Smart Sentencing

According the HeartandMinds.com, there are approximately “2 million people locked up in federal, state, and county facilities. Though crime rates are down, that's up more than 600% since the 1970s. More than 6 million people are under state supervision in the form of parole or probation. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world.” Wikipedia: “According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS): ‘In 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults.’… The United States has less than 5% of the world's population and 23.4% of the world's prison population.”

We spend almost $25 thousand a year per inmate in the U.S., and less than $10 thousand a year per public primary or secondary student (Wiki.answers, minddump.org); some states, like California, stretch past the $50,000 mark, and healthcare for prisoners, the cost of housing an inmate over 55 triples in California, according to the January 10^th KBPS.org, which spends $2 billion a year on prison healthcare alone. According to the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, those sentenced to death, who require special handling and a highly structured and Constitutionally-based appeal process, the number pops up to $90,000 per year for this class of inmates.

The greater the level of security, the higher the cost. North Carolina’s published statistics show that annual average price of incarceration going from $21,597 for minimum security inmates, $27,992 for medium security and, $31,273 for “close custody” ($26,955 as of June 30, 2009). The solitary-confinement-only Tamms Correctional Center in Illinois runs a staggering $64 thousand per inmate per year. (Corrections.com, 12/31/09). It costs each American resident (including babies!) over $100 per year in tax dollars to fund our prisons (Noorslist.Wordpress.com).

We need “stupid dog tricks” – Lindsay Lohan’s serving 14 days of a 90 day sentence, for example – like we need a higher unemployment rate. Except for the federal system, where there is no parole and inmates generally serve their entire sentences (they can reduce jail time by up to 15% for good behavior), the number of inmates released years before their full sentence – through parole, amnesty or sentence reduction – pretty much creates a Swiss cheese sentencing structure where the holes are often greater than the solid cheese! Prison sentences in this country are out of control, often exacerbated by three-strikes mandatory sentencing statutes.

The State of Missouri has another approach: their Sentencing Advisory Commission provides all judges with a cost analysis before a sentence is given. “For someone convicted of endangering the welfare of a child, for instance, a judge might now learn that a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770. A second-degree robber, a judge could be told, would carry a price tag of less than $9,000 for five years of intensive probation, but more than $50,000 for a comparable prison sentence and parole afterward. The bill for a murderer’s 30-year prison term: $504,690.” New York Times (September 19^th).

Needless to say, this practice has alienated adherents from all over the political spectrum. Prisoners aren’t numbers, argue some, while others point to their belief that costs should not impact the need for longer sentences imposed in the interest of public safety. Yet we are in a recession, we do over-incarcerate based on international comparisons, and inmates are still released early after the fact. The balancing act of public safety (and is the public really safer with angrier, bitter, well-trained criminals unable to find work because of very long sentences?) and public cost is a tough one, but Missouri may just be on to something.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes you really have to ask yourself if a particular government practice, bolstered by angry voters, is really serving the public interest.