The story that Pfaff carefully describes is different from the standard narrative: It’s not drug offenses that are driving mass incarceration, but violent ones. It’s not the federal government that’s behind mass incarceration, but a whole host of prison systems down to the local and state level. It’s not solely police and lawmakers leading to more incarceration and lengthy prison sentences, but prosecutors who are by and large out of the political spotlight. [...]
It’s an uncomfortable read, not least because it suggests America will have to make some very tough choices if it wants to seriously cut the incarceration rate: Are we really okay with locking up fewer violent offenders? Does the country really have the ability to sustain a focus on local and state politics to ensure that the real sources of mass incarceration come down? If America does stumble upon a new crime wave or drug crisis, will all the work that’s already been done be pulled back as politicians resurrect “tough on crime” rhetoric (like President Donald Trump has)? [...]
One caveat to this part of Pfaff’s argument is the churn of the prison population. While the majority of people in state prison at a single point in time are in for violent crimes, many more people are admitted to prison for drug and property offenses than for violent ones. But the lower-level offenders end up serving much shorter sentences, so they don’t add as much to the total prison population at any given point in time as violent offenders do. This was demonstrated in a 2015 analysis by Jonathan Rothwell for Brookings, where he charted the “stock” and “flow” of prisons and how they differ based on offense: [...]
Courts and juries do, in theory, act as checks on prosecutors. But in practice, they don’t: More than 90 percent of criminal convictions are resolved through a plea agreement, so by and large prosecutors and defendants — not judges and juries — have almost all the say in the great majority of cases that result in incarceration or some other punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment