Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?

Chapter 7. Incarceration and Crime

chAPter 7 Incarceration and crime On July 31, 2006, the Italian Parliament passed legislation that reduced the sentences of most Italian prison inmates by three years, effective August 1, 2006. The clemency applied only to inmates convicted of a subset of felonies committed prior to May of that year. The passage of the “collective clemency” bill followed a six-year debate surrounding Italian prison conditions, spurred in large part by the activism of the Catholic Church and the personal involvement of Pope John Paul II. With Italian prisons filled to 130 percent of capacity , the onetime pardon was principally motivated by the need to address prison overcrowding. Figure 7.1 displays a scatter plot of Italian monthly incarceration rates (measured as inmates per 100,000 residents) for the period from January 2004 to December 2008. The month of August 2006 is set to zero along the horizontal axis, with all months preceding and following measured relative to that month. The incarceration rate is relatively stable between January 2004 and August 2006. Between August and September 2006, however, the collective pardon induces a sharp decline. Over this one-month period, the prison population declined by 21,863 individuals, equivalent to a 36 percent decrease , with a corresponding decrease in the national incarceration rate from 103 to 66 inmates per 100,000. Figure 7.2 displays corresponding monthly total crimes per 100,000 Italian residents. The national crime rate increased slightly during the pre-pardon 202 WHY ARE SO MANY AMERICANS IN PRISON? period, increased sharply between August 2006 and September 2006, and then steadily declined back to pre-pardon levels. The magnitude of the increase in crime coinciding with the mass prisoner release suggests that on average each released inmate generated fourteen felony crime reports to the police per year. Looking at variation within the country, we also note that Italian provinces that received more released inmates as a result of the pardon experienced relatively larger increases in crime. Although most of the increase in Italian crime associated with the collective clemency was attributable to theft, there was also a notable and statistically significant increase in robbery, a crime classified in most nations as a violent felony (Buonanno and Raphael, forthcoming). Italy’s experience with the 2006 collective clemency bill contrasts sharply with the recent experience of California. In April 2011, the state of California enacted broad correctional reform legislation under the banner of corrections realignment. The legislation eliminates the practice of returning parolees to Monthly Incarceration Rate 110 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 −40 −20 0 20 40 Month Relative to August 2006 Figure 7.1 scatter Plot of Monthly Incarceration Rate against Month Measured Relative to august 2006 Source: Authors’ compilation based on Italian Ministry of Interior (2009b), Ministero della Giustizia, Italy. INCARCERATION AND CRIME 203 state prison custody for technical parole violation for all but a small set of the most serious and mentally ill offenders. The legislation also defines a group of nonserious, nonsexual, nonviolent offenders who upon conviction will serve their sentences in county jails. These offenders will earn good time credits more quickly than they would within the state prison system and can be given split sentences that involve alternative monitoring within the community. More generally, judges are now afforded greater discretion to devise alternatives to confinement in the sentencing of these offenders. The legislation was prompted by an order by a federal three-judge court impanelled as a result of legal decisions in two lawsuits against the state filed on behalf of California prison inmates. In Plata v. Brown, it was alleged that California was providing inadequate health care services to its prison population . In Coleman v. Brown, it was alleged that the system was providing inadequate mental health services. These cases were consolidated and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court affirmed the three-judge Crimes per 100,000 Italian Residents 450 400 350 300 −40 −20 0 20 40 Month Relative to August 2006 Figure 7.2 scatter Plot of Total Monthly crimes per 100,000 Italian Residents against Month Measured Relative to august 2006 Source: Authors’ compilation based on Italian Ministry of Interior (2009a), Ministero dell’Interno, Italy. 204 WHY ARE SO MANY AMERICANS IN PRISON? court ruling that prison overcrowding led to inadequate health and mental health care in violation of the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual...