As Orin points out in a recent post, one out of every hundred adults in now behind bars in country. The source for this factoid is the Pew Center on the States, which released its report "One in 100" to much fanfare. The Pew Center claims that we are not really getting anything in return for the moneys spent on prisons. But curiously, despite the claim that this expenditure is "failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime," the study never attempts to assess the impact on overall crime.
As a quick way of assessing the return is interesting to compare the moneys spent on prisons over the last twenty years(collected in the Pew report) and crime rates over the same period of time. This chart plots one against the other:
[click to enlarge]
As can be seen, significant increases in spending on prisons has coincided with significant reductions in crime. Of course, proving causality would require a more sophisticated analysis. But it would be remarkable to think that the prison growth has had nothing to do with the fact that violent crime rates have reached their lowest point in recent years, according to the Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.
To be clear about my own views, we should be smart about who we incarcerate. And of course we should explore alternatives to prison. But all too often factoids like the Pew Center's are used to urge bans on further prison construction without considering the very tangible harms to crime victims that such an approach would produce.
This is exactly right; yet you appear to pay very little mind to this critical point.
2. Many more factors could come into play - causality could be very very difficult to show.
3. If we finally were to determine causality, this would not automatically indicate that we should expand (or not shrink) prisons. 100% incarceration would also mean lower crime-- actually...
4. Does the crime number include crimes within prisons?
It does, however, require explanation.
Hm. Scans wrong. Oh well, could still be correct.
So, even if there is a causal connection, a spending increase of just more than 1/2 has resulted in a decrease in just over 1/3. Sounds like we're not really getting our money's worth.
K
And yes, proving causation would require more sophisticated analysis. But so would proving correlation. You can't just put two lines on a graph that sort of move in opposite directions and say, "voila--correlation." Can you tell us what r is?
Or, at least, that's our presumption until we see evidence to the contrary.
Otherwise, why should we not always presume causation absent proof, or even argument?
But there is and was tremendous variance between California counties on use of the three-strikes law. Some, such as Los Angeles County, charge every possible strike regardless. Most apply it with discretion against repeat offenders, in particular against violent repeat offenders.
EVERY study I've read of the effects of sentencing practices says that getting repeat offenders off the street for long periods does more to reduce crime rates than any one other prosecution/sentencing policy.
I think if you went back further, you'd see less correlation. I haven't looked at the numbers for a few years, but as I remember, for most of the 20th century we had pretty stable (and relatively low) prison populations, and crime rose and fell from time to time (with a large non-cyclical increase beginning in the late 60s).
In the last 20 years, we've seen a massive non-cyclical increase in the prison population. If you just take one crime wave and map it on to that increase, of course you'll see a correlation.
Comparing US incarceration rates against the Chinese rate is misleading, China executes 8,000 people per year, 20 times the rate of the rest of the world combined. While adding that 8000 people per year to the incarceration total wouldn't explain the gap, maybe the deterent effect would.
But it may be that your point still holds: that China's penal system is more effective/efficient than the US system. Maybe we do need to substantially increase execution rates and see if it will help lower incarceration rates.
Steve Levitt, "The Effect of Prison Population Size on Crime Rates: Evidence from Prison Overcrowding Litigation." The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1996, 111(2), pp. 319-51, Link.
The paper uses overcrowding litigation as an (admittedly imperfect) instrument for prison population, and finds the the raw correlation actually understates the extent to which prisons reduce crime.
California's enormous incarceration rates and staggering prison population are due as much or more to our being stuck with a true "gangster" union in the prison guards' association than to any other, more mundane, causes.
In addition to the usual public employee scam of selling campaign contributions to the legislature in exchange for hefty pay raises and construction of new prisons to provide still more campaign contribution opportunities, the prison guards' association has engaged in outright criminal conduct. One example was armed pursuit of a guard who reported misconduct INTO AN FBI OFFICE where the guy was then talking to FBI agents about it.
Most developed countries experienced significant drops in crime in the 1990s. Canada, in particular, functions as an excellent control; Canada did not increase incarceration rates and did not undergo as much economic growth in the 1990s as the USA. Nevertheless, Canada experienced comparable drops in crime rates to those in the USA.
The major factors seem to be demographic. For an excellent discussion of this, see The Great American Crime Decline by Franklin Zimring.
