the quick-fix solutions, and rather contemplate sound
solutions to our crime problems, as well as our other problems.
It’s easy to be like Balekian and others who jump on the bandwagon
because it’s politically vogue to do so, but as Californians, who
are known to set trends for other states in our nation to follow,
it would be prudent not to let our emotions override our intellect,
so that trends we set are sound and a beacon for others to
follow.

John Smith

Phoenix, Arizona