And we’re off. Some of the bills introduced in the Senate have been posted to the Legislative Services website.
- Senate Bill 8, introduced by Senator Heinold, would require the Governor to petition the USDOT to initiate proceedings to put all of Indiana in the Central Time Zone.
- Senate Bill 2, introduced by Senator Drozda, creates a new credit class for offenders where they only get 1 day of good time credit for every 6 days served. I believe the typical credit class gets offenders a day of good time credit for every day served, effectively cutting a sentence in half (Class I), but there are also currently credit classes II (1 for 2) and III (no credit). Sen. Drozda’s bill would create Credit Class IV for individuals convicted for “crimes against the person” (assault, murder, and the like); controlled substance offenses, and handgun offenses among others. A “tough on crime” bill to be sure. I wonder what the price tag would be for this expansion of incarceration time.
- SB 6 introduced by Senator Ford would require cell phone providers to disclose your cell phone location to law enforcement officers in an “emergency” situation. Emergency isn’t defined, so I wonder if it would be an emergency if law enforcement thought you were up to no good and really, really wanted to know where you were.
- SB 9 introduced by Senator Howard would allow a municipality or county to adopt an ordinance that regulates the “use” or hours of use within the county or municipality, provided the regulation is not more lenient than state rules. Given the confusion over jurisdiction on fireworks laws, I would suggest a provision specifying that the Sheriff’s Department and/or the police department are entitled to enforce such ordinances.
- SB 19 introduced by Senator Steele would allow the governor, the lieutenant governor, and members of the General Assembly to solemnize marriages, a privilege currently reserved to members of the clergy, judges, mayors, and city and court clerks.
- SB 25 introduced by Senator Bowser, would increase Indiana’s minimum wage to $7.25, up from $5.15 per hour. (The $5.15 minimum wage has been in place since March 1, 1999.) Employers could pay teenagers $6.25 per hour for their first 90 days of employment (up from $4.25 per hour.)
- SB 28, introduced by Senator Waltz, would allow the State to get a restitution order against an offender for the costs of prosecuting the offender. If this legislation moves forward, I would recommend an amendment instituting debtors’ prisons to facilitate collecting these fees. In my experience, offenders frequently have trouble paying the restitution and very often have trouble paying the community corrections fees and other assorted costs. As a matter of justice, it seems appropriate to make criminals pay out the nose. However, as a practical matter, if a guy is inclined to rehabilitate himself but you immediately pound him with a mountain of debt to go along with the life he wasn’t doing a very good job of managing in the first place, you can probably expect to seem him incarcerated again sometime soon.
There are a number of other introduced bills, but those were the ones that caught my eye on my first pass.
Update I wanted to add a couple of bills that Joe flagged:
SB30 would allow school corporations to give taxpayer money… to endowments of some sort. Sounds shady. I didn’t realize Center Grove schools had that much money.
SB 31 would ban ATM’s from riverboats, would require they install clocks (digital, no less), and would require casino operators to give breathlyzers before folks can ask for a line of credit from the casino.
[tags]sb8-2007, sb2-2007, sb6-2007, sb19-2007, sb25-2007, sb28-2007, sb30-2007, sb31-2007[/tags]
Doug, SB 28 should be called the “kick ’em while they’re down” bill. Waltz’ other bills are true gems.
SB30 would allow school corporations to give taxpayer money… to endowments of some sort. Sounds shady. I didn’t realize Center Grove schools had that much money.
SB 31 would ban ATM’s from riverboats, would require they install clocks (digital, no less), and would require casino operators to give breathlyzers before folks can ask for a line of credit from the casino.
I can’t wait to vote this guy out of office. Borst was out of touch, but Waltz is a nut… who just happens to be the nephew of Greenwood mayor Charlie Henderson.
Thanks Joe. Your post reminds me of a project I have in mind but have no idea when I might get to it. I’d like to set up the blog to allow diaries. So many of the readers here post a lot of good stuff that tends to get buried in the comments.
