What Do Inmates Do After They’re Released?
That’s one of the most important questions any sensible person would ask in considering whether criminals are sentenced too harshly, or (relatedly) whether their existing sentences should be shortened by mass clemency or other expedients such as First Step Act re-sentencing. After all, we should be guided by “facts” and “data,” not emotion, right? Emotion is, after all, the province of revenge-driven right-wing kooks, while reliance on criminal justice “data” is the specialty of the more tempered among us.
Well OK then, let’s look at the data. What do they tell us?
In brief, they tell us that, in overwhelming numbers, after they’re released, criminals get back in the crime business. Most of them return fast, and over time, close to all of them return to harming us, our property, and our right to live in peace and safety.
Here’s the grim news, furnished by none other than Merrick Garland’s Justice Department, and featured (h/t and thanks) by leading “reform” advocate, Prof. Doug Berman. Doug’s entry relates:
Today BJS released another new “special report” on recidivism, this one titled “Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 24 States in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008–2018).” Here is the introduction and “Highlights” from the first page of the report [emphasis added by WGO]:
Among persons released from state prisons in 2008 across 24 states, 82% were arrested at least once during the 10 years following release. The annual arrest percentage declined over time, with 43% of prisoners arrested at least once in Year 1 of their release, [another] 29% arrested [by] Year 5, and 22% arrested [by] Year 10.
Got that? A little over seven in ten released criminals are at it again within five years of re-entry, and over four in ten are back to crime within a year. (The report doesn’t tell us how many return to crime within 24 hours, but you better believe it’s not zero).
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) used prisoner records from the National Corrections Reporting Program and criminal history data to analyze the post-release offending patterns of former prisoners both within and outside of the state where they were imprisoned. This report presents findings from BJS’s first study of prisoner recidivism over a 10-year period. The study randomly sampled about 73,600 released prisoners to represent the approximately 409,300 state prisoners released across 24 states in 2008. These states provided prisoners’ records and the FBI or state identification numbers that are needed to obtain criminal history data on the released prisoners.
These 24 states were responsible for 69% of all persons released from state prisons that year nationwide.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- About 66% of prisoners released across 24 states in 2008 were arrested within 3 years, and 82% were arrested within 10 years.
- The annual arrest percentage among prisoners released in 2008 declined from 43% in Year 1 to 22% in Year 10.
- About 61% of prisoners released in 2008 returned to prison within 10 years for a parole or probation violation or a new sentence.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FEED
Sounds like state prisons really needs to be reformed, since circa 2008 they were doing a pretty awful job rehabilitating those who were sent there. Don’t you think, Bill, this ugly data supports the claim that prisons need reforming (which was, of course, a chief goal of the First Step Act at the federal level).
A few things if I could:
— I might be tempted to say this is a response from “Big Government” Doug Berman, the man who thinks it’s the government’s job to change the way misguided souls behave. And it’s true that one (but not the main) purpose of incarceration is rehabilitation if possible. But (a) that is not the main purpose of punishment (the main purposes being just desert and incapacitation), and (b) the entity most clearly responsible for producing change, and most clearly in the best position to do so, is (ready now?) the inmate himself!
Why is it always someone else’s fault?
And for that matter, even if it were a limited government’s job to change the hearts and minds of its citizens, how much power does it have, really, to do so after these folks have reached their early to late twenties (which is around the time of first incarceration on felony convictions)? My experience is that nearly everyone’s basic attitudes towards life are established by then.
Yes, there are some exceptions. Some people can change after that age, and a lesser set of them will do so as a result of government programs. But you can’t build policy on exceptions.
— But I digress. Indeed, I follow you in your digression. The main lesson from the DOJ statistics is that the “reform” narrative, the one we hear over and over and over again — that slimmed down incarceration will bring back into society law-abiding, productive, community-minded citizens — is pure bunk. What it brings back into society are people almost all of whom pick up where they left off. Some (most) of these criminals do it sooner and some do it (slightly) later, but the huge majority go back to crime.
Or to put it more briefly: The central and politically essential narrative of criminal justice reform — that we’ll be “just as safe” with less incarceration — is just flat out false. This is shown, not just by these depressing recidivism figures, but by even more telling data. As many entries you have (commendably) put up on your blog attest, we have indeed had less incarceration over the last several years, but we are ANYTHING but just as safe. From 2015 on, violent crime has exploded, as have drug overdose deaths, now at a level never before seen in our history.
This is not “just as safe.” It’s the opposite. Time to admit it. And of course the disproportionate share of victims of both hard drugs and, particularly, murder, are black people. So if black lives actually did matter to criminal justice reformers, they would return to the Bush-Clinton-Bush measures that contributed to a massive reduction of crime and crime victimization.
