could it have been prevented?

Warning, this post is sort of old (and sad and serious) news, but I've been so darn busy tussling with a climbing, whining, non-eating toddler (read previous post) that I haven't been able to collect my thoughts. Until now.

Here are the basics:

Just after Thanksgiving, in Pierce County, Washington, a man with issues stormed into a coffee shop and shot four police officers, several of them execution style, before running off and evading police for several days. When he was finally discovered, a shoot-out ensued and he was killed, also.

A month later, in my home town of Salisbury, Maryland, a little girl went missing. Law enforcement officers suspected a sex offender living nearby of foul play, and sure enough he had information that ended up being true. Her body was found a couple days after Christmas. The real kicker here is that I went to high school with the sex offender and knew him. And, even more so, the neighborhood where the two of them lived was near by parents' home. Salisbury made the news the week of Christmas, because the little girl was missing for several days and search parties were organized to look for her (hoping they'd find a very cold and starved little girl, not a body). Thousands of people turned out Christmas morning at the local minor-league baseball stadium -- near my childhood home -- to search.


Why do I tell you these CSI stories?

Because both of these killers, at one time, were in jail. They were a threat to society and were apprehended and were locked up. If they were still in jail, these awful things wouldn't have happened, right?

But I'm here to argue that their being out of jail made sense. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject, and I can't find any information that emphatically and obviously and undeniably points to the fact that they should have been locked up for their lives.

Lets take Scenario I, Maurice Clemmons, our criminal in Tacoma. My source here is an op-ed piece in our local paper by former Arkansan governor Mike Huckabee. (No, I did not vote for him for president. Although I am impressed he's lost 300 pounds or whatever.) Here is an exerpt:

Maurice Clemmons was 16 years old when he committed the crimes of burglary and robbery. He was sentenced to a total of 108 years in prison, dramatically outside the norm for sentencing for the crimes he committed and the age at which he committed them.

Nine years ago, the name Maurice Clemmons crossed my desk. I commuted his sentence from 108 years to 47 years.... Only letters of support for Clemmons' commutation were received, including one from the circuit judge.

Three months after the commutation, Clemmons met the criteria for parole and was paroled to supervision in late 2000.

Several Washingtonians were blaming Huckabee for the fact that this guy was out of jail and went on a killing spree here in Washington. The article goes on to say that Clemmons "engaged in intermittent criminal activity that increased in violence and frequency" after he moved to Washington. In the end, he had been charged with raping a child but was released when he posted his own bail. Shortly after that was then the murders occurred.

So, here's my question. If anyone is at fault, it's the judge who set a bail after the rape charge. It's not Huckabee. In fact, if we locked up for life (for 108 years) every 16-year-old kid who stole a candy bar or a car stereo, we'd have a lot of prison space wasted on young adults who may or may not be menaces to society. I can't say. Another article said he served 11 years of his 108/47-year sentence. Eleven years in jail for stealing something when he was a kid!

I just don't think Huckabee can be blamed here for giving him a second chance. Lots of us were morons when we were teenagers. Maurice Clemmons was too. The only hint we had that this guy was capable of dangerous things were the crimes right before the murders.

So what went wrong? Allowing him to post his own bail went wrong. But most people charged with a crime have the perogative to post bail, unless they are considered an immediate danger to society. Do we strip everyone of that right, simply because this guy abused his liberties? Could we really have prevented this? Was it the judge's fault that he didn't see that immediate danger?

OK, on to Scenario II: Thomas Leggs -- I knew him as TJ in school -- was a registered sex offender. Why? This article in the Washington Post explains that in 1998 and in 2001, twice, he pleaded guilty to having sex with "a child," a teenager who was not yet 18. In 1998 -- since we were the same age -- he was 18, and in 2001, he was 21.

So, do we lock up indefinitely every young man who has sex with his under-age girlfriend? I just don't think it's possible! He was on the sex offender registry, which was probably punishment enough. His recent criminal charges have to do with burglary, destruction of property, etc. I searched and searched for more information on this guy's criminal history, and didn't find much. One article pegged the ages of the girls at 12 and 14, respectively, and said the second instance was just inappropriate relations (not sex).

Part of me wants to say, "oh that's so young, we need to lock him up forever!," which is what everyone on Facebook and the Salisbury news blog comment sections are saying. (He is very much guilty until proven innocent in those forums.)

But the other part of me wants to say, "should my tax dollars keep this guy in jail for his entire life?" I just don't know what to think. I mean, I have a son myself, and there are scary people out in the world, but do we lock up everyone??

Could we have known what would happen? Can we really beat ourselves up for this?

Do we incarcerate everyone who is a threat, or instead, do we put into place the best measures to warn us (sex offender registry, etc.) and give people another chance? Does it have to be all or nothing? Who of us has never made a mistake?

Believe me, I don't think police officers should be needlessly killed, and I definitely don't believe our children should be at risk. But in these two instances, I just don't know what we could have done to prevent these tragedies from happening. They were disturbed people, but they weren't murderers. I don't think we could have known.

I guess I've been thinking a lot about agency and free choice lately. If I want to curb behavior in some way, I can be manipulative with what I allow, but in that regard I am taking away the agency of someone else and making their behavior match my expectations and guidelines. But then is that really free choice? At what point does someone lose the opportunity to choose for himself?

And on the other hand, is it fair that the actions of these criminals takes away the agency of innocent people? Men and women who serve society as police officers, and children? What is fair about that?

I'd be interested in your thoughts here. Should these guys both have been in jail forever? Are you willing to pay to build more jails to keep them -- and people like them -- off the street? Or do we give second chances? Did they deserve a second chance? Does it have to escalate to murder before we take the criminality of someone seriously?