Oh, and I hadn’t been aware that Waltz was related to Henderson.
To me, the bigger question is “What is the point of prision?” If it is ment as punishment for the offender, or protection to the public, then I agree with the bill. If it is rehab, then I don’t. However, I don’t think anyone REALLY thinks that what prision is for.
SB30 is a friggin joke. If they want to give an endowment to someone, how about an IPS school? This is why I support vouchers – Indiana public school funding is so whacked it is not funny. We can buy buildings that are modern art, and now maybe even give money away, but not pay for enough teachers? Let me give some of my tax money to a school that I can personally hold accountable!
As for SB31, what is wrong with that Joe? While I agree with Doug’s idea about being in all or nothing (state ran gaming), I think some control is better than none at all.
After all, we have bent or flat broken the rules time and again FOR the casinos. First it was “No gambling”. Then we allow lotto. Then we said it is ok as long as it is in the river, since you’re not really in the state. I remember that riverboats had to stop games when in port, and then undock and be in the open water when gaming. Then they were allowed to game while in port, but had to still take trips. Then the allowed “off-track” betting Now, they allow French Lick to reopen.
Taking a few things back to help slow the bleeding for those with issues seems to be a reasonable thing to do. The gaming industry has had MANY laws go their way over the past 15 years, they can deal.
Yeah, a regular political machine. Not as interesting as Carson/Mays/Johnson machine that runs Indianapolis, but what do you expect from the suburbs?
It’s kind of interesting – on the southside of Indianapolis in the last three years, we’ve had three longtime politicians knocked out of office – Waltz replaced Borst, Walker replaced Garton, and Elrod replaced Mahern (though Mahern’s refusing to lose, last I heard there was talk that perhaps the Democratic-controlled House wouldn’t seat Elrod.) Mahern has all these conspiracy theories for why he lost, with allegations of Republican conspiracies. He seems to ignore that Elrod pounded a lot of pavement and Mahern ran a few TV ads in the eleventh hour when it finally became apparent to him it was a campaign.
I can’t make it into more of a trend than “voters get fed up with old, out-of-touch politician”. In the case of Borst and Garton, I think it’s a combination of the right-wing nuts & the above.
I just don’t see the point of the law. It seems pointless to me.
If that law is OK, I propose the next one is a mandate that local TV stations have a 30 minute break between NFL games on Sundays to encourage folks to get some exercise or to spend more time with their spouses. Or maybe we should ban drive-thru’s at fast food places, and mandate people can’t idle in the parking lot. That would require folks to get exercise *and* would reduce pollution.
I don’t understand the intent of the law – it seems inspired by someone who got drunk at a casino, blew through a lot of money gambling, lost track of time, and caught hell from their spouse for the whole experience.
If you don’t like the ways casinos encourage you to spend more money (no clocks, serving free booze, ATM’s around), then don’t go to the casinos. That doesn’t require intervention from the state, it requires personal responsibility. But a lot of the Republicans in Indiana aren’t big on personal responsibility – they’re big on imposing their morality (via more laws) on Hoosiers.
Doug, it would also be nice if your “Recent Comments” were exposed as an RSS feed. At the least, WordPress has comment feeds for each post that can be subscribed to – I think you just need to include the link in your theme.
For instance, here is the comment feed for this post.
I just don’t see the point of the law. It seems pointless to me.
It seems like a compromise to me. I think gambling should not be legal because of the damage it causes. Others think it should be legal because it is “victemless” and it will go to the black market anyhow.
Actually, I see a good comparison between gaming and prostitution. We all know people are going to do it. Some feel it is better to make them illegal so that fewer have casual access to it. Others feel they should be legal with no restrictions because it is a right.
The thing I have heard many say about prostitution (or some drugs) is that we should make it legal so that it can be controlled. Mandatory STD testing, etc. Same for gaming. Make it legal, but also control it so that it is LESS harmfull than the black market version would be.