But it will never happen, for one simple reason: Returning to policies that actually DO make us safer would require ACTUALLY paying attention to data and — even worse! — confessing that the “reform” agenda is a product, not of “paying attention to science,” but of lockstep devotion to ideology.
Bill, your reply whistles past a key worry for many reform advocates — namely that imprisoning the wrong people may make them MORE likely to commit future crimes, i.e., that prison itself is criminogenic. Because I am not a “big government” guy, I do not think it is “government’s job to change the way misguided souls. behave.” Rather, I am just eager for government not making its citizens worse and others worse off as a result. These recidivism data showing, eg, some drug possession offenders sent to prison going on to commit violent offenses, certainly contribute to my concern that prison may make some people worse and society worse off for its investment in caging people.
Meanwhile, the general reentry success to date of tens of thousands of “low-risk” persons released early from federal prison by Attorney General Barr in 2020 serves as on-going data that, done right, reductions in the prison population can advance public safety (and public health) while also saving money. Interesting that you are so eager to amplify data showing the failures of state prisons circa 2008 in terms of recidivism, but you have not said boo about the successes of significant 2020 early federal prisoner releases on this front. And somehow you think the BJS data undermines the case for sentencing and prison reforms? Notably, all the prisoners released in 2008 studied by BJS were sentenced in a pre-reform era (the “Bush-Clinton-Bush” period) AND half of them had 10 or more prior arrests before whatever got them put away to be released in 2008. If anything this BJS report highlights how dysfunctional and problematic our system was during the “Bush-Clinton-Bush” times, at least in terms of really advancing public safety (since much of the rest of the world saw similar crime declines without heavy investment in incarceration).
Meanwhile, that you reference increasing overdose deaths to suggest the old-school drug war “works” to reduce the harms of “hard drugs” proves that you are not really interested in looking at data to do anything other than confirm your pre-conceived commitments. I will readily note that some reform advocates (of all political stripes) are eager to find ways to “spin” inconvenient data. But opioid prosecutions off all sorts have increased in the last decade, and all we clearly have to show for this particular drug war surge seems to be ever-increasing overdose deaths.
As for clear data, since nearly all recent violent crime increases involve guns (while many other crimes have been mostly decreasing), does your claimed interest in following the data lead you to consider much, much tighter gun controls at the federal, state and local levels? Unfortunately, the GOP has largely blocked efforts to look at gun harms with complete data — perhaps because gun fans realize that “paying attention to science” likely would not support our “liberal” gun policies that contribute to our high rates of homicide and other violent crimes. I found it interesting that weapon offenders had some of the highest recidivism rates in the BJS study, and I continue to fear that the role of guns and gun flows around reasonable gun control measures is often getting insufficient attention in efforts to assess and reverse the recent uptick in (gun) crimes,
“Bill, your reply whistles past a key worry for many reform advocates — namely that imprisoning the wrong people may make them MORE likely to commit future crimes…”
The murky phrase “wrong people” is sure doing a lot of work there.
“… that prison itself is criminogenic.”
I’m surprised that you continue to hold this view, which is massively refuted by the uniform data of at least the last generation. If prison were criminogenic, then when we had lots more prison, e.g., from roughly 1990 to 2010, we’d have lots more crime. Instead, we had lots more prison and the biggest crime REDUCTION in the country’s history. And over the most recent five years, as the prison population fell off markedly (by about 400,000), we have had an upsurge in the most worrisome crime, namely violent crime, and particularly violent crime against black victims. In other words, the evidence is just overwhelming that, mostly through incapacitation, imprisonment reduces crime.
“Because I am not a “big government” guy, I do not think it is “government’s job to change the way misguided souls. behave.”
Well you sure had me fooled. The major thrust of your first comment was that the government needs to become more active and determined to “reform” prisons. (I happen to agree with that view, because some government spending is worth the candle while much, much more isn’t).
“These recidivism data showing, eg, some drug possession offenders sent to prison going on to commit violent offenses, certainly contribute to my concern that prison may make some people worse and society worse off for its investment in caging people.”
During the “tuff on crime” era I noted — the time when sentences got longer and prisons got fuller and police got more proactive — society was massively better off for the tens of thousands of people who were NOT murdered, robbed and raped, but who would have been had the shockingly high crime rates we were building toward over the soft-on-crime era of the Sixties and Seventies continued.
Why does the reform movement just blank on this tremendous benefit to our country — a benefit disproportionately going to minorities? Really, why? Ideological obsession with the idea the Police Are Bad?
P.S. The awful crime acceleration of the Sixties and Seventies did not continue for a reason that’s easy to see: We wised up (“we” including, I might add, Bill Clinton and then-Senator Joe Biden). Now we’re getting dumb again, and the results are showing up in the morgue. Legal academia should care about this.
