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Does Prison Work?

Since 1980 the U.S. prison population has more than quadrupled (4.6x) by growing to a staggering 2.3 million people. With some states paying as much to keep a person in prison as it would cost to pay tuition, room, board and fees at Harvard, we must ask the question, does prison work?

Did you know?

The US imprisons it’s people at the highest rate in the world: 716 per 100,000 people.
- Among OECD countries, Israel comes in 2nd at 223 per 100,000 people.
While the U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, it holds 25% of the world’s prisoners.
1 out of every 105 American adults is in prison.
1 out of every 35 American adults is in prison, on parole, or probation supervision.
Over $80 billion dollars are spent on corrections yearly
The most serious charge for 20% of state prisoners and 51% of federal prisoners is a drug offense.
- 6 in 10 drug offenders have no history of violence or high-level drug selling activity.
- Only 14% of drug offenders get treatment.

What is Prison For?

In America, prison has historically had four major purposes:

Retribution: punishment for committing a crime.
Incapacitation: removing criminals from the streets.
Deterrence: preventing future crime from being committed.
Rehabilitation: helping inmates heal and become productive citizens upon reentry to society.

Rehabilitation era

Before the mid-1800’s, prisons focused on retribution, incapacitation, and deterrence. They mainly served to remove criminals from society.

Sometime after the mid-1800’s, the philosophy of incarceration shifted to rehabilitation.

The 1870 and 1970 Prison Congresses both endorsed incarceration principles such as:

“corrections must demonstrate integrity, respect, dignity, fairness”

“sanctions imposed by the court shall be commensurate with the seriousness of the offense”

“offenders . . . shall be afforded the opportunity to engage in productive work, participate in programs . . . and other activities that will enhance self-worth, community integration, and economic community integration, and economic status.”

This rehabilitation era lasted until the early 1980’s.

What stopped the rehabilitation era?

In 1974 a criminologist named Robert Martinson published a report that claimed:

“with few and isolated exceptions, the rehabilitative efforts that have been reported so far have had no appreciable effect on recidivism.”

Martinson later retracted his conclusions and his original essay was full of methodological flaws, but prominent political figures still embraced his message and policies began to diminish rehabilitation.

In a 1989 case called Misretta v.U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court upheld federal sentencing guidelines that no longer made rehabilitation a serious goal for inmates.

After that point, prisons returned to emphasizing retribution, incapacitation, and deterrence. Prominent political figures began political campaigns centered on phrases like:

“Tough on Crime”
“Three Strikes You are Out”
“War on Drugs”

Does Prison Work to Decrease Crime?

Crime Rate in U.S. has gone down since 1980.

Year	Violent Crime				Total Violent Crime	Property Crime			Total Property Crime
Year	Murder and Non-Negligent Manslaughter	Forcible Rape	Robbery	Aggravated Assault	Total Violent Crime	Burglary	Larceny Theft	Motor Vehicle Theft	Total Property Crime
1980	10	37	251	299	597	1684	3167	502	5353
1985	8	37	209	303	557	1287	2901	462	4651
1990	9	41	257	424	732	1236	3195	658	5089
1995	8	37	221	418	685	987	3044	560	4591
2000	6	32	145	324	506	728	2475	414	3618
2005	6	32	151	302	491	750	2343	443	3535
2010	5	28	119	253	405	701	2006	239	2946
2012	5	27	113	242	387	679	1959	230	2859
Numbers are rate per 100,000

Prison Population in U.S. has gone up since 1980.

Year	Probation	Parole	Jail	Prison	Prison & Jail	Total
1980	1,118,097	220,438	182,288	319,598	501,886	1,840,421
1985	1,968,712	300,203	254,986	487,593	742,579	3,011,494
1990	2,670,234	531,407	403,019	743,382	1,146,401	4,348,042
1995	3,077,861	679,421	499,300	1,078,542	1,577,842	5,335,124
2000	3,826,209	723,898	613,534	1,316,333	1,929,867	6,479,974
2005	4,166,757	780,616	740,770	1,448,344	2,189,114	7,136,487
2010	4,055,514	840,676	748,728	1,521,414	2,270,142	7,166,332
2012	3,940,000	851,200	744,500	1,567,800	2,312,300	7,103,500

Since the incarceration rate has more than quadrupled and crime has dramatically decreased, it would appear that prisons emphasizing retribution, incapacitation, and deterrence do, in fact, work.

Not so fast…

Only 25% of the decreased crime rate is due to an increase in incarceration.
In the past 10 years, all of the 19 states that decreased imprisonment rates also decreased in crime rate (Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Wisconsin.)
In 2000 Florida and New York both had about 70,000 inmates. Since then Florida has added 30,000 inmates and New York has decreased by 10,000 inmates. Yet, both states have seen a decrease of crime by 28-29%.

The Cost of Incarceration

Expanding prisons is less effective than presumed and the cost of imprisoning inmates is growing out of control.

In 1982 the US spent $22 billion on corrections (adjusted to 2010 dollars).
- That’s $97 dollars every man, woman, and child paid every year for prisons.
In 2010 the US spent $80 Billion.
- That’s $259 dollars every man, woman, and child pays every year for prisons.

Year	Total Local, State and Federal Corrections Cost in US (2010 dollars billions)	CostPer Capita
1982	$22	$97
1987	$36	$148
1992	$55	$213
1997	$67	$246
2002	$80	$277
2007	$78	$259
2010	$80	$259

The US spends an estimated average of $31,286 per inmate per year.
- Kentucky pays the least at $14,603 per inmate per year.
- New York pays the highest at $60,076 per inmate per year.

