In my article of April 17, I told you that our criminal justice system is broken. We lock up too many people for too long for too many reasons and spend ‘WAY too much money on prisons. We’ve fallen hard and expensively for that seductive promise to "get tough" on crime, without even thinking of the option of getting smart about dealing with our crime problem. I also told you that finally, some positive changes were taking place, and said that we can and should do more, faster.
But what?
Some communities have taken bold steps to make it easier for released felons to find legitimate employment. The City of New Haven, Connecticut, has banned the "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" question in its application forms for municipal jobs. If the applicant is offered a job, his or her record is discovered, and only then is it discussed to determine if the person’s own particular history reasonably should be a concern for the particular job offered. I would imagine a history of sexual abuse of children would be an absolute obstacle for a school bus driver, and a history of forgery and embezzlement would cause some major concerns if someone is offered a job in the city payroll office. Those are logical, legitimate concerns.
On the other hand, unceremoniously slamming the door in the face of anyone who’s ever been convicted of any felony simply makes life more desperate for that person and discourages him or her from trying to become a productive member of society.
California is making use of a multi-pronged program to provide housing, life skills training, and practical support for those recently released from prison. Results? Only half as many of those who have received this intervention return to prison as would otherwise be predicted.
The State of Washington has an admirable record for research in corrections effectiveness. In one meta-analysis, researchers looked at the cost savings to taxpayers of rehabilitation programs in prisons, not just in their own state, but across the county. On average, vocational education programs result in savings (after deducting the cost of administering the program) of $13,738 for each participant, general education $10,669, intensive supervision in treatment-oriented programs $11,653. There are those who think that any kind of rehabilitation program amounts to "coddling criminals." That is insane. Programs like these actually make more demands of prisoners than the human warehouse / crime school prison, and they give back to the tax payers some of the fortune we now spend on imprisonment.
I have long proclaimed that early intervention can help prevent troublesome young people from becoming long-term criminals. One of the effects of our "get tough" mania has been that prisons have filled faster than we can build them. In some areas, juvenile offenders are routinely given probation repeatedly, because judges know that institutions have no space for them. In a few communities, High Point, NC, for one, police are working to sort out the most hard-core juvenile offenders and offer the remainder referrals to job training programs instead of court. Judges, with fewer juvenile offenders to adjudicate, can send them to institutions where, hopefully, their behavior patterns can be altered before they become deeply ingrained. From early results it appears that those given job training referrals are taking advantage of the opportunity to avoid imprisonment.
Another form of early intervention is removing the juvenile offender from his or her home environment in favor of a multi-dimensional treatment-oriented foster care program. This is more expensive than simply sending the child to a standard foster care home, but the savings in reduction of long-term criminal activities and their costs to taxpayers amount to $77,798 for each child!
What I’ve touched on here are only some of the more obvious changes that can be made, those in which benefits can be documented. There are hundreds of others. For example:
Stop making "sex offenders" out of 18-year-olds for having consensual sex with 15- to 17-year-olds.
Get rid of the "three strikes" laws. A person convicted of a third shoplifting offense isn’t a serious threat to society.
Make better use of probation, sooner. Don’t save money by reducing the number of probation officers on the job – as a misguided governor of Illinois did some years back – only to spend many times more to build additional prisons.
Put more emphasis on rehabilitation. Of course it doesn’t work 100% with everyone, but neither does penicillin! Every offender who turns his or her life around makes our society a little safer and saves tax dollars that can be put to better use than incarceration.
Use innovative corrections, such as community service, more frequently and make sure it’s applied intelligently.
Make parole boards professional panels that include forensic scientists. Parole boards whose seats are used as political plums are not qualified to distinguish between glib psychopaths and offenders who are truly amenable to change.
Start a serious, dispassionate examination of our drug laws. It won’t be quick or easy, but our current approach is funneling money to violent street gangs and guns to Latin American drug cartels, and filling our courts and prisons. It’s a move we’ve put off far too long.
America is a great nation, but sometimes our problems are also great. This is one of them, and it affects all of us.
Paul Karsten Fauteck, Psy.D.