Page 67 - Impact: Collected Essays on the Threat of Economic Inequality

Crime and Incarceration:
A Future Fraught with Uncertainty
65
Ronald F. Day1
Over the past four decades, incarceration’s net has widened considerably, ensnaring individuals in efforts to “promote public safety .” Policymakers around the country embraced Stop and Frisk and Broken Windows policing and other “tough on crime” measures, including harsh sentencing laws like mandatory minimums, truth-in-sentencing, three-strikes, and life-without-possibility- of-parole (“LWOP”) .2 As a result, there are nearly 80 million people in the U .S . with a criminal record on file,3 2 .3 million in jail or prison, and another 4 .7 million or so on some form of community supervision .4
Although public safety has been the mantra, there is sufficient evidence that the incarceration spike is not a byproduct of crime . In spite of prevailing perceptions, the link between incarceration rates and crime rates is complex . For example, during the past two decades, crime rates have been on a steep decline, while incarceration rates in many states have, until recently, continued to climb .5 According to a report by the National Research Council, “The best single proximate explanation of the rise in incarceration is not crime rates, but the policy choices made by legislators to greatly increase the use of imprisonment as a response to crime .”6
Social scientists have determined that there is a direct correlation between poverty and high incarceration rates, with the overwhelming majority of people entangled in the criminal justice system being Black and Latino males from inner-city neighborhoods .7 Once saddled with these criminal convictions, they find it exceedingly difficult to recuperate . Devah Pager put it this way: “The negative credential associated with a criminal record represents a unique mechanism of stratification, in that it is the state that certifies particular individuals in ways that qualify them for discrimination or social exclusion .”8 Family members often share this burden, increasing the likelihood of fractured families and social disorder . While other groups campaign to diminish income inequality, these goals are overshadowed by notions of fairness, equality, and social justice
1 Associate Vice President of the David Rothenberg Center for Public Policy, The Fortune Society. Special thanks for research and editing assistance to JoAnne Page, President and Chief Executive Officer, The Fortune Society; Lucy Gubernick, a second- year law student at Fordham Law School; and Kevin Tang, a senior at Macaulay Honors College at Hunter College.
2 Michael Tonry, Remodeling American Sentencing: A Ten-Step Blueprint for Moving Past Mass Incarceration, 13 criminology & puB. pol’y 503 (Nov. 2014).
3 Gary Fields & John R. Emshwiller, As Arrest Records Rise, Americans Find Consequences Can Last a Lifetime, wall sT. J., Aug. 18, 2014, http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-arrest-records-rise-americans-find-consequences-can- last-a-lifetime-1408415402.
4 lauren e glaze & danielle kaeBle, u.s. dep’T of JusTice, Bureau of JusTice sTaTisTics, correcTional populaTions in The uniTed sTaTes (Dec. 2014), available at http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus13.pdf.
5 Prison and Crime: A Complex Link, The pew chariTaBle TrusT, Sept. 2014, http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/ Assets/2014/09/PSPP_crime_webgraphic.pdf?la=en.
6 naTional research council, The growTh of incarceraTion in The uniTed sTaTes: exploring causes and consequences (Jeremy Travis et al.) 1736 (2014).
7 Christopher Muller & Bruce Western, Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology and the Poor, The annals of The american academy of poliTical and social science 166 (2013), available at http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/brucewestern/files/ mass_incarceration_macrosociology_and_the_poor.pdf.
8 Devah Pager, The Mark of a Criminal Record, 108 a. J. soc. 937 (2003).
Criminal Justice Reform