'Incarceration is not the right place for so many lower level offenders in our criminal justice system,' said the report's lead author. (photo: Brynn Anderson/AP)
Quarter
of Inmates Could Have Been Spared Prison Without Risk, Study Says
By Jamiles Lartey, Guardian
UK
11 December 16
Study of 1.5 million prisoners finds that drug treatment,
community service, probation or fines would have served as more effective
sentences for many
A quarter
of the US prison population, about 364,000 inmates, could have been spared
imprisonment without meaningfully threatening public safety or increasing
crime, according to a new study.
Analyzing
offender data on roughly 1.5 million US prisoners, researchers from the Brennan
Center for Justice concluded that for one in four, drug treatment, community
service, probation or a fine would have been a more effective sentence than
incarceration.
“The
current sentencing regime was largely a knee-jerk reaction to crime, not
grounded in any scientific rationale,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the
justice program. “While it may have seemed like a reasonable approach to
protect the public, a comprehensive examination of the data proves it is
ineffective at that task.”
The
study also concluded that another 14% of incarcerated individuals had already
served an appropriate sentence. These people could be released within the next
year “with little risk to public safety”, the researchers said. Combined, these
two populations represent 39% of the current incarcerated public.
“Very
long lengths of stay in many many cases do not make people safer,” said
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the lead author of the report. “Incarceration is not the
right place for so many lower-level offenders in our criminal justice system. “
The
study drew on data from 2012 and took three years to complete. Researchers
applied a four-factor test on the effectiveness of incarceration, relative to
the different types of crimes prisoners had committed. Seriousness of the
crime, impact on the victim, state of mind of the perpetrator and risk of
recidivism were all examined as part of the analysis. Researchers determined
that for most low-level crimes, especially nonviolent drug crimes, prison was
ineffective or unwarranted.
“There
are so many groups trying to work to end mass incarceration but without a
blueprint for exactly how you would do that, it’s really hard to make changes,”
Eisen said. “We wanted this report to jump-start a conversation.”
Beyond
the fact that many inmates do not pose an immediate threat to public safety, an
abundance of evidence suggests that prison itself likely has a criminogenic
effect on those who enter its walls.
When people involved in low-level, nonviolent crimes become incarcerated, they
are often placed in an environment with more unstable and violent criminals;
they can become more prone to crime upon release than they would otherwise have
been. Alternative sentencing strategies, including drug treatment and community
service, have been shown in several studies to have the opposite effect.
Incarceration also damages family, workplace and community ties in ways that
often make it more difficult for people to avoid crime after release.
Eisen’s
team also considered the way offenders tend to age out of criminal behavior.
“The research is incredibly compelling that after a certain age, it’s very
unlikely that a person would commit a second offense,” Eisen said.
Last
year, for instance, Marc Mauer, a researcher and the executive director of the
Sentencing Project, testified to Congress: “A 20-year-old robber is much less
of a risk to public safety by the time he turns 30, 35, or 40, and this is true
more or less across the board.”
The
Brennan Center calculates that this could equal a cost saving of $20bn a year,
greater than the combined budgets of the US departments of commerce and labor.
“Our
resources are finite, and any opportunity we can have to realign those
resources to find the truly dangerous people and put them behind bars, we
should,” said Ronal Serpas, the former police chief of the New Orleans and
Nashville departments.
Serpas
noted that a slew of law enforcement organizations, including the Major Cities
Police Chiefs Association and the National District Attorneys Association, had
all come together to endorse the scaling back of mass incarceration. The
organizations encompass 30,000 law enforcement professionals in all.
A
young policing leader during the crime wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s,
Serpas said he understood why so many officials supported incarceration and
draconian sentencing laws during that era. “I get it, I was there,” he said.
“But
this is 20 years later,” Serpas added. “We don’t treat arthritis the same way
we did 20 years ago, but unfortunately we’re still over-relying on
incarceration the way we did back then.”
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has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
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