Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both be Reduced?

Daniel S. Nagin Carnegie Mellon University National Association of Sentencing Commissions August 7, 2012

500 Growth in US Incarceration Rate 400 300 200 100 0 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Year

• • • • Some Observations About the Four Decade Long Increase in Imprisonment Undoubtedly reduced crime but size of reduction is highly uncertain and also irrelevant to policy changes from the status quo Social and economics cost have been large Correction costs have become unsustainable Wide spread recognition across the political spectrum that crime policy needs to be re thought

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Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both Be Reduced?

Steven Durlauf and Daniel Nagin (Criminology and Public Policy, 2011)

Yes Requires a shift from severity-based to certainty-based sanction policies Shift in resources from corrections to policing Focus today will be on severity component of the conclusion

When Brute Forces Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Imprisonment by Mark Kleiman • Reaches broadly similar conclusion

Potential Crime Prevention Effects of Imprisonment • • • Incapacitation Specific Deterrence—Effect of the experience of imprisonment on reoffending General Deterrence—Effect of the threat of punishment on offending

Why Deterrence Is Important to Crime Control Policy • • Crime control by incapacitation necessarily increases imprisonment Crime control with deterrence can reduce both crime and imprisonment—if the crime is deterred there is no need for punishment

Key Conclusion of Recent Literature Reviews • • • • The marginal deterrent effect of increasing already lengthy prison sentences is modest at best. Incapacitation effects seem to decline with the scale of imprisonment The strategic deployment police has a substantial marginal deterrent effect.

No evidence of a specific deterrent effect—all evidence points to either no effect or a crime increasing effect of the experience of imprisonment

Research on Sentence Length and Deterrence • • • • California’s 3-Strikes law at best has had a modest deterrent effect Increased penalties upon reaching age of majority have no apparent deterrent effect Project Exile (Richmond, VA) no apparent deterrent effect Short but certain periods of incarceration do affect the behavior of active offenders

Figure 2: Marginal Versus Absolute Deterrent Effects

Crime Rate C 0 C 1 S 1 S 2 Sentence Length

Policy Implications for Sentencing • • Lengthy prison sentences are not effective deterrents Incapacitating aged criminals is not cost effective crime control – Recidivism of releases 45 or older is 45% less than their 18 to 24 counterparts – 17% of California’s prison population is 50 or older, up from 6% in 1998 – Nationally, 20% of prison population is 45 or older, double 20 years ago – 10% of prison population is serving life terms (4% LWOP)

Bottom line

• • • Lengthy sentence can not be justified based on crime control grounds—they must be justified on justice grounds In an era of tight crime control budgets, policing (and parole and probation services) not prisons should receive a larger share of a smaller pie.

Need to scale back on sentence length, particularly of the mandatory minimum and lengthy variety

Recent Essays

• • • • • Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both Be Reduced? Imprisonment and Reoffending Deterrence: A Review of the Evidence by a Criminologist for Economists Deterrence in the 21 st the Evidence Century: A Review of My email address: [email protected]

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