OSI hosted a forum to mark the publication of Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration (New York University Press), by the director of the Vera Institute of Justice and former Soros Justice fellow Michael Jacobson.
Over two million people are incarcerated in America's prisons and jails eight times as many as in 1975. At current incarceration rates, an African American born in the United States today has a 30 percent chance of spending time in prison. Mandatory minimum sentencing, parole agencies intent on sending people back to prison, three-strike laws, for-profit prisons, and other changes in the legal system have contributed to this spectacular rise of the general prison population.
After overseeing the largest city jail system in the country, Michael Jacobson knows first-hand the inner workings of the corrections system. In Downsizing Prisons, he argues that mass incarceration will not, as many have claimed, reduce crime nor will it create more public safety. Instead, Jacobson suggests that our prison system needs a massive overhaul.
Downsizing Prisons examines specific ways that states have begun to transform their prison systems. Jacobson offers practical policy solutions and strategies, including changing how parole and probation agencies operate, significantly reducing punitive sentencing and "technical" parole violations, and supporting drug-treatment programs for low-level drug offenders. These policy changes can actually increase public safety as well as save money.
In addition to Michael Jacobson, the panel featured:
- Michael Blain, director of public policy at the Drug Policy Alliance;
- Roderick Hickman, secretary of the California Youth and Adult Correctional Agency;
- Nkechi Taifa, senior policy analyst at OSI Washington, D.C.;
Gara LaMarche, vice president and director of U.S. Programs at OSI, was the moderator.
Summary
Moderator Gara LaMarche began by noting that one of the striking aspects of the prison reform issue “is the synchronicity between human rights advocates and those who work within the prison system.” He asked Michael Jacobson, a veteran of the corrections field, how typical his views are for those who come from a corrections background.
Although mass incarceration reform is a grassroots social movement issue, Jacoson said, government can help in a number of ways. The two agendas don’t always overlap, but in many respects the goals are the same.
In New York, the perception is that the increase in the prison population is connected to the recent dramatic reduction in crime, LaMarche said, yet Jacobson’s book argues the contrary. He asked Jacobson to elaborate on that issue.
The argument that increased incarceration causes reduced crime is an intuitive one, Jacobson said. “But when you take a longer, historical view,” crime rates have clearly fluctuated over time. “It’s an incredibly simplistic way to look at it,” he said. In the 1980s and early 1990s, crime was up despite increased incarceration. And according to the general consensus in academic research, the increase in incarceration is responsible for at most 25 percent of the total reduction in crime.
"When you look at this argument on a state-by-state basis," Jacobson said, "the argument falls apart." For instance, over the last decade, West Virginia has had a steep increase in incarceration, but crime has actually increased. The state received no public safety benefit from its policy.
Conversely, New York has had by far the lowest growth prison system in the country, Jacobson pointed out, while the state has experienced the largest crime reduction in the nation by far. “The key point is that you can have huge declines in crime without increased prison prison population,” he added.
In California, Roderick Hickman said, "there is a well-funded, well-established culture in that state" that makes it very challenging to implement simple reforms in the parole revocation process. Reorganization of the criminal justice system is taking place, however; Hickman pointed to current initiatives “to create infrastructure in communities in ways that haven’t happened before.”
In the area of criminal justice, LaMarch observed, there has been a disconnect between evidence and political action, and "anecdote has often driven policy making." He asked the panelists which arguments for reform are effective with legislators.
Public will is built by evidence with lobbying force behind it, Michael Blain said. Referring to progress on reforming the Rockefeller Drug Laws, he stressed the importance of strategic, policy-driven, grassroots movement.
The process involves educating the grass roots, Blain said, but also educating policymakers. “The average legislator doesn’t understand what their prison system is all about,” he said. For instance, the Alabama prison system is currently 214 percent over capacity, with inmates who are predominantly nonviolent and predominantly people of color. At the same time, Alabama cannot afford health care and education funding, since half the general fund is being spent on the prison system.
The current situation offers a “window of opportunity,” said Nkechi Taifa, referring to last year's Blakely v. Washington decision (and, subsequently, U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan), which called into question the constitutionality of federal and state sentencing guidelines. These developments could spur reevaluation of the last 20 years of sentencing policy and practices in the United States, Taifa said. She also cited the recent introduction of the Second Chance Act in Congress as a promising first step.
In the past, in Texas, when the state budget improved, the prison population shot up, LaMarche pointed out. What could prevent this trend from continuing?
Although the cost issue is “a powerful driving factor,” Jacobson said, it is not the only factor. Even as states' economies improve, the pressure to keep taxes down continues. Moreover, the current situation doesn’t concern only with cost, he said; some very significant changes in public opinion have occurred. National and state-level polls indicate that public concern about crime is by far outweighed by health and education issues. And within the crime issue itself, Jacobson said, the public is much more sympathetic to alternatives to prison for certain classes, such as nonviolent offenders.
This dynamic creates an opportunity, Jacobson said. If structural reforms are made now, more public safety will be created. Then when the fiscal situation improves, funds can be used elsewhere.
Blain cited the Texas Justice Network as an example of effective grassroots organization. Thanks to foundations that invested in building the network’s capacity for policy work, the organization has successfully used voter registration of formerly incarcerated people in Texas as an organizing strategy in efforts to abolish the Regional Narcotics Task Force.