“Meanwhile, the general reentry success to date of tens of thousands of “low-risk” persons released early from federal prison by Attorney General Barr in 2020 serves as on-going data that, done right, reductions in the prison population can advance public safety (and public health) while also saving money.”
I’m sure you know that it’s way to early to make any judgment about early releases done last year. The data aren’t in and won’t be for quite some time. But there are numerous anecdotal stories, some of them posted right here on C&C, about one hoodlum after the next who got a dumbed down sentence or a dumbed down prosecution, and thanked us for our “compassion” by going out the next week and yoking or raping or battering yet another victim. But the “reform” movement simply will not respond to such stories. Silence if golden, I guess.
********************************
Let me now skip down to your remarks on gun control (which you seem eager to apply to everyone EXCEPT previously convicted felons). Thus you say, “… does your claimed interest in following the data lead you to consider much, much tighter gun controls at the federal, state and local levels?”
It certainly will when I see even slight evidence that the gun fires itself. Until then, I will continue to regard guns as inanimate tools which can be used for good or ill. I do, however, enthusiastically support “criminal control,” that is, getting sober with the hoodlums who use guns in committing crime. The problem we’re having is not with a piece of metal. It’s with the piece of metal in the hands of those with no empathy for their victims and who think rules are for suckers. In other words, the problem is with the defense bar’s clientele.
Bill, since you misstate crime realities, I am not sure this discussion is worth continuing — e.g., crime rates peaked in 1991 (not in the “Sixties and Seventies”), and nearly all crime rates in the Obama years were considerably lower than in the entire “Bush-Clinton-Bush” era you seem to pine for. (Data here: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm). Even with discouraging pandemic increases in homicides and other crimes, most crime rates remain far lower now than in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era. A new CA report covers this: http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/ca_crime_rate_falls_to_record_low_in_2020.pdf.
In short, the crime data is quite clear: it was during “Bush-Clinton-Bush” era that we experienced “shockingly high crime rates” and many more tens of thousands of people were murdered, robbed and raped during those years than in any other period in US history. (You also have your prison numbers wrong, too, as we have gone from roughly 1.5 million to about 1.2 million prisoners from 2016 to 2021, though the magnitude of your factual error here is at least only 25%.)
You mangle what I said beyond recognition in order to paint, not merely an incorrect, but an inverted, picture. You do this by treating crime and criminal justice policies as static, when in fact they are very dynamic. A new generation inherits the entrenched messes of the old one (as Reagan and Bush inherited the bad policies and bad results of the Sixties and Seventies), and the generation after that (Obama/Trump/Biden) inherited the successes of its immediate predecessors until they began to squander them away, which is what they are doing now.
At absolutely no point — zero — did I say that, as you put it, “crime rates peaked…in the Sixties and Seventies.” Crime rates were galloping up in the Sixties and Seventies, you bet, in the soft-on-crime, let’s-trust-judges-with-everything era to which you seem to want to return. They continued this upward trend into the Eighties, but by then we had caught on, and by the mid- to late Eighties we had put in place the sober, bi-partisan policies than would begin to show their wisdom as the Nineties dawned.
“…and nearly all crime rates in the Obama years were considerably lower than in the entire ‘Bush-Clinton-Bush’ era.”
Ummm, that’s because it takes time for criminal justice policies to work (or to fail), as you certainly can’t help knowing. It took 30 years of the kind of soft thinking you want to bring back to get us to the awful point we were in 1991. But then — remarkably quickly, really — the sound policies adopted under Reagan-Meese-Bush began to take hold, and sure enough, in the early Nineties and for the next 20 years they were working, increasing incarceration of the guilty and saving the lives of the innocent. Thank God.
Because Clinton was a moderate rather than a nutjob “progressive,” he largely continued these policies, as of course did George W. Bush, resulting in continued large decreases in crime. The momentum was strong enough to last through 2014, which was the low point for crime. After that, as the “progressive” movement began to score significant victories and Obama didn’t have to worry about another election, soft-on-crime narratives re-appeared, along with — guess what — the results of soft-on-crime, which is what we started to see five or six years ago and are continuing to see now.
Also, I am correct on the prison population numbers. You say, contrariwise, that I “have [my] prison numbers wrong, too, as we have gone from roughly 1.5 million to about 1.2 million prisoners from 2016 to 2021, though the magnitude of your factual error here is at least only 25%.” You give no source for those figures, but I’ll give you the quotation and the source for mine. The quotation is, “As of 2016, the last year for which supervision data is available, 2.2 million people were incarcerated in United States jails and prisons.” My source for that is last summer’s HRC and ACLU finding, wonderfully reported in this highly useful criminal law blog entry, https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2020/07/big-new-aclu-and-hrw-report-details-how-probation-and-parole-feed-mass-incarceration-in-the-united-s.html. You reported the more recent and lower 1.8 million figure in your entry six months ago, here: https://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2021/03/highlighting-why-those-concerned-about-mass-incarceration-need-to-be-concerned-with-murder-spike.html. The difference between the 2.2 million prison population number and the 1.8 million number is 400,000, just as I said.
