Relying less on prisons can make society safer
When a crime occurs it's too late. Someone has been harmed and a victim's sense of safety has been shattered. Historically, our nation's preferred “solution” to this kind of harm has been to search for and punish the perpetrator, usually by imposing a prison sentence. In recent years, however, there has been increasing recognition that there are more effective ways to protect public safety. These new approaches both hold the perpetrators of crime accountable — which no one denies is important — while also addressing the root causes of crime to ensure that there are fewer victims in the future.
With the number of persons incarcerated in our state prisons having fallen from a high of 165,000 people in 2006 to 95,000 people behind bars today, California has a generational opportunity to reconfigure our system of justice to focus on prevention rather than punishment. That's why Gov. Gavin Newsom's move to close multiple California prisons is a smart and necessary evolution in the state's approach to public safety.
California's embrace of mass incarceration began in the 1970s. Fueled by a “punishment first” mentality during a “tough on crime” era, California abandoned any serious commitment to rehabilitation. Driven by fear, politics and media sensationalism, we invested heavily in police and prisons, constructing a vast network of massive penal institutions that were incredibly costly to operate. Since 1980, we have built 22 new prisons and just one new UC campus. This year alone California is poised to spend $18 billion on prisons, at the expense of other strategies that can make us safer.
Our expensive prison system did little more than warehouse ever-increasing numbers of lawbreakers. Prisons made little effort to address the needs of incarcerated persons, failing to provide them with the skills, education and treatment needed to improve their chances of leading law-abiding lives once released.
Prisons do little to address the root causes of criminal behavior. And in recent decades, an extensive body of research has been amassed showing that preventative approaches which address the underlying causes of crime are far more effective at reducing crime and recidivism than prisons in the long run. Prevention-oriented crime control targets the key underlying factors that lead people into criminal behavior in the first place, such as poverty, lack of education, substance abuse, exposure to child maltreatment and untreated mental health problems.
By closing some of the California prisons that are no longer needed, Gov. Newsom is freeing up billions of dollars that can be reinvested into addressing the well-known root causes of crime, and by doing so can help ensure that there will be far fewer crime victims in California's future. For example, these savings can be invested in education programs that provide young people with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. This can include programming that teaches life skills, job training and mentoring. Incredibly, one of the most effective and least costly ways to prevent crime is summer and after-school programming for youth.
Resources saved from prison closures can be used to address the behavioral health crisis on our streets and the closely related homelessness crisis. The funds recouped from prison closures can help build housing, expand mental health services and provide substance use disorder treatment to help break the cycle for those going through the revolving door from our street to our jails and prisons, and back to our streets.
Savings can also fund resources devoted to rehabilitation and expand programs that support individuals after they are released from prison to reduce reoffending.
Crime victims are largely in favor of this a more effective prevention-centered approach to crime control. More than eight out of 10 victims support using a portion of the state prison budget to fund mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment and trauma recovery services. Seventy-five percent favor reducing sentence lengths for people in prison rated low risk to public safety that do not have life sentences.
Today, 57% of all persons sentenced to prison from Los Angeles County are rated low risk to reoffend by the California Department of Corrections. Are we safer continuing to lock up non-dangerous people, or are our taxpayer dollars better spent on behavioral health treatment, housing the homeless, reentry services, and supporting victims of crime?
By boldly moving to close many of our state's no longer needed prisons, Governor Newsom has created an opportunity for California to begin its long-awaited journey towards a system of justice rooted in prevention rather than punishment. We will all be safer as a result.
Cristine DeBerry is the founder and executive director of the Prosecutors Alliance of California. Craig Haney is a distinguished professor of sychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and author of “Criminality in Context: Psychological Foundations of Criminal Justice Reform.”