It’s no secret that the American criminal justice system is “grossly inefficient and morally unacceptable,” as has been documented here before. In the latest American Prospect, Adam Serwer artfully peels back the layers of failure, and surveys the landscape for change:
In the 1980s and 1990s — the “tough on crime” era — -incarceration was touted as the simple solution to our crime problem. Today, the United States imprisons 1 percent of its entire population. Including the number of people on probation and parole, one in 31 Americans is under supervision of the criminal-justice system. Mass incarceration has succeeded in reducing crime, but the strategy has diminishing returns. The offense rate of the top 20 percent of offenders is more than 10 times that of the average prisoner — a few very active criminals commit most of the crime. But under the current system, offenders who could be more cheaply deterred or rehabilitated instead incur the most expensive — and, from the perspective of its effect on the community, damaging — form of punishment possible. This is why, even as the number of incarcerated people has increased exponentially, crime hasn’t decreased at the same rate.
Fueled by the damage mass incarceration has done to state budgets, a new “smart on crime” movement has emerged to seek new ways of reducing the number of people in the system. Many states, including New Jersey, have attempted to do so by reforming probation and parole, in part by using something called “graduated sanctions” — levying small punishments on those who violate the terms of their supervision. Instead of being thrown back in jail, parolees are confined in short-term residential assessment centers — privately run institutions where they are evaluated. The parole board, based on recommendations from the parole officer, then decides the best course of action: revoking parole, placing the offender in a work or treatment program, or putting him on position-monitoring (using the ankle bracelet), which is one of the harsher sanctions in New Jersey.
Photo: Rennett Stowe