Balancing Public Safety with Fiscal Responsibility
With the news full of stories about budget crises at both the state and federal level, the main concern is how to reduce government spending to balance the budget. The Right on Crime initiative claims to offer a solution to cutting criminal justice budgets while reducing offenders’ recidivism rates, which in turn produces an additional savings in crimes not committed.
Right on Crime believes that solution is drug courts, where non-violent offenders charged with drug possession are diverted away from the traditional legal route of criminal court, felony conviction, and incarceration:
More than just another type of court, drug courts represent a fundamental shift from incarceration as the primary means of punishing minor drug offenses to mandatory treatment for those offenders willing to take responsibility for their actions, using prison only as leverage to ensure compliance.
Even the White House agrees:
A decade of research indicates that drug courts reduce crime by lowering rearrest and conviction rates, improving substance abuse treatment outcomes, and reuniting families, and also produces measurable cost benefits.
In the 1970s, conservatives decided that getting tough on crime meant prosecuting and incarcerating everybody who broke the law. While the sentiment was understandable, three decades of results highlighted a flaw: non-violent offenders — often drug users — came out of prison as violent felons, committed violent crimes upon parole, and returned to prison within two years.
This led to what Right on Crime researchers Marc Levin and Vikrant Reddy call an “unsustainable growth in prison construction.” As most states struggle to balance budgets this year, many are looking at shrinking the prison budget.
Levin says this makes it even more important that we look at other alternatives. For example, Levin says geriatric parole is one option, since the elderly are physically less able to commit crime. Another possibility is diversion for teenagers who commit property crime like burglary, but this requires another important element: Levin wants more input from victims in deciding how to handle each case.
Levin says: “Prison does well at incapacitating people.” Reddy adds: “Locking up violent offenders remains the best solution to protect the public.” Says Levin: “It’s all about striking the right balance.”
The latest available Department of Justice (DOJ) data from 2008 show that 18.4% of all state prison inmates are drug offenders (251,400), with a mean incarceration of 15.2 months.
According to Levin and Reddy, this represents an opportunity to reduce prison and recidivism. Citing DOJ data, Levin wrote:
Drug courts are reducing recidivism both in Texas and throughout the nation. Texas offenders completing drug court programs have a 28.5 percent re-arrest rate compared to 58.5 percent in the control group. Even including those offenders who failed to successfully complete the drug court program, the re-arrest rate is 40.5 percent. Similarly, the incarceration rate of offenders who complete drug court programs is only 3.4 percent after three years compared with 12.0 percent for all drug court participants and 26.6 percent for the control group.
Levin compares this to “regular” inmates: “50% go back to prison within three years after release. Prison doesn’t serve as much of deterrent to your average inmate.”
A Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that among released convicts with at least 10 prior arrests, 77.3% were rearrested and 52.8% were reconvicted of a violent crime within three years of release. As prior arrests decrease, so do recidivism rates (see table below). The “harder” the convict, the less prison serves as a deterrent.
In 1996, the National Institute of Justice compiled a cost estimate of each major crime, putting a price tag on the total cost, including tangible costs like medical care and lost earnings, plus intangibles like “pain, suffering, and lost quality of life.” Converting their findings to 2011 dollars, the FBI four major violent crimes cost as follows:
- Murder – $4,480,662;
- Rape – $132,591;
- Robbery – $12,192;
- Aggravated Assault – $36,577.
A small reduction in recidivism translates into a major societal savings. For example, in 2009, these violent crimes cost an estimated $111.5 billion. A one-half percent reduction — assuming that drug courts would have this modest influence on recidivism — translates into about $560 million in societal savings for violent crimes not committed in 2009 alone. This amount would increase over the years, because those not “saved” from the catch-release-reconvict cycle would continue to commit additional crimes in the future. Additionally, as new convicts not “saved” by drug courts are added each year, this number will increase exponentially. Within 3-4 years, the annual savings via drug courts becomes many billions.
Let’s legalize the drugs, but make all public assistance and public employment conditional on passing a drug test.
Um, looks like cost shifting, an arbitrage play on the purported differential savings between a local cheaper medical model versus expensive state penitentiary model for dealing with “hypes.” Well, if it works so good, why hasn’t it worked in California with their mental health recidivism rates? Remember all those state hospitals–the “snake pits”–that were closed down in the ’60s and ’70s with the “patients” released to their local communities for mental health interventions? Problem is the state pocketed the savings while the local communities didn’t have the money to provide the local intervention for the growing population of “nuts”–unless it was jail for a new beef; so the “nuts” live on the streets until a criminal code is violated and the mental health intervention happens in the expensive local jails and lockups. Yeah, I can see it now; “normal” families, after kicking their dope fiend son’s and daughters out of the house so as not to be enablers, will want to reconnect with their program failing, serial stealing, dope fiend son’s and daughters over whom the parents have no control once they reach the age of 18. Yeah, looks like real quality family time with Harriet the hype and hoe. Want to save money? How about legalize dope, tax it, and no drug courts? For the new drug related crimes do public floggings in lieu of expensive incarceration. Oh, and fast track death penalty cases; surely if President Lincoln’s killers could be tried, convicted, and executed in 90 days in the age of candles and the horse and buggy, surely we can execute a child killer in one year in the internet age? May I suggest a constitutional amendment? No new supreme court civil cases can be heard–Roe V. Wade etc— in the current year until the death penalty back log is cleared for the previous thirty years, meaning they’re all executed or released, which ever comes first.
