Michael Vick: Lock Him Up and Throw Away the Key?

As many people know, Michael Vick was a star quarterback in the National Football League, even leading the Atlanta Falcons to the Super Bowl in 2002. Then he was arrested by the FBI for participating in a dog-fighting ring. After a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to three years in a federal prison.

Upon his release from prison, Vick served a year's suspension before being reinstated in the NFL. He was signed to a contract by the Philadelphia Eagles before the state of the 2010 football season and is now playing professional football. His dog-fighting days seem to be behind him.

Here in the state of Michigan (and in probably every other state), politicians talk about getting tough on crime, but nobody wants to spend the money to build more prisons or hire more police officers. And if somebody in the department of corrections says, "Hey, let's build a prison in this community," the people of that community scream, "Not in MY town!"

There are people who would like to line up all the criminals and shoot them, but nobody wants to pay for the bullets. Because of magical thinking on the part of the average American taxpayer, the bullets are supposed to materialize from nowhere. But it doesn't work that way.

As of now, any punk in Detroit sent to Dickerson knows that he or she won't serve the whole 90 days of his or her sentence because prisoners obtain early release because of overcrowding. Only the most incorrible serve the entire sentence.

Now some of you might want to stuff small jail cells with 20 to a cell like people used to stuff Volkswagens back in the 60s, but if you were arrested for drunk driving because you were involved in an accident that wasn't your fault and the cop smelled alcohol on your breath, your tune might change, even if your blood alcohol content was over the legal limit and you were guilty of drunk driving.

Not everybody who is legally drunk is drunk. Some people can handle a Molson Canadian (roughly 6% alcohol) better than others, but one Molson in an hour will make you legally impaired while two will make you legally drunk.

The conviction rate in this country is over 99%. What's more, 99% of all cases never even go to trial because the defendant usually pleads guilty at the arraignment. I have spent entire days in court just watching people line up before the judge, and I have seen only person ask for a trial.

The defendant was a 19-year-old woman whose home had been raided by a combined SWAT team from Ecorse, Lincoln Park, and River Rouge, Michigan. The individual that the police really wanted to arrest was the woman's boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer. The police knew that he wasn't home that day, but they conducted the raid anyway because you have to go through a lengthy process to get approval for a police raid on a drug house. Naturally, the police didn't want to go through the process all over again.

I don't know outcome of the case, but the defendant was probably convicted. The advantage is almost always in favour of the prosecution because the prosecutor almost always has access to the evidence, like police reports, while the counsel for the defence may not have such access. Sometimes, a public attorney can't even get a copy of the police report.

People who commit violent crimes are seldom in their right minds when they commit them. A man from Toronto has just been arrested in Jamaica for slashing his wife's throat after he caught her texting another man; he clearly wasn't thinking when he did it.

Most criminals are ordinary people; criminals like Charles Manson or Michael Vick are rare. Many are young people who haven't acquired the wisdom to learn from their mistakes or the self-control to keep from making them.

The problem is not with the courts and the police being too leniant on crime, nor is it with liberals who "want to help the criminals." The problem is that there is simply too much crime, and the case load has become too much for our criminal justice system to handle.

The conservatives say, "Lock 'em up and throw away the key!" The Liberals say, "Let's try to rehabilitate those that can change their behaviour, like petty criminals and drug addicts."

Both approaches have failed, or we wouldn't be having this debate. We think in terms of rehabilitation when the hard-nosed approach is seen as a failure, and then we swing back in the opposite direction when rehabilitation is seen as a failure as well.

Therefore, we should celebrate Michael Vick's return to the NFL as a success story, if he has learned from his mistakes and doesn't repeat them.

In a country where the recidivism rate is about 85%, at least one ex-convict has managed to stay out of trouble, so far.