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Commentary: Prison smarts

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 15, 2011 - The United States comprises approximately 5 percent of the world's population but incarcerates about 25 percent of the world's prisoners. Those numbers raise alarm in certain quarters.

Law-and-order types, like myself, find it appalling that we have so much crime. We try to identify the societal failings that have allowed criminal deviance to become so commonplace in our nation.

Liberals, on the other hand, tend to blame the rooster for the dawn by indicting the criminal justice system for locking so many people up. A recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial provides instructive insight into the latter mindset.

A Sept. 4 missive, "Brains over brawn" was subtitled "Time for Missouri to act smart, not tough, on crime." The piece argued that we are wasting precious resources by indulging our reflexive impulse to jail people who break the law.

Along with the usual arguments for "treatment" over "punishment," the editorial offered one intriguing paragraph:

In 1982, Missouri had fewer than 6,000 people in prison. Now, the state's prison population tops 30,000. The corrections budget has grown in that time from $122 million to more than $665 million.

Missouri's exponential jump in incarceration during the period is hardly unique. Beginning in the early 1980s, the national emphasis in criminal justice began to shift from rehabilitation and early release to extended incapacitation of the offender through longer terms of imprisonment. As a result, the number of adults in prison grew from approximately 500,000 persons in 1982 to 2,292,133 by the end of 2009. Though the latter figure is admittedly large, it still represents well less than 1 percent of the total population.

Rather than wave the bloody shirt on behalf of victims like 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who was abducted and murdered by a paroled rapist who later taunted her family when sentenced in open court, or rehash hackneyed ideological arguments, I decided to heed the editorial's admonition to get smart about the issue by researching what, if anything, we'd gained by this massive investment of time and money.

Delving into FBI data files, I anticipated that I would find the crime rate had fallen, but due to the increased national population, the actual number of crimes committed would have risen. Turns out I was wrong.

In 1982, a nation of 231,534,000 people recorded 21,010 murders. By 2009, the population had increased to 307,006,550. Yet, despite the addition of nearly 75.5 million new souls, murders declined to 15,241 -- meaning that 5,769 fewer Americans met a violent death that year in a country that was now about one-third larger. Similarly, robberies dropped from 553,130 to 408,913 (- 144,913 / -26.2 percent) while the overall violent crime rate declined by 28.3 percent to 426.4 per 100,000 from 594.3 .

And what of the cruelly incarcerated "nonviolent" offenders that tug upon the tendrils of the bleeding heart? If burglars are any indication, prison would seem to be just the treatment the doctor ordered.

In 1982, 3,447,100 American dwellings were violated. By 2009, that number declined to 2,196,971 (-36.3 percent). 1,250,129 households and business were thus spared invasion during the era of brash, thoughtless incarceration.

Of course, other factors could be at play here. Economist Steven Levitt ("Freakonomics"), for instance, argues that legalized abortion has lowered crime rates by reducing the number of unwanted -- and subsequently neglected -- children to grow into juvenile delinquents. And the growing popularity of burglar alarm systems for private homes may have contributed to the decreased incidence of residential break-ins.

But the overall correlation of rising incarceration and falling crime is impossible for an objective observer to ignore. This inelegant finding is not particularly popular in academic circles because it's so obvious. People confined to penitentiaries cannot prey on the public at large -- well, duh, not much to study here.

In a time of crushing public debt, it makes sense to look for ways to economize operations. However, we can ill afford to waste scarce resources on efforts that don't work. Given the dismal success rates of rehabilitation programs -- more than 50 percent of convicts violate their parole within three years of release -- prison emerges as a relative bargain.

It costs money to confine prisoners but it's also expensive to allow them to roam the streets. If you doubt that, just ask one of the 5,769 extra Americans who weren't murdered in 2009 but would have been in 1982.

Where can you find one of these fortunate citizens? That's hard to say -- you might start by looking in a mirror.

M.W. Guzy is a retired St. Louis cop who currently works for the city Sheriff's Department. His column appears weekly in the Beacon.