National: Sentencing Policy in the 21st Century
Article by Brigette Sarabi
At the end of the 20th century, the U.S. went on a prison boom that was breathtaking in scope. Just a little over 20 years ago, in 1982, we spent $9.6 billion dollars on all prisons and jails in the U.S. By 2001, that number had skyrocketed to $57 billion, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Small states like Oregon have seen the cost of their prison systems swell to huge proportions, especially when compared to the low-growth, no-growth or actual budget cuts to other state programs like education and healthcare. Oregon’s cost to operate its prisons currently runs about $1 billion each budget cycle. In the Governor’s proposed budget for the 2005-07 biennium, he is proposing a stunning 33% increase for the Oregon Department of Corrections, and at the same time proposing massive budget cuts for programs serving senior citizens and preschoolers.
Why is this prison spending spree happening? Are a lot more people being arrested for crimes? No. In Oregon and across the U.S. the huge growth in the prison system hasn’t been because of an equal growth in arrests or court cases. There were 12 million arrests in 1982, and only a modest increase to 13.7 million in 2001, and the number of court cases over the same period grew by just seven percent. The number of prisoners in the U.S., however, more than quadrupled.
According to an article in the New York Times last spring, the huge growth in the number of prisoners over the past two decades reflects a decision by the public and politicians to become more punitive, sentencing more offenders to incarceration and for longer terms. “As a society, we became much more punitive and passed all kinds of laws like mandatory minimums, three strikes and you’re out and sending juveniles into adult prisons,” said Professor Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University.
The focus on punishment and vengeance in our criminal justice system has often been called “tough on crime.” But many people, including lawmakers, are beginning to see that “tough on crime” is often just “dumb on crime.” Consider this: over the past ten years since Measure 11’s mandatory sentences took effect, the state of Oregon has been in a perpetual prison building boom. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent, and thousands of new prison beds built, not because there are so many new crimes, but because we are locking people up a lot longer. There is no end in sight to new prison construction in the state. At the same time, over the past several budget cycles, Oregon’s lawmakers have had a “slash and burn” policy when it comes to prison programs. Many politicians want to prove how tough they are so we have cut education and treatment programs that can help prisoners rebuild their lives when they get out—and over 95 percent of prisoners do get out.
In Oregon, it’s estimated that over 70 percent of our prisoners have serious reading and math deficiencies, but lawmakers have eliminated almost all GED education programs. According to the Oregon Department of Corrections, close to 80 percent of prisoners (close to 10,000) have serious substance abuse problems, but we have cut drug and alcohol treatment back so much that we now have a little over 500 treatment beds in a prison system with over 12,500 prisoners. In the Governor’s new budget, the one with the 33 percent corrections increase, no new resources will go to programs. In fact, the Governor wants to cut those paltry 500 treatment beds by one-third. What do you call a plan that is supposed to reduce future crime that actually forgets about rehabilitation, cuts out any and all programs that could reduce recidivism, and builds more prison warehouses? Sounds like “dumb on crime” to me.
Many people across the country, both regular taxpayers and elected officials, are beginning to wake up to the “dumb on crime” nature of our prison spending binge. Connecticut, like Oregon, is running out of space for its growing number of state prisoners. But a University of Connecticut poll last spring found that 51 percent of Connecticut residents were in favor of relaxing the state’s mandatory minimum sentences and investing more in alternatives to incarceration instead of building more prisons or shipping prisoners out of state. According to Dan Wilhelm, director of the state sentencing and corrections program at the Vera Institute of Justice (as quoted in the New York Times last May), since 2003 more than half the states took legislative steps to modify tough sentencing laws they passed in the 1990’s, like scrapping mandatory minimum sentences or requiring treatment instead of prison for first-time drug offenders. The Vera Institute of Justice, a non-partisan organization that helps state legislators working on sentencing reform, has been active with lawmakers in several states, including Texas, and helped these states craft sentencing reforms that save tax dollars and still protect public safety. In the fall of 2004, it was rumored that the Vera Institute would be providing their services to Oregon’s lawmakers as well. That turned out not to be true, but not because Vera wasn’t willing to help. A confidential source close to those involved was told that Vera’s services would not be used because Oregon wasn’t ready to tackle sentencing reform. If this were a movie, maybe we could just call it “Dumb and Dumber.”
Across the country, people are beginning to realize that when it comes to keeping the public safe, there are smart and effective policies that can do a heck of a lot more than the “tough and dumb” policies that might make politicians sound like Wyatt Earp, but leave the rest of us no safer, and considerably poorer.
