While Americans seem to be sharply divided along partisan lines when
it comes to important domestic policy issues — take health care,
immigration or the national debt, for example — in at least one area of
national importance, conservatives and liberals are increasingly united:
criminal justice reform.
With only 5 percent of the world’s
population, America incarcerates 25 percent of the world’s jail and
prison population, imprisoning individuals at a rate five times higher
than comparable Western, industrialized nations. During the upcoming
fiscal year, the federal government
would spend nearly $7 billion, a nearly $300 million increase from this
year, under the president’s budget proposal to house prisoners and very
little, comparatively, on investments to curb the deluge of prisoners
entering the system.
Policymakers and opinion leaders from both
sides of the aisle recognize that this rate of incarceration is not
sustainable or wise and are increasingly rallying around the same
common-sense solutions to improve public safety while saving money.
Prominent conservative leaders such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III, and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist all have called for an overhaul of the criminal justice regime.
Despite the growing bipartisan consensus in support of criminal justice reform, the federal government
has done little in recent years to address the pressing issues of
growing incarceration rates, prison overcrowding and recidivism. These
issues place a heavy burden on the judicial system and on society at
large. Incarceration trends are not promising, nor are estimates that
the federal prison population is projected to grow substantially over
the next several years. We cannot ignore the significant challenges this
creates for the Bureau of Prisons and continue to believe that the “lock ‘em and leave ‘em” approach is working.
The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing to address rising prison costs. It’s promising that Congress is talking about the issues, but the time for talk is over — it is time for Congress to act, and it should look to states for the road map.
In
several states, legislators have crossed the aisle to build consensus
and enact reforms on a bipartisan basis, easily outpacing the federal government. In tough-on-crime Texas, the Republican chairman of the state House Corrections Committee worked with the Democratic chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee
to shepherd through legislation in 2007 that increased drug treatment
capacity and expanded diversion from prison for nonviolent, low-level
offenders. Similarly, the Georgia legislature
unanimously passed a bill this year that diverts low-level offenders
away from prison and, when appropriate, into drug treatment, reserving
prison for dangerous offenders. States such as Kansas, South Carolina
and Ohio have enacted similar legislation.
Bipartisan reforms at
the state level have proved to be socially and economically beneficial.
Texas’ reforms saved an estimated $440 million in a single year. Over
the past few years, its prison population has decreased, along with its
crime rates, allowing the state to close a prison for the first time in
history in 2011. Other state reforms have had similar experiences.
Instead of throwing good money after bad, Congress should follow the example of these states and take steps to curb federal prison population growth. Congress
can start with proven solutions that reduce recidivism and give
prisoners a second chance. One example is increasing the number of days
that a prisoner can earn off his sentence for good behavior, called
“good time credit.” Congress
also should implement programming within prisons that would increase
the likelihood of prisoners’ success after release, such as more drug
treatment programming, educational opportunities and vocational
training, all of which have proved to be effective at reducing
recidivism. These investments make it less likely that the government will have to spend money in the future to re-incarcerate the same people.
Congress
also should consider who is incarcerated in federal prisons. Sensible
people agree that violent criminals belong behind bars, but the reverse
is often true as well — many low-level, nonviolent offenders do not
belong behind bars. The increased use of diversion programs, probation
and other prison alternatives, all of which many states have
successfully employed, should be systematically implemented by the federal government.
At
a time when almost every issue seems to bitterly divide Democrats and
Republicans, reforming our flawed criminal justice policies has produced
consensus rather than division across our nation. Congress
ought to take advantage of this political consensus to develop and
enact practical yet effective solutions and embrace criminal justice
reform.
Former Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, West Virginia Democrat,
was chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce,
justice, science and related agencies. David A. Keene, former chairman
of the American Conservative Union, is a member of the board of
directors of the Constitution Project.
No comments:
Post a Comment