Crime, Punishment, and the Underclass
Crime rate remains at 2003 level, study stays (Mark Sherman, AP)
The nation's crime rate was unchanged last year, holding at the lowest levels since the government began surveying crime victims in 1973, the Justice Department reported yesterday.
Since 1993, violent crime as measured by victim surveys has fallen by 57 percent and property crime by 50 percent. That has included a 9 percent drop in violent crime from 2001-2002 to 2003-2004.
The hallmark of the underclass (Charles Murray, OpinionJournal)
A rough operational measure of criminality is the percentage of the population under correctional supervision. This is less sensitive to changes in correctional fashion than imprisonment rates, since people convicted of a crime get some sort of correctional supervision regardless of the political climate. When Ronald Reagan took office, 0.9% of the population was under correctional supervision. That figure has continued to rise. When crime began to fall in 1992, it stood at 1.9%. In 2003 it was 2.4%. Crime has dropped, but criminality has continued to rise.
This doesn't matter to the middle and upper classes, because we figured out how to deal with it. Partly we created enclaves where criminals have a harder time getting at us, and instead must be content with preying on their own neighbors. But mainly we locked 'em up, a radical change from the 1960s and 1970s. Consider this statistic: The ratio of prisoners to crimes that prevailed when Ronald Reagan took office, applied to the number of crimes reported in 2003, corresponds to a prison population of 490,000. The actual prison population in 2003 was 2,086,000, a difference of 1.6 million. If you doubt that criminality has increased, imagine the crime rate tomorrow if today we released 1.6 million people from our jails and prisons.
But... but....
Certain friends on the left are so adamant with their "tuff on crime" ridicule and their "overincarceration crisis" rhetoric.... Why can't we just let 'em all out?
Seriously, the Murray piece is a very interesting look at the underclass. Even if you don't appreciate my tweaking certain folks, you ought to give it a read.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 10/03/05 23:24 | American Politics | Technorati
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Kevin,
The latter article offers only one narrative or one possible set of reasons for why the crime rate has dropped. If incarceration really began in earnest in the 1960s, why did it take nigh on 30 years for the crime rate to begin dropping precipitously?
I'm not suggesting that incarceration isn't an important part of a penal philosophy, and we would likely differ on just HOW important it is, but you're not suggesting that incarceration is the primary causal factor responsible for a dropping crime rate, are you?
Posted by TP @ 10:13 on 10/04/05
First question: Lead time?
Second question: No. That's an article-length if not dissertation-length argument. I'm just calling attention to Murray's perspective (which I try to do every time he writes something) in light of an earlier article I meant to post and forgot about. To the extent I'm suggesting anything with the linkage, it's that incarceration isn't as trivial as some folks suggest.
Posted by Kevin @ 10:27 on 10/04/05
This article raises some interesting points. If the basis of the measure of criminality is the percentage of the population under correctional supervision, then the definition of criminal has to include non-violent drug offenders, and I'm not sure I can completely go along with that.
The explosion in the prison population in the last 15-20 years is largely due to non-violent drug offenders. I can't cite specific figures, but I'm pretty sure that roughly half of the prison population falls into that category. This directly falls into what Murray called "changes in correctional fashion" in the article. It was during the "Just Say No" years that throwing drug users in jail and tossing out the key became popular.
I'm not saying these folks don't contribute to crime; they certainly contribute their share of property crime, but I fall into the camp that believes this to be as much of a medical problem as a criminal justice problem. Addiction is a disease.
Treatment and rehab work, and they're a lot cheaper than prisons. No, they don't work for everyone, but the recidivist rate for parolees and probationers is pretty abysmal, and we keep doing that. Why not put more money into the much cheaper alternative? I'm not saying let'em all out, I'm saying screen'em and put'em in treatment.
As for those other folks, well, they can stay where they are, and their sentences should probably be longer.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 13:49 on 10/04/05
APC, how many of those "non-violent drug offenders" were actually only non-violent drug offenders? Some, I'm sure, but a lot of them are guilty of all sorts of crimes, but it's the drugs that they get caught on. Sometimes the drugs are the cause of the other crimes (in which case legalization might help), but often the drugs seem to be an indicator of general anti-social behavior. Not that all drug users are bad people, but that if you follow the drugs, you will find a lot of rather unsavory characters (with an excuse to put them away).
I believe it quite possible that rounding up non-violent drug offenders is greatly contributing to the lowered crime rate. I say this even as I question the overall wisdom of the War on Drugs. The idea of laws meant to put people guilty of something else away don't sit well with me, but using one law to go after another criminal is not a novel concept (tax evasion, for instance).