There are already bans for free drinks in the casinos in Indiana. This is going along the same lines, and it is a compromise between no legal gaming and totally uncontrolled gaming.
I don’t support this law because I can’t handle myself in a casino. I’ve been about once evey two to three years, drop about $20 and leave. I don’t have any addictions to alcohol or gambling, so it does not affect me directly. There are others that have addictions to one or both of those, and they should have some protection.
Go re-read about “kick’em when he’s down”. Same thing here. If someone already is struggling with an addiction, why make it easier for them to get in MORE trouble? You say this law isn’t needed, people just need more personal responsibility. How can you be against SB28 then? It is all about personal responsibility!
SB 8 sounds like noise. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I don’t care what our offset from UTC is — we just need to nuke Daylight Saving Time. Worldwide would be great, but moving Indiana back into the correct column would be a good start. More on point, however, didn’t the law already require Mitch Daniels to back the counties’ choices for DST/time zone issues in petitions to the DOT, and he stuck a shiv in a few counties’ backs anyway? How is more legislation gonna compel him to do what he’s not inclined to do? Like Bush, Daniels seems to have contempt for the legislature, and will do what the law requires only as it suits him.
SB 2 is just vindictive crap. A day of infringed liberty is a day of infringed liberty. It’s talking out of both sides of one’s mouth to characterize time incarcerated in two different ways. Sounds like the sort of game William Jennings Bryan played with 1 Genesis when confronted with geological data. When is a year not a year? When God say so. When is a day not a day? When Senator Drozda says so. Does Senator Drozda have a God complex?
On SB 6, I agree with Doug. Everybody’s always a suspect. What freedoms of ours are our soldier, sailors, airmen, and marines fighting to protect in Iraq, again?
On SB 9, I’m generally in favor of localizing political decisions like this, but I really don’t get the anti-fireworks hysteria. Where I live, very changed since the supposed liberalization of fireworks laws last year.
SB 19 is crap. If the governor, lieutenant governor, and state legislators want to solemnize marriages, they can pay their 10 bucks and become a minister of the Universal Life Church as I did. If it doesn’t play with their loony evangalical fundamentalist Christian base to have membership in multiple churches, tough. Such conflicts of religious interest can easily be solved by electing more atheists to office.
SB 25: Hell, yes. Far and away the most useful piece of legislation in Doug’s list.
I think Doug pretty soundly made the case against SB 28. I don’t know why “tough on crime” conservatives don’t just indulge their fantasies and impose only 2 types of sentence: immediate summary execution, to be carried out by the judge in the courtroom once the trial jury returns its verdict (for serious crimes, like, say, contraception or abortion), and lifetime enslavement (for lesser crimes like disrespecting the flag, or killin’ somebody who needed killin’).
Hmm, two corrections (Doug, if you have the time and inclination to just edit my post above, I won’t complain).
In my SB 9 paragraph, “very” should be followed by “little”.
In my SB 29 paragraph, “evangalical” should be “evangelical”.
SB28, in my mind, would do nothing but encourage folks to return to crime. As Doug said above (and I really don’t have much to add to it), you get out of jail, you’ve got no job and no prospects above minimum wage labor, you’ve got nowhere to live, and you owe the government $50,000 before you’ve earned a dime? It seems like excessive punishment to me that will cost us more in the long run in terms of an increased incarceration rate. As a crime deterrent, I don’t see it working.
Much as I don’t see SB31 solving gambling problems. If gambling shouldn’t be legal, let’s not make it legal. I don’t gamble either (outside of church bingo once a year) and it wouldn’t break my heart if Indiana had no gaming. If you truly want to protect Indiana residents with gambling problems, you ban it entirely from the state. Driving hundreds of miles is a much bigger obstacle than not having an ATM machine or forcing clocks to be installed. Last time I checked, wristwatches are pretty cheap, and ATM machines are plentiful. (You don’t think ATM’s would open up as close as possible to the entrance of casinos? What’s next, a new law stating that ATM machines within 1000 feet of a casino must have a breathalyzer installed?)
