For most of the last two decades, Haley Barbour was a model Republican able to appeal to social and fiscal conservatives alike. He led the GOP’s charge against Bill Clinton’s scandals, raised buckets of money for countless conservative causes, and rallied Mississippi back from Hurricane Katrina with little of the drama of neighboring New Orleans.
But in his final hours in office as Mississippi governor this month, Barbour tarnished his own legacy as well as the GOP’s law-and-order image with more than 200 pardons, including a dozen convicted murderers, more than a dozen people convicted of manslaughter and homicide, several rapists, and a slew of robbers and drug dealers.
Getting "tough on crime" became popular among the public and politicians alike. In election years, Congress created more one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentences or increased the length of many of those already on the books. Whoever we most feared -- drug offenders, immigrants, consumers of child pornography -- became the next target of a long mandatory prison sentence. Governments also began curtailing prisoners' options for challenging their convictions or sentences, so that even legitimate legal claims could not be brought into courts. Our lust to punish -- and punish harshly -- has cost us dearly. We are the world's top jailer; we now pay over $60 billion each year to lock up 2.3 million people.
Pardons clash with this recent history and cause a kind of philosophical whiplash. They shouldn't. We are also a people who claim to be predominantly Christian and believe in mercy and redemption. Christian or otherwise, most of us extol second chances. With punishments as draconian as ours have become, second chances can literally be the difference between life and death, being an active or absent parent, prosperity or poverty. The pardon power is often the only remedy for those who have been unfairly or excessively punished in the harsh and inflexible sentencing system we have spent 30 years building. Pardons and commutations can correct some of these injustices. They grant forgiveness when, sadly, we forget to be merciful. Our founding fathers included the pardon power in our Constitution for precisely this reason. They betted on us going too far in our zeal to punish and created pardons as a safeguard for those on the receiving end of our excess.
With 30 years of unwise punishment policies to repair, the pardon power is more important now than ever before. Governor Barbour was right to use and defend it. Other governors and President Obama can live up to our nation's highest and best ideals -- doing justice and showing mercy -- by following his example.
But in his final hours in office as Mississippi governor this month, Barbour tarnished his own legacy as well as the GOP’s law-and-order image with more than 200 pardons, including a dozen convicted murderers, more than a dozen people convicted of manslaughter and homicide, several rapists, and a slew of robbers and drug dealers.
Getting "tough on crime" became popular among the public and politicians alike. In election years, Congress created more one-size-fits-all mandatory minimum sentences or increased the length of many of those already on the books. Whoever we most feared -- drug offenders, immigrants, consumers of child pornography -- became the next target of a long mandatory prison sentence. Governments also began curtailing prisoners' options for challenging their convictions or sentences, so that even legitimate legal claims could not be brought into courts. Our lust to punish -- and punish harshly -- has cost us dearly. We are the world's top jailer; we now pay over $60 billion each year to lock up 2.3 million people.
Pardons clash with this recent history and cause a kind of philosophical whiplash. They shouldn't. We are also a people who claim to be predominantly Christian and believe in mercy and redemption. Christian or otherwise, most of us extol second chances. With punishments as draconian as ours have become, second chances can literally be the difference between life and death, being an active or absent parent, prosperity or poverty. The pardon power is often the only remedy for those who have been unfairly or excessively punished in the harsh and inflexible sentencing system we have spent 30 years building. Pardons and commutations can correct some of these injustices. They grant forgiveness when, sadly, we forget to be merciful. Our founding fathers included the pardon power in our Constitution for precisely this reason. They betted on us going too far in our zeal to punish and created pardons as a safeguard for those on the receiving end of our excess.
With 30 years of unwise punishment policies to repair, the pardon power is more important now than ever before. Governor Barbour was right to use and defend it. Other governors and President Obama can live up to our nation's highest and best ideals -- doing justice and showing mercy -- by following his example.
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