WHY CAN'T WE CONNECT THE DOTS ON CRIME?

WASHINGTON

THE COMBINATION of miscommunication, ignored warnings, and general hubris
- -- all in a culture that discouraged internal criticism -- virtually
guaranteed disaster. No, this is not a follow-up on NASA and the Columbia
space shuttle tragedy. It is a commentary on criminal justice in America.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, after months of painstaking
investigation of the Feb. 1 space calamity, has issued a scathing report of
those in charge. A similarly independent body ought to take a look at our
criminal justice system.

It would find, as the NASA investigators found, not so much a lack of
information but rather an almost willful failure to connect the dots.

For example, the Department of Justice recently issued its annual report on
crime that contained this wonderful news: Violent crimes and crimes against
property declined last year to the lowest levels since the department
started compiling such records in 1973.

That's from the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics' August report,
"Criminal Victimization 2002." This is from bureau's July report titled
"Prisoners in 2002": America's prison and jail population increased by 3.7
percent from 2001 to 2002 -- three times the rate of increase recorded a
year earlier.

An independent board of inquiry might wonder at the logic of increasing
levels of incarceration at a time of significant decreases in crime.

Perhaps someone would raise the possibility that the increased
incarceration rates produced the decreases in crime.

Well, that someone ought to talk to Vincent Schiraldi, president of the
Washington-based Justice Policy Institute. It was Schiraldi who called my
attention to the inconsistency between the crime statistics and the policy.

The Justice Policy Institute looked at the FBI Uniform Crime Report's
homicide data and found this interesting tidbit: The regions of the country
with the slower growth in prison population from 2001 to 2002 (the
Northeast and the Midwest) had declines in homicides, while those regions
with the greater increases in incarceration (the West and the South) had
increases in homicides. Schiraldi's point is not that incarceration causes
violence; it is that there is no credible link between crime rates and
incarceration rates.

OK, you say. That's incompetence, but disaster?

Try this: According to another bureau report released last month --
"Prevalence of Imprisonment in the US Populations, 1974-2001" -- one out of
every 37 adults living in the United States at the end of 2001 had been to
prison at some time during his or her life. That's about 2.7 percent. But
for adult black males, the been-incarcerated rate was 16.6 percent
(compared to 7.7 percent for Hispanic males and 2.6 percent for white males).

And it gets worse. By the Justice Department's projections, 32 percent of
black males born in 2001 will spend some time in prison, unless something
is done to change the trend.

And what might change it? Well, education might. As Schiraldi notes, there
is a very strong correlation between educational failure and incarceration
- -- especially among African American males.

But according to a report the Justice Policy Institute released on
Thursday, by the time they reach their 30s, nearly twice as many black men
will have been to prison as will have earned bachelor's degrees. Slightly
more than half of black male dropouts will spend time in jail in their
lifetime.

So why are we cutting funds for education -- both K-12 and higher ed?

It is, says Schiraldi, our failure to connect the dots. "Schools are facing
the largest budget shortfalls since World War II," he says. "And the
decreases in state spending for schools is occurring at a time when drops
in crime would allow the states to sensibly re-examine their prison policies.

"Look, I'm not saying people in jail are all innocent. I grew up in a
blue-collar family in Brooklyn. Members of my family got in trouble from
time to time -- but none ever went to prison. If a third of my (white)
nephews were looking at prison, we wouldn't have this policy. The president
would declare a state of emergency, bring the best minds together to talk
about education and treatment. Mandatory sentencing wouldn't even be on the
table."

In other words, like the Columbia investigators, we'd connect the dots.

William Raspberry is a syndicated columnist.