Doc Berman is busy having a conversation with himself.  It’s not exactly like those crazy bluetooth cellphone people who chatter like they’re insane the street, but it would be courteous to join in so people don’t start to ask tough questions.

The other day, he  expressed his pessimism on the possibility of any change to crack sentencing in an election year.  It’s long been the rule that no one loses an election because they’re tough on crime.

But Doc’s head has spun around (no, not like the Exorcist, just half way).  After reading an article in the Houston Chronicle, Doc had an epiphany.  The only thing that can push people harder than fear is money.  Money talks (as some lawyers occasionally tell their clients).  Doug Berman listens.

The tough-on-crime crackdown of the 1980s and 1990s is getting a second look in Congress. Some lawmakers, including Houston Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, are questioning whether the soaring incarceration rates brought about by changes in federal sentencing laws have actually deterred crimes….

When Congress takes a second look, we usually get nervous.  Frankly, when Congress looks at all, we usually get nervous.  It’s like going to the doctor’s; nothing good ever comes of it.

You didn’t think that undoing a generation and a half of tough-on-crime talk was going away easily, did you?  It begins with sweet talk, slowing undermining the assumptions that had such superficial appeal to the common man.  But as Doc Berman astutely points out, this is just the outside of the onion.  Inside is the real reason.  Money.

It was one thing when we were awash in cash, with plenty of moolah to pay for the excesses of political rhetoric.  We could afford mass incarceration, and politicians were loving their ability to flaunt it as proof of how effective they were at saving us from all the bad guys.

But having squandered our vast riches on another loser war, and now with the economy polling way ahead of crime, it’s time to pull the prison plug so they can pass out those savings to the huddled masses.

It had long been a wonderment why people didn’t object to the amount of money the every-increasing punishments cost, though it required people to first connect the taxes they pay to the time that’s imposed.  Granted, that’s a tough one for most people to follow.

Plus, so many years of beating fear into the hearts and minds of people will not be an easy thing to overcome.  Prison may not be the answer, but what to do about the fear?  It’s unlikely to go away.  You can still use those I Heart Fear bumper stickers as soon as somebody invents the next bogeyman, and you can bet someone will.  America is nothing with someone to fear.

But now that our Congress is struggling to find the next American ATM, prisons are just too ripe to ignore.  So while Doc Berman is singing the lead in this song, I want to add my voice to the Hallelujah Choir!  Cha-Ching!