Prison guards shot into a crowd to stop 200 rioting inmates at California’s Folsom State Prison, wounding five, authorities said Saturday. Another two inmates were injured by other prisoners during Friday’s riot, which began at about 7 p.m. in the main exercise yard and ended after 30 minutes. Prison spokesman Lt. Anthony Gentile said officers fired after other efforts to break up the riot failed.
“We tried to control the situation with chemical agents dispersed over the crowd,” Gentile said Saturday. “We fired several rounds of rubber bullets and that didn’t stop them from fighting.”
None of the inmates suffered life-threatening injuries, and none of the 45 to 50 officers who responded were hurt.
The piece provides no background for the riot; the Sac Bee reports that the cause is still under investigation.
The argument is that such mass releases would not adversely impact public safety. As the report explains,
Crime can explain only a small portion of the rise in incarceration between 1980 and theearly 1990s, and none of the increase in incarceration since then. If incarceration rates had tracked violent crime rates, for example, the incarceration rate would have peaked at 317 per 100,000 in 1992, and fallen to 227 per 100,000 by 2008 – less than one third of the actual 2008 level and about the same level as in 1980.
But is this true? Calculating the extent to which incarceration is the outcome of an increase in crime is a tricky task. One way of looking at this issue is by estimating how much crime reduction we have achieved by increasing our usage of incarceration. The data is not encouraging.
In his book Punishment and Inequality in America, Bruce Western carefully considers data from a variety of sources to estimate the past played by incarceration in crime reduction. Reasoning that the decline in crime rates cannot be attributed to rehabilitative programs in prison (seeing as mass imprisonment has not really been accompanied by developments in that field) he concludes as follows:
Studies of the impact of the prison boom on the crime drop have focused on the deterrent and incapacitative effect of incarceration. Leading studies suggested that the growth in state imprisonment rates through the 1990s can explain one-third of the drop in serious crime. My best estimate suggests that the 66-percent increase in the state prison population, from 725,000 to 1.23 million prisoners reduced the rate of serious crime by 2 to 5 percent – one-tenth of the fall in crime between 1993 and 2001. Fully 90 percent would have happened without the 480,000 new inmates in the system. In 2001, the annual cost of incarcerating a state prisoner was $22,000. This suggests that the 2- to 5-percent decline in serious crime over the eight years from 1993 to 2001 was purchased for $53 billion.
Steven Raphael and Rucker Johnson’s 2006 study, using sophisticated statistical modeling, found that the marginal effect of increasing prison population over crime rates has drastically declined over time, and come to similarly grim conclusions:
When we split the sample into two equal time periods, we find crime-prison effects for the latter period that are less than one-third the size of those for the earlier period. For 1978 to 1990, we estimate that each additional prison year served prevented approximately 30 index crimes. For the period from 1991 to 2004, the comparable figure is eight. Moreover, this decline in level effects corresponds to substantial declines in crime-prison elasticities, suggesting that the constant-elasticity specification often used in previous research under-estimates the degree to which the crime-abating effects of incarceration decreases with scale.
This large decline in the marginal effect of an inmate suggests that the most recent increases in incarceration have been driven by the institutionalization of many inmates who, relative to previous periods, pose less of a threat to society. Indeed, given the much lower crime- abating effects for the most recent period, it is likely the case that for many recent inmates, the benefits to society in terms of crime reduction are unlikely to outweigh the explicit monetary costs of housing and maintaining an additional inmate. Moreover, once one accounts for the additional external costs of incarceration, such as the adverse effects on the families of inmates, the effects on victimizations behind bars, the effects on additional HIV/AIDS infections (Johnson and Raphael 2006), and the potential effects on the long-term employment prospects of former inmates, the benefit cost ratio on the margin is likely to be substantially below one.
———— Thanks to Ocean Mottley for the CEPR report, and major props to Josh Guetzkow for the sources.
This Spring and onward, may we all be free to sit on city sidewalks without being cited or arrested. May we be free to choose a rewarding, enriching life path, without poverty constraints.
May we be free from victimization and domestic violence.