Finally, let’s not get distracted from the main point here. The DOJ report on recidivism shows that more than four-fifths of criminals return to crime after release. Fully half that number do it in the first year. What that means is that, if we have shorter sentences and yet more early releases, we’ll have more crime faster. No fancy dance with words can change this.
The criminal justice reform crowd told us that if we’d adopt their policies (largely retreads of Sixties policies in fancier language), we’d be just as safe. Starting toward the end of the Obama years, we did increasingly adopt their policies, and we are anything but just as safe. Their most important promise was point-blank false. And they don’t care, because it was never about keeping us safe to begin with. It was about their core belief that Amerika is a cruel, punitive, racist nation that deserves the “reckoning,” as they like to say, that it’s now getting. The bitter irony of this is that it’s black people who, by overwhelming numbers, are disproportionately the victims of the surge in violent crime the reform crowd has mightily, if unapologetically, helped to bring about.
Bill, I guess I thought you would be able to precisely distinguish PRISON numbers from PRISON + JAIL numbers. The total incarcerated numbers are different than what your referenced (“prison populations”). I am not surprised when some people conflate or confuse prison and jail data, but I expect a bit more accuracy in this forum. But this is a small matter — though one I hope you get right with your students.
More notable (and curious) is your new “momentum” theory of crime and punishment. Does this mean anything good that happened in this area in the Trump years should be credited to Obama and anything bad now should be blamed on Trump? And you strangely speak of “30 years of the kind of soft thinking,” but then I am confused if that includes the 1980s as well as the 60s and 70s in your fuzzy math. I would find it strange if you mean to include the Reagan-Bush years in your “soft thinking” vision. At the same time, it is hard to see the 50s and even 60s (an era of Boggs Act and lots of drug mandatory minimums) as a soft era. Further, if you actually looks at PRISON data, we see that modern mass incarceration got started in the 1970s: “Since the uptrend began in 1969, the number of prisoners held in the United States has increased by 61 percent, and the incarceration rate for sentenced prisoners has gone from 98 per 100,000 U.S. resident population to 140 per 100,000.” BJS, Prisoners in 1980: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p80.pdf. So the 1970s were a “soft” era even as we had a historic and unprecedented increase in our prison population?
The problem, Bill, is not just that your numbers are hinky and hazy. The problem is that only ideology and wishful thinking, not the reality of facts on the ground, support your inaccurate account of “what work.” You remind me a bit of the folks who think the 2020 election was stolen by fraud — I sense they also may be keen to blame the Sixties and Seventies (30 years?) — because you have to ignore the actual data and then concoct theories and embrace a certain ideology to figure out some counter-factual way to turn around the evidence that contradicts what you are eager to believe about how the world works.
Finally, California and Texas and New York and a few others states started adopting decarceral policies in the mid-2000s, and crime kept falling to record lows in 2014. Other than a few (important) crime categories impacted clearly by the pandemic (and a massive number of guns on our streets thanks to lax gun policies), crime remains at record lows in nearly all parts of the country. And, sadly, more people will die of Covid today in Florida and more people will die in car wrecks this month in Texas, more people will die of overdoes in Ohio this summer, than will be murdered in NYC in all of 2021. There is a lot we can and should being doing to make Americans safer, but having the government lock more people in cages for longer periods of time does not seem like a good investment of limited tax dollars (as well as seeming to be contrary to many of our founding values). But just as I have given up trying to convince some people that we should trust the 2020 election results, I know I should give up trying to convince you that we can do better than having the so-called “land of the free” continue to lead the world in caging its people.
Just one or two quick notes to start with. More I hope later.
— To my way of thinking, and I believe to the great majority’s way of thinking, a “prisoner” is not just a person held by the authorities in something denominated, sometimes quite arbitrarily, as a “prison” rather than a “jail.” A prisoner is a person held by the authorities in secure custody on criminal charges. The deprivation of liberty looks and feels the same to the incarcerated person whether it’s called a jail or a prison.
This point is made, and made in florid terms, by none other than your very own self, when you refer to those in custody as being “caged” or “in cages.” Are the bars wider apart, or softer, in what are called jails than in what are called prisons???
If a “prisoner” is, as I believe, a person being held in a secure facility against his will, then I’m absolutely sticking with my earlier statement that we have 400,000 fewer prisoners now than we had five years ago. Of course, I can’t really claim credit for having figured this out, since, as I’ve noted, I got my numbers from left-leaning sources whose work you put up on your blog. Hey, look, I believe you! You should be happy rather than wanting to dance on the head of the law professor pin.
