A new study by Harvard Medical School researcher William N. Brownsberger is
extremely critical of United States governments' relatively-recent policies
known as 'mandatory minimum sentencing'. It seems that some people who can
afford to hire the best lawyers still don't go to prison in the USA -- the
study finds such policies not only to be wasteful in terms of cost, but
also grossly uneven in their application -- it notes a huge preponderance
of de facto evidence of an apparent institutional or cultural bias in the
disproportionate use of such sentencing with ethnic and racial minorities.
The study was conducted under a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation.
On Monday, November 22, the Associated Press quotes Brownsberger as having
stated unequivocally "Mandatory sentencing laws are wasting prison
resources on non-violent, low-level offenders and reducing resources
available to lock up violent offenders."
One variant on mandatory minimum sentences is the
'three-strikes-you're-out' legislation adopted recently in many states,
which in some cases requires sentences of life in prison for relatively
minor offenses.
The cost to the taxpayers of keeping one person in a prison cell has been
estimated to vary around the amount of $30.000 per year -- with the US
recently passing the threshold of 1,500.000 persons behind bars, the cost
to taxpayers just for incarceration amounts to $60,000 -- and that does not
include police enforcement, community corrections, the court system, legal
costs, the costs of government studies, and the cost of building new prisons!
By implication, and considered along with recent research findings by the
prominent Rand Corporation (a well-known conservative 'think-tank' or
policy studies institution) and British researcher Eric Longley, the new
Harvard results essentially 'seal the case' for a moral condemnation of
latter-day 'criminal' justice and corrections policies in the United States
of America.
Mandatory minimum sentences take discretion out of the courts' hands and
require sentences of determinate length for certain types of offenses.
They violate the long-standing US tradition of an independent judiciary,
and impose a structure upon US justice systems that, while it is designed
in part to balance the application of justice, tends instead to constrain
judges and others in their exercise of their responsibilities, causing them
to be unable to consider mitigating factors and equity in sentencing. One
important point to observe in considering 'mandatory minimums' is that
while the idea of standardizing society's responses to transgressions seems
on its surface to be a just and democratic one, the fact is that most of
these schemes are concocted by politicians who are running for office on
fear-mongering 'tough-on-crime' platforms. The resulting legislation
inevitably calls for much longer prison terms than were the practice before
the legislation was enacted.
In its design, the Rand Corporation study takes this difference fully into
account, finding that old-order sentencing of shorter term lengths is two
to three times more effective in preventing recidivism (re-offending after
release) than the new 'mandatory minimums'. Conversely, while it is not
explicitly stated in the Rand study, current practices may resultingly be
judged to be deeply destructive in their effect -- by implication, the
essential Rand finding is that as currently carried forward, the policies
of the so-called 'criminal' justice system are unjust and actually cause
more crime. In economic terms alone, this is good for the people who build
and operate prisons and rely on the system for their livelihoods, but it is
very bad for the average taxpayer and for low-to-middle class people, who
bear the brunt of the additional crimes committed as a result of the
policies. The direct monetary cost to US citizens of these additional
crimes cannot possibly be accurately estimated.
A major controversy has also arisen in the Federal sentencing laws' blatant
discrimination between 'crack' (crystallized) cocaine and the powdered form
of the drug. The crux of this controversy is that a disproportionate
number of members of minority racial and ethnic groups are arrested for
using 'crack', resulting in greater public visibility of this problematic
usage. In the barrios and slums where lower-income people in the US are
forced by their economic circumstances to reside and work, 'crack' cocaine
has been described as an 'epidemic'. However. there is no direct evidence
that substance abuse generally is encountered more frequently among
lower-income groups than at other times in recent history. Instead, the
idea of a societal 'epidemic' is reinforced by the violent gang warfare
carried out for control of the lucrative drug markets. This gang-warfare
phenomenon is very similar to that encountered in the 'Prohibition Era' of
the nineteen twenties, when the US government outlawed the production and
use of the drug alcohol in all its forms; beer, wine, liquor, etc. It
would seem that the US government is reluctant to learn the lessons of
history: that these laws are unfair, essentially unenforceable, and result
in far greater problems than the ones they were intended to address in the
first place. In the face of all this evidence that these policies are
injuring its citizenry, the US government add insult to injury by
continuing to mandate sentence lengths for crack cocaine that are many
times those of sentences for powder.
