In criminal justice, Reno calls for 'science and common sense'

BY LISA TREI

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno last week called on Stanford Law School students to help make the nation's criminal justice system more equitable, and to start addressing thorny social problems that send people to prison in the first place.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno asked Stanford law students Feb. 20 to make the nation’s criminal justice system more equitable and to focus on the human side of corrections. She spoke at a two-day symposium. Photo: L.A. Cicero

"We should be about figuring out how we keep people out of the criminal justice system," Reno told students who responded with a standing ovation Feb. 20 at the opening of a two-day symposium titled "Punishment and Its Purposes."

Reno, who served as the nation's first female attorney general during the Clinton administration, told students never to forget that those who commit crimes are real people with hopes and fears. "How we fashion punishment and how we fashion support for punishment to make a difference in the lives of those people is what we should be about," she said.

The symposium, sponsored by the Stanford Law Review, included expert panels on federal sentencing guidelines, race and criminal justice, and the clash between public sentiment and rational theory.

Reno's presentation painted a grim picture of America's corrections system. Referring to a speech last August by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy that bluntly criticized mandatory minimum prison terms, Reno noted that 2.1 million, or 1 in 143, people are incarcerated in U.S. prisons. In contrast, she said, England, France and Germany have about 1 in 1,000 people in prison. Furthermore, 40 percent of the U.S. prison population is African American, with about 10 percent of African American men in their mid to late 20s behind bars.

"We have functioned for far too long as a country not operating on all of its cylinders when that many people are in federal and state prisons," Reno said.

Reno called on schools of criminology to participate in establishing a national clearinghouse where the latest research on effective punishment and rehabilitation could be gathered and disseminated. Lawyers, law enforcement personnel, victims, psychologists, criminologists, economists, neurologists and judges would contribute their knowledge in a cross-disciplinary effort to find out what works and doesn't work, she said.

"We need to understand science and common sense, and we need to make sure that that triumphs over the political rhetoric that has informed the politics of corrections and the politics of crime and criminal justice in this country," Reno said.

Referring to her tenure as the nation's leading law enforcer, Reno said she was troubled by the level of "purely political" rhetoric in Washington, D.C., over corrections and sentencing. "We will never leave the politics of crime and sentencing behind until we do our level best ... to develop sentencing policy based on solid research," she said.

According to Reno, sentencing should be designed to accomplish the following objectives:

• Ensure that the person being sentenced does not commit another crime;
• Deter others;
• Make the victim as whole as possible;
• Be fair and just and proportionate to the crime.

With an estimated 600,000 people leaving the prison system every year, Reno said it makes sense for the corrections system to teach inmates basic skills needed to function in civil society. "One of the things that troubles me is that lawyers like to wait until a crisis occurs," she said. "It makes no sense to send someone to prison with a chronic drug or alcohol problem and not provide effective treatment" to help that person deal with what may have contributed to landing him in prison in the first place.

Reno also stressed that society must focus on supporting its most vulnerable members: children. As state attorney in Dade County, Fla., Reno said doctors told her that the concepts of reward and punishment are learned in the first three years of life. "Too many children ... are in prison today," she said. "They have been raised without the support they needed, without a foundation of learning and conscience to prepare them to be constructive members of society. And it is through absolutely no fault of their own."

Reno said she has never understood why society supports affirmative action at the university level rather than providing a quality education for all children through 12th grade. Reno said social policies that invest in children from infancy would pay dividends in the long term. "We've got to start in those first three years; we've got to make sure the child is prepared for school," she said. "We must do everything we can to promote excellent education for all children."

Reno asked the audience, as future lawyers and leaders, to focus on the human side of corrections. "Don't get caught up in the numbers," she said. "Remember, these are all people -- flesh and blood, with hopes and fears, failures and successes -- who deserve a chance to make a difference. We can provide it if we come together and use the best science and the best cooperation to help achieve our goals."