Guest Viewpoint: It’s time to bring back time off for good behavior

The Register-Guard

by Claudia Hardwick

Managing criminal behavior is a complicated problem that we are struggling with here in Oregon.

The goal, of course, is to make our communities safe from crime. How have we attempted to do this?

We voted to adopt Measure 11 in 1994, as part of the “tough on crime” movement. Measure 11 mandates long sentences for persons convicted of serious crimes, and it allows no time off for good behavior in prison.

The rationale was that the measure would keep criminals off the streets for long periods while giving them the punishment that they deserved. So how has this worked out?

The first result is that it has proved tremendously expensive. The prison population has soared, and we now have almost 14,000 of our citizens in prison, not counting the people in the various city and county jails around the state.
It costs a lot of money to incarcerate this many people, and state money goes to prisons rather than to schools, police, health care and other services.

John Kitzhaber, the governor at the time Measure 11 was enacted, predicted, “School districts will cut hundreds of teachers but we will be hiring a thousand new prison guards. So we won’t be teaching your kids, but we will be guarding them well.”

This has proved to be true.

But does Measure 11 keep us safer? During the 1980s and 1990s, a number of similar measures were enacted in various states across the nation, and crime rates indeed fell. However, they fell both in states that had such measures and states that did not.

It slowly became obvious that the crime rate is connected to other variables, such as unemployment. Research from the Pew Center shows that these measures have incurred huge costs without improving public safety.

If Measure 11 is both tremendously expensive and not providing the results that we want, then we need to modify or abolish it. That will prove difficult, because the anger and fear that is our instinctive response to crime make us want to focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

But it is necessary to focus on rehabilitation. We must change criminal behavior to productive behavior because, according to the Department of Corrections, 93 percent of people in prison come back into our communities and become our neighbors.

When we ignore rehabilitation there is a high recidivism rate, and prison becomes a revolving door with the same people re-entering prisons after committing more crimes. This does not make our communities safer.
How can we help people change their behavior?

Measure 11 crimes are serious, and prison provides a necessary “time-out” punishment. But punishment alone does not teach people about what behavior is desirable; it must be paired with rewards for positive behavior if people are to live successfully in society again.

The best way to reward good behavior in prison is to permit people to shorten their sentences if they can demonstrate pro-social behavior.

We need to encourage positive behavior from the moment a person is incarcerated by offering drug and alcohol treatment, anger management, sex offender training and mental health programs. Job training needs to be offered, and all levels of education should be available.

ll inmates should be able to reduce their sentences significantly by participating in such programs, by staying out of trouble while incarcerated and by exhibiting positive uses of their time. If prisoners are unwilling to change their behavior, they would serve his entire sentence.

There are a small percentage of people who are unable to follow the rules of society, and they always will pose a threat. Most of them appear to have brain dysfunctions that inhibit empathy.

Those people will not be able to live safely in society and need to be housed humanely in an appropriate facility as long as they are dangerous. However, most people who commit criminal acts do not fall in this category.
There needs to be a careful transition from prison to the community for serious offenders. They need to have stable housing and help finding and keeping jobs, and they need to be monitored as they make this transition. However, as they prove that they can participate successfully in the community, the monitoring can be tapered off.

Oregon could recognize huge savings by modifying Measure 11 and allowing inmates to earn time off for pro-social behaviors. We need to think about criminal behavior and get beyond the anger that results in harsh punishment but ignores the larger goal of long-term public safety.

It will take time and effort to change our system, but it must be done.

Claudia Hardwick of Eugene is a clinical psychologist (and long-time PSJ member and leader)