PRISON ECONOMICS

Crime and Punishment Think that stuffing prisons with lawbreakers makes
sense? You clearly haven't run the numbers.

America is an exceptional country. Compared with citizens of other nations,
Americans tend to be more religious and more entrepreneurial. We send more
people to university, have more millionaires, and enjoy more living space.
We are the world leaders in obesity and Nobel Prizes.

And we send people to prison at a rate that is almost unheard of. Right
now, almost two million Americans are either in prison (after conviction)
or jail (waiting for trial). Of every 100,000 Americans, 481 are in prison.
By comparison, the incarceration rate for Britain is 125 per 100,000, for
Canada 129, and for Japan 40. Only Russia, at 685, is quicker to lock 'em up.

America was not always so exceptional in this regard. For the 50 years
prior to 1975, the U.S. incarceration rate averaged about 110, right around
rich-world norms. But then, in the 1970s, the great prison buildup began.
This was a bipartisan movement. Democrats like Jerry Brown of California
and Ann Richards of Texas, for example, presided over prison population
booms, as did Republican governors like John Ashcroft of Missouri and
Michael Castle of Delaware. Bill Clinton worried in public about rising
prison populations but signed legislation, much of it Republican sponsored,
that kept the figures rising. No surprise, then, that spending on
incarceration has ballooned from less than $7 billion in 1980 to about $45
billion today.

Just because the U.S. is different doesn't mean it is wrong. But prison is
a serious matter in a way that, say, America's inexplicable affection for
tractor pulls is not. Accordingly, a number of people--social scientists,
prison professionals, even a few politicians--have begun to examine how and
why the U.S. sends people to prison. What they are finding, in broad terms,
is that there is a substantial minority of prisoners for whom incarceration
is inappropriate--and much too expensive.

Who deserves to be imprisoned is, of course, partly a question of moral
values. Prison keeps criminals off the streets; it punishes transgressors
and deters people from committing crimes. But it is also a question of
economic values. Everyone agrees that caging, say, John Wayne Gacy is worth
whatever it costs, but that locking up a granny caught shoplifting makes no
sense. The question to consider, then, is not "Does prison work?" but "When
does prison work?" Economics can help draw the line.

On one level, it makes sense that America imprisons more people than its
peers. The U.S. has historically been more violent than Europe, Japan, or
Canada--in particular, our homicide rate is well above world norms--and the
public wants violent people punished while freeing society from their
presence. "We are a culture that believes change is possible, that human
beings can be saved," says Francis Cullen of the University of Cincinnati,
who specializes in public attitudes toward crime and rehabilitation. "The
dividing line is violence. That's where people start becoming unwilling to
take risks."

Fundamentally, America's prison population grew because people got sick of
feeling scared and elected politicians who promised to deliver freedom from
that fear. Moreover, it could be argued that America had some catching up
to do: From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the violent-crime rate rose
sharply while the incarceration rate actually fell. Those trends probably
helped spawn the "tough on crime" mentality that has reigned since. In the
1980s lawmakers delivered mandatory minimums--statutory requirements for
harsh sentences for certain offenses, mostly gun- and drug-related. In the
1990s came "three-strikes" laws, designed to target repeat felons;
truth-in-sentencing legislation; and the abolition of parole in many states.

All those policies filled prisons, but not necessarily with the hardened
thugs people thought they were putting away. Though there are now 400,000
more violent offenders behind bars than there were in 1980, the proportion
of violent offenders in the prison population has actually fallen.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the percentage of violent
offenders in state prisons has dropped from almost 60% in 1980 to 48% at
the end of 1999; 21% were in prison in 1999 for property crimes, 21% for
drug crimes, and the rest for public-order offenses, such as immigration,
vice, or weapons violations. In the federal system, home to about 145,000
offenders, 58% are in for drug offenses (compared with 25% in 1980) and
only 12% for violent crimes--down from 17% in 1990. Of the six crimes that
account for the great majority of prisoners (murder, robbery, aggravated
assault, burglary, drugs, and sexual assault), drug offenders made up 45%
of the growth from 1980 to 1996, figures Allan Beck of the BJS. Every year
from 1990 through 1997, more people were sentenced to prison for drug
offenses than for violent crimes.

The Land of the Free?

Country, Incarceration Rate Per 100,000 Residents

Russia, 685

USA, 481

Singapore, 465

Canada, 129

Britain, 125

China, 115

Spain, 110

Australia, 95

Germany, 90

France, 90

Italy, 85

Japan, 40

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, World Prison Population List,
Statistics Canada