Keeler: Justice system needs to be studied

If we're ever going to get a handle on why we lock up so many Americans and find out if we're paying too much for too little benefit, this is the time. The cut-the-deficit chorus in Washington seems to have made even the law-and-order hawks have second thoughts about prison costs.

But last week, a perfectly sensible proposal for a broad examination of the nation's criminal justice system died in the Senate. Sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), it would have done nothing more radical than create a blue-ribbon commission to spend 18 months looking into the system, then recommend reforms. The United States has a far higher per capita rate of prisoners than the world average. If we're locking up people for too long, or for the wrong reasons, and if we can save billions of dollars without increasing crime, it's an idea whose time has come.

In fact, Webb's bill enjoys broad support among law enforcement groups, such as the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriffs' Association. In 2010, the House of Representatives passed it. And last week, Webb tried to get it adopted in the Senate as an amendment to an appropriations measure.

It got 57 votes, including four Republicans -- not enough to get past the 60-vote filibuster barrier. The 43 nay votes all came from Republicans. And Webb was mightily miffed.

"Their inflammatory arguments defy reasonable explanation and were contradicted by the plain language of our legislation," Webb said in a statement after the vote. "To suggest, for example, that the nonbinding recommendations of a bipartisan commission threaten the Constitution is absurd."

Webb's strong words should come as no surprise. He's a fighter, like the Scots-Irish forebears he celebrated in a book called "Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America."

He's a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam, where he earned the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Later, he served as Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan. He's a prolific author, including a novel of Vietnam, "Fields of Fire."

So Webb is tough -- not the soft liberal often associated with prison reform. His passion for it goes back decades. In the military, he served on courts-martial. Later, as an attorney, he defended pro bono a young ex-Marine convicted of murder in Vietnam. In 1984, for Parade Magazine, he went to Japan to write about its justice system. "Since then," he wrote in 2009 in Parade, "Japan's prison population has not quite doubled to 71,000, while ours has quadrupled to 2.3 million. The United States has by far the world's highest incarceration rate. With 5% of the world's population, our country now houses nearly 25% of the world's reported prisoners."

He argues that we're locking up people who don't have to be in prison -- like nonviolent drug offenders -- but not doing enough to protect the public from violent gangs and drug cartels.

Over the years, I've spent a lot of time in prison, as a reporter -- starting with the Attica uprising in 1971 and including a prison guard strike in 1979 -- and as a visitor. I've interviewed inmates who make me glad there are stout bars and high walls between them and society. And I've known sad-sacks, whose incarceration protects no one and helps no one.

Crime is a long-term problem, but short-term legislators try to solve it with fixes that don't work, but do add unnecessarily to the prison population. Now it's time to undo some of the damage they've done.

Webb isn't running for re-election in 2012. That gives him 14-plus months to get this bill through the Senate. I'm betting he keeps fighting, as he should.

Bob Keeler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.