Is Measure 11 Really Working?

Article by Erika Spaet

In 1994, Oregon voters passed a ballot measure that imposes mandatory minimum sentences on 21 violent offenses. It was passed, according to its supporters, to keep Oregon safer.

The late 1980s saw a rash of violent crime all over the United States; it was in 1987 that Willie Horton, who earned a weekend furlough from prison in 1986, absconded and committed a heinous and violent crime. Voters praised Presidents Reagan and then Bush for their “tough on crime” policies. The whole country was afraid that the Willie Hortons of the world would attack them in their homes, and in Oregon, Measure 11 was a solution to the perceived “soft on crime” status quo.

It is now the 15th anniversary of Measure 11 and we pose the question: is it really working?

Evaluating Measure 11’s Effectiveness

There are a few ways to evaluate the effectiveness of Measure 11. Its affect on crime rates is just one way, though certainly not always the most important. The index crime rate in Oregon has been on a slow decline (see chart below), though it doesn’t appear to be correlated with the passing of Measure 11.

If lawmakers wanted Measure 11 to have a deterrence effect—meaning that those who might have committed crimes chose not to because they were aware of the increase in sentences—the crime rate would have seen an immediate and substantial decline. This didn’t happen. If incapacitation was the desired effect—meaning that felons who would have been released weren’t, making them unable to commit more crime—the crime rate would have seen a substantial decline around 1997, the year when the original sentences would have run out. This also didn’t happen.

We are not surprised. Analysis shows that increased incarceration—which is all that Measure 11 does to mitigate crime—is usually only responsible for a 25% decrease in crime. In some studies, it is much less, and in others, increased incarceration actually causes crime to go up.(1)

So the idea that Measure 11 caused crime rates to decline in Oregon doesn’t hold up. Elsewhere, crime rates were going down, but not because of increased levels of incarceration.

As Oregon started locking up more and more people, our crime rates began slowly going down. Across the country, 3,000 miles away in New York in 1994, crime went down too – and prisons began emptying. The same happened in California and Washington. Had all four states instituted tough new mandatory minimum sentences like those mandated by Measure 11? No – on the contrary: although they all experienced drops in crime, Oregon, much more than any of the others, used prison cells to try and achieve that goal (see chart below).
 

If New York didn’t use prisons, what was its solution? The first and most obvious answer is that outside factors, such as the political, social and especially economic climates of the country, were changing in a way that naturally reduced crime.

Between 1992 and 1997, unemployment across the country declined – a factor researchers say contributed to nearly 40% of the decline in the crime rate. Increased average wages and high school graduation rates have also been significant contributing factors.(2)

Drug abuse patterns are also important to take into consideration. Meth use in Oregon began to decline in 1996 due to what was perceived as a decline in quality of the drug and meth-use restrictions, which may have resulted in fewer property crimes.(3)

Some researchers even say that crime was going down because baby boomers had more or less grown up by the late 1990s, and it is well known that an individual is most likely to commit crimes when he or she under the age of 30.

In other words, crime would have gone down anyway.

Alternatives to Incarceration Programs

Meanwhile, states like New York were being “smart on crime” by using alternatives to incarceration (ATI) programs. ATI programs allow a judge to sentence someone to a program where they receive treatment, education and employment training in the community while under supervision.

And they work.

Since 1994, the New York City jail population dropped 23%, and the state’s prison population didn’t grow at all. The city’s total crime and violent crime rates dropped by 52%. Those who completed an ATI program were less likely to be convicted of a new offense afterward than those who hadn’t undergone the program.

Using evidence-based practices like these work better than mandatory minimum sentencing and increased incarceration not only because they are effective in reducing crime rates, but because they cost less than Measure 11 has: in dollars and in human life.

Oregon has built three prisons and expanded five others in the past decade to accommodate Measure 11 prisoners. The state now spends tens of millions dollars more to lock up inmates than it does to educate students at community colleges and state universities. Analysts now say that for every dollar spent on incarceration in Oregon, residents see about a dollar in reduced crime costs.(4) This is in part because of the state’s over-reliance on incarceration and in part because of its ineffective and unreasonable use of Measure 11.

Every prosecutor interviewed for a RAND (a non-profit research organization) study on the implementation of Measure 11 said that it would be ridiculous for the measure to be applied in every case. All court practitioners in the study who were interviewed believed Measure 11 penalties to be too long and too severe.(5)

More Effective Ways to Spend our Tax Dollars

Despite a leveling off of crime rates in Oregon, victims and survivors are still hurting. Dr. Irvin Waller, well-known crime victim advocate and author of Less Law, More Order: The Truth About Reducing Crime (see “Tough on Crime is Tough on Crime Victims” in Justice Matters, Summer 2009) writes that if a government redirects 10% of what it currently spends reacting to crime to enhancing crime prevention programs and crime survivor support, there would be a 50% reduction in the number of victims after ten years.

“Whatever the talk,” he writes, “our taxes today are being used primarily to respond to crime by being reactive, reactionary, and repressive. We pay for professional law enforcement officers, professional lawyers, professional judges but the gains in terms of reducing victimization are not significant.”(6)

The bottom line is that since 1994, Measure 11 has—and continues to—hurt everyone.

Taxpayers hurt when their legislature’s budget wastes money on senseless incarceration; prisoners hurt when their access to a fair judicial process is taken away; crime victims hurt when their state neglects to take care of them and prevent more crime; Oregon neighborhoods hurt when the bonds of community are continually broken by an over-reliance on incarceration rather than in-community solutions to crime.

The price tag of Measure 11 is more than one can estimate, and not worth the consequences. Oregon can do things differently and more effectively. Measure 11 wasn’t—and never will be—the right answer to crime.

Source for graphs: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, Bureau of Justice Statistics

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Justice Matters.