Can We Become “Smart on Crime”?

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

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• Marc Mauer, Race to Incarcerate, rev. and updated (New York: The New Press, 2006).

Everything one would want to know about the “war on drugs” and the “tough on crime” movement is presented in Marc Mauer’s Race to Incarcerate. The book is decidedly against our criminal justice policies of the last 35 years, but it is based on a very careful and balanced examination of the data and research.

The United States has an incarceration rate about seven times higher than other Western developed nations. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world—and it is still rising. In 2004, the U.S. incarceration rate was eight times France’s, seven and a half times Germany’s and six and a quarter times Canada’s. Mauer argues that this does not have to be the case.

Prior to the 1970s, the U.S. incarceration rate was on par with other Western developed nations. But since the initiation of the “war on drugs” and the “tough on crime” mentality we have had a strong and steady increase in America’s incarceration rate.

Some might argue that it is incarceration that prevents the U.S. from having a higher crime rate. Over the 1990s, there was a very strong decline in crime rates across the country. Today, crime rates are still at a relatively low level in spite of a slight rise in some areas. Is the high U.S. incarceration rate keeping the crime rate low?

Since the early 1970s, the incarceration rate has only gone up yet the crime rate has both increased and decreased. From 1970 to 1980, the crime rate and the incarceration rate both increased. From 1984 to 1991, again, both rates increased. The U.S. has seen long periods where the crime rate increased and the incarceration rate increased. If incarceration had a powerful negative effect on the crime rate, the crime rate would decrease with large increases in the incarceration rate. This has not been the case.

Mauer’s argument is not that there should be no incarceration, but rather that we should be, as others have called it, “smart on crime” rather than “tough on crime.” “Tough on crime” policies have been largely counterproductive. High incarceration rates and other “tough on crime” policies may actually increase the crime rate in the long term.

A large part of the increase in the number of prisoners has been of low-level, non-violent drug offenders. For individuals with substance abuse problems, drug-treatment is far better than incarceration. Mauer states:

A 1994 study conducted by the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs . . . found that every dollar invested in substance abuse treatment generated seven dollars in savings, primarily through reductions in crime and reduced hospitalizations. (175)

Other studies have concurred that increasing drug treatment is a far “smarter” strategy for dealing with drug addicts that incarceration. For nonviolent property crime offenses, community service and other types of alternatives to incarceration are “smarter” responses.

One way that our criminal justice polices may increase crime is that in our “tough on crime” mentality, we actually make it difficult for ex-offenders to desist from criminal behavior. Rather than providing opportunities for ex-offenders to become employed, we make it more difficult for them and thus increase the likelihood that they return to crime. “In 1994, Congress prohibited inmates from receiving Pell grants for higher-education courses” (200). The more educated ex-offenders are the more likely they will be able to find a job. Many states also prohibit ex-offenders from obtaining a license for many jobs such as becoming a barber or doing asbestos removal (199). Jobs like becoming a barber or an asbestos remover are among the few jobs that the average ex-offender actually has a decent chance of obtaining. Preventing ex-offenders from becoming socially-integrated, employed individuals amounts to begging them to return to criminal behavior. These policies are certifiably “stupid on crime.”

Our “stupid on crime” mentality leads us to over-fund pro-incarceration policies and under-fund crime-reduction policies. For example, early in the Clinton Administration, Congress decided against a $60 billion economic program to create jobs in Los Angeles after the Los Angeles riots. More jobs would have likely reduced Los Angeles crime rates. That program, however, was deemed too expensive. A year later,

Congress . . . determined that they could in fact allocate $30 billion to these communities. This time, though, the appropriation took the form of a massive crime bill loaded with sixty new death penalty offenses, $8 billion in prison construction, “three strikes” sentencing, and other provisions certain to escalate the prison population (185).

Congress decided that the country could not afford job creation and crime prevention for poor black communities, but it could afford to increase criminal justice expenditures to put more blacks in prison.

Our criminal justice policies are, in part, the product of anti-black attitudes. This might seem like an extreme and unfair characterization until one reads Mauