Pew Center Report Finds Increasing Incarceration Expensive and Ineffective

by Matthew Clarke

On June 6 2012, the Pew Center on the States issued a report on the consequences of the trend toward longer terms of imprisonment in state prisons. The report found that lengthening sentences did not necessarily lower crime rates and was very costly.

Since 1970 there has been little debate on the consequences of lengthening prison sentences. The public, the media and politicians have all assumed that increasing the length of sentences would reduce crime rates. However, the effect of lengthening sentences has not been the subject of rigorous study so the assumption had no empirical evidence to back it up. Nonetheless, the assumption led to an increase of 700% in the number of state and federal prisoners between 1970 (91,669 prisoners) and 2005 (l,543,206). Because such dramatic and costly public policies should be based upon evidence rather than unsupported belief, the Pew Center on the States undertook a study to determine the effect of lengthening sentences on crime rates.

Less than half of states publish length of sentence statistics. Those states that do publish the statistics have no standardized model for their reports, making comparison of information between the states difficult. Therefore, the Pew Center developed a standardized survey tool covering the years 1990 to 2009 which was sent to each state.

Only 35 states provided sufficiently detailed information to be included in the report. The results showed a long term trend toward longer incarceration such that, on average, state prisoners were incarcerated an average of nine months (36%) longer in 2009 (average length of imprisonment 2.9 years) than in 1990 (2.1 years). "While nine months per inmate may not sound like a long time, even a small relative difference in average time served can make a large difference for an overall population."

The increased incarceration between 1990 and 2009 was virtually identical for violent crimes (+37%) and drug crimes (+36%) but slightly less for property crimes (+24%). The change in incarceration varied widely among the states, with Florida (166%) experiencing the largest increase while Illinois (-25%) had the strongest decrease in average rate of incarceration.

The cost of this increased incarceration is enormous. The extra nine months of prison time costs the states an average additional $23,300 per prisoner. Again, this per-prisoner amount may not seem significant, but collectively, the cost is a large portion of the states' corrections budgets.

"For offenders released from their original commitment in 2009, the additional time behind bars costs states over $10 billion, with more than half this cost attributable to non-violent offenders." That is about 20% of the $51 billion the states spend each year on corrections, most of which is spent on prisons "even though offenders on probation and parole dramatically outnumber those behind bars."

So what have the states purchased for this additional $10 billion annual expense? Some would say public safety and indeed there is a long-term trend of lowering crime rates that may be partially attributable to increasing prison populations since a criminal cannot easily commit a free world crime while imprisoned. But the relationship between increasing imprisonment and reducing crime rates is not so clear cut. "During the past decade, all 17 states that cut their imprisonment rates also experienced a decline in crime rates. And a 2006 legislative analysis in Washington State found that while incarcerating violent offenders provides a net public benefit by saving the state more than it costs, imprisonment of property and drug offenders leads to negative returns.”

A new Pew analysis of non-violent prisoners released in Florida, Maryland and Michigan in 2004 which took into account risk factors such as criminal history, time served and other data, found a significant portion of the prisoners could have been released sooner without impacting public safety. The study found that 14% of the Florida releasees, 18% of the Maryland releasees and 242 of the Michigan releasees could have been released between 3 and 24 months earlier without jeopardizing public safety. This would have resulted in significant prison population decreases--2,600 prisoners (3%) for Florida, 800 (8%) for Maryland and 3,300 (6%) for Michigan. The savings would have been $54 million (FL), $30 million (MD) and $92 million (MI).

The report included some suggestions for deceasing populations which have been successfully implemented in some of the states. These included raising the minimum dollar amount required to felonize certain property crimes, rolling back mandatory minimum sentencing provisions, increasing prisoners' opportunities for earned sentence reductions and revising parole eligibility standards.

The report noted that recent polling found strong public support for revisions to reduce the incarceration of persons convicted of non-violent offenses so long as the revisions still held the persons accountable and public safety was not compromised. "Nearly 90 percent support shortening prison terms by up to a year for low-risk, non-violent offenders if they behaved well in prison or completed programming, and voters also support reinvesting prison savings into alternatives to incarceration." Let's hope the lawmakers take a cue from their constituents.

Sources: Time Served: The High Cost, Low Return of Longer Prison Terms, Pew Center on the States, June 2012, www.pewstates.org, www.huffingtonpost.com

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