And of course the major point — the one that tends to get lost (or is it hidden?) in the semantics dispute — is that over the five years in which we have had this 400,000 inmate reduction, violent crime has seen a major spike, in particular aggravated assaults and murder. If, given the appalling recidivism figures (which you also put up), you want to think that there’s no relationship between big reductions in incarceration and big increases in the worst kinds of crimes, I can’t stop you. But of course you can’t, and I would be willing to bet you don’t, believe any such thing. When you put more criminals back on the street, you get more street crime. This is what many, many, many years of date show.
— As to my “momentum” theory of the prevalence of crime (which I’m quite sure you share, however quietly for present purposes), this is what I actually said: “A new generation inherits the entrenched messes of the old one (as Reagan and Bush inherited the bad policies and bad results of the Sixties and Seventies), and the generation after that (Obama/Trump/Biden) inherited the successes of its immediate predecessors…”
Do you disagree with that — that is, with what I wrote rather than some different version of what I wrote?
— Last for now, I’m still searching for where I said — as you maintained I did — that crime “peaked” in the Sixties and Seventies. You used that supposed point as a mainstay of your statement that I just don’t know criminal justice realities. And you’d have a good point, if I ever said it.
Only I didn’t.
Crime was galloping up in those times, but it took time to get to its peak, which wasn’t until the early Nineties. This is what I’ve said for years, as I’m sure you know.
I definitely do not want to waste time on prisoner/incarcerated/caged semantics, so I will instead dicker with “over the five years in which we have had this 400,000 inmate reduction, violent crime has seen a major spike.” In fact, violent crime went down from 2016 to 2019 — which I guess you would credit to Prez Obama “momentum” — and then we had a pandemic that disrupted life in many ways, aggravated by a high-profile police murder that further enflamed fragile communities. And yet, despite a considerable spike in murders, other violent crimes did not go up much if at all (from near-record lows) in 2020 and other crimes continued downward. Again, would you say the fewer overall crime victims thank Prez Obama under your “momentum” theory?
As for that “momentum” theory, I think any and every leader can, if she wants, dramatically change both the tone and realities of criminal enforcement. Consider what Prez Nixon was able to do, with both his law and order rhetoric and his policies, that contributed to an historic increase in national prison populations throughout the 1970s. Again, I struggle to understand how you define the 70s as a “soft” period when we dramatically increased prison population over that decade — which perhaps contributed to driving up crime because, recidivism and crime data suggests certain incarceration efforts can increase crime rather than reduce it. Especially since prisons sentences for most lesser crimes tend to only be a few years, it makes perfect sense that all the extra folks sent to prison in the early 1970s contributed to increased crime in the late 1970s, and then all the extra prison sentences in the late 1970s contributed to increased crime in the 1980s, and so on and so on until we hit a natural peak 20+ years after Nixon turned our nation away from a commitment to rehabilitation in our correction systems..
Critically, I am not sure there is a very close/powerful link — good or bad — between total prison levels and total crime level because so many other factors contribute to crime. Crime spiked during alcohol prohibition even as prison populations increased as more guns and more fights over turf escalated the harm created by young men with little else to do. The same seemed to play out as the drug war ramped up in 70s and 80s, and similar forces may be afoot during the pandemic. However one sorts out the particulars, it remains obvious that only ideology, not crime facts and incarceration data over the last 50 years, provides the foundation for your distorted accounting of these realities.
Hi Bill –
I am a longtime fan of your comments although I disagree with the content of what you say – I think you have a certain edge and directness about the points you are trying to convey, and I admire that about you.
If you care to respond, I have a few questions –
1. Do you have a general distrust of what is commonly known as parole (or other mechanisms of shortening sentences) based on your federal prosecution experiences, or is it just based on what you believe as a human being? You seem to take an absolutist view that parole is bad based on your comments praising the abolition of parole in the SRA of 1984. You also seem to praise long and longer sentences for crimes – without considering the nuances of locking up more and more people for decades (the effect on individuals, state budgets, prison overcrowding, etc.)
2. You seem to have a view that individual rehabilitation is rare – is this also based on your federal prosecution experiences, or just based on BJS statistics?
3. I noticed that your comments tend to view as “excuses” the very real circumstances that might tend to induce individuals into committing crimes – age, brain development, poverty, abuse/trauma, and so on. Is this opposition to shorter sentences based on these factors a product of your upbringing, or just a conservative, “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” viewpoint you tend to have.
Thank you for reading/considering my questions.
Brett Miler
Thanks for reading the blog and for your questions. I’ll take a crack and try to be (relatively) short.
1. It’s less that I distrust parole than that I think a determinate sentencing system is better on the whole than an indeterminate one. Honesty in sentencing is important for the same reason honesty in every other part of the system is important: The public should be able to trust what gets determined in court. In the days of parole, the judge could say ten years, but the real sentence was six years or three years or two years, all calculated by a largely unknown and unaccountable bunch sitting behind the curtain.
