RALEIGH – State legislators are reportedly considering a reduction in funding, perhaps down to zero, for a state program that attempts to route criminals into punishments other than prison. Naturally, the proposal bugs the heck out of the alternative-sentencing community.
You might think the term “alternative-sentencing community” is an odd euphemism, but I happen to think it is an accurate phrase. Beginning roughly in the 1960s, a number of criminologists, psychologists, social activists, foundation givers, and politicians developed a wide-ranging critique of the traditional crime-fighting technique of arresting, convincing, and sentencing criminals to length prison terms.
They really do form a community. It appears to be a tightly knit one. They attend each other’s conferences and seminars, review each other’s books and papers, and support each other’s pilot programs and budget requests. They are passionately committed to the cause of de-incarceration. They are deeply suspicious of prison officials, companies that build prisons, and especially private firms that own or manage prisons, whom they consider to have an obvious and nefarious incentive to keep people locked up (which is, of course, an argument for structuring contracts with private-prison firms carefully, rather than an argument for eschewing them altogether).
I know of the alternative-sentencing community because I’ve interacted with it. Just about every time I write about the cost-effectiveness of prisons or the relationship between incarceration and crime, I get a complaining call or missive from one or more activists. Here’s a simple test: if someone says that tougher laws or additional prisons won’t succeed because they don’t address the “root causes” of crime, that person is likely to belong to the alternative-sentencing community.
I should also say that I don’t bear these folks any animus, or automatically discount what they have to say. As taxpayers, we should all have a strong interest in seeing that one of the few proper functions of government, to police and deter criminal acts, is carried out in the most cost-effective manner possible. If treatment centers or probation-with-counseling programs can reduce recidivism rates and deter crime effectively, and do so at a far lower cost than incarceration, then they are worth our consideration (as long as we believe that the primary purpose of law enforcement, just punishment, is also being carried out).
The problem is that the community’s case is decades-old and has not aged well. It was never based on much in the way of empirical evidence or sound insights about why people commit crimes. No, crime isn’t caused by economic deprivation, since crime rates were much lower when Americans were much poorer (say, in the 1930s) and more recently crime rates have risen even as incomes and living standards also rose. And after politicians made the decision during the 1980s to begin addressing high crime rates with tougher laws and expanded prison capacity, America – and North Carolina – got a lot safer.
Of course, this may be a coincidence rather than a causal link. Maybe criminals are too irrational for the prospect of prison to affect their decisions. Maybe some of the alternatives actually cost less than prison when you account for the full costs, which include the thousands of dollars in damages inflicted on innocent victims by criminals outside the lock-up.
But I doubt it.
My email box awaits the inevitable replies.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.