{"id":268,"date":"2010-10-24T13:31:21","date_gmt":"2010-10-24T18:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=268"},"modified":"2010-12-06T14:03:45","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T20:03:45","slug":"this-years-missing-argument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/?p=268","title":{"rendered":"This Year\u2019s Missing Argument"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What\u2019s missing from this election year rhetoric that dominated every other election year in which Terry Branstad was a candidate?\u00a0 The talk of reinstating capital punishment in Iowa.\u00a0 However, it goes much further than that.\u00a0 There has been little or no discussion of enhancing penalties, creating new crimes, cracking down on certain drug dealers (no pun intended), or the criminal justice system in general.<\/p>\n

What has kept the death penalty and criminal sanctions out of discussion this time around?\u00a0 As far as the death penalty is concerned, both Governor Culver and Branstad favor the concept of state-sanctioned death for committing capital murder.\u00a0 If Culver is re-elected, we will probably hear the end of the issue for at least four years.\u00a0 Although Culver is a proponent of the death penalty, he doesn\u2019t initiate the cry for legislation.\u00a0 If Branstad is elected (or would we say re-elected, as well), we can expect several instances throughout his term in which he will tout the need for reinstating the death penalty in Iowa after a half century of living fine without it.<\/p>\n

Setting the death penalty aside, it\u2019s difficult to find any trace of \u201ctough on crime\u201d issues in debates, advertisements, or mud-slinging.\u00a0 To emphasize this fact, I never thought I would see the day in which the campaign for Iowa\u2019s attorney general came down to gay marriage, consumer protection, and health care coverage? \u00a0When competition for the top law enforcement office in the state becomes a battle of social issues, we shouldn\u2019t expect the campaign for the office of governor to focus on criminal issues.<\/p>\n

The lack of proving who\u2019s tougher on crime this election cycle might indicate that Iowa has passed all the laws necessary to deal with every crime imaginable, or that Iowa’s punishments for crimes are just, or perhaps all the nasty perpetrators are locked up and can no longer offend society.\u00a0 Realistically, it could be that, because it costs a lot of money to incarcerate felons, no one wants to explain how the state can afford to spend more tax dollars in order to be tougher on crime.\u00a0 If an increase in spending is realized each year to offset crime, shouldn\u2019t there be a point in which enough has been spent to curtail the increase in crime? \u00a0Surely, we must have hit that saturation point by now.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of unanswered questions.\u00a0 Fawkes-Lee & Ryan is committed to working toward sensible sentencing practices.\u00a0 No matter who comes out on top on November 2, our dedication to ensuring common sense approaches to sentencing structure is based upon factors that rehabilitate the offender, protect society, and take the financial cost to the taxpayer into consideration.\u00a0 The death penalty does none of this.\u00a0 It\u2019s a relief to know that this year\u2019s debate on crime and punishment is not as prevalent as it has been in previous elections.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time for Iowa policy makers to sit back and examine the sentencing structure in place and do some fine-tuning.\u00a0 Some of that tinkering should include decreasing the thresholds of punishment for a few sentences that were created or enhanced in the past 40 years, mostly based upon emotion and political posturing.\u00a0 We think the time is right for a practical approach for change.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2010 Fawkes-Lee & Ryan.\u00a0 All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lack of proving who\u2019s tougher on crime this election cycle might indicate that Iowa has passed all the laws necessary to deal with every crime imaginable, or that Iowa’s punishments for crimes are just, or perhaps all the nasty perpetrators are locked up and can no longer offend society. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,52,17],"tags":[88,30,90,89,53,26,91],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-death-penalty","category-issues","tag-branstad","tag-crime","tag-criminal-justice-2","tag-culver","tag-death-penalty-2","tag-fawkes-lee-and-ryan","tag-sentencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iowappa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}