There is, yes, a non-frivolous case to be made for second-look sentencing (of which parole is one sort), but one key sticking point for me is that it would operate in only one direction. That is neither satisfactory nor honest. If, as Doug says, prison is criminogenic, then a second look should be able to raise, and not just lower, a given sentence if indeed the inmate has become more dangerous rather than more socialized. But raised sentences will never be accepted by the reform crowd. On that ground alone, I would not accept second-look sentencing. If fluidity and flexibility are good qualities as things change over time, it can’t just be used in one direction.
Yes, there are costs to incarceration, as you say. But (1) since the taxpayers foot the bill, it’s up to them, not commentators, to decide if the costs are worth it, and (2) every single one of the costs can be obviated if the criminal would simply lead a normal life and decide, as the rest of us do, not to steal stuff, not to swindle people, and not to use violence to settle his gripes. It is mainly the criminal, and not society, that determines his own fate. The best way to reduce costs is not to create them to begin with.
2. My view that rehab is rare is based on a Heritage study of a few years ago; my experience that people mostly don’t change once they become adults; and the very depressing recidivism stats, which show overwhelmingly that if you commit a jailable crime once, you are overwhelmingly likely to do it again.
3. What induces people to commit crime is not that hard to see when you’ve been in the system as long as I have. The main thing is greed. Other important causes are a feeling of entitlement, lack of empathy with whomever you robbed or swindled or beat up; and a me-first, rules-are-for suckers attitude. The other items you note tend to be entries on defense counsel’s Rolodex. I might take them more seriously if I didn’t see them lied about so often, or if I didn’t know so many people who had one or more of the deficits you mention and yet managed to live lives of grace and generosity rather than shady dealing.
I know this is short answer to questions which could bear a much longer one, but wanted to get something down before time moves on.
Are you a lawyer, by the way? One way or the other, I hope you will comment again. Thanks.
Hi Bill –
I am not a lawyer – I am just a chronic reader who enjoys reading what you post. Thank you for your response to my questions – I guess people who are (or were formerly) prosecutors or law enforcement officers tend to have a tougher view on crime as a result of being exposed to it on a daily basis – it just seems to me that incarcerating people for longer and longer terms is producing costs that are now being viewed with some skepticism and are attempting to be alleviated by measures such as the First Step Act.
I also guess that prosecutors and other law enforcement officials tend to be more conservative – and tend to believe that people deserve what they get (“it is mainly the criminal, and not society, that determines his own fate) without considering other relevant social factors.
Thank you for reading.
Brett Miler
Hi Bill,
I’m not sure you will remember this, but we had a constructive exchange of opinions in comments on one of Doug’s posts several years ago about research linking preschool lead exposure and crime. In that exchange, I agreed that recidivism rates are horribly high, but there is good news in the recently released data for prisoners released in 2008 and 2012.
First, these studies show that more than 85% of released prisoners had recorded their first arrest before the age of 25. This is consistent with research showing that only 10% to 30% of criminals begin offending after adolescence, and other research showing that almost all criminals sentenced to adult prisons for the first time had prior sentences to probation, juvenile residential placement, and/or adult jails. This is good news because arrests of juveniles and youths ages 18-24 have continued to plummet through 2019, tracking earlier declines in elevated preschool blood lead levels. Juvenile arrest rate trends for violent crime, property crime, and weapons offenses over the last 30 years suggest that juvenile arrest rates could fall to near zero in the mid-2020s. There has also been a racial convergence in juvenile arrest rates, consistent with an earlier racial convergence in elevated preschool blood lead prevalence. The same pattern is evident in the prison incarceration rate for males ages 18-19 (on track to approach zero by 2025) and in arrest and incarceration rates for youths ages 20-25. Graphs and data links for these trends are at:
https://ricknevin.com/2020/11/a-black-male-baby-born-today-stands-a-near-zero-chance-of-going-to-prison/
The second piece of good news is that older adults have much lower recidivism rates. For those ages 24 or younger at release the 5-year arrest recidivism rate was 82.7% in the 2008 study and 81.0% in the 2012 study. For those ages 65 and older, the arrest recidivism rate was 38.4% in the 2008 study and 25.6% in the 2012 study. If we look at those returned to prison (indicative of more serious arrest offenses), the 5-year rate for ages 24 or younger at release was 62.7% in the 2008 study and 56.8% in the 2012 study. For those ages 65 and older, the return-to-prison recidivism rate was 32.1% in the 2008 study and 14.4% in the 2012 study. The lower recidivism rates for older adults is consistent with how ongoing brain (white matter) growth throughout life can mitigate the impact of preschool lead exposure on behavior.
