Imprisonment and Crime Can Both be Reduced Criminology

Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both be Reduced? (Criminology & Public Policy, 2011) STEVEN N. DURLAUF UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN DANIEL S. NAGIN CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Imprisonment and Crime: Can Both Be Reduced? Yes Requires a shift from severity-based to certainty- based sanction policies Shift in resources from corrections to policing

Crime Prevention Effects of Imprisonment: Homicide Rates in the USA from 1974 to 2009 12 10 8 Rate per 100, 000 6 4 2 0 1974 1979 1984 1989 1994 1999 2004 2009

Potential Preventive Effects of Imprisonment Incapacitation Specific Deterrence—Effect of the experience of imprisonment on reoffending Nagin, Cullen, and Jonson (2009) General Deterrence—Effect of the threat of punishment on offending Apel and Nagin (forthcoming) Durlauf and Nagin (2011)

Crime Control and the Imprisonment Rate Crime control by incapacitation necessarily increases imprisonment Crime control with deterrence can reduce both crime and imprisonment—if the crime is deterred there is no need for punishment

Two Key Theoretical Constructs in Deterrence Severity of punishment—sentence length Probability of imprisonment given crime “certainty of punishment” Apprehension threat posed by police key component of certainty

Deterrence Depends Upon the Interplay of Certainty and Severity Certainty (P) Severity (S) P & S Interact Deterrence

Key Findings from Recent Literature Reviews The marginal deterrent effect of increasing already lengthy prison sentences is modest at best. With the right deployment the police have a substantial marginal deterrent effect. Little evidence of a specific deterrent

Policing and Crime Control Police are at the frontline of creating certainty How police are used not their numbers is key Not all methods of deploying the police are equally effective in preventing crime Hot spots & problem oriented policing v. “standard model” tactics

Apprehension Risk and Crime Control Capturing and incapacitating criminals Police presence deterring crime in the first place Using police to reduce the attractiveness of criminal opportunities to prevent crime from happening Costs of actually having to imprison someone is averted Result: less crime and imprisonment

Guidelines for Formulating Policy Lengthy prison sentences cannot be justified on deterrence grounds Shifting resources from imprisonment to policing offers the realistic possibility of reducing both crime and imprisonment In an era of reduced crime control budgets policing should get a larger share of a smaller budget

Mandatory Minimum Statutes (MMS) No nationwide data on numbers sentenced under MMS 17% of California’s prison population is 50 or older, up from 6 percent in 1998 20% of the US prison population is 45 or older, up from 10% in 1991 Policy Recommendation: MMS be amended to apply only to the demonstrably dangerous or repealed outright

Implementation of Guidelines: Some Important Questions Policing Identification of high crime impact policing strategies and paroleprobation strategies Careful monitoring of negative externalities Sentencing Evidence of severity effects for shorter sentence—European studies should be a priority Better studies of stigma and stereotyping effects of imprisonment Targeted identification of high rate offenders (e. g. , Netherlands Habitual Offender Law) Better State Level Data on Sentencing Create a mechanism for shifting resources from state- level corrections to local-level policing

Research and Evaluation Infrastructure The National Institutes of Health (NIH) model for CJ Research Medical treatments are based on scientific evidence not on dogma and unverified assumptions Model of continuous improvement of treatment Silver bullet medical treatments are the exception not the rule Medical treatment are disease specific NIJ is the natural candidate for taking on this mantle But Office or Research and Evaluation’s FY 08 budget was less than $20 mil— 2/3 smaller than in FY 2002 Adoption of recommendations of Strengthening Scientific Research and Development at the National Institute of Justice is an important first step

Thank you dn 03@andrew. cmu. edu