Figures from the DoJ show that the vast majority (over 80%)of prisoners in the state prison systems are there on there 4th arrest, their 5th arrest, their 6th arrest etc…
I’m not sure how we are enforcing the “three strikes law,” but apparently, people who have been arrested 4 times, 5 times, 6 times, etc., are being allowed out on the streets to commit additional crimes.
“In both 2009 and 2014, persons admitted to prison had a median of nine prior arrests in their criminal histories.”
Which makes me think “Wow! if we simply threw away the key after the ninth arrest, the crime rate would drop roughly in half.” (Not quite that simple, but that’s a god statistical starting point.)
How does that happen?
Did someone once switch from “I was gonna stop at three crimes” to “now I’m gonna commit 8 or 10 or 12 crimes” because some of the prisons are run by the private sector?
Is driving up prison populations the problem or is people committing crimes the problem?
The one fact we know for sure is that someone isn’t committing violent street crimes while they are in prison.
Those are both good points.
As to the recency of the data, it surprised me too, but part of the study (released Friday, April 14, 2023) read as follows:
BJS randomly sampled about 90,900 persons admitted to state prison to represent the approximately 369,200 persons admitted to state prison in the 34 states in the study in 2014. Data on admissions in 2014 were the most recent available at the time the study was initiated. These 34 states accounted for 73% of all persons admitted to state prison that year nationwide.
2014 is a long time ago, But, since the data changed so little from 2009 to 2014, we have little/no reason to believe it suddenly began change post 2014
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As to drug offenses the study had this to say (Page 4 same source):
I am not gonna give a free pass to criminals who repeatedly break into people’s houses or cars etc., but it is noteworthy that (only) ~34% of incarcerees surveyed had ever been convicted of a violent crime or a weapons charge.
Maybe as a society we should try something different than just locking people up. There is not enough focus on rehabilitation and that includes having a system than continues to punish a person after they have served their debt to society.
We always assume the worst of a person who has been incarcerated, in many situations they are relegated to the lowest paying jobs, continuous fees for parole, etc so life is stacked against them even after serving their sentence.
I have been mulling over the concept of a credit-like rating for conviction history.
A person could run up unmanageable debt, and default on loans and payments, and file bankruptcy and all the rest. But he could turn his financial behaviors around and over time repair his credit history. Until your credit is repaired, lenders are right to use your credit history to think the worst of you as a credit risk. But yes, you can repair that over time if you want.
In the same way a guy with a criminal history should be able to repair his social-risk standing. Maybe yes, immediately after release from prison and/or after his parole period is up, people are justified to use caution in dealing with the guy. But over time a clean record ought to be ample standing not to require a guy to list prior convictions on a job report, for example.
Obviously there would need to be careful implementation and definitions around this concept, but somehow a clean history after a conviction (and paid penalty) should allow a guy to escape that history.
In another thread I posted that this society needs a deep discussion about what it expects from the penal system. Is it a system of vindication and penalty? Then put the guy to work (yes, maybe chain gangs, though there are lots of other ways to do that.) Is it a system to take him out of society? If that’s all it is, then just execute the guy and get it over with. Is it a system for rehabilitation? Then put a working rehab system in place for those who can demonstrate that they can be rehabbed.
As it stands now, I submit that we as a society really don’t know what we want from the penal system, so we just toss them in there and hope the problem evaporates somehow.
