State issues in the correctional system.
Just a few days ago we reported on Governor Brown’s decision not to build the new death row, commenting that abolition would save even more. Today, Death Penalty Focus is circulating a cost-centered petition to Governor Brown to abolish the death penalty.
Please read and sign. This is our chance to take this crisis and galvanize it into something positive.
This morning at CELS I heard a paper by David Abrams titled Building Criminal Capital vs Specific Deterrence: The Effect of Incarceration Length on Recidivism. Abrams sought to figure out what sort of relationships existed between incarceration and recidivism. These sort of studies often present serious challenges, because length of incarceration might reflect other factors about the defendants that might predict recidivism later on. However, Abrams built on an opportunity to control for that, since defendants were randomly assigned to public defenders of differing attorney ability. Attorney ability therefore allowed him to instrument for sentence length. The findings were that the relationship between sentence length and incarceration was not linear. For the lowest sentences, the relationship is negative; it becomes positive for an intermediate sentence length, and then negative for the longest sentences. The conclusions tie the findings with theories of criminal capital formation and with specific deterrence.
In the grand tradition we started in the 2008 elections, I’d like to offer some reflections about some of the results.
The first issue on the agenda is the meaning of Jerry Brown’s election for governor, especially if accompanied by Kamala Harris as Attorney General (an outcome which is still uncertain as I write this). As we said earlier in the race, while there are plenty of corrections-related reasons to be relieved that Meg Whitman will not be commanding our ship, Jerry Brown’s platform in these matters is not particularly innovative or efficient. Some have made much of his personal distaste for the death penalty and have predicted that, as part of a team with Kamala Harris, the institution may be abolished or at least halted de facto. Brown’s behavior during the countdown toward Albert Brown’s execution does not appear to predict such an outcome. It remains to be seen what sort of relationship Brown forges (or rekindles) with CCPOA, and what his position might be on Plata/Coleman, which he litigated fiercely against petitioners as Attorney General.
We then have the failure of Prop 19, which I decline to read as stemming from fear or demonization of marijuana users. Much of the feedback I received after publicly endorsing Prop 19 had to do with people who in principle supported legalization but thought the initiative was poorly designed and would lead to chaotic local regulation and, possibly, to “corporatization” of pot. I found it curious that the concerns about possible “corporatization” exceeded, for some, the concerns about racist oppressive enforcement, but to each their own. The lesson to be learned here is, perhaps, that the initiative process is not a good place for such reforms, and given the broad public support for the idea of legalization, creating an appropriate legal framework should be left to professional legislators.
Finally, a municipal disappointment was the disheartening passage of Prop L, the sit/lie ordinance. We blogged extensively here, here, here and here about the punitive and classist animus behind this initiative and are dismayed to see it come to life. Our hope is that the police will act sensibly in enforcing this measure.
CDCR has just released its recidivism report, which is fairly detailed and merits some discussion. First, I think these reports are a good start and CDCR should be commended for tracking down the information and analyzing it. The Office of Research did an overall good job at highlighting some of the major issues and, while I’m sure more could be mined from the raw data, there is enough content to comment on.
Here are some points that come to mind, in no particular order:
The recidivism rates in general, while not surprising, are disheartening, and attest to the complete failure of our prison system in achieving deterrence, rehabilitation, or both. It is telling that the statistics haven’t changed significantly over time, despite increased punitive measures. Clearly, what we are doing under the title “corrections and rehabilitation” does not correct OR rehabilitate. The percentages are particularly distressing for people who have been incarcerated at least once before.
Some interesting demographics: The report tracks people up to three years after release. Almost 50% reoffend within first six months; at one year, the percentage rises to 75%. Women recidivate at much lower rates than men (it would help to have a breakdown of this by offense, because perhaps offense patterns matter here). Unsurprisingly, recidivism declines with age. Also, recidivism rates for first-time offenders are highest for Native Americans, African Americans, and White inmates. But these effects dissipate for re-releases.
