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Judge Posner Weighs In on the Costs and Benefits of Long Prison Sentences

USA v. David Michael Craig, No. 12-1262.       

PER CURIAM

The defendant pleaded guilty to four counts of producing child pornography. 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a).    Because his total offense level was 43, his guidelines sentence for each count was life. U.S.S.G. ch. 5, pt. A (Sentencing Table). But the judge could not impose that sentence because the statutory maximum sentence for each count of conviction was 30 years. 18 U.S.C. § 2251(e).

The judge sentenced him to the 30-year maximum on one count and to concurrent sentences of 20 years on each of the remaining three counts, but he ordered that the set of 20-year sentences be served consecutively to the 30-year sentence, making the total sentence 50 years. The judge was entitled to do this.

 The lawyer has filed an Anders motion to withdraw as counsel on the ground that the appeal is frivolous; we grant the motion and dismiss the appeal.              

 

POSNER, Circuit Judge, concurring. 

I write separately merely to remind the district judges of this circuit of the importance of careful consideration of the wisdom of imposing de facto life sentences. If the defendant in this case does not die in the next 50 years he will be 96 years old when released (though “only” 89 or 90 if he receives the maximum good-time credits that he would earn if his behavior in prison proves to be exemplary).  

Federal imprisonment is expensive to the government; the average expense of maintaining a federal prisoner for a year is between $25,000 and $30,000, Notice, Bureau of Prisons, 76 Fed. Reg. 57081 (Sept. 15, 2011), and the expense rises steeply with the prisoner’s age because the medical component of a prisoner’s expense will rise with his age, especially if he is still alive in his 70s (not to mention his 80s or 90s). It has been estimated that an elderly prisoner costs the prison system between $60,000 and $70,000 a year.      

The social costs of imprisonment should in principle be compared with the benefits of imprisonment to the society, consisting mainly of deterrence and incapacitation. A sentencing judge should therefore consider the incremental deterrent and incapacitative effects of a very long sentence compared to a somewhat shorter one.                        

For suppose the defendant had been sentenced not to 50 years in prison but to 30 years. He would then be 76 years old when released (slightly younger if he had earned the maximum good-time credits). How likely would he be to commit further crimes at that age?     

It is true that sex offenders are more likely to recidivate than other criminals, Virginia M. Kendall and T. Markus Funk, Child Exploitation and Trafficking: Examining the Global Challenges and U.S. Responses 310 (2012), because their criminal behavior is for the most part compulsive rather than opportunistic. But capacity and desire to engage in sexual activity diminish in old age. Moreover, when released, a sexual criminal is subject to registration and notification requirements that reduce access to potential victims. Id. at 320.

As for the benefits of a lifetime sentence in deterring other sex criminals, how likely is it that if told that if apprehended and convicted he would be sentenced to 50 years in prison the defendant would not have committed the crimes for which he’s been convicted, but if told he faced a sentence of “only” 30 years he would have gone ahead and committed them?

Sentencing judges should try to be realistic about the incremental deterrent effect of extremely long sentences. Even unsophisticated persons tend to discount future costs and benefits. Most people prefer to receive a dollar today than a dollar a year from now, even if that future dollar is certain, and likewise they prefer to pay a dollar a year from now than today. If you face a 50 year sentence rather than a 25 year sentence for some crime you’re thinking of committing, you consider it heavier punishment but probably not twice as heavy; every year added to the prospective sentence has a lesser deterrent effect than the preceding year of the sentence because it is added on at the end.

Sentencing judges are not required to engage in cost-benefit analyses of optimal sentencing severity with discounting to present value. Such analyses would involve enormous guesswork because of the difficulty of assessing key variables.

But virtually all sentencing, within the usually broad statutory ranges—the minimum sentence that the judge could have imposed in this case, by making the sentences on all four counts run concurrently, as he could have done, would have been 15 years, 18 U.S.C. § 2251(e), and the maximum sentence, by making them all run consecutively, as he could also have done, would have been 120 years—involves guesswork.

I am merely suggesting that the cost of imprisonment of very elderly prisoners, the likelihood of recidivism by them, and the modest incremental deterrent effect of substituting a superlong sentence for a merely very long sentence, should figure in the judge’s sentencing decision.

For the full opinions visit the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals Web Site 

For more about Chicago Federal Criminal Defense Attorney Michael J. Petro, visit www.mjpetro.com

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