The question becomes, then, what role does government have in mandating personal responsibility? Where do each of us draw the line between “government taking care of those who can’t help themselves” and “government interfering in people’s lives”.
As I live in Waltz’ district, I’m thinking about asking his office for the rationale behind each of these bills.
We totally agree here.
The important question isn’t where each of us draws the line, but where all of us compromise where that line is drawn. I agree, it isn’t a perfect solution, and it is not as effective as other solutions might be. However, every little bit helps.
I suppose one of the reasons I support it is that it interferes with a business that I think should be illegal anyhow. Since it isn’t banned, anything that interferes with their grasp on those with gambling problems is OK by me.
BTW, I think SB28 is a crock too. Just using it for the sake of arguement.
A day of suffering by the victims and their families is still a day of suffering. Do you think that someone that assults someone else should get out in 5 years when they are sentanced to 10?
Why do YOU think we put people in prision, Brandon? Is it just to infringe their liberty because some people just like to put people behind bars?
Basically, I think things are fine as they are, and you think gambling should be rolled back. (I guess I should admit I’d go further and legalize those machines you see in most bars. Mitch was right when he said we should either enforce the law or drop the law, but talk was all that happened.)
Not to be flippant, but where do we draw the line? One person? One thousand? One million? How many Hoosiers have this disorder, and what are the estimates for how many will be helped by this law?
Sell me on the law, I guess is what I’m saying.
Jason wrote:
Penal sentences (for violent crimes, anyway[*]) are not predicated in any significant way on the amount of suffering caused to the victims. Should someone who assaults a homeless, crack-addicted hooker who is reviled by her family get less time because she has no loved ones to grieve for her? If she herself lapses into a vegetative state as a consequence of the assault and cannot emotionally react to her plight, should the aggressor get no time at all?
Does a prisoner “cheat” justice by dying in prison before serving his full sentence? How should we render restitution to his victim, and/or the victim’s loved ones, for the unserved balance? Does the answer change if the prisoner is murdered in prison? What if he is murdered by an inmate or corrections officer who has been paid to do so by a victim’s family member?
Even if you join the most prominent social movement in the history of the United States, the one to abolish all parole boards, furloughs, judicial discretion in sentencing, and appeals for post-conviction relief[**], what do you do about criminals whose lives outside the prison system were so vile that they actually prefer life as a convict?
If we are to ground our criminal justice system on slaking the victims’ thirst for vengeance, why do we not have them operating the machinery of execution? I mean, c’mon, it’s so simple we trust public-sector employees to do it[***]. Why don’t we still use public humiliation as punishment in the form of the stocks, or public executions?
From a broader moral perspective, outside the legal system, I freely concede you have a point. The U.S. government clearly cares little for the suffering of Iraqi civilians in our war, judging by our actions, and no one in the world seems to give much of a damn about those killed in Darfur, Sudan. The victim status of the dead and dispossessed there have had literally no punitive consequences to the Janjaweed militia members.
Inertia, combined with the appeal of sweeping problems under the rug rather than confronting them. By warehousing people out of sight and entrusting their care to a specialized class, the general public need not concern itself with their treatment.
Are you referring to the prisoners or the victims, here? In any case, given the high degree of genuflection to any politician who claims to be “tough on crime”, the answer would appear to be “yes”. That which a society broadly tolerates must be considered to be in comportment with that society’s notion of justice.
Whether I personally feel that it’s just, well, that’s another question — but I’m in a minority position, and I’m likely to stay there, as you have shrilly made clear. The torch-and-pitchfork contingent is so starved for spokesmen, isn’t it?
[*] Penalties for crimes against property work a bit differently, probably because the severity of the affront sustained by the victim is so much more easily quantized.
[**] Surely this must be the case, given the tone of your response.
[***] Thank you, conservatives and LP libertarians; I’ll be here all week.