The releases from prison are unevenly distributed across counties (a large percentage of released inmates goes to LA). However, most of the folks that end up in LA are first-time releases, which explains why the recidivism rate in LA is actually the lowest. Other counties, such as SF, Fresno, and San Joaquin, have the highest recidivism rates, but they receive re-releases (for whom the rates are higher in general) more than first-time releases.
The distribution of offenses is interesting. 20% of released inmates were in for serious/violent crimes, and this percentage holds for recidivism, so it would appear that people do not “graduate” to more serious crime (perhaps they just do more of the same). Also, there doesn’t seem to be a connection between seriousness of crime and recidivism (which might suggest that it’s the institutionalization that contributes to it). Also, the report doesn’t track a connection between the original offense and the re-offense, save for sex offenders. Notably, however, 47% of returnees to prison are brought back in because of parole violations.
This category merits special attention because it’s the one most often targeted by punitive legislative energy. 6.5% of released people registered as sex offenders. The data suggests that sex offender registration slightly reduces recidivism. However: Only 5% of released sex offenders who recidivate are convicted of an actual sex offense. 8.6% commit an unrelated crime, and 86% are back on a parole violation. This speaks volumes about the pervasiveness of registration rules and limitations and about the low risk of sex offenders.
More than half of the released inmates are in for short sentences – but for recidivists the length of sentence grows (this is probably just the effect of previous offenses enhance sentencing or of repeated parole violations.) There is a rise in recidivism for people who serve 0 to 24 months. After that, the rates decline. Possible intervening variables are health and age.
Recidivism rates rise significantly for folks released after their second incarceration (although subsequent re-incarcerations don’t make much of a difference). The returnees are also more likely to be assigned a high “risk score”. These two findings are not unrelated; I imagine that, when using the CSRA tool for predicting recidivism, one predictor of “high risk” is repeated prison sentencing. This classification therefore probably feeds itself.
On a more general note, I hope that releasing the data also means that our judicial apparatus might rethink some of its policies and approaches. In Malcolm Feeley and Jonathan Simon’s 1992 piece The New Penology, they argue that our “actuarial” approach to justice is behind a transformation from external correctional goals (e.g. reducing recidivism) to internal goals (e.g. reduce riots and escapes). If someone is keeping track of recidivism data, let us hope that the data actually gets used.
The two candidates for Attorney General, a position which would provide its holder with plenty of influence over criminal justice policy in general and incarceration rates in California in particular, are Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley and San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris. The Chron summarized the candidates’ exchange in a televised debate. Unsurprisingly, the media has portrayed Cooley’s traditional “tough on crime” approach as clashing with Harris’ “smart on crime” innovations.
Lest the death penalty issue, which is a bone of contention between the candidates, throw you off, Harris is a tough law enforcer, far from being soft on crime. Moreover, while her overall approach to criminal justice emphasizes evidence-based measures and tackling roots rather than symptoms, there have been some gaffes. This year, for example, we’ve seen Harris endorse some measures that we found questionable, such as the (unenforceable) prohibition for sex offenders to join social networking websites and the truancy courts. While the latter measure tackles a phenomenon closely associated with crime rates, there is little evidence that scolding parents in court will do the trick. Nevertheless, Harris has proven to be a thoughtful, impartial, collaborative policymaker, who among other things endorses San Francisco’s Clean Slate program–a rare collaboration between the Sheriff’s department, the DA’s office and the PD’s office.
Cooley’s criminal justice policy does appear to be more traditional, but the L.A. District Attorney’s office has some community collaboration programs (including one for monitoring truancy!). It also devotes energy to combating gang activity. His campaign seems to include, so far, some of the familiar symbolic tactics, such as using victims as symbols of fear and highlighting controversial issues such as the death penalty to his advantage.
For the readers who may not have caught this SF Chron piece, it provides some information about the crime policy of different candidates for Oakland Mayor. It makes for a fascinating read; and interestingly, not all the candidates are uniformly knee-jerk-tough-on-crime-for-the-sake-of-it.
City Councilwoman Jean Quan says the city needs to preserve its community policing efforts, bolstering neighborhood-based programs that many credit with cutting crime. She voted to keep some of those programs even at the expense of officers’ jobs.
