Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both be Reduced?

1. Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both be Reduced? Daniel S. Nagin Carnegie Mellon University National Association of Sentencing Commissions August 7, 2012

3. 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

4. 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

5. When Brute Forces Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Imprisonmentby Mark Kleiman • Reaches broadly similar conclusion

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. Figure 2: Marginal Versus Absolute Deterrent Effects Crime Rate C0 C1 S1 S2 Sentence Length

11. 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)

12. 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

13. 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 21st Century: A Review of the Evidence • My email address: dn03@andrew.cmu.edu

14. Thank you dn03@andrew.cmu.edu