Incarceration is incredibly expensive (~$35,000/prisoner/year in CA, plus the loss of the prisoner's contribution to the economy). Therefore, finding the best incarceration rates for crime reduction while minimizing spending should be a high public policy priority. Unfortunately, most political discourse on this subject is driven by anecdote and emotional reaction.
First, one could argue that it's obvious that if you remove the people who commit crimes from the population, you not only prevent them from committing more crimes, but you scare all their criminal friends into obeying the law as well. This explanation is simple, straightforward, and intuitive. It's also backed by at least some anecdotal evidence. It's not, however, well supported (or refuted, necessarily) by the overall trends in our history, as was pointed out by tdsj.
The main opposing view, I think, is that putting people in prisons inculcates criminal cultures, and makes small time criminals into professional criminals. There are plenty of stories of people who went in as pot dealers, and came out as coke dealers. Imprisoning large parts of a community (like, for example, black urban males) breaks up family structures within that community, prevents members of that community from finding gainful employment (nobody wants to hire the guy who just got out of prison) and disenfranchises that community. Large imprisonment rates foster criminal cultures, destabilize communities, and alienate those communities from society at large. Hence, vicious cycle and more crime.
The second argument isn't quite as intuitive, and it's also not proven conclusively by the data we have, but I think it's at least as plausible as the first.
Also, if you really want to find a metric that provides a good correlation with the crime rate, try the unemployment rate. Those two lines will match up beautifully.
Dogbert: So your theory is that when career criminals are in jail, other people commit more crimes to keep the average up.
The reason prison spending has gone up is public intolerance of crime. While interest groups like public employees unions have lobbied for spending increases, there is a reservoir of public support that provides a conducive environment for the lobbying effort.
Like if the cost of the crime is 20k, and it costs 80k to "punish" the criminal (court fees, legal fees, prison fees), where should we draw the line?
Are there more cost-effective punishments like slave labor or wage garnishment that would get us more bang for the buck?
I would love to see a study on that!
2. I suspect that there is a correlation between money spent on prisons and an aging population.
Well of course this is a very simplistic way of looking at it. When someone commits a crime and is caught, how much time they spend in jail (or even if they go to jail at all) depends on a myriad of factors beyond the simple facts of the case. One of the most important is how good a lawyer they can afford. But even if you take that variable away, just simple economic circumstances, where you live, where you are tried, and unfortunately still, the color of your skin, make huge differences in sentencing.
Why in the world should we tolerate career criminals? Is it really too much to ask that you not commit three felonies?
I have absolutely no sympathy for someone who gets convicted of three felonies (in reality, probably having committed many more than three) and gets thrown in jail for life. We as a society are much better off.
Bill Clinton claimed credit for his economic management and "hundred thousand cops on the beat" initiative that reduced crime. Giuliani claimed credit for changes in policing methods. Federal law enforcement points out that the crime rate fell when the country came out with serious penalties for crack cocaine. Economist Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame credits abortion becoming legal roughly 20 years before the rate started falling, weeding out proportionally more kids from bad homes.
That's just the few claims I can recall in a few minutes. I'm sure there are others out there. It's interesting how many causes claim credit for when a good trend occurs but are nowhere to be found when it reverses.
What's the old saying -- Success has a thousand fathers, failure is an orphan.
While drug use may be a victimless crime, are drug dealing and production really victimless crimes?
The studies that you would love to see done have been done by, e.g. Zedlewski and Kleiman and Cavanagh. On average it costs an order of magnitude less to imprison an offender than the crime that offender commits would cost society if he were not imprisoned. On the margin (the worst offenders) the benefits of imprisonment are orders of magnitude greater than the costs.
factor in those costs-I bet it's scary.
You are doing the math wrong. The question is not what is the cost to society of the crime he actually committed, but what would the cost be of the crimes he would commit if not either deterred or detained.
None of these considerations, of course, apply to people whose "crimes" generate value for society: hookers, drug dealers, loan sharks, immigrant-traffickers, and bookies. (Yes, I realize you might not value the services of these entrepreneurs, but their customers clearly do.)
