What do call a country with declining crime rate but accelerating numbers of convicts sent to prison? How about the United States of America? With a quarter of the world’s incarcerated criminals and about 5% of the world’s population, America is sentencing crazy! We send just about any level of criminal to jail, where many are forced to affiliate with racist gangs just to survive and learn the finer arts of becoming habitual criminals. We saddle felons with a prison record that makes finding decent job close to impossible and then wonder why they get stoned or revert to crime. If prison were so effective, if it constituted a true deterrent, why are the numbers of prisoners growing?! The system is broken, perhaps beyond repair.
But in the ultra-conservative heartland, the Bible Belt, where one might expect a revolutionary approach to letting criminal avoid prison, comes a new policy (a few years new) that may be the most important vector in judicial reform that we have seen in years. One of the biggest sources of incarceration covers probation and parole violators. North Carolina decided to look at this problem and decide to embrace a policy of mild punishment and quick forgiveness in most instances.
An N.C. probation violator might spend a long weekend in jail, but he/she probably won’t face having to serve the full balance of their suspended sentence. “It was a wake-up call that this is serious business,” [after serving 3 days, probation-violator André Duckett] said in an interview here in rural Halifax County, near the border with Virginia.
“The quick dip is one of a battery of new policies, adopted in the name of ‘justice reinvestment,’ that have helped North Carolina reverse the costly increase in prisoners, and that officials hope will help curb crime and recidivism as well.
“Criminal justice officials knew that something had to give. The number of prison inmates had climbed to 41,000 by 2011, with further increases projected, even though crime was declining. The adult corrections budget had climbed to more than $1.3 billion.
“As they considered their next steps, officials made a startling discovery: More than half of all prison admissions involved offenders whose probation had been revoked. And in a large majority of those cases, the offenders had not committed any serious new crime but rather had committed so-called technical violations: missed appointments, failed drug tests, failure to attend drug treatment.
“‘We were filling very expensive prison beds with low-level felons for technical probation violations,’ said W. David Guice, the commissioner of adult corrections and juvenile justice… As a legislator, Mr. Guice was the primary sponsor of a 2011 law that set the state in a new direction. In addition to the quick dips and a related decline in probation revocations, the new approach includes the use of 90-day jail stays, still without formal revocation, for probationers with more serious crimes; efforts to focus probation and parole supervision on offenders judged at highest risk of trouble while easing the monitoring of others; and at least some oversight and services for those re-entering society after serving prison time.
“Prison admissions have declined by 21 percent in three years, to 23,000 in the year that ended June 30, 2014, down from 29,000 in 2011, according to state data. The overall prison population shrank over the same three years to 38,000, and 10 prisons have closed, although significant further declines in prisoner numbers do not appear likely. The adult corrections budget, instead of rising as once projected, has dropped by $50 million per year, officials say.” New York Times, September 11th. Sometimes a good idea is a really good idea. It’s time to apply this concept to the rest of the country.
I’m Peter Dekom, and we really need to reexamine every facet of our criminal justice system from the ground up.
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2 comments:
In theory, Justice Reinvestment is a wonderful idea. But, do you realize that people that should be in prison are loose, running the streets? They violate their probation and do not get revoked.
You statement, "...reverse the costly increase in prisoners, and that officials hope will help curb crime and recidivism as well", is truthful in that you do, in fact, do all three.
But let's take the statement a step further...
1. Reverse the costly increase in prisioners - you have, but now the money Prisons is saving is being tripled in our communities. Child abuse, domestic violence, property crimes, the list goes on and on. Just check with the Departments of Social Services across North Carolina for verifcation.
2. Curb crime - Sure, but how? Well,if an individual is not convicted of a crime, the crime is not "jotted down" as a crime. That's how you fix charts to show a decrease in crime.
3. Curb recidivism - Again, in North Carolina we are showing an enormous decrease in recidivism, but if you are not sending people to prison because they are placed on probation and not convicting them, of course you have a decrease in recidivism. This means does not mean crime is down (see # 2), it only means you have stopped sending criminals to where they belong.
I fully understand that NCDPS, as an agency, is saving money. But the bottom line, which the public does not realize, is that tax payers are paying more for the criminals being on the streets. Looking at the bigger picture, Justice Reinvestment is costing North Carolinians more, but the facts are being hidden due to political reasons.
As long as we don't invest in young families and our schools, we are not going to fix crime. I can go on and keep typing away but, what people need to understand is that our crime rate in North Carolina has increased while statistics are being airbrushed to make it seem not so.
If it worked that way. Instead, we are seeing gangs getting new recruits, people whose records will keep them from getting decent jobs, and the system just doesn't work. We have higher incarceration rates and 25% of the entire planet's prisoners. Take the ineffective money wasted on prisons and invest it in families and schools. And the dangerous criminal in jail where thgis is necessary to protect the public. We actually don't have the money anymore, so we better use it wisely.
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