Former state Senate leader Don Perata is willing to throw many such programs out the window if it will keep more cops on the force, a stance that has earned him the support of the police union.
And City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan points to economic development strategies that could provide jobs for residents, rather than more funding for the Police Department, as the surest way to cut crime.
In other Oakland news, it appears that Johannes Mehserle, convicted of involuntary manslaughter in relation to Oscar Grant’s shooting, is seeking a new trial. The relevance of his new evidence to the issue of his guilt seems rather tenuous, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Jonathan Simon has a post up in which he criticizes the death penalty for being no more than an extended life sentence under harsh conditions with an end that makes a harsh punishment (life in prison, the sentence for Brown’s crimes in Western civilized countries) into a non-punishment.
I have this to add: The absurdity of this week’s last-minute litigation is further proof of the farce that the death penalty in the United States has come to be. If you do not believe that the death penalty should be abolished immediately on human rights grounds, you should at least agree that the farcical preoccupation with regulation minutiae and expiration dates of chemicals has completely emptied the death penalty of any possible meaning. Even those of us who still believe that the death penalty functions as some sort of a morality tale, warning people against committing serious crime (an assumption hotly debated between factions of econometric experts: see here and here), should now be able to see straight and acknowledge that its current form is a mockery of these objectives.
In his 2002 book When the State Kills, Austin Sarat discusses the transformation of the death penalty from a public display of monarchical force to a hidden, hypertechnical, bureaucratic procedure, occurring away from the public eye and offering little in the way of a public message. Some conservative commentators, such as Tom Harman, have explicitly stated that if legislators cannot reform the death penalty, in its current form it is untenable.
Of course, a possible reaction to this bureaucratization of state killings could be an outcry to minimize the possibilities of post-conviction review (and by doing so, minimize the opportunity to uncover and undo wrongful convictions) or to shoot or hang death row inmates in the town square. Some of the more disturbing anonymous comments on the internet expressed a willingness to engage in this sort of exercise. If these views are broadly shared (and they are not synonymous with abstract support for the death penalty, which, incidentally, wanes when respondents are presented with the life without parole option), then the American people are getting exactly the sort of justice they deserve.
I want to believe that American citizenry, regardless of where people stand on the death penalty, is better than this. Reflective, socially conscious citizens, whether supportive of the death penalty or not, deserve better than to have human lives on the line due to such hefty considerations as chemical expiration dates. Reflective citizens deserve to air the real issues–retribution, victim positions, acceptable state action–without being bushwhacked by evasive maneuvers on the part of the state.
A weekend story on the Chron provides a peek into Oakland’s truancy court, where parents are charged for their children’s absences from school. The consequences include arrest and fines, but also stern lectures from the judge about the need to reduce truancy. This is not the first time we have noted this indirect mechanism for crime control: In San Francisco, Kamala Harris has often drawn attention to the link between truancy and crime, both in op-eds and in her book Smart on Crime. Harris’ website boasts a 23% decline in truancy as a result of these policies (no statistics for recidivism reduction are offered, however).
After making several changes and vetoes to the legislative proposal, Governor Schwarzenegger signed the California budget today. The Chron details the gubernatorial changes to the budget (millions taken away from education and welfare). Pay attention to what is missing: no further changes to the $1.2 billion unallocated cuts to the CDCR budget.
(image courtesy the Sacramento Bee)
There has been some back-and-forth with police chiefs and GOP members over the last few days regarding their support of Governor Schwarzenegger’s plan for the correctional system. Trying to make some sense of it all, it appears that the idea is to vote on unallocated savings, then figure out the details. The Governor has been quoted as saying that the prison issue had caused “some misunderstandings, and we are ironing them out.” Basically, as the L.A. Times puts it, “[d]espite the delay, the budget deal will still include $1.2 billion in cuts to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, though it will not specify how they are to be made”.
The main point of contention, as we discussed here and here, is inmate release. The solution? Decide on the cuts, postpone discussion on what is to be cut. The inner dealings between Republicans and Democrats regarding this compromise, complete with political back-and-forth and emails titled “Budget Double Cross” (sic), are in the Sac Bee, for your reading pleasure (or agony).