So the lead-crime theory suggests that we will see declines to near-zero youth recidivism, because vanishingly few youths will be arrested and imprisoned in the first place, and we will continue to see much lower recidivism rates in elderly prisoners, similar to the 2012 rates for those 65 and older. If that trend continues, then I’m not sure that the “just desert” argument for keeping people in prison until they die there is very strong. Of course, there will be some number of elderly prisoners who should remain incapacitated because they are still dangerous. But if there is good reason to believe that most older prisoners are not still dangerous, then how many years of retribution are appropriate as the punishment for suffering from severe lead exposure in the womb and in the first years of life?
FYI: Other posts at ricknevin.com show that lead exposure trends have continued to show remarkable predictive power for robbery and burglary trends in Canada, Britain, and Australia, and murder rate trends in Latin America.
– Rick
Hi Rick —
I’m always happy for good news. The problem is that, while your predictions of near-vanishing crime might be correct, they’re still just predictions. Right now, with violent crime, and murder in particular, on a tear over the last five or six years, I’m not real optimistic. One way or the other, there are, as they say, no facts about the future. So only time will tell how we’ll be doing in the mid-2020’s.
That being the state of play, I can make only a few observations relevant to your contribution. First, arrest rates reflect not only the behavior of criminals but the policies under which police operate (or, sometimes, are forced to operate). When the now dozens of “progressive prosecutors” holding sway in large cities refuse to prosecute property crimes or “minor” drug or assault crimes, arrests for those things are going to dry up, because the police understandably see no point in beginning work on a prosecution that’s not going to happen. I suspect that phenomenon is behind a portion, perhaps a large portion, of the falloff in arrests. If that’s so, the drop in arrests does not reflect a drop in crime, but, to the contrary, only a politically-grounded drop in how we deal with crime. That would be anything but good news to crime victims.
Second, the fact that older adults have much lower recidivism rates. is, I would think, merely a reflection of the fact that older adults have much lower crime rates generally. Older adults run out of steam (as regrettably I can tell you from first-hand experience). So that cohort (people 65 and older) was never a big part of the problem to begin with, not with crime overall and even less with violent crime, which remains the specialty of youth.
Third, I don’t believe that I have made a “just desert” argument, or any other argument, for keeping people in prison until they die. A very, very few people should be in prison for the duration, but that is not the case with 99% of criminals. What I’ve argued is not that recidivism statistics show we should keep criminals locked up forever, but, much more modestly, that we should stand back from recent policy initiatives favoring lower sentences generally and early release from sentences currently being served. Opposing EARLY release is a different matter entirely from opposing any release ever.
I’m not a fan of large scale prison releases, due to recidivism risk, but “early release” could be appropriate for a lot of prisoners who somehow ended up with much longer prison sentences than other offenders received for similar crimes. To have a serious discussion about that requires that we go back to your statement that “we should be guided by “facts” and “data,” not emotion”, but some of what you are saying is just factually incorrect.
It is not true that “violent crime, and murder in particular,” have been “on a tear over the last five or six years”. The violent crime rate in 2019 was 366.7 (per 100K population). That was lower than every year since 1970, except for 2014 when the violent crime rate was 361.6. See: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-1
Preliminary FBI data show violent crime increased 3% in 2020, which would raise the violent crime rate to about 278. The violent crime rate was over 380 in 2016, 2017, and in every year from 1971 through 2012. The murder rate in 2018 and 2019 was 5.0. It was 5.4 in 2016, 5.3 in 2017, and 5.1 in 1960. The FBI reported a very large spike in murders in 2020, but that is just one year – and an extremely weird year at that. So it sounds like your grave alarm over crime is based on one year of data for murder (by far the least common crime), and you are projecting into the future based on that one year of murder rate data, but you dismiss crime and arrest trends across several decades with the statement that “there are, as they say, no facts about the future”.
It is also not true that “violent crime … remains the specialty of youth.” Juveniles and young adults have always accounted for a larger share of felony property crime arrests than their share of violent crime arrests. Their share of both violent and property crime arrests has fallen in a way that cannot be dismissed by speculation that the drop in arrests “does not reflect a drop in crime, but, to the contrary, only a politically-grounded drop in how we deal with crime.” Adults ages 25 and older accounted for just 19% of all burglary arrests in 1980 but they accounted for 67% of burglary arrests in 2019. Adults ages 25 and older accounted for 27% of robbery arrests in 1980 but they accounted for 48% of robbery arrests in 2019. Adults ages 25 and older accounted for 31% of larceny-theft arrests in 1980 but they accounted for 70% of larceny-theft arrests in 2019. Adults ages 25 and older accounted for 20% of motor vehicle theft arrests in 1980 but they accounted for 62% of vehicle theft arrests in 2019. Adults ages 25 and older accounted for 51% of aggravated assault arrests in 1980 but they accounted for 74% of aggravated assault arrests in 2019. Over the last three decades, both property and violent crime arrest rates have plummeted for young offenders, but arrest rates have increased for ages 50 and older. These are 40 year trends that are consistent with birth year trends in lead exposure. Are there really any criminal justice polices that can explain those trends in arrest rates by age?
https://ricknevin.com/2021/08/a-crime-surge-without-robbers-burglars-or-thieves/
As an aside, the lead-crime relationship also discredits the notion that our criminal justice system is just racist. The racial convergence in youth arrest rates over recent decades has resulted in a corresponding racial convergence in prison incarceration rates for young men, and both of those trends have tracked the earlier racial convergence in preschool lead exposure.
