Friday, July 5, 2013

Alternatives to incarceration are cutting prison numbers, costs and crime | Greg Berman

8:37 PM | Posted by Free Game Zone | | Edit Post

approaches promoted by states like New York gaining political recognition than just locking people up is not the solution

last month brought good news for those concerned about the rate of incarceration in the United States after decades of expansion, it seems that the number of Americans in prison or jail began to decline. A closer look at the figures reveals that much of this reduction was driven by a handful of states - places like California, Michigan, New Jersey and New York - that have reduced their lists of prison by tens of thousands of prisoners during the last two years.

The history of New York is particularly worth exploring because, in its prison rolls have declined, so, too, a crime. According to a recent report (pdf) of the Vera Institute of Justice, the JFA Institute and the Brennan Center for Justice, the prison population in New York fell by 17% between 2000 and 2009 - about 71,000 to 59,000 people. Equally important, the count in the prison system in New York has dropped 40%, from nearly 22,000 in 1991 to 13,200 in 2009. In fact, it seems that New York City is the engine of the prison and the prison state decline. And, as has been well documented, crime is down in the city. There was a record low 414 murders in 2012 (whereas in 1990 there were over 2400)

What is happening here? How New York has been able to reduce crime and imprisonment at the same time? The short answer is that nobody knows for sure. As Michael Jacobson of the Vera Institute of Justice said, the precise causes "will be discussed in the social sciences until the sun reaches the earth."

The key to this success theories tend to focus on the size and strategic vision of the NYPD, for understandable reasons. Least said something else that distinguishes New York many other countries: a dynamic network of alternative programs to incarceration.
  • nonprofit organizations such as the Centre for alternative sentencing and employment services and employment center offers worked with the justice system to provide community-based alternatives to traditional sanctions, including drug treatment and vocational training for more than a generation. In recent years, joined dozens of drug courts, mental health courts and community courts were created by the judiciary of the State of New York under the direction of Judge Jonathan Lippman linking offenders to social services and the restoration of the community, rather than incarceration.
For many years, these programs operate under the radar, operating in a hostile political climate all that could be caricatured as "soft on crime." There are indications, however, that this situation could change.

In New York, the political authorities have come to recognize that alternatives to incarceration should be embraced, not scorned. In fact, drug courts to expand infrastructure in New York was a central element of the reform of the Rockefeller drug laws in 2009. This bipartisan effort to reform improves the discretion of judges in New York to send the infringement court offenders in drugs and other forms of treatment, rather than long prison sentences.


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