Taking the Next Step

By David Kaczynsky

Schenectady Daily Gazette, December 23, 2007

On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine signed a landmark bill making his the first state in the modern era to legislatively repeal its death penalty statute. New Jersey thus follows in the footsteps of New York, which achieved de facto abolition in October when the state’s highest court removed the last inmate from the Unit for Condemned Persons at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.

The demise of the death penalty in both states followed careful studies and open public hearings on every conceivable aspect of capital punishment. New Jersey’s bi-partisan death penalty study commission - which recommended repeal after a year-long study – modeled its approach on five days of public hearings conducted by the New York State Assembly in 2004 and 2005. Both groups found, in essence, that any speculative benefits of the death penalty were outweighed by the known risks and costs, including the likelihood that innocent people would be executed, patterns of unfairness in the application of capital punishment, and the exorbitant cost of capital prosecutions.

There is an emerging consensus among New Yorkers, reflected in public opinion polls, that a maximum sentence of life imprisonment without parole is the wiser choice. It protects society at a fraction of the cost of the death penalty, without risking the execution of an innocent person, and without forcing murder victims’ family members to endure a decades-long capital appeals process.

Money Available Now

As our lawmakers negotiate next year’s budget, funding for the Capital Defenders Organization and for death penalty-related programs at the New York State Prosecutors Training Institute are off the table for the first time since 1995. Since 1995, more than $200 million in tax dollars was wasted on New York’s death penalty system.

But we should not allow ourselves to forget what the 1995 law hoped to accomplish – a reduction in crime and violence. Even as we learn that the death penalty is not the answer to our crime problem, it goes without saying that abolishing the death penalty is not the answer either. If lawmakers were once willing to invest more than $20 million a year in an unproven crime-reduction program, they should now be willing to invest at least that much in programs that have demonstrated effectiveness in preventing crime from occurring in the first place.

In Blueprints for Violence Prevention – a comprehensive national study by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado at Boulder - a forceful case has been made for a more preventive approach. Instead of devoting all our energy and resources to mopping up after violent crimes occur, we should work to prevent such crimes from occurring at all. What the study found should not surprise us. Too often, today&;rsquos victimized child becomes tomorrow’s perpetrator.

Early Intervention

The best way to prevent future crimes is two-fold: prevent child abuse now and employ research-tested interventions with troubled youth before they get caught up in the adult system.

While the study offers a disturbing glimpse into a failing juvenile justice system rife with waste, inefficiency, and bureaucratic inertia, it also offers immense hope by pointing to strategies that have worked successfully over time to reduce child abuse and helping at-risk youth discover positive futures. The study identified 11 model programs so effective that the federal government has jumped on board to promote replication efforts around the county. New York needs to get on board, too.

The death penalty was always more about desperation and despair than preventing crime. On the other hand, when we intervene to save a child we may well end up saving more than one life. Rescuing children is something we have learned how to do. There is a growing body of research to give us positive direction. Cycles of violence can be broken.

In Lawmakers’ Hands

Abolishing the death penalty, whether through court action in New York or legislative action in New Jersey, frees up money that can be far better used for crime prevention and victims’ services.

It only remains to be seen if our political leaders have the will and energy to tackle the crime problem at its source.