I’m glad to hear that you think that 99% of prisoners should not be incarcerated for the rest of their life, but a recent Sentencing Project report found that 1 in 7 prisoners are serving life sentences. Do you think that estimate is accurate?
– Rick
Rather than letting be the perfect (a full, point-by-point reply) be the enemy of good (a partial but much faster reply), I’m going to go with the latter. I’ll try to get to a few of your main points.
— You say, “Preliminary FBI data show violent crime increased 3% in 2020, which would raise the violent crime rate to about 278. The violent crime rate was over 380 in 2016, 2017, and in every year from 1971 through 2012. The murder rate in 2018 and 2019 was 5.0. It was 5.4 in 2016, 5.3 in 2017, and 5.1 in 1960. The FBI reported a very large spike in murders in 2020, but that is just one year – and an extremely weird year at that. So it sounds like your grave alarm over crime is based on one year of data for murder (by far the least common crime), and you are projecting into the future based on that one year of murder rate data, but you dismiss crime and arrest trends across several decades with the statement that “there are, as they say, no facts about the future”.
OK, then, let’s disregard 2020, which I agree is anomalous, and instead look at the five years before that (2019-2015, inclusive) and compare that with the preceding five years (2014-2010 inclusive). Over the former, more recent period, there were a total of 83,389 murders. Over the latter period, there were 72,802. That is an increase of 10,587 murders in the more recent period over the same amount of time just before it. That’s a spike in murders of slightly over 14%.
Now it’s arguably overstatement to say that that’s seeing murder “on a tear,” but it is no overstatement at all to say that a 14% hike over so short a time is a significant and very worrisome increase. And I do not agree with you that this can be dismissed, or quasi-dismissed, by saying that murder is “by far the least common crime.” What is more important is that it’s the crime of by far the greatest public concern, and the only crime from which victims cannot recover. But for however that may be, much the same trend, in comparing these recent five year periods, is also true of aggravated assault, a far more common sort of violent crime which likewise saw a significant increase. Source: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm
In light of these numbers, I’m sticking with my assertion that violent crime is markedly up in recent years (not counting the anomalous 2020) compared with the same time period immediately before, and that this period of increased violence coincided exactly with the ascendancy of “progressive” ideas about criminal justice, and their replacing the Bush-Clinton-Bush ideas that had held sway when violent crime was consistently decreasing over a generation, starting 30 years ago.
— I’m also sticking with my assertion that violent crime is the specialty of youth (by which I mean persons aged 18-29). I would just invite you or anyone who cares to to examine the number of violent crimes undertaken by that cohort and compare it to the number of violent crimes undertaken by the entire population over age 50.
— Finally for now, I’d be curious to know why you thought that I believe, or ever believed, that 99% of prisoners should “be incarcerated for the rest of their life.” Could you quote me saying that or anything like that? Or saying anything that would suggest it?
It’s true that recidivism is a huge problem, much bigger than Doug Berman and other “reformers” prefer to come to grips with. But avoiding recidivism, while important, is not the main guidepost in sentencing. Just desert for the crime of conviction is — a view I have held for my entire career. Just desert for the massive majority of crimes is not life imprisonment or anything close. Indeed I don’t know a single prosecutor or former prosecutor — and I know lots — who thinks that any but a tiny portion of crimes should be punished with a life sentence.
— “…a recent Sentencing Project report found that 1 in 7 prisoners are serving life sentences. Do you think that estimate is accurate?”
I think it’s tripe. I was in the system for my whole career (before teaching) and I can count on one hand the number of life sentences that were handed down. I would love to see some BJS stats on how many of our nation’s current 1.8 million prisoners are serving a life sentence. It won’t be 1 in 7 or anywhere close to 1 in 7.
Thanks for this follow up. I did not mean to imply that you ever said that 99% of prisoners should serve life. I said I was glad to hear you think 99% of prisoners will NOT serve life. You have stated your opposition to “early release”, and that could result in a lot of people dying in prison IF it was true that 1 in 7 prisoners are serving life. That’s why I asked what you thought about that estimate. I thought that estimate was dubious, but “tripe” is a much better word!