I met Mike McCloud in 2018 when I was working for the ACLU of Kansas. We fought for the clemency of dozens of people, and Mike was one of them.

We hit it off right away. Mike has a sunny, southern way about him. He’s talkative and funny, the kind of person you enjoy spending time with.

A judge took into account the time he had already served – and the fact that he was a model inmate who paid back every penny he stole – and released him. Mike had even managed to save money through his work, so he had a financial parachute to help him ease back into society.

A fairytale ending? Not when Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe storms onto the scene as the villain. Howe challenged Mike’s release, arguing that the judge had no authority to change the sentence. The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled in Howe’s favor.

Because of this miscalculation, we cannot have a good time. In 2018, Howe defended his decision, but I repeat now what I said then: We cannot afford prosecutors like Howe when they are prone to costly mistakes like this one.

Mike openly admits that he committed a series of robberies in the 1990s, stealing around $7,000. Mike will tell you that he served 27 years for that crime, and I will tell you that while he was in prison, Kansas reduced the penalties for such crimes.

Under the new legislation, Mike served almost twice the sentence that the new law prescribed. In fact, at about $70 a day, McCloud’s incarceration cost taxpayers nearly $690,000. Howe wanted Mike, who was 67 at the time, to serve an additional 21 years.

Again, Mike stole $7,000. Even adjusted for inflation, that’s $14,000. This isn’t Fort Knox.

Mike had diabetes. Had he returned, he would have likely contracted COVID-19 as inmates simply could not maintain social distancing. Given his age, another 21 years would have been a death sentence. Fortunately, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly granted him clemency in 2021 and he is still a free man today.

This is not a difficult decision. This kind of criminal revenge remains terribly expensive.

This is just one example. Considering that there are more than 2 million people in prison in our country, this excessive, wasteful pursuit of more prisons should brand Howe and people like him as “tax and spend” conservatives. We are paying for all this bluster.

Despite having discretion, he chose to send taxpayers another huge and unnecessary bill.

The ACLU of Kansas and the ACLU nationally have focused significant reform efforts on prosecutors, who are among the most powerful people in the justice system. They decide who to charge, what charges to bring, and make sentencing recommendations.

I live in Johnson County and this kind of wasteful government spending is concerning. It continues to be costly to feed the ever-expanding prison industrial complex, but there is another element that concerns me more: the judgment here, or lack thereof. Considering the cost to taxpayers and the fact that Mike served his sentence with exceptional focus and dignity, Howe could have left this matter in the bag. Most of us would not consider a diabetic septuagenarian a threat to society.

I guess hardly anyone would have complained, and I doubt any of the people Mike robbed would have wanted him to go back to prison.

Given the cost, it didn’t make sense to send Mike back to prison, but this just seemed cruel and disproportionate. For so many people in these decision-making positions, cruelty seems to be the key.

Kick their asses. Hit them hard. Raise the bill and raise the taxpayer’s bill too.

If anything, Mike was a success story. Authorities should question him about how he got caught up in a cruel and broken system and emerged not only rehabilitated, but remorseful and determined to succeed. He may hold the answer to our recidivism problems.

But no.

We’re so fixated on vengeance that we don’t see (or don’t want to see) the lives we destroy in the process. I swear, if any of these people ever saw a rose growing out of a crack in the sidewalk, they’d trample it.

Mike is a wonderful person. I’m so glad he got to go home.

But what worries me is all the people like him who are still in prison, running up taxpayer bills because someone wanted to prove to voters that they were “tough on crime.” Most of them will be returning to Kansas communities.

I would have preferred them to return with Mike’s cheerful disposition rather than the cruelty and bitterness of a virtuous “look how tough I am” show of bravado.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission, and former deputy executive director of the ACLU of Kansas. Kansas Reflector’s opinion section seeks to amplify the voices of people affected by public policy or excluded from public debate. Information, including the ability to submit your own comments, can be found here.