May we be free from draconian legislation, excessive mandatory minimums, and the Three Strikes Law. May we be free to provide for our families and to live with dignity, honor and good health. May those of us who work in the law enforcement system be free to connect with our community and help it without animosity and danger. May the prosecutors among us be free to do our jobs exercising discretion and compassion, released from constraining legislation and a punitive organizational culture. May the defense attorneys among us be free to provide our clients with the best representation, released from budgetary constraints. May those of us who work in corrections be free to do a correctional job that respects our safety and the human dignity of the people entrusted to our care. May those of us within walls be free from prison rape and abuse. May those of us within walls be free from boredom, narcotics, the endless chatter on TV. May we be free to choose education, vocational programs, and avenues of life within walls that will help us rebuild bridges with our loved ones outside upon our release. May those of us in juvenile care be free to choose a bright future. May those of us who work in parole be free to furnish our parolees with hope and possibility, rather than oppression and supervision. May those of us on early releases be free to rebuild our lives. May those of us who have just been released from prison be free to find a home and a job without discrimination. May all of us, as a society, be free from prejudices, biases, and irrational fears of the “other”.
My friend and colleague Jonathan Simon has focused his undergraduate course at UC Berkeley, Punishment, Culture, and Society, on the California correctional crisis. His lectures are being recorded and podcasts are available here. I’m sure they’ll be of interest to many of our readers.
The California Report discusses today the reactions to the SCOTUS decision. Incredibly, the Governor’s office interprets the dismissal of the appeal as a victory. Hear more in this small snippet, featuring, among others, Michael Bien and yours truly.
As you might imagine, we get a lot of emails from blog readers. Much of our recent correspondence involves family members of lifers–many of them third-strikers–who are anxious to know how the Plata/Coleman release order, or the Governor’s plan to reduce prison population, might affect their relatives in prison. The answer, of course, is anyone’s guess; but from the discussions before the court, it would appear that the releases would mostly apply to short-term non-violent drug offenders. Our sympathies, as a society, are often placed first with inmates from this category, rather than with those incarcerated for longer periods, especially for violent sentences. This is why John Irwin’s last book, Lifers, makes for such an interesting read.
The world of criminology has recently lost an insightful and passionate thinker and reformer, with Irwin’s passing ten days ago. Irwin’s perspective on the correctional system was informed by his experiences as a juvenile delinquent, which led him to car thefts, burglaries, and finally an armed robbery, for which he served five years out of a five-to-life term. As he observes in Lifers, under today’s sentencing regime he would probably have served a much longer term. While in prison, he started accumulating academic credits, pursuing a college degree. After his release, he continued his education, eventually earning a Ph.D. in sociology and becoming a pioneering voice in a field that later came to be known as “convict criminology“. This perspective on crime and punishment comes from academics who are, themselves, former convicts, and has much in common with the critical criminology that emerged in the 1970s.
One of the major strengths of convict criminology is the ability to communicate on a more personal way with inmates and their experiences. While, as James Bennett shows in his fascinating book, oral histories of delinquents and convicts have been an important component of criminological research for decades, these methods are not without their problems, particularly with regard to interviews with inmates (as Mary Bosworth explains in this fabulous piece). Researchers like Irwin have a remarkable ability to connect with the experiences and inner lives of their interviewees, and Lifers is a wonderful example.
The book is built around in-depth interviews with seventeen San Quentin inmates sentenced to life, a substantial number of whom are still in prison awaiting their parole dates. Irwin presents their personal stories in their own words, starting with their family background, providing an honest, unflinching description of their crimes (homicides for the most part), and telling of their time in prison and the transformations they have undergone during this lengthy period of confinement and reflection. The narrative is occasionally paused by Irwin, who draws general insights from the commonalities between the individual stories, but is careful to retain the individuality and uniqueness of the narrators. The reader comes to care about these people and follow their personal journeys with sympathy and interest.