Posted by R. Alex @ 17:54 on 10/04/05
RA, I think we're agreeing more than you think here. Like I mentioned, property crime like petty theft and burglary are undoubtedly byproducts of drug use, and getting those folks off the streets has certainly aided in the reduction of the crime rate. My point is that the recidivism rate could be reduced with a serious treatment effort instead of just releasing them without trying to address the root cause of the problem.
As for the War on Drugs, I'd like to put in a little tidbit from the Harper's Index from the October issue of Harper's magazine:
Total US spending on poppy eradication and other antidrug efforts in Afghanistan last year: $780,000,000
Amount it would have cost to purchase the country's entire 2004 poppy crop: $600,000,000
Posted by another precinct chair @ 08:33 on 10/05/05
Not that all drug users are bad people, but that if you follow the drugs, you will find a lot of rather unsavory characters (with an excuse to put them away).
That's not exactly the way Murray put it, but that's what he's getting at with his argument about the underclass. The worst of that underclass -- those "unsavory characters" -- are not immoral, but amoral. They literally seem to exist outside of the normal societal notions of morality. What to do about them?
Even if we assume that the problems of the worst of the underclass are chiefly drug related (I think that's a bad assumption, and it's definitely not Murray's assumption, just to be clear), I think we come back around to the problem of just not having a good solution. "Treatment" is sometimes floated as the solution to the "overincarceration crisis" (with the premise that it is driven by drugs) but is it really THE solution?
Are we THAT confident in our ability to "treat" chronic drug use that has resulted in violent and less violent crime? (I'm asking that as an open-ended question for anybody who wants to take a crack at it)
Posted by Kevin @ 08:43 on 10/05/05
APC,
I've no problem with treatment in specific cases, but I think it a bit presumptuous to believe that the drug users really want treatment. Many may vaguely want it the same way most smokers would ideally like to quit, and they may prefer not being addicted versus being addicted and not having product available, but as long as product is available they will still want it. Treatment is only as good as those undergoing it are serious. When they're serious, I say "go for it," but I am concerned about the inevitability of it being used as an early release program for those that are not serious.
For what it's worth, I don't think that we're approaching this from opposite directions. Our diagnoses of the nature of the problem seem to differ, though.
On the Afghani pop stat, do you think that production would remain constant if the US made its policy buying off the drugs? May be if they are "stretched to the max" so to speak, but I suspect it quite possible that the void created by paying off the current farmers would simply create more farmers, which we would then have to spend more money either combatting or buying off.
Posted by R. Alex @ 10:16 on 10/05/05
Y'all both raise good points. I don't mean to set forth treatment as a panacea, just as another tool in the toolbox; I just think it's woefully underused at this point.
Treatment's definitely not for everybody. It requires certain circumstances. They vary from person to person, but usually involve hitting some kind of "bottom," which is different for each person, of course. A lot of people have to take more than one crack at it, and it definitely shouldn't be offered to everybody, hence the screening requirement.
I just put in the Afghani stat to point out that the War on Drugs seems to me to be ill-conceived and poorly carried out, and has been that way since its inception and under every administration. I didn't mean to suggest that we should actually buy the crop. Plus, I just love the Harper's Index. Every month, it's full of little absurdities like that from all different fields. If you don't read the Index, you really ought to check it out.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 11:43 on 10/05/05
On a little reflection, treatment should be offered to almost everyone, but with very strict oversight. Frequent urinalysis, required meetings (AA/NA, etc.) with severe consequences for relapses. For that matter, it can be done from jail, or a halfway house situation. Here in Travis County, a program was done in the county jail facility out in the country. It could be on work release or residential. A relapse meant a return to jail with an increase in the sentence.
Posted by another precinct chair @ 15:59 on 10/05/05
Intersting article. The vast majority of those under correctional supervision for drug crimes are marijuana based offenses, for which treatment, etc. will do very little because there is really not much to treat. Legalize marijuana and you will radically alter the numbers that Murray cites. Also, crime statistics tend to reflect the number of 16-30 year old males in the population, hence the "peak" of crime when the baby boomers were in their 20's. The breakdown of the family is a more serious problem, but one that it is difficult for gov't to address. The breakdown is happening at all income levels, but money can buy some of the socialization that a father usually provides. My mind is open to all ideas and solutions on this issue. This really is the key to so much, the bedrock of a nation.
Posted by el_longhorn @ 13:16 on 10/06/05
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