If you don't understand why, consider this hypothetical, with a small state prison,
when
a tough new sentencing law goes into effect:
In each of these years, the number of new inmates drops because of falling crime
rates;
10% die or complete their terms--yet the total number of inmates continues to rise.
Using data on prison populations and releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics
we
have developed estimates for the amount of time that lifers will serve in prison.18 (See
Appendix for a description of this methodology.) Our analysis indicates that from 1991
to 1997 there was a 37% increase in time to be served by lifers prior to release.
Persons admitted in 1991 could expect to serve an average of 21.2 years, a figure which
rose to 29 years by 1997 (most recent figures available). Thus, in contrast to popular
imagery which sometimes portrays lifers as serving short prison terms, the average life
sentence today results in nearly three decades of incarceration.
05.29a Clayton Cramer on Increasing Prison Populations;
"Life" Sentences of 29 Years in Prison; African-American Crimes Rates. A recent
government report on prison statistics has attracted some comment, and I did a bit of
websurfing on it. The table above comes from
"State Rates of
Incarceration by Race," The Sentencing Project, 2004, and I'll return to it later.
Clayton Cramer has useful things to say about why a one-time change to stricter
sentencing will cause the prison population to keep rising even if crime rates fall as a
result:
The Sentencing Project is an organization hostile to long prison terms. It has various
reports on prison statistics. One of them is
THE MEANING OF "LIFE": LONG
PRISON SENTENCES IN CONTEXT BY MARC MAUER, RYAN S. KING, AND MALCOLM C. YOUNG MAY 2004
, which on page 12 says
1991: 500 inmates in prison
1992: 100 new inmates get sent up the river; 50 existing inmates are released
or die;
550 total inmates
1993: 95 new inmates get locked up; 55 existing inmates die or leave; 590 total
1994: 93 new inmates; 59 die or leave; 624 total
1995: 90 new inmates; 62 die or leave; 652 total
1996: 85 new inmates; 65 die or leave; 672 total
Of course, this seems to me to actually confirm that "life" sentences are not for
life-- they are for 29 years. If you're 20 when you commit your murder, you get out at
age 49. Moreover, page 9 says that one of every four lifers is serving a sentence of
"life without
parole". Presumably the rest are getting out of prison before they die. In four
states-- Illinois, Iowa, Maine, and South Dakota-- and in the federal
system, a life sentence always means life without parole, although the governor or
President can always grant clemency. But in the other states, "life" just is a word to
fool the public into thinking the sentence is longer than it is.
(What they say in the Appendix is that the 29-year figure is the population of
life
prisoners currently divided by the flow of releases that year. In a steady state, this
will be the average sentence.
This is suspect. For one thing, they don't say whether "releases" includes deaths or
not. For another, this estimate not only assumes that present policies are maintained in
the future-- a desirable assumption to make, since some assumption has to be made about
future policy-- but, I think (I might be wrong) that the present policy is the same as
the one followed in the past, which we know is false. If, for example, present releases
are high because the existing stock was admitted under a policy in which "life" meant
easy parole, then 29-years is an underestimate of what a currently sentenced prisoner
might expect.)
The high imprisonment rates of African-Americans are another subject covered
extensively by the Sentencing Project. The Sentencing Project insinuates that this is
because of racism, but without convincing evidence (they cite self-reports of
criminality from surveys, and arrest rates as compared to imprisonment rates, neither of
which indicates racism). The table at the top of this weblog entry from
"State Rates of
Incarceration by Race," The Sentencing Project, 2004 shows the ratio of black to
white imprisonment rates per 100,000 in the particular population. The District of
Columbia is the highest, with a ratio of 28.9. We hardly think of the D.C. government as
being anti-black. Then comes New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, Connecticut, Wisconsin, and
Pennsylvania, all above 10. The bottom of the list has Hawaii (1.3), Idaho (2.8 ),
Alaska, Mississippi, and Georgia (4.0-4.1). Are those the least racist states? The
first three, maybe, but not Mississippi and Georgia. I wonder what is going on. It
certainly is interesting that the rates vary from state to state, and might shed some
light on why black crime rates are so much higher on average. Note too, from
The Crisis of the Young African
American Male and the Criminal Justice System, by Marc Mauer, that
49% of prison inmates nationally are African American, compared to their 13% share of
the overall population. In 1954, at the time of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision, African
Americans constituted about 30% of persons admitted to state and federal prisons.
Nearly one in three (32%) black males in the age group 20-29 is under some form of
criminal justice supervision on any given day -- either in prison or jail, or on
probation or parole.
The Crisis of the Young African
American Male and the Criminal Justice System, by Marc Mauer also has this appalling
statistic:
...
I wonder what percentage of 30-year-old black males has been in prison or jail or on
probation or parole at some time during their lives?
... [in full at 04.05.29a.htm]
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