Irwin’s conclusion, which he explicitly repeats throughout the book, is clear: the men he interviewed are very different from the men who had been sentenced to life in prison so many years ago. This transformation undermines any argument for lengthy sentences; the brash young people who had committed these crimes have been, for a long time, thoughtful, remorseful, transformed individuals. Yet, some interviewees’ parole has been repeatedly denied for retributive reasons (see this, for example).
The book makes a good read for folks who know little about the criminal justice system. It humanizes the inmates for people who may not have had a lot of contact with incarcerated people. It also provides a good historical primer of the process that led California governors to ratchet up our sentencing structure, emphasizing in particular the increase in actual time served for lifers. The informative background provides some illuminating tables of comparison between California penal code provisions in different points in time, as well as some broad information about the extent to which different governors (Pete Wilson, Gray Davis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger) have been willing (or unwilling) to pardon lifers. It also makes for a short and engaging read, suitable for the general audience at least as much as for professionals in the correctional field.
Happy 2010 to all our readers! May this be the year in which we make sensible, fact-based, and humane decisions in criminalization, law enforcement, and corrections.
A Baha’i friend has shared the following video with me.
I have been following stories of the Baha’i persecution in Iran for quite some time. It is an abominable situation, and one which we have very few tools to improve through international negotiation and pressure.
On this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the relative transparency of the California prison system. I am grateful for public court documents and for the CDCR website. I am grateful for public fiscal reports, which inform Californians of the effects our prison population has on their wallets. I am grateful for the Senate and Assembly websites, where we can learn how our legislature thinks about these matters. I am grateful for National Public Radio and for newspapers. I am grateful for my colleagues in the research community who write about criminal justice, prisons, and the death penalty; they work hard to obtain access to databases and information, which we can later find, analyzed and discussed, in their illuminated books and articles (several of these excellent sources will be reviewed here over the next few weeks). I am grateful for organizations like NOBLE, NACDL, and Books Not Bars, for their efforts to produce external reports on police proceedings, courts, and juvenile institutions. I am grateful for the ability to pick up the phone, or send an email, so I can get accurate information from its source that can be shared with our readers. I am grateful for you, our readers, for emailing us with information that can only be obtained from you.
We have a big problem on our hands. A very big problem. But we have ways of obtaining information about the situation, and ways to communicate with policymakers, officials, activists, inmates, and their families. These are important tools and they are not to be taken for granted.
California currently houses over 8,000 prisoners in privately-operated, out-of-state facilities. Contracting with private prison companies raises concerns about providing economic incentives for incarceration. I first read of American Police Force here on this blog, last week.
The Talking Points Memo Muckraker has been following this story all along. In particular, check out their excellent post from Monday, telling a fuller version of convicted felon and “‘low-level card shark” Michael Hilton bringing American Police Force into impoverished Hardin, MT.
Today the New York Times has a good story on state regulation of medical marijuana dispensaries. This debate has a renewed impact on California this week, as Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley told reporters yesterday he will resume targeting medical cannabis dispensaries for prosecution. Explicit state regulation of medical cannabis dispensaries would save California’s criminal justice system the costs of arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating people who fall into the cracks opened by the vagueness of this state law.
When California passed the original state medical marijuana law in 1996, no specific regulations were included for state regulation or licensure of medical marijuana sales, supply, or distribution. Since then, three digits’ worth of Californians have been prosecuted over this ambiguity (partial list here). 13 states now have medical marijuana laws (comparative guide here). In 2009 New Mexico became the first state to have its Department of Health license and regulate a non-profit medical marijuana distributor, a delivery service. This June, Rhode Island became the first state to legislate that its Department of Health will license and regulate a non-profit retail Compassion Center.
Before coming to Hastings this fall, I worked for several years as the executive director of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition, RI’s medical marijuana community. Besides educating professionals, organizing patients, and forming a coalition, we lobbied for the 2006, 2007, and 2009 state laws authorizing and amending the Medical Marijuana Program. Throughout our successful efforts to regulate statewide distribution of this therapeutically beneficial substance, we faced the obstacle of the argument that we would make RI “like California, like the Wild West.” Now that New Mexico and especially Rhode Island have established regulatory models, California should model medical marijuana dispensary rules on other states’ effective programs.