Just last week I was at a gas station and saw the aftermath of an assault. An older Asian man was walking out of the store with a bottle of coke, a young punk walked up to him punched him in the nose and ran off with the coke, leaving the man with a bleeding and possibly broken nose. Whats the cost of that crime, a coke and a doctors bill? Its got me considering a CCW permit, and of course a snub-nose .38 to accessorize the permit. What's that going to cost?
That depends on the circumstances, I suppose. Is quietly growing marijuana (or poppies, for that matter) inherently violent? Not to my knowledge, though of course the stories of lethal mantraps around (or lethal violence committed upon visitors to) marijuana farms are because growing the plants is a crime so the owners can't protect them any other way.
Ditto for dealing. Is selling marijuana or cocaine to someone who shows up, cash in hand, eager to buy an inherently violent act? I don't think so. Is selling booze to an alcoholic a crime? Should it be?
Plus, the chart appears to be all corrections spending, not just prison spending. Corrections spending includes all sorts of non-prison sanctions, so the graph really doesn't compare crime rates to incarceration rates.
Also, why sentence white collar offenders with no prior record to lengthy prison sentences? Better to heavily fine people like Conrad Black or Martha Stewart than put them in jail.
Prison should be mostly for those who commit crimes against the person.
Why should white collar offenders be excused from jail. Martha Stewart stole from the persons who she sold that stock to just as surely as a shoplifter steals a coat off a rack.
As for Black, he probably stole tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. If someone drilled into a vault of a cusino (a la Oceans Eleven) and stole $10 million and was caught for the first time, would you say they didn't deserve jail time?
Cusino (spelled properly) is blacklisted--who'd a thunk!
"Martha Stewart stole from the persons who she sold that stock to just as surely as a shoplifter steals a coat off a rack."
IIRC, Martha Stewart was convicted and sentenced for lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice. Though I agree with your general point.
And for the person asking for the R2 - yeah, that would be interesting, but just looking at the graph, you can assume it would be large (now, we're only looking at 2 variables here, so perhaps once more were introduced into the mix, it would be different)
I agree that we need to be smart about how we spend our CJ dollars and that there's something sad about having so many people incarcerated. But, this post does seem to be on to something... (I expect Paul Cassell to be crucified for this post. Too bad).
So considering the fact that the buyer could have made a profit thanks to Martha, how did Martha steal from the buyer?
I can't see how warehousing the mentally ill in prisons really helps them or society.
I think you may be referring to Harcourt's work, but I don't think it was quite dramatic of a change.
It doesn't help the mentally ill. To the extent that it reduces violent crimes committed by the mentally ill, it helps society. It is a very clumsy and crude "solution," however. The decision to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill meant that people who in 1960 might have been institutionalized before they got around to murder, rape, kidnapping, or mayhem, now have to pretty near kill someone before they get any attention.
Los Angeles County Jail has effectively the largest mental hospital in the country now because of the decision to largely destroy the public mental hospital system, starting with the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963.
That said, I agree with Public Defender. We are going from the "baby boom" to the "baby bust"--and I believe there is a strong corrolation between an aging population and a drop in crime.
I remember my very wise Criminal Procedure professor (who moonlighted as a Federal Magistrate Judge) saying, "The greatest indicator of recidivism is age."
What he meant, and which I have observed over the years to be true, is that if you walk into an average state courtroom on arraignment day, most of the defendants are under 30. If you see a 40-something charged with burglary or robbery or drug offenses, you can almost guarantee that person is in not in court on their first offense.
By contrast, if you see someone in their 30s or 40s in court on their first offense, it will likely be alcohol related (DUI or related crime); a sex crime involving a child (or related crime); a crime of violence against a family member; or a "paper" crime (a la Martha Stewart).
All that said, I am strongly opposed to mandatory three-strikes laws. All they do is transfer long-term medical costs to the Department of Corrections and away from Medicaid or other sources. The unintended consequence of California's three-strikes law is that we will have hospitals that are officially "prisons" with an ever increasing prison budget dedicated to meeting geriatric prisoners' medical needs.
Don't get me wrong. There are people who NEVER deserve to breathe free air for even a second--I don't care how senile or feeble that person might be. But as prison beds need to be rationed, I would rather reserve them for people who need to be removed from society NOW, not those who were moronically stupid before outgrowing the need to commit crime.
"This is really stupid. I don't like having people watch me take showers and tell me what to do 24/7. Prison and jail sucks."
