SENTENCES MAKE CROOKS THINK TWICE

Violent and property crimes have dropped by more than half in the past decade,
to their lowest levels since records started being compiled 30 years ago,
according to the annual survey of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Not surprisingly, the drop comes about a decade after the country, alarmed by
the sharp increase in serious crimes --- from 2.4 per 100 persons in 1964 to
5.7 in 1989 --- started imposing mandatory prison sentences, such as Georgia's
"seven deadly sins" law, passed in 1995, that required criminals convicted of
seven violent felonies to serve a minimum of 10 years in prison without parole.

Georgia has 5,837 inmates serving "seven deadly sins" sentences and 329 inmates
serving life without parole.

The 1995 law was followed in 1998 by a state Board of Pardons and Paroles
policy change requiring inmates convicted of another 20 crimes (in addition to
the seven) to serve 90 percent of their sentences.

Those changes came about because crime had become a low-risk enterprise. A
study done in the early 1990s by professor Morgan Reynolds of Texas A&M
University for the National Center for Policy Analysis found that the "expected
punishment" for serious crime had dropped from 24 days in prison in 1950 to 5.5
by 1974 and rose slightly to 8.5 by 1988.

The analysis was based on five probabilities: that the crime would be reported,
that somebody would actually be arrested, that the person arrested would be
prosecuted, that the accused would be convicted and that he would go to prison.

Excluding crimes committed by addicts and the mentally ill, I think criminals
make reasonably rational marketplace choices. If their chances of being killed
or punished are low, the offense becomes more attractive. Politicians and law
enforcement officials can talk tough, but criminals know which crimes are
pursued and when sentences are real. Until the 1990s, the criminal justice
system had lost all credibility. Sentences were phony and people inclined to
criminal activity knew it. The absolute best thing that happened in the decade
was that sentences gained credibility.

Reynolds looked specifically at burglary. After running his five probabilities,
he concluded that the average burglar who was sent to prison served 13 months
behind bars -- but because 99 percent of all burglaries never resulted in
prison, the average penalty for each crime amounted to five days.

Another study by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms focused on
career criminals. The study found that each career criminal committed an
average of 160 crimes per year.

A 1987 study by the National Institute of Justice estimated the average
societal cost per crime to be just over $2,300. Multiplying the crimes of
chronic offenders, the study projected the cost of not incarcerating them at
more than $350,000 per year.

Unquestionably, keeping burglars, car thieves and violent criminals behind bars
longer makes streets and property safer. A 1999 Justice Department study found
that of 614,000 inmates released from state and federal prisons every year, 62
percent will be rearrested within three years and 41 percent will return to
prison.

That doesn't mean that you lock them up and throw away the key, but it does
mean we should proceed cautiously in changing the tough-on-crime course set in
the 1990s.

The mistakes we've made are to swing wildly back and forth from punishment to
rehabilitation, and to change policies when the bills for get-tough policies
come due.

Sentences must be real, the costs notwithstanding.

We pay by the day. Or we pay by the crime.