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Maandag, 2 Juni, 2008

Door N.C. Aizenman | Meer dan één in 100 volwassenen in de Verenigde Staten is in gevangenis of gevangenis, een hoogte van alle tijden die staatsoverheden bijna $50 miljard per jaar en de federale overheid $5 miljard meer kost, volgens een gisteren vrijgegeven rapport.

Met meer dan 2.3 miljoen mensen achter staven, zijn de Verenigde Staten in zowel het aantal als percentage ingezetenen het incarcerates, weggaand de wereldleider ver-meer-dichtbevolkt China verre tweede, volgens een studie door de onafhankelijke Het Centrum van de bank op de Staten.

De groei in gevangenisbevolking is grotendeels wegens taaiere staat en het federale veroordelen die sinds de medio-jaren '80 wordt opgelegd. De minderheden zijn in het bijzonder beïnvloed: Één in negen zwarte mensenleeftijden 20 tot 34 is achter staven. Voor zwarte vrouwenleeftijden 35 tot 39, is het cijfer één in 100, vergelijkbaar geweest met één in 355 voor witte vrouwen in de zelfde leeftijdsgroep.

Het rapport compileerde en analyseerde gegevens uit verscheidene bronnen, met inbegrip van de federale Dienst van de Statistieken van de Rechtvaardigheid en Dienst van Gevangenissen en elk Ministerie van de staat van correcties. Het omvatte geen individuen die voor de schendingen van de noncriminalimmigratie worden vastgehouden.

Hoewel de studies vinden over het algemeen dat het gevangennemen van meer overtreders misdaad vermindert, kan het effect minder invloedrijk zijn dan veranderingen in het werkloosheidscijfer, lonen, de verhouding van politieambtenaren aan ingezetenen en het aandeel jonge mensen in de bevolking, rapport mede-auteur Adam Gelb zei.

Bovendien wanneer het over het verhinderen komt herhaal inbreuken door nonviolent misdadigers - wie omhoog over de helft van de incarcerated bevolking maken - minder-dure straffen zoals communautaire supervisie, elektronische controle en het verplichte drug adviseren zou kunnen zo veel bewijzen of efficiënter dan gevangenis.

Bijvoorbeeld, Florida, wat bijna zijn gevangenisbevolking in de loop van de afgelopen 15 jaar heeft verdubbeld, een kleinere daling in misdaad dan heeft ervaren New York, wat, na een korte verhoging, zijn aantal medebewoners tot onder het niveau van 1993 heeft verminderd.

„Er is geen vraag die zettend hevige en chronische overtreders achter staven het misdaadtarief vermindert en straf die welverdiend is,“ bovengenoemde Gelb verstrekt, die aangezien de directeur van het Project van de Prestaties van de Veiligheid van het Centrum Openbare staten bij het ontwikkelen van alternatieven aan opsluiting adviseert. “On the other hand, there are large numbers of people behind bars who could be supervised in the community safely and effectively at a much lower cost — while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims and paying child support.”

Sociologist James Q. Wilson, who in the 1980s helped develop the “broken windows” theory that smaller crimes must be punished to deter more serious ones, agreed that sentences for some drug crimes were too long. However, Wilson disagreed that the rise in the U.S. prison population should be considered a cause for alarm: “The fact that we have a large prison population by itself is not a central problem because it has contributed to the extraordinary increase in public safety we have had in this country.”

About 91 percent of incarcerated adults are under state or local jurisdiction. And the report also documents the tradeoffs state governments have faced as they devote larger shares of their budgets to house them. For instance, over the past two decades, state spending on corrections (adjusted for inflation) increased 127 percent; spending on higher education rose 21 percent.

Five states — Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut and Delaware — now spend as much as or more on corrections as on higher education. Locally, Maryland is near the top, spending 74 cents on corrections for every dollar it spends on higher education. Virginia spends 60 cents on the dollar.

Despite reaching its latest milestone, the nation’s incarcerated population has been growing more slowly since 2000 than it did during the 1990s, when harsher sentencing laws began to take effect. These included a 1986 federal law (since revised) mandating prison terms for crack cocaine offenses that were up to eight times as long as for those involving powder cocaine. In the 1990s, many states adopted “three-strikes-you’re-out” laws and curtailed the powers of parole boards.

Many state systems also send offenders back to prison for technical violations of their parole or probation, such as failing a drug test or missing an appointment with a supervisory officer. A 2005 study of California’s system, for example, found that more than two-thirds of parolees were being returned to prison within three years of release, 40 percent for technical infractions.

“We’re just stuck in this carousel that people get off of, then get right back on again,” said Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, who as New York City police commissioner in the 1990s oversaw a significant reduction in crime.

Because of these policy shifts, the nationwide prison population swelled by about 80 percent from 1990 to 2000, increasing by as much as 86,000 a year. By contrast, from 2007 to 2008, that population increased by 25,000, a 2 percent rise.

The U.S. Supreme Court has recently issued decisions giving judges more leeway under mandatory sentencing laws, and a number of states — including Texas, which has the country’s second-highest incarceration rate — are seeking to reduce their prison population by adopting alternative punishments.

Last year, Maryland officials began developing a new risk-assessment system to ensure that low-level offenders are not kept in jail longer than necessary, said Shannon Avery, executive director of a policy planning division of the state’s Department of Public Safety.

“That’s what you have to do when you don’t have enormous amounts of tax dollars available for building prisons,” she said.

Among the early innovators that states can look to is Virginia, which overhauled its system for sentencing nonviolent offenders in the mid-1990s. Although the state’s incarceration rate remains relatively high, Virginia has managed to slow the growth of its prison population substantially and reduce the share of its budget spent on corrections while still reducing its crime rate.

State judges use a point system to weigh factors believed to predict a lawbreaker’s likelihood of becoming a repeat offender or otherwise pose a threat to public safety. Those deemed low risk are given alternative sentences. As a result, the share of Virginia prison beds occupied by nonviolent convicts has dropped, from 40 percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 2007.

“The idea is to make a distinction between the people we’re afraid of and the ones we’re just ticked off at,” said Rick Kern, director of the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. “Not that you shouldn’t punish them. But if it’s going to cost $27,500 a year to keep them locked up, then maybe we should be smarter about how we do it.”

See More:Law USA News 

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