Dear Criminal Justice System Reform Debate,
First of all, thank you for being the first real Dear So and So.
Second, Sorry for the repost. Cat Tax.
Third, I want to say that I dearly hope that you get picked up on the national news scene soon because we’ve got lots of work to do, but we likely won’t get started in earnest until someone campaigns about it.
So, what are the problems, exactly? Well, as I see it, the biggest, easiest to define problems are:
- There are too many people in prison.
- There are too many people going back to prison, after being released.
- Incarceration rates are absurdly racially lopsided.
- In a strictly fiscal sense, it is an abhorrent cost.
- In many cases, prison actually teaches criminals how to be better criminals.
- Prison is not a solution to the problem that caused the crime. It is simply a repercussion of the crime occurring.
I went ahead and gathered some data as well, which should help get the conversation going:
Population and Cost Data1
- The United States accounts for 4.4% of the world’s population.
- Incarcerated individuals in the United States account for 22% of the world’s incarcerated population.
- It costs the taxpayer roughly $24k/inmate/year to incarcerate someone.
- Including all costs (new prison construction, maintenance, utilities, etc) the annual cost of US prisons is about $60,000,000,000
Incarceration Rates*2
- For every 100,000 US citizens, 439 Caucasian men are incarcerated
- For every 100,000 US citizens, 4,332 African-American and/or Latino men are incarcerated
- For every 100,000 US citizens, 943 men are incarcerated
*data only accounts for men, age 18 or over, in State or Federal penal systems
Crime Rate Data3
- There has been a 32% decrease in violent crime in the period from 1982 to 2012 (570.8/100k in ’82 vs. 386.9/100k in ’12)
- There has been a 38% decrease in property crime in the period from 1983 to 2012 (4637/100k in ’83 vs. 2859.2/100k in ’12)
- Every 1% drop in the unemployment rate results in about a 2% drop in property crime rates and a .5% drop in rates of violent crime4.
Recidivism Data5
- A 2005 study of >400k released inmates showed that 67.8% were rearrested within three years.
- 76.6% of those >400k inmates were rearrested within five years.
- Of those rearrested, 57.6% were rearrested within the first year of release.
- 82.1% of property offenders were arrested for new crimes.
- 76.9% of drug offenders were arrested for new crimes.
- 73.6% of public order offenders were arrested for new crimes.
- 71.3% of violent offenders were arrested for new crimes.
Tax Data6
- A person making $36k/year that has a tax rate of 15% will pay roughly $5,400 in income taxes.
- A 10% drop in the prison population would mean that ~226,000 more people would be eligible to pay income tax (assuming all stayed out of jail and had jobs).
- If just one third of the 226,000 made $36k/year and were taxed at 15% an additional ~$406,000,000 would be put back into the tax pool.
There’s some data, Criminal Justice System Reform Debate.
Now go start some conversations.
Love,
Elijah
Dear So and So 
An important aspect of this discussion is the increase in incarceration and the increase in privatization of the prison system.
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Hello Dear So and So! Welcome to the Internet! Hopefully some of the “best of” from the Connections blog will make it out here too!
As for criminal justice reform, this is an issue with supporters on both sides of the aisle. On the one hand that bipartisan factor can help get things done. But it can hurt in an election year since neither side can use it as an effective club to beat opponents with. Plus you have to take into account the influence of the prison industry (both private companies and public prison guard unions) which has been very successful in blocking meaningful reform.
It’s a complex issue. On the one hand, as you pointed out, crime has gone down in recent years. This is partly as a result of locking up so many potential criminals. But on the flip side we now have so many laws (not to mention federal and state regulations) where violations can result in prison time that it’s impossible to know them all. One expert estimates that the average American adult commits three felonies every day without being aware of it. That’s just insane. We’ve got way too many people in prisons and too many coming out worse than when they went in. Hopefully more people will wake up to this problem and make it an issue to be addressed.
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Thank you WordPress for deleting the very long comment I wrote on my phone when you made me login. Arrgh.
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Hello Dear So and So! Welcome to the Internet! Hopefully some of the “best of” from the Connections blog will make it out here too!
As for criminal justice reform, this is an issue with supporters on both sides of the aisle. On the one hand that bipartisan factor can help get things done. But it can hurt in an election year since neither side can use it as an effective club to beat opponents with. Plus you have to take into account the influence of the prison industry (both private companies and public prison guard unions) which has been very successful in blocking meaningful reform.
It’s a complex issue. On the one hand, as you pointed out, crime has gone down in recent years. This is partly as a result of locking up so many potential criminals. But on the flip side we now have so many laws (not to mention federal and state regulations) where violations can result in prison time that it’s impossible to know them all. One expert estimates that the average American adult commits three felonies every day without being aware of it. That’s just insane. We’ve got way too many people in prisons and too many coming out worse than when they went in. Hopefully more people will wake up to this problem and make it an issue to be addressed.
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Actually, I think the best way to address the issue, is to look at the root cause(s) of it. Why do people turn to crime in the first place? Why does it seem that black males perpetrate more crime than whites? Is it due to race bias? Education or lack thereof?
The issues with the criminal justice system are the direct result of much deeper social-economic issues. I’d argue that the focus shouldn’t be on the prisons at all, but on the problems that lead people to end up there.
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