The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any nation on Earth. That means that even non-democratic regimes like Iran, Cuba, and Russia that routinely jail people summarily have a lower incarceration rate than we do.
Not only do all other advanced countries incarcerate at a lower rate, their crime rates in those countries are often also lower than ours.
A wise friend of a notably different political persuasion than mine once said: “There are dangerous criminals that we’re rightly afraid of and they should be incarcerated, but the majority of criminals are frustrating and we are rightfully angry about their behavior, but we need to be much wiser about how we deal with them.”
The latter is being smart on crime.
I have never been a police officer or an attorney, and while I have some knowledge on these subjects I’m hesitant to write about policing and the courts. I spent most of my 45 professional years managing state correctional services for juveniles and adults, as well as directing community-based programs for both populations. I’ve also taught courses in a university’s Justice Studies program regarding the criminal justice system (CJS) as a whole and the correctional subsystem in particular.
Much has been written and, in some places, much is being done about bringing current American policing into what I call a higher state of enlightenment. The same should be happening in other parts of the justice system, like the cash bail process, and corrections, including probation and parole (P&P). My contention is that by undertaking enlightened reform, society can make communities safer, save taxpayer dollars, and be more humane, thus accomplishing several goals simultaneously.
The term enlightenment is used here because it suggests a state of awareness arrived at after a thoughtful and truthful review of the CJS history, the system’s current state and a scientific analysis of data that leads to a clearer vision of how to evolve it further. It is the exact opposite of what is done by some policy advocates, especially politicians who opt for jingoistic, simplistic, and self-serving slogans.
All too often people running for office mouth the slogan “tough on crime” when a learned analysis would show that regardless of their intent their ideas and proposals are actually dumb on crime.
A wiser and more effective responses to crime is not only humane, it is also wise financially. The cost to incarcerate adults ranges from $30,000 to over $100,000 annually depending on the level of security they are housed in. Juvenile incarceration costs start around $90,000 annually and often are much higher. The costs of community correctional, whether in residential settings or under probation or parole supervision, are notably lower than incarceration.
For example, annual P&P costs for adults range from less than $1,000 to a high of under $4,000 annually depending on the level of intensity of the supervision.
I defy anyone to offer a good public policy explanation of why our nation’s adult prison population grew exponentially over the past several decades even though the crime rate steadily declined.
The Council of State Governments, a nonpartisan organization, reviewed New Hampshire’s data and found a startling fact regarding our increased prison population. It found that 60% of the prison population’s increase was due to technical violations of probation and parole rules as distinct from committing new crimes.
Technical violations mean minor things like missing or being late to an appointment, violating curfew, etc. It would be bad correctional practice to allow these violations to occur without consequence, but locking people up for minor rule breaking has been shown to be both costly and counter-productive for recidivism reduction. I’m pleased to report that New Hampshire’s P&P officers are now considerably less prone to use this practice.
Some have postulated that the national increase in prison population is also due to policies and draft laws generated by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on behalf of their private correctional corporation sponsors. While New Hampshire has not privatized corrections, many of our politicians have been influenced by ALEC’s indirect lobbying at their national meetings.
This resulted in the adoption of laws and policies that led New Hampshire to incarcerate many more people than necessary.
Privatization of corrections is certainly a cause of this irrational phenomenon, but it isn’t the only one. I urge readers to watch Ava DuVernay’s documentary titled 13th for an understanding of another root cause of mass incarceration and the disproportionate incarceration of people of color.
For those who are fearful that enlightened policy changes would be permissive and would lead to an increase in crime, I offer the following proof of that fallacy.
In 1975, New Hampshire’s total population was about 700,000 and the state incarcerated about 245 youth in its secure juvenile correctional facility. Today’s state population is approaching 1,400,000 and the same juvenile correctional facility houses between 10 and 30 youth on any given day. In other words, while the state’s total population increased by 100%, the number of incarcerated youth decreased by about 85%. If we were in fact incarcerating dangerous youth we would expect the reduction in incarceration to have allowed them to terrorize our communities. In fact, the juvenile crime rate has decreased steadily over the same period of time.
There is another New Hampshire example of data-driven, effective policies that give rise to foolish political opposition.
A bipartisan committee recommended a policy of releasing people incarcerated for serious crimes who have not been granted parole eight months before their sentence is completed. It faced immediate political opposition. Some of the opposition came from aggrieved crime victims. Their opposition is understandable even though they were arguing emotionally and contrary to their own best interest.
One cannot offer the same absolution to several politicians, including a failed gubernatorial candidate, who claimed to support law and order but showed complete ignorance of research into what works to increase public safety. The reasons a bipartisan committee recommended adoption of such a policy are:
■Once an inmate completes his or her sentence, the state has no authority over them and may no longer track their whereabouts or search them or their property regardless of the crime for which they were incarcerated.
■New Hampshire data showed that the portion of inmates re-entering the community who violated their conditions of release usually did do so within eight months of release.
■Because probationers and parolees have a diminished expectation and right to privacy, the early release policy enabled the state to monitor their adjustment to community life. Thus, increasing the probability that they would be redirected or rearrested preemptively if they were preparing to or actually beginning to offend gain. The absence of this policy was partially responsible an awful instance case where a violent inmate who refused to participate in prison programming was held until the end of his sentence without the state’s ability to monitor him upon release. He proceeded to rape and murder a victim in an adjoining state.
An example of what New Hampshire can do almost immediately at virtually no increase in cost is to develop a much smaller facility (one with fewer than 40 beds or two smaller ones) for juveniles and repurpose the 144-bed Sununu Youth Services Center (SYSC) for nonviolent young adults (those under the age of 28) currently incarcerated at the New Hampshire State Prison. The reasons this change would be a significant improvement over the status quo are:
■Research has clearly shown that brain development, particularly the prefrontal cortex, isn’t complete until one reaches their mid- to late 20s. This research doesn’t say that younger people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. They are simply much less capable of executive decision making, delayed gratification, etc. which are governed by that part of the brain. Hence the difference of culpability between children and adults.
■Research has also identified contact with criminals as one of the significant criminogenic risk factors (factors that increase criminality). Hence putting young impressionable nonviolent offenders with more hardened older offenders is the perfect recipe for furthering their criminality rather than curbing or diminishing it.
■SYSC is a secure 144-bed facility that, due to excellent progress in juvenile justice, is grossly underutilized.
I recognize that we will never eliminate crime, and we should therefore not eliminate law enforcement or correctional services. I’m proud, however, to have been part of the change process that led to a more enlightened juvenile justice system in New Hampshire. I just wish it didn’t have to take 30-plus years.
We can make similar enlightened societal and systemic changes in the adult correctional system. The results of doing what works – as distinct from what some simplistic people think and say – will be lower recidivism, a lower level of crime, and significantly lower costs.
(Joseph Diament is the recently retired director of the Division of Community Corrections in New Hampshire’s Department of Corrections and also from his position as adjunct professor in the Justice Studies Program at SNHU. Six years previously he served as director of the New Hampshire Division for Juvenile Justice Services. His private sector experience includes being CEO of Odyssey House Inc. of New Hampshire and Maine, and director of programs and administration at New Futures.)