On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 23:04:02 -0500 (CDT) Grassroots Media Network <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Crowded Prisons, Plummeting Crime Rates Is There a Connection Between the Two? Aug. 20, 1999 By Jim Krane The U.S. prison population is at a record high. NEW YORK (APBnews.com) -- As America's crime rate has dropped to its lowest level in a decade and the prison population has risen to a historic high, authorities are debating if and how these two trends are connected. The discussion was further energized this week by the release of the latest national prison population figures from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). That report, which indicated there are nearly 2 million people currently incarcerated, also begs this question: Is the crime rate down because a record number of criminals are locked up? "They absolutely have to be related," said University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. "It would be startling if locking up almost 2 million people didn't reduce crime." "If you've got the bad guys chained to a bench, they can't be out there in public doing their mayhem," added Morgan Reynolds, director of the Criminal Justice Center of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. While he noted there is no hard and fast link between the jail population and crime in the outside world, Allen Beck, chief statistician for corrections at the BJS, agreed that incarceration does prevent a certain amount of crime. This is particularly true of crimes such as domestic assault, armed robbery, serial murder and rape. "I don't think there's any doubt we would have more crime if some of those high-rate offenders were out in the community," said Beck. Prison having some success Related Stories: Nearly 2 Million Behind Bars in America Reno: Spend More to Prevent Recidivism The Graying of America's Prisons: An Emerging Corrections Crisis California Jails Will Overflow in 2001 Nonviolent Prison Population Hits 1 Million U.S. Prison Population Hits Record Related Site: Crime Control and the Expansion of the Prison Population Since most of the prison population is in the over-30 age range, most of the crime reduced would have been committed by older offenders, said Alfred Blumstein, criminology professor at Carnegie-Mellon University. Blumstein said the steady decline since 1985 in offenses committed by those over 30 shows that prison is having some success. For crimes committed by those younger than 30 -- the most crime-prone years -- Blumstein said prison's effect is less dramatic because fewer young offenders are in prison. Beck co-authored the BJS Prisoners in 1998 report that describes the steady increase in the prison population to just under 1.9 million by the end of 1998. Beck said an increase in prison sentences also deters certain types of crimes, especially economic and property crimes such as fraud, burglary and auto theft. But in other areas -- particularly so-called crimes of opportunity like drug trafficking -- prison has been shown to be ineffective, Beck said. Back on the streets Forty percent of prisoners today will be back on the streets within 12 months, said Beck. The U.S. prison system experiences a turnover of 500,000 prisoners a year -- with a half-million flowing in and slightly less flowing out each year, he said. After the crime wave of the 1980s, criminologists at Carnegie-Mellon issued a study that found that, despite a 200 percent increase in the number of violent felons jailed that decade, violent crime dropped only 9 percent. Another study, authored by Levitt, found a closer correlation: a 10 percent increase in the prison population reduces crime by 1 to 3 percent. "Long sentences focused on violent, repeat offenders are extremely effective," Levitt said. But he also pointed out that sending small-time or nonviolent criminals to jail may give society little public safety payback for the expense involved. Policing, probation, parole, prison Hans H. Chen/APBnews.com William Bratton But in individual communities, jailing a robbery-prone crack head or violent juvenile has made a big difference in safety, said William Bratton, former police chief of New York City and Boston. Bratton is widely credited for reducing crime in those cities through police tactics that target crime hot spots and jail repeat offenders. "Studies show a small proportion of the criminals commit a large portion of the crime," said Bratton. But besides a simple jail term, Bratton believes that aggressive policing and tightly controlled parole and probation programs can control the behavior of those prone to trouble. "We know for a fact that in New York, we changed the gun-carrying habits of people on the streets," he said. That, in turn, cut the number of shootings and murders, he said. Beyond prison, other developments helped cut crime, experts say. New policing methods worked, as did a prolonged economic expansion, stricter parole and probation monitoring and greater street-level vigilance by neighbors, said Jean O'Neil of the National Crime Prevention Council. "As there are no single causes for crime, there are no single causes for the drop in crime," O'Neil said. Longer sentences for the same crowd Paradoxically, the decrease in crime and rise in the prison population doesn't mean that more people are winding up in prison, said Beck. Convicts that enter prison these days just stay longer, he said. Beck's study found three factors are responsible for a large portion of the increase in prisoners: Longer sentences More cautious and restrictive parole releases More parole violators returned to prison Drug crime not charted Another issue in the crime-prison connection has to do with which offenses are counted in the nation's recognized crime rate, calculated by the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The UCR measures a string of violent crimes and three property crimes: burglary, larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft. Although drug offenders are one of the largest groups of criminals in the prison system, drug crime isn't measured in the FBI statistics. Violent crime swings In the 1980s, violent crime and drug crime rose sharply. The number of adults arrested shot up 45 percent and the prison population more than doubled, said Beck. When violent crime -- and the crime rate -- began dropping in the 1990s, drug crime kept climbing, with drug law violations rising by 35 percent between 1990 and 1997, Beck said. These drug crimes didn't show up in the crime rate, but the jailing of tens of thousands of offenders increased the prison population. At the same time, arrests plunged in cases of murder, rape, robbery and burglary -- crimes that often draw prison time, said Beck. "So even though violent crime is down, the likelihood of going to prison is going up," said Beck. In recent years, parole violations cause the biggest increase in prison numbers. From 1990 to 1997, the increase in new convicts entering prison grew only 4 percent, while the number of offenders returned to prison on parole violations grew almost 40 percent, the BJS found. Inmate numbers peaking The number of U.S. prisoners is finally beginning to stabilize, with the plunging crime rate beginning to pull down the number of inmates, said Beck. Predictions by sentencing reform groups that the United States will incarcerate 2 million inmates by the year 2000 will probably not materialize, he said. "In the next 12 months we'll see some leveling off," Beck said. Levitt agreed, saying that with the diminishing returns of locking up small-time offenders, states need to rethink their prison construction plans. "As crime falls, you need fewer cells to punish criminals to the same extent," he said. "If that's the case, it doesn't make sense to keep adding to prison capacity." Another upswing ahead? But the effects of ballooning numbers of prisoners may, in the future, breed more crime, when angry ex-cons without viable skills emerge from prison. "In the short term, we're incapacitating offenders and reducing crime," said James Fox, professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. "We're really not prepared for what the impact may be down the road." Jim Krane is an APBnews.com special projects editor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). ==================================== The Grassroots Media Network 1602 Chatham St Austin, TX 78723 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.crosswinds.net/~rootmedia/ http://www.crosswinds.net/~rootmedia/Queer http://www.koop.org/stonewall/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] We are: Grassroots News Network, Queer News Network, Latino News Exchange, Wmyn's News Service, Enviro News Service, Worker's News Service, Grassroots Film & Video Collective, and Theoretical Ammo Arts Brigade, To recieve daily news articles please respond to this post with the following command in the subject line. 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