The Other Bailout

You could measure the good times… Money was plentiful, and politicians wanted to spend increasingly more in this one core area where they knew they could get votes. Sound politics. Over the last two decades, spending in this basic state governmental arena quadrupled, which according to a March 2009 report from the Pew Center on the States (“The Long Reach of American Corrections”), increased faster than any other market segment except healthcare. Yup, if you got tough on crime – the politicians cry for the last three decades – you incarcerated more inmates (we have only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s inmates), kept them in prison longer (the U.S. is among those countries on earth with the longest average prison sentences) and built more prisons.

But while annual “per inmate” costs ranging from $25,000 to $45,000 a year (averaging around $35,000) were once great subjects for bond issuances and spending increases (tough on crime!)… it was a vengeance that was affordable only in vastly better times. Strangely enough, with all the special handling required, and all the lawyers and courtrooms needed in “automatic appeal” death sentences, the cost of executing criminals turns out to be vastly more expensive than keeping the perp in prison for life.

How about this quote (cited in the above Pew Report) from David Keene, President of the American Conservative Union: “The fact that so many Americans, including hundreds of thousands who are a threat to no one, are incarcerated means that something is wrong with our criminal justice system and the way we deal with both dangerous criminals and those whose behavior we simply don’t like.” Look at how many addicts are behind bars, many of whom would fare infinitely better in a drug treatment program. We sure have a lot of folks in the criminal justice system right now – in jail, on parole or on probation – 7.3 million Americans, well over 2% of the entire population.

Those three strikes laws putting criminals in prison for rather low level felonies on that third strike is a classic example of a law who time has passed. Maybe habitual criminals need to be put away for long period of time, but the definition of an “habitual criminal” cannot be derived from a mathematical formula. Besides, states (not to mention the federal government) have a big recession to deal with, and the $47 billion that the states spent on their criminals in 2008, well, as the above quote suggests, there must be a better way.

We are beginning to see those changes in the waterfall of “reform” that is pouring over the criminal justice system. The other day, New Mexico Government Bill Richardson signed bill banning capital punishment – for some this was a humanitarian gesture, but for most legislators, it was an easy cost-savings fix. The March 24^th NY Times: “Some states, like Colorado and Kansas , are closing prisons. Others, like New Jersey , have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release… Michigan is doing a little of all of this, in addition to freeing some offenders who have yet to serve their maximum sentence.” Even the longer sentences are finding “sympathetic” (yeah, right!) legislators willing to reconsider.

New York is in the process of repealing some of the longest drug-related sentences in the country, including mandated minimums for lower level offenses. These harsh statutes (commonly referred as the Rockefeller Drug Laws) were passed during a heroin epidemic in the 1970s. The new emphasis will be on enforceable treatment implemented through New York ’s growing “drug court” system.

The handwriting is smeared upon the wall: “‘In California we are out of room and we’re out of money,’ said the state’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate. ‘It may be time to take some of these steps that we should have taken long ago.’” NY Times.

In a bizarre twist, shutting down prisons has drawn a different kind of wrath from communities where they are situated – as prisons close, jobs are lost and local businesses that have come to rely on the flow from the paychecks of corrections officers and the vendor orders to supply the facility are shutting down. Not so much the NIMBY (“not in my back yard”) cry we’d expect. Prisons have been the training ground for criminal skills, recruitment centers for gang activity, accelerants of HIV (then spread through the communities where the prisoners go upon release) and have crushed more than one inmate’s long-term career prospects in any field.

So while this meltdown is thoroughly unpleasant and unlikely to end anytime soon, the silver linings may actually help reduce crime rates in the future, create alternatives to harsh prison sentences and make America a safer and better place to live… just because vengeance is so damned expensive!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.