Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration

Introduction: Bloated Prisons

Introduction: Bloated Prisons THERE IS ONLY one way onto Rikers Island. It is a long bridge that connects the borough of Queens to the largest penal colony in the world. Most of the almost 110,000 people who make the trip over the East River to Rikers over the course of a year will spend an average of six weeks there before they are released back to their communities. Many will have made bail; others will have had their low-level cases dismissed or have completed their short sentences; some will be found not guilty; and many will be sentenced to serve their time on probation. However, almost 10,000 of these people will plead to or be found guilty of a felony crime and will be sent to the New York State prison system thereafter. This mammoth system of sorting and punishing exists in different forms in every city and county in the United States. Nonetheless from Los Angeles, California, to Fargo, North Dakota, to Clinton, New York, criminal justice systems perform remarkably analogous functions : deciding who stays home and who goes to prison. It is the latter decision on which this book concentrates. The United States now locks up a higher percentage of its population than any country in the world. The more than 2 million people who are incarcerated today make up roughly eight times the number in 1975. Moreover, those in prison are disproportionately African-American and Latino, and much of the increase in prison population over the last decade and a half has been driven by those sentenced for nonviolent drug or property crime. An emerging body of research documents the harm to family members and communities of what David Garland, a sociologist well known for his work on punishment, calls “mass imprisonment .”1 By now, these facts and figures are known and largely accepted . Over the last two decades, a host of criminologists and analysts have pointed to an array of problems in the size and scope of the U.S. penal system and have argued strenuously for the system’s reform.2 Many writers have called for less spending on incarceration and, as an alternative, more spending on economic or community development, 8 preventive, educational, or early childhood development programs. The argument is that spending now on prevention will result in greater social justice, reduced incarceration, and less spending on criminal justice and corrections down the road. Yet, despite such overwhelming and persuasive criticisms, the growth of prisons and prison spending has continued.3 For the outpouring of intellectual and academic criticism has not been able to halt the momentum toward greater incarceration created by the last two decades of uncontrolled spending on corrections, driven by longer and mandatory prison sentences, huge increases in the number of those incarcerated for drug offenses, the introduction of private capital in the form of correctional privatization, and the growth of exceedingly powerful corrections unions. These structural forces, combined with a remarkably simplistic and inflammatory public and political discourse on the value of prisons, have all but ensured the continued growth in incarceration. The purpose of the book is not merely to echo valuable work already done on the shortcomings of the U.S. prison policy. Rather, my goal is to make a substantive and political case that policy makers can begin to reverse 30 years of prison growth in a way that protects public safety while ameliorating pressing problems of health care, education, and deteriorating state budgets. We actually know quite a bit about “what works” in corrections. Although much of the academic work on corrections has been concentrated on the many shortcomings of our corrections policy and, at times, can take on a certain “preaching to the choir” tendency, there is also a growing body of work on effective programs and interventions that can reduce crime, decrease recidivism, and protect public safety.4 This book will try to make the case that resources can be made available, through reforming our corrections system , that can not only fund these efforts at creating long-term public safety but also help ameliorate the structural underfunding of our education and health care systems. In making this case, I draw heavily on my own background and experience. I have personally made that trip to Rikers Island more times than I can remember. From 1995 to 1998, I was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, the largest city jail system in the country. While in that...