Branden,
Thank you for explaining your view on prision. I didn’t actually think you were totally against prison, hence the “shrill” response. From what I am reading, and correct me if I’m wrong, you think prison is something that the mob of torch and pitchfork people want. You think prison is not effective, and violates the freedom of those who are put into prision.
So I can understand better, what action, if any, do you think should be taken against those that murder, steal, or otherwise harm the innocent?
Yes, I do understand that our current administration falls into that group I described above. I assume your action should be applied equally to convicted criminals and Bush & Co.
I’m really not upset, or attempting to be “shrill”. I’m trying to understand a viewpoint that seems to be very different from my own. That’s why I’m here!
Jason
Jason,
I’m not so much explaining my view of prison as critiquing proposed legislation that involves prison.
At any rate, to respond to your points:
A preoccupation with imprisoning undesirables, coupled with a significant degree of schadenfreude at the prospect of prison rape, is a consistent trait of the lumpen conservetariat, yes.
I have doubts that the U.S. prison system is the most effective means of dealing with serious crime known to Western democracies. Our prison system more closely resembles those of such fountainheads of individualistic democracy as the People’s Republic of China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia than it does those of Canada, Germany, Finland, or Spain.
As far as infringing the freedoms of the imprisoned goes, well, yeah — that’s an essential characteristic of prison, isn’t it?
I’m willing to assume that any corrective action a society takes on those who violate its social contract is going to necessitate derogation of the offender’s rights. This is not a concept I have trouble with; what I have trouble with is the U.S. penal system as an exemplar of this principle.
Prison should be one of several options. For example, I wouldn’t have much trouble with restricting penal sentences to violent offenses, or maybe even the subset of violent offenses committed with malice aforethought.[*]
In South Africa, Truth and Reconciliation commissions have been established to deal with the abuses of the apartheid era, as an alternative to conventional prosecution, and this tactic has met with some success. Not only do I think that such a mechanism may be more fitting to political and war crimes committed by U.S. politicians, but I wonder if such a concept could be effectively and fruitfully applied to civilian criminal justice. I should think that would be something Christians could get behind, with its emphasis on forgiveness and redemption, but this is not the sort of Christianity we get from political leaders.
Hopefully I’ve shed some light on my views. I don’t claim to have all the answers (about the prison system or anything else), but on this subject in particular, U.S. culture seems to be hidebound. If there is much in the way of critical study of U.S. prisons, it’s being kept walled up in academia where it can be derided as “liberal elitism”. I don’t see politicians from either major party doing much to break ground here. The GOP seems constrained by its embrace of violent and punitive rhetoric, and the Democrats seem constrained by the self-fulfilling prophecy of being called “pussies” by right-wingers.
I posit that it takes balls to promulgate social policies based on compassion. What is spineless is to let oneself be constrained by the Fox News/right-wing talk radio axis of contempt and belittlement.
[*] This, of course, is an impractical position to hold, as it appears the general public just is not ready to accept the idea that imprisoning drug addicts in a place where they can get drugs and learn from career criminals is a worse solution than drug rehabilitation.
On another subject, why does the General Assembly seem to use “Vehicle Bill.” to mean “bill number reserved for future use”?
They did list last session, too.
Or are there really that many “vehicle bills” proposed each session? What the heck is going on?
“Vehicle bill” is the term used to describe a bill that will be a ‘vehicle’ for forthcoming legislation. Basically it’s a place holder that allows a select few bills to get around the deadline for introducing bills. The vehicle has technically been introduced and probably assigned to the rules committee or something, then when they know what will go in the bill, they just offer a committee amendment.
Doug,
D’oh. That makes perfect sense. I guess I’m just too used to “vechicle” being used as a synonym for “motor vehicle”. :)
Thanks for the clarifcation, and happy holidays to you and your family!
Thanks. And same to you. My wife just told me I have “issues” because I’m blogging about Indiana legislation from South Carolina on Christmas Day. And she’s probably right. But, it’s raining pretty steadily and we’re in the quiet time between the present madness in the morning and the gut busting feast of late afternoon.