Of course, there are those who do not outgrow their need to commit crimes--and I have nothing against protecting society from them.
Another, probably greater factor is the incentive structure outside of the criminal justice system. The Amish have low rates of incarceration and abortion, and have many children. From some of the correlations previously cited, that should make it dangerous to walk through Amish country at night, yet I don't think that is the case. Changes in that incentive structure may well be the best correlate to changes in crime rate, though terribly hard to measure.
Most people would be surprised how often line prosecutors and line defense attorneys agree about who needs to be hammered, who needs a few years in prison, and who needs a second (or even third or fourth) chance.
Keeping every single defendant in prison for life for committing three felonies before age 30 makes no sense. For the vast majority of these guys, we are wasting money by incarcerating them past their 35th birthday.
A three-strikes law might make sense if it gave the judge a choice of the standard penalty or incarceration until the 35th birthday, whichever is later, and as long as it had an exception for the treatable mentally ill.
The criminal laws are not a static system. I suspect if we could somehow create a metric for the number and types of behaviors that are criminal, we'd see that metric rising as we become more "civilized" and society decides it needs to try and control more peoples' behaviors. Thus, over time, it becomes more likely that some behavior is criminal that previously wasn't. Drug laws strike me as a prime example.
And I agree that there shouldn't really be a distinction between mental health facilities and prisons/jails, for the purposes of this causation discussion. They tend to fill the same purpose for slightly different classes of individuals. While it may make a large difference to the individual which one they are held in, as far as society goes, both remove people who functioned in some unacceptable manner from our midst.
Arguably a large percentage of the people passing through our criminal justice system are folks who are self-medicating for some mental or behavioral problem, and the self-medication got out of hand or landed them within the grasp of the police somehow. That's one reason why recidivism is so high ... addiction isn't something that responds well or quickly to cost/benefit arguments.
Perhaps another reason why recidivism drops off at about age 30 is that by that time, people tend to get better control of their addictions (if they've survived them that long). They learn how to "handle" their drugs; know what they can take, how much, what kind of employment and relationships they can expect to have if they use, where to crash.
Presumably, people fit some sort of Gaussian curve of behavior, and somewhere 2 or 3 standard deviations below average there is a point at which behavior becomes "criminal". That line can move some (my first point), and the Gaussian curve is also a dynamic ... as is the population. Individuals may shift their position within the curve, either instinctively or rationally.
Logically, we'd expect both the potential gain from criminal behavior, severity of the penalties, and the chance of getting caught to be factors for the rational changes.
Economics can shift people into the criminal zone ... even by a rational process. Drug dealers may conclude that the chances of getting caught are low compared to the chances of making a lot of money.
But people are not always rational. Particularly the mentally ill or folks with behavioral problems (maybe the one is a subset of the other, I don't know). So some portion of our criminal population doesn't likely respond much to penalties and probabilities. As our population grows, so will the absolute number of those people.
And, as we treat prisoners with more civilized approaches, we can expect the per capita cost of prisons to grow rapidly. Yes, kind of like college costs!
Another difference: at one time, people were committed because they were mentally ill, and might not have even committed a serious crime. They were hospitalized because they needed treatment--and while there was some reason to suspect that some of them might become a criminal matter on the outside, this was by no means certain. This was the medical model of commitment, and from what I can find, it worked for the benefit of both the society, and many of the mentally ill. At least mentally ill inmates of a hospital weren't freezing to death, dying of pneumonia, or begging for money to buy alcohol.
Today we operate (in most states) on a public safety model. A mentally ill person who commits a very serious crime will be committed or imprisoned (and most likely the latter). A mentally ill person who starves himself to death while family, friends, and police look on helplessly, as in Oregon--well, that's THEIR CHOICE, to hear some ideologues tell the story.
As for "treatable mentally ill": in most states, you can't treat a mentally ill person against their will, with limited exceptions for those who are a imminent danger to themselves or others if not treated. And you can't hold a mentally ill person against their will if they aren't being treated, except as punishment for a crime. See Donaldson v. O'Connor (1975). Some state legislatures, with the assistance of a few courts, have managed to carve out some exceptions here and there, but the current system doesn't work. It just imprisons mentally ill offenders--usually after they have become at least a local headline.