EDITORIAL: Prison sometimes is a wasteful option

Jan. 11--As President Barack Obama prepares to step down after eight years in Washington, he has been busily attaching his signature to many pardons of people within the prison system.

While the number of his pardons has been generally in keeping with previous presidents, his number of sentence commutations is much larger. For that figure, Obama has earned criticism.

Actually, what Obama has been doing is in sync with such conservatives as the Koch brothers and such tough-on-crime states as Texas and Georgia. It's called "smart justice," and it means that public safety can be protected and money can be saved at the same time without using prison as a first resort. Cheaper and more effective alternative programs are used.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law delves into this issue with a report titled "How many Americans are Unnecessarily Incarcerated?"

Incarceration overused

The Brennan Center studied three years of nationwide data, mining it according to various factors such as victim impact, the perpetrator's intent, an inmate's likelihood to re-offend and type of crime committed.

The report concluded that 39 percent of the people currently behind bars really shouldn't be incarcerated at all -- or, at least, their sentences should be shortened.

It reached that number by first looking at people convicted of lower-level offenses. These crimes were of the non-violent type: drug possession, minor fraud or forgery, minor theft and so on.

The report concluded that many of those inmates would have been far better served by being placed in programs like drug-abuse or mental health treatment, community service or probation.

And those alternatives to incarceration wouldn't have resulted in any risk to public safety or a rise in repeat offenses. In fact, the alternatives would be more effective than putting someone behind bars.

The Brennan Center researchers went on to look at those convicted of more serious offenses including aggravated assault, murder, robbery and serious drug trafficking. It concluded that the vast majority of these inmates could have a year shaved off their sentences with little impact on public safety.

It based its conclusion on previous studies that have shown that sentences longer than 20 months had little to no effect on an inmate's tendency to re-offend upon release. In fact, some studies have actually shown that the longer someone is in prison, the more likely they'll become "criminalized" by their association with other inmates, increasing the chances of recidivism.

With all the criminals, the Brennan Center stressed that exceptional circumstances -- such as evidence of repeated serious offenses or possible heinous circumstances of the crime -- should be considered when deciding whether to use either alternatives to incarceration or sentence reduction.

The impact would be huge.

Why does all this matter? This certainly matters to those convicted of lesser crimes who might be more adequately treated via prison alternatives. It would also benefit those convicted of more serious crimes whose shortened sentences would lead to more successful returns to our communities.

It also matters to the community. Those former inmates will eventually come back to our neighborhoods. Public safety will be increased when the possibility of successful re-entry is increased and recidivism is decreased.

On a purely economic level, incarceration affects all of our pocketbooks, and mass incarceration affects them massively. It costs $31,000 per year to incarcerate even one person, so imagine the impact of a little over 100,000 prisoners on Florida's taxpayers.

On a national stage, mass incarceration hurts disproportionately minority communities, whose residents bear the brunt of incarceration. While African-Americans make up only 13 percent of this country's population, they account for 37 percent of its prisoners.

"If we do not take steps now, Americans of color will forever be relegated to a penal and permanent underclass, and mass incarceration will continue to cage the economic growth of our communities," NAACP CEO Cornell William Brooks wrote in the Brennan Center study's preface.

Brennan Center recommendations The report concludes with several recommendations to stem the tide of mass incarceration, save taxpayers money, increase public safety and promote a more successful return to communities.

--Eliminate prison for lower-level crimes, barring exceptional circumstances.

--Reduce mandatory sentences.

--Allow current prisoners to petition judges to be sentenced to an alternative to prison or to have time shaved off their sentences.

--Encourage prosecutors to use their discretion to seek alternatives or shorter prison stays.

The report estimated that if its recommendations were all used and the targeted 39 percent of prisoners nationwide were released to alternatives or had their sentences shortened, it would save about $20 billion each year.

That's enough to employ 270,000 new law enforcement officers, 360,000 new probation officers or 327,000 new school teachers.

What are we waiting for?

___

(c)2017 The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.)

Visit The Florida Times-Union (Jacksonville, Fla.) at www.jacksonville.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.