MediaWatch: September 1994
Table of Contents:
Law and Order Phobia
While Congress debated the crime bill, NBC News continued portraying tough-on-crime proposals as expensive failures. On Dateline NBC August 23, Brian Ross followed up on criminals he profiled in a piece for the NBC Nightly News 17 years ago. Ross explained that in 1976, "In Waterloo, Iowa, criminals were being given a second chance....And in New Orleans, the District Attorney was getting tough on career criminals and Clarence Williams was sent to prison for life after being caught with a stolen television set."
Fast forwarding to the present, Ross continued: "We found Clarence Williams not serving life in prison, but back on the streets of New Orleans. A court set him free on a technicality six years after he went to prison." Williams had been convicted three times since his last prison stint. Ross asked longtime New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, "Is there any evidence getting tough works, that it cuts down on crime?" Connick answered: "Not as long as you have people at the other end of the system undoing what prosecutors and police are doing."
Instead of exploring how Williams was released, Ross judged the policy to be a failure: "Neither Louisiana, nor any other state for that matter, has enough prisons for all the people who could be considered career criminals. The talk of getting tough on crime has been an empty threat."
Traveling to Iowa, Ross found something to admire. "In New Orleans, Mark Fairbanks could have gone to prison for life. In Waterloo, he was let out of prison to work at the John Deere tractor factory by day, and by night, to participate in some experimental group therapy." Ross praised the counseling program because it "costs taxpayers a lot less than prison, with an astonishing success rate for those in the program: 70 percent... commit no further crimes for at least 5 years." He later called it "one of the few success stories in the criminal justice system."
But wouldn't those locked in prison have a 100 percent success rate for not committing new crimes? It certainly held true for Clarence Williams. Did the reason one was judged a success while the other a failure have more to do with the predilection of the judges than with the actual merits of the policies?
