I met Mike McCloud back in 2018, when I worked for the ACLU of Kansas. We were fighting for clemency for dozens of people, and Mike was one of them.

We hit it off immediately. Mike has a sunny, southern way about him. He’s chatty and fun, the kind of person you’d like hanging out with.

A judge looked at his time served — and at the fact that he’d been a model inmate who paid back every dime he’d stolen — and released him. Mike had even managed to save money from working, so he had a financial parachute to help him gently reenter society.

Storybook ending? Not with Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe rushing the stage as the villain. Howe challenged Mike’s release, arguing that the judge had no authority to modify the sentence. The Kansas Court of Appeals ruled in Howe’s favor.

This kind of poor judgement is why we can’t have nice things. Back in 2018, Howe defended his decision, but I’ll say now what I said then: We can’t afford prosecutors like Howe if they’re prone to expensive mistakes like this.

Mike will freely admit that he committed a series of robberies back in the 1990s, netting roughly $7,000. Mike will tell you that he served 27 years for that crime, and I will tell you that while he was incarcerated, Kansas lowered the penalties for such crimes.

Under the new legislation, Mike served nearly twice the amount prescribed in the new law. In fact, at about $70 a day, incarcerating McCloud cost taxpayers almost $690,000. Howe wanted Mike, who was 67 at the time, to serve another 21 years.

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

Mike had diabetes. Had he gone back, he’d likely have contracted COVID-19, given that prisoners simply could not practice social distancing. Considering his age, another 21 years would have amounted to a death sentence. Thankfully, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly granted him clemency in 2021, and he remains a free man today.

This isn’t a tough call. This kind of prosecutorial vengeance remains terribly expensive.

This is just one case. When you consider that the nation has more than 2 million people in prison, this excessive, spendthrift rush to fill our prisons should label Howe and folks like him “tax and spend” conservatives. We’re paying for all this bluster.

He had discretion but chose to send taxpayers another huge, unnecessary bill.

The ACLU of Kansas and the national ACLU have focused considerable reform efforts on prosecutors, who are some of the most powerful people in the justice system. They decide who gets charged, what the charges will be, and make recommendations on sentencing.

I live in Johnson County, and this kind of profligate government spending is concerning. Feeding the ever-expanding prison industrial complex remains expensive, but there’s another element here that disturbs me more: the judgement here, or lack thereof. Considering the costs to taxpayers and the fact that Mike had served his time with exceptional focus and dignity, Howe could have left this matter in his pocket. Most of us wouldn’t consider a diabetic septuagenarian a menace to society.

I’m guessing few people would have complained, and I doubt any of the folks Mike robbed would have wanted to see him go back to prison.

Given the costs, sending Mike back to prison didn’t make sense, but this just seemed cruel and disproportionate. For so many people in these kinds of decision-making positions, it seems cruelty is the point.

Kick them while they’re down. Pile on. Run up the score, as well as the taxpayers’ tab.

If anything, Mike represented a success story. Authorities should be interviewing him about how he entered a cruel and broken system, and emerged not just rehabilitated, but contrite and driven to succeed. He might have the answer to our recidivism issues.

But no.

We’re so focused on retribution that we can’t see (or refuse to see) the lives we’re destroying along the way. I swear, if any of these folks ever saw a rose growing out of a crack in a sidewalk, they would stomp it.

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

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

I’d rather they return with Mike’s sunny disposition, not with the cruelty and bitterness of a virtue-signaling, “look how tough I am” flex.

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 at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.