State	Crime Rate (per 100,000)	Incaceration Rate (per 100,000)	Cost per inmate per year
Alabama	4026	648	$17,285
Alaska	3240	340	$44,955
Arizona	3961	572	$24,805
Arkansas	4235	552	$24,391
California	2995	439	$47,421
Colorado	2926	445	$30,374
Connecticut	2440	376	$50,262
Delaware	3971	443	$32,967
Florida	4037	556	$20,553
Georgia	4000	479	$21,039
Hawaii	3625	302	$33,660
Idaho	2268	474	$19,545
Illinois	3118	373	$38,268
Indiana	3494	434	$14,823
Iowa	2586	309	$32,924
Kansas	3434	317	$18,207
Kentucky	2947	458	$14,603
Louisiana	3006	867	$17,486
Maine	2669	148	$46,404
Maryland	3154	387	$38,384
Massachusetts	2687	200	$45,017
Michigan	3057	445	$28,117
Minnesota	2770	185	$41,364
Mississippi	3296	686	15,235
Missouri	3756	508	$22,350
Montana	2586	378	$30,226
Nebraska	3006	247	$35,950
Nevada	3123	472	$20,656
New Hampshire	2472	209	$34,080
New Jersey	2459	286	$54,865
New Mexico	4100	323	39,000
New York	2310	288	$60,076
North Carolina	3877	373	$29,965
North Dakota	2184	226	$39,260
Ohio	3662	448	$25,814
Oklahoma	3817	654	$18,467
Oregon	3363	361	30,105
Pennsylvania	2577	403	$42,339
Rhode Island	2925	197	$49,133
South Carolina	4476	495	15,961
South Dakota	2072	416	$28,693
Tennessee	4204	432	23,145
Texas	3881	648	$21,390
Utah	3168	238	$29,349
Vermont	2444	265	$49,502
Virginia	2447	468	$25,129
Washington	3870	269	$46,897
West Virginia	2590	363	$26,498
Wisconsin	2670	366	$37,994
Wyoming	2485	385	43,500

What’s the Alternative

We can no longer say that prison is better than nothing. We must ask if prison is better than the alternatives. 8 out of 10 Americans believe alternatives to prison are a better approach for non-violent offenders.

Halfway House

Halfway Houses are used mostly as an intermediate step to help people return from prison to the community but they can also be used instead of prison or jail when a person’s sentence is very short. It costs about $74 per day for a person to be in a halfway house.

House Arrest

House Arrest requires offenders to stay home, often with electronic monitoring like an ankle bracelet. It costs about &10.00 per day for a person to be on house arrest.

Probation

Probation is an effective alternative for low-level crime. It keeps the offender in the community while still limiting freedom. It costs about $9 per day for a person to be on probation.

2012	Per Inmate Daily Cost	Per Inmate Monthly Cost	Per Inmate Annual Cost
Federal Prison	$79.16	$2,412	$28,948
Halfway Houses	$73.78	$2,244	$26,930
House Arrest	$10.00	$304	$3,650
Probation	$9.17	$279	$3,347

A variety of research demonstrates that investments in drug treatment, inmate education and interventions with at-risk families are more effective than expanding incarceration.

Drug Treatment

For every $1 spent on drug treatment:

the community saves $7 in reduced crime and increased earnings.
the prison system would have to spend $8 to reduce drug use the same amount.
the prison system would have to spend $15 to reduce drug related crime the same amount.

Inmate Education

RSVP: Taking serious the charge to “keep the peace”, the San Francisco Sheriffs Department founded the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project (RSVP); an intensive re-education program for inmates. When compared to a similar group of inmates without the program:

Rearrest for violent crime went down 46% with just 2 months in the program.
Rearrest for violent crime went down 53% with just 3 months in the program.
Rearrest for violent crime went down 83% with just 4 months in the program.
Those that did get rearrested spent 66% less time in prison.
As a result, RSVP saved tax payers $4 for every $1 it cost.

Stay’n Out: New York’s ‘Stay’n Out’ drug treatment program (1977-2008) separated participants from the general inmate population and gave them group counseling and special workshops.

Graduates were 68% less likely to get rearrested than those outside the program.

Interventions

Child-Parent Centers: Founded in Chicago in 1967, Child-Parent Centers provide publicly-funded early educational and family support to disadvantaged children and their parents. For 14 years, researchers tracked 989 of those children and 550 similar children not in the program.

The children who did not participate were 70 percent more likely to be arrested for a violent crime by age 18.

Nurse-Family Partnership: From pregnancy until their child’s 2nd birthday, low-income moms are provided with the care and support they need to give their child a healthy start.

Arrests by age 15 fell 59% for the children of moms that participated in the program.

The Perry Preschool Study: HighScope Educational Research Foundation conducted a 40 year study called The Perry Preschool Study. It gave high quality preschool education to children born in poverty and at high risk of failing in school.

At age 40 only 28% had served time compared to 52% of those outside the program.
Only 14% had been arrested for drug crimes compared to 34% of those outside the program.
For every $1 spent on the children the community saved $16 in reduced crime and increased earnings.

So, does prison work?

While prison does work 25% of the time, the most effective and cost efficient way to decrease crime is by investing in prevention and rehabilitation.

Sources