The three recent (all announced in 1997) research studies are as follows:
1. Rand Corporation -- Finds that in cases involving substance abuse
(specifically cocaine) and where addiction is presumably a factor, the use
of rehabilitation and treatment outside of prison is approximately seven
times more effective than extended ('mandatory minimum') sentences, and two
to three times more effective than 'traditional' shorter prison sentences.
It also contrasts the two types of sentences, finding that 'traditional'
sentence lengths are less destructive than 'mandatory minimums'. This
study measured the variable of recidivism or re-offending -- the
implication is that current policies and practices make society more unsafe;
2. As part of a larger study. independent British researcher and
consultant Eric Longley releases findings indicating that rehabilitation
programs are significantly more effective when administered in a community
setting than when administered in the prison setting;
3. Harvard researcher William N. Brownsberger releases research findings
indicating that 'mandatory minimums' are overly costly to society, are very
uneven in their application between different ethnic groups, and, in what
has become known as the 'revolving door' effect, tend to force hardened
offenders out of the prisons to make room for others convicted of less
harmful and non-violent crimes. The study, conducted in Massachusetts,
finds that only half of Massachusetts prisoners convicted of drug-related
offenses have previously been charged with any violent offense, and only
one-third of them have ever been convicted of such an offense.
Furthermore, more than 60 percent of those incarcerated for drug offenses
have moderate, light, or no previous criminal records at all. Another key
finding of the study is that African-Americans and Hispanics are far more
likely to be imprisoned for drug-related offenses than Caucasians.
According to the Associate Press, the study found that the rate of
imprisonment was found to be 39 percent higher for African-Americans and an
incredible 81 times higher for Hispanics! The study did not explain the
differences, except to say that they were so large that they could not be
accounted for solely by differences in poverty rates among the groups.
CERJ Board Member Rudy Cypser of New York CURE also recently announced new
economic studies which indicate that changes to policies -- including a
changeover to more Restorative Justice methods -- would reduce recidivism
so greatly that they would save US taxpayers many billions of dollars per
year in measurable public-sector (governmental) costs. The question now
is, can the various smaller one-issue justice reform organizations unite
their voices and create a reCERJence of real justice in the United States?
Among other measures to be considered, the Harvard study recommended more
community-based responses to crime and other transgressions, treatment for
addicts, and special drug courts.
Often cited in response to arguments for justice reform is the fact of a
decline in the crime rate as measured by the gathered statistics on known
crimes. These statistics do not take into account the huge amount of crime
that goes unreported, and ignore demographic factors like the graying of
the baby-boom generation. They also fail to acknowledge that in the past
twenty years, there has been a rapidly-growing proliferation of new
programs along the Restorative Justice model in the USA. With this concept
also currently coming into wider popular and professional acceptance, there
has been an accelerated experimentation with -- and adoption of --
community-based correctional methods, to the point where even state
governments are trying to find ways to bring them into existence on a
statewide basis. So who is more properly to take the credit for the
reduction in crime, if anybody?
People who use methods that are proven to work, or people stubbornly using
methods that plainly don't?
Only a year-and-a-had old, the CERJ coalition-building movement for justice
reform has already played a meaningful part in the recent popularization of
the concept and methods of Restorative Justice methods -- the research is
in -- these are methods that really work!
If you would like to be added to the CERJ international email distribution
list, send me a message at <jvw@together.net>. I'll also need your home
state, province, or country because the list is segmented for organizing
purposes. You'll get anywhere from 2-6 email messages per week while on
the list. If you ever wish to be removed, simply write to me again -- the
CERJ list is managed with a human touch!
Please also visit the CERJ web site (address below). It is still being
developed at this time, and will hopefully shortly include additional links
to some of the studies mentioned above. Dr. Rudy Cypser, the author of the
New York CURE studies, may be reached through the ERJ-Links section of the
web site.