
End Mass Incarceration Now - alphakappa
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/opinion/sunday/end-mass-incarceration-now.html?_r=0
======
MBCook
Good luck.

Between easy fear-mongering ("Do you want criminals on the street?",
"Representative Smith let that murder out, he could have prevented this",
"Senator Bill is soft on crime!") and the huge number of jobs who depend on
this nonsense (prisons, police, lawyers, bail bonds, half-way houses) I fear
this will never be undone.

~~~
arrrg
You need to do what many Western European nations have been doing for years
now: build a huge commission of experts (as broad as possible with as many
voices as possible, but all not too political, the more scientists –
criminologists, sociologists, … – the better) and let them decide on it. That
defers responsibility, but also prevents easy attacks. It shields politicians.

Some find this disgusting and antithetical to democracy, but I’m actually
quite ok with it. The politicians only set the broad guidelines and figure out
how to pay for it.

Of course there are controversies and of course it is occasionally very
possible to score political points with “hang them higher” rhetorics, but not
all that often.

All’s not perfect, too, obviously, but at least it’s a bit better.

~~~
jpatokal
Doesn't that pretty much describe this, which was the trigger for the article?

 _...a two-year, 444-page study prepared by the research arm of the National
Academy of Sciences at the request of the Justice Department and others._

~~~
davidcbc
Not at all. The study doesn't make any changes to the law.

------
argumentum
Leaving aside victimless crimes for now (drugs, gambling prostitution), one
problem with US sentencing is that it doesn't scale linearly.

For instance, the sentence for petty larceny can be 6 months to a year. The
penalty for 1st degree murder can be 30 years to life. I don't know anyone who
would think Murder is merely 30 to 60 times worse than stealing underwear from
Walmart.

I'm not one of those who thinks we should adopt Nordic style sentences. I.e.
Anders Breivik should never see the light of day again in my opinion.

But sentences should be appropriate to the seriousness of what was done. Since
the worst possible penalty is death/life in prison, which is ~30 to 60 years
in most cases, lesser crimes such as theft or fraud should merit much smaller
penalties. I.e. a day in jail, community service or payment of restitution.

~~~
dandrews
> _" sentences should be appropriate to the seriousness of what was done"_

Sentences should be high enough to deter crime, and no higher. If one month of
prison time doesn't reduce your petty theft rate significantly, then double
it. Measure the new offense rate then double the penalty _again_. Eventually
you'll reach that knee in the curve where any additional punishment you can
mete out has little significant effect, and that's your magic number.

The idea of "lesser crimes" should not be used to influence punishment. You
cannot linearly compare shoplifting against auto theft or battery - so it's
not possible to assign commensurate sentences. Compile the offense rates and
then go for the knees, dispassionately.

~~~
sobkas
Because a drunk driver thinks how many years will he spend in prison for
causing an accident and killing people and not thinking that nothing will
happen because no one will catch him?

~~~
dandrews
I don't understand your question.

My point was that sentence guidelines should generally be data-driven, the
dependent variable being the crime rate for a specific offense. I did not
mention edge cases, judicial discretion, capital offenses, recidivism,
rehabilitation, and other gnarly stuff.

~~~
sobkas
My point is: did criminal made a decision to commit a crime based on facts and
rational tough or he made it based on other factors. Was he even capable of
doing so(drunk driver, ideological driven crimes). Did he considered the
length of sentence, when his goal is to not get caught and not minimising the
time of incarceration?

Does in your example crimes with lower rate of catching criminals will end
with a very high sentences and few caught will get an unreasonable jail times?
"You have pirated a song, an infinity in jail is Your sentence"

"Data-driven" is a reasonable approach, but what data should be allowed to
drive? Choosing what kind of data to use and making relevant conclusions from
it is the hard part.

~~~
YZF
Yes. Surprise! People are not rational.

Anyways, the data is in. Putting more people in prison for longer doesn't
work. The problem though is that in the short term reversing this policy
without any other policy changes may not work either. People aren't as simple
as that.