Having lived in California for 18 years, I concluded that personal responsibility isn’t important there. In this article, the sources discuss the imperative nature of personal responsibility to succeed via the drug court process. In California, everybody is a victim, and only the nanny state can do what all the permanently helpless children cannot accomplish for themselves. California also has an extremely strong prison guards’ union, which is far more interested in gaining more power and numbers than supporting a solution that costs maybe 25% of incarceration, but requires no guards. Plus, by cycling drug offenders through prison, it raises the likelihood of recidivism, which again will require more prisons and guards.
It isn’t just the guards, it’s the entire “judicial-industrial complex,” of which they are just one cog. It starts with the police, sheriffs and other LEOs. On the next rung are the DAs, defense lawyers, bail bondsmen, judges, bailiffs, court clerks and jailers. At the top are those unionized state prison guards, along with the wardens, construction companies and all the various vendors (food service, etc.). All of the above depend on high crime rates to justify their ever-increasing budgets and/or keep their jobs. (In the suburban county where I live, the sheriff’s office devours nearly half of all county revenues.)
Ever wondered why, after a citizen heroically uses deadly force to stop a crime the local police chief or sheriff whines, “Yeah, this time it turned out OK, but it’s still a bad idea. Everyone should just give in to the criminal’s demands and then call 911,” when all that does is embolden the thugs and lead to even more crime? Now you know. And now you also know why the police unions led the charge to defeat last November’s referendum in California to decriminalize marijuana.
Always remember, law-enforcement bigwigs are nothing more than bureaucrats with badges, who will do anything to increase their budgets, and therefore their power. In their case, crime = money. Several years ago a ruckus erupted in some small Iowa town when the city council, bemoaning the lack of “diversity,” proposed importing large numbers of blacks. No way to prove it, of course, but I’d lay 10-1 odds that the “Wormtongue” whispering that nonsense in the council’s ears was none other than the police chief.
Actually my county in CA has a drug court, and it does save money and salvages lives. Nothing is perfect but it has made a difference. I have no idea how its statistics might align with those quoted here from TX, but I suspect it would be similar. Crazy, huh? Something in CA that works. Who’d a thunk it?
The problem is that it is getting more and more difficult for an ex-offender who wants to “go straight” to get any kind of a job.
It is difficult enough to find work for those of us who are NOT ex-offenders.
Why employers avoid hiring the long-term unemployed
By diverting into drug court, first-time drug offenders avoid the stigma of being convicts. If they succeed in drug court, they’re not prosecuted. No conviction, no record, easier employment.
Prison has to be a last resort, for cost reasons alone, never mind the destructive effects that it has on convicts for whom there is at least some hope of reform. When I lived in California, I found the contrast between California and Georgia quite astonishing. For first offense burglary, reactionary Georgia was using electronic monitored home arrest–while progressive California was sending them to prison. Of course, that prison guard union might have something to do with it.
Criminalization of addicts is wrong. There is almost no hope of recovery in prison. It would actually save money to use drug court and fund treatment programs for drug offenders.
I have no respect for politicians, judges and police who arrest people with an addiction and allow the dealers to remain on the streets, which is commonly the case.
Possession, in an amount for personal use, should at most be a misdemeanor, not a felony. Having a felony record doesn’t give much incentive, or encouragement to clean up.
Change the laws.
One way to reduce prison costs is to enforce the death penalty. I don’t mean decades waiting to be executed either.
Bring back the true right of “Right to bear arms”. If we are all armed, less crime.
Prosecute and execute any drug dealer selling more than a kilo of drugs.
Reestablish family values. Less people wanting drugs, the less demand.
Hooray for drug courts community courts and various other programs. These and all programs are PART of the solution. They’re not THE solution.
It seems that conservatives have jumped on the anti-incarceration bandwagon. To say that we rely too much or only on incarceration implies we need to rely more on “alternatives to incarceration.” According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the end of 2009 we had 1,613,740 people in prison throughout our country. We also had 5,023,275 people on community supervision or so called alternatives. If the goal is to put fewer people in prison and more people in “alternatives”, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. We have more than 70% of our corrections population in the community. In some states it’s as high as 80%. Some may say we should increase it to 80% nation-wide but if we do we’ll basically end up with what we now have–as system in which the VAST majority of offenders is in community programs/supervision rather than in prison.
Fixing the system through prison reform misses the entirety of the problem. The system doesn’t need to be reformed. It must be TRANSFORMED.
We shouldn’t jump to the answers before asking the right questions.
We’re told that prisons hold a large number of non-violent offenders. This raises several questions. Should we only incarcerate violent offenders? What about car thieves, burglars, drug dealers, swindlers and others? Should we never incarcerate these types of criminals? What exactly is a non-violent offender? Is it someone who has never committed a violent crime? Is it someone convicted of a non-violent crime but with a history of violence? Is it someone who committed a violent crime but was convicted of a non-violent crime because of plea bargaining? The point is that sentencing statistics provide only a snapshot of the person’s current offense.
We rely on a flawed success measure-recidivism. This also raises several questions. If a person hasn’t returned to prison, is it because they’ve reformed or is it because they haven’t gotten caught? Perhaps an individual was rearrested in another jurisdiction but as long as he/she doesn’t return to the institution of release it’s counted as a success. Reliance on recidivism creates unintended consequences. Probation and parole officers are often instructed not to revoke supervision unless (until) a person commits a “serious” offense. Many major offenses can be prevented by revoking individuals at the first sign of trouble-usually after a “minor” infraction. To do so would be considered a failure in today’s system. Does this make any sense? Offenders can avoid rearrest and conviction while continuing to wreak havoc in the community.