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lmg643
at the federal level - drug offenses are about half of the population.

of course, it's one thing to talk about legalizing marijuana - but i'm not
sure what i'm supposed to think about early release for a guy who was
importing heroin into chicago, so that kids who can't afford reformulated
oxycontin have a way to get high. it's all part of the same "non-violent drug
offense" coin.

this is a pretty reflexive NYT column. once we get away from "non-violent drug
offenders" i think the argument loses force. If you spend about 20 minutes
reading about the details of the types of gnarly violent crimes the non-drug-
related "mass incarcerated" commit, this sort of vague editorializing rings
really hollow. people are capable of really heinous stuff.

~~~
gcd
> once we get away from "non-violent drug offenders" i think the argument
> loses force.

I disagree.

97% of federal convictions and 94% of state convictions are the result of plea
bargains. At least 4% of death sentences are erroneous. In 2007 there were 2.4
million prisoners in the United States.

I'm guessing death row convictions receive much more attention than normal
convictions, especially convictions from plea bargains. In this case, we can
conservatively guess that the rate of false conviction is higher for plea
bargains.. let's say it's 6%. Extrapolate that to the entire prison
population, and that's 144,000 people who are wrongfully locked up. That
number is far, far too high no matter how you look at it, and I'm guessing
it's even worse than that in reality. The way our system abuses the plea
bargaining system is morally reprehensible. This alone should be enough to
warrant reform.

> people are capable of really heinous stuff.

People who were raised in shitty circumstances tend to do shitty things. 68%
of prisoners don't have a high school diploma. I think that's pretty telling
on its own.

The real question is: what is the point of prison? Is it a place wherein
troubled individuals can receive treatment and be corrected so that they may
be reintegrated at some point and become functioning and productive members of
society? Or is simply a place that we punish people indiscriminately?

Recidivism rates tell the story. In California, 60% of the formerly
incarcerated end up back in prison. Prison is obviously not a place for
treatment or healing or anything that might improve the lives of the people
who enter it. It is a place that society simply locks the people up that it
doesn't like - for the most part, poor black people.

But there is hope. When I see things like this:
[http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/05/13/rehab-program-
boas...](http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2014/05/13/rehab-program-boasts-
nearly-70-percent-cut-in-prisoner-recidivism-rates/) , it gives me hope that
people will realize that the way we're handling 'corrections' produces more
criminals than it stops. Our system currently doesn't work if the goal is to
reduce crime in the long run. I wonder how many criminals we have created
because of false convictions. Or because of the war on drugs, since the number
of federal prisoners has jumped 790% since 1980 (do you really think people
have been committing 790% more crime since then?)

~~~
csense
I agree that current prison sentences are too high, many drug offenders don't
belong in prison, current plea bargaining practices make a mockery of the very
idea of justice by essentially turning a criminal prosecution into a game of
high-stakes poker, and it is currently far too difficult for convicts who have
served their sentences to reintegrate into society in a positive way.

But your analysis leaves out the idea of deterrence.

Heavy consequences for serious violent crimes like rape, murder, assault, etc.
keep those violent crimes from being seen as viable options for resolving
disputes by people who have self-interest but little-to-no empathy or ethics.

A free democracy with a prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, can't
really do much to criminals other than attempt to rehabilitate them, lock them
up, or punish them financially [1]. Enduring sentences of rehabilitation and
financial punishments are probably things that a rational, self-interested
sociopath would be willing to endure as the price of being allowed to maim or
murder someone who gets in the way of what they want. OTOH the prospect losing
a few decades to prison, would probably convince our hypothetical sociopath to
try to find a lawful way to deal with their situation.

[1] The death penalty is an interesting and complex topic, and I think the
consensus is slowly moving toward ending the death penalty. My view is that it
obviously does nothing for rehabilitation, it's not cost-effective at keeping
criminals off the streets (it's less expensive to imprison a defendant for
life than to do all the legal maneuvering courts and legislatures have found
necessary to properly protect the rights of the accused), and its deterrence
value is not that great (because it's so expensive, relatively few cases go
through the process, and it takes a long time, so the additional deterrence
provided versus a life prison sentence is questionable at best). Since life
imprisonment does a better job of satisfying those three main objectives of
criminal penalties, it should be preferred.

In other words, the death penalty either has to get a lot faster, cheaper, and
much more widely applied, or we need to give it up entirely. I think the first
path is a political non-starter and fraught with constitutional issues, making
the second path the only real way forward.

~~~
gcd
I agree - I certainly did leave that out. I still think we need to have
consequences for crimes with victims, especially violent ones. But that's
still only part of the equation: we need to have deterrences _and_ corrections
in the same way that there's preventative medicine _and_ treatment.

Even for violent crimes, I don't think that locking people up should be the
_only_ response. Victim-centered approaches, like restorative justice circles
for example, could and should be used more where applicable. The victim is
mostly left out of the equation in our current justice system. We should also
try to view instances of violence not as deliberate evil actions taken by
people, but instead culminations of bad circumstances and bad choices. This is
not to say there shouldn't be repercussions for the bad choices, but we should
also offer support and rehabilitation to try to improve the circumstances.

Of course, there will always be the people who are beyond rehabilitation. Even
then, for these kinds of people, 'prison' doesn't sound quite right to me..
'mental institution' seems more appropriate.

On [1], I don't support the death penalty because there are so many errors
made in sentencing. Even if we managed to make the error rate much lower, I
personally don't think the cost of innocent lives would be worth the potential
extra deterrence the threat of death provides over life imprisonment. Hell,
even if the rate were 0%, I still wouldn't support it for moral reasons.

------
DigitalSea
Mass incarceration is big business. This is what happens you privatise
something, its sole goal is to make money and guess what makes a private
prison money? More inmates.

Then you have all of the other people/entities that benefit from a broken
system; lawyers, police, judges, bail bonds. The justice system is inherently
corrupt. And speaking of private prisons, most of them have occupancy
guarantee clauses in their government contracts.

I think the problem is even bigger than the New York Times thinks it is. It'll
take more than a NYT article to fix the problem.

~~~
resounding
Does anyone have insight into how this works in the UK? 9% of their prisoners
are privately held, vs 3% in the US
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_prison))?
As in, are there systems or incentives in place to prevent UK prison companies
from lobbying for harsher jail sentences?

------
rancar2
There are two main external approaches that help improve outcomes for people
affected by incarceration, top-down = Policy change & bottom-up = Grassroots.

It is first worth noting that change is generally hard for everyone:
governments, organizations, and individuals, because it's not typically not a
simple singular event but a complex process:
[http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Womens_Hea...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Womens_Health_Watch/2012/March/why-
behavior-change-is-hard-and-why-you-should-keep-trying)

On the policy front, this is one of many approaches being taken, and this
specific one is coming from the White House, My Brother's Keeper:
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2014/02/27/fact-s...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-
office/2014/02/27/fact-sheet-opportunity-all-president-obama-launches-my-
brother-s-keeper-)

On the grassroots front, there are two organization that come to mind that are
running programs showing promise in breaking the cycle of crime at different
points: Roca & the Center for Employment.

Here are their theories of change respectively: [http://rocainc.org/what-we-
do/the-solution/rocas-interventio...](http://rocainc.org/what-we-do/the-
solution/rocas-intervention-model-for-high-risk-young-people/)
[http://ceoworks.org/about/what-we-do/ceo-
model-3/](http://ceoworks.org/about/what-we-do/ceo-model-3/)

Both are taking part in scaling what works with Social Impact Bonds:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_eccles_invest_in_social_change](http://www.ted.com/talks/toby_eccles_invest_in_social_change)
[http://www.socialfinanceus.org/what-we-do/select-current-
eng...](http://www.socialfinanceus.org/what-we-do/select-current-
engagements/social-finance-drives-landmark-new-york-state-deal)
[http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/tackling-
mas...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/02/tackling-mass-
incarceration/?smid=pl-share)

Additional case studies from David Hunter: [http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/10/HunterC...](http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/10/HunterConsulting_ROCA_CaseStudy.pdf)
[http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/CenterF...](http://dekhconsulting.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/CenterForEmploymentOpp_CaseStudy.pdf)

------
pekk
Does mass incarceration mean "prisons"? What sets the line between having
prisons and having "mass incarceration"?

~~~
gcd
Mass incarceration, in this case, is the trend in massive upward growth in
prison population since 1980 (up 790% federally) and also the way in which we
rely on incarceration to deal with social and economic problems - for example,
globalization and technological change have drastically transformed the
economy and forced poor colored communities into the underground economy.
Instead of finding ways to integrate former factory workers into the new
economy, we have cut welfare and started locking them up disproportionately.

In short, the United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other
country, and we do it because we aren't brave enough to deal with our problems
more directly. That is mass incarceration.

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mschuster91
sorry, but what joke is this moderation? In half an hour, this article fell
from #1 to #30, and I bet in half an hour it won't even be on #60.

------
mynameishere
_even when there is no evidence that imprisoning more people has reduced crime
by more than a small amount._

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gen...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Violent_crime_rates_by_gender_1973-2003.jpg)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_th...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg)

The ny times editorial board is either living in a dream world, or is
willfully lying and actually wants a return to the levels of property and
violent crime from 40 years ago.

~~~
eruditely
Unleaded gasoline/Abortion, and for the part where violent crime is caused by
a large minority there is still a massive population that is just incarcerated
for no good reason and will not contribute. That population is huge. Save
them.

~~~
DougWebb
Here's a Mother Jones article discussing the correlation between the rise and
fall of leaded gasoline usage and the rise and fall of violent crime during
the 20th century.

[http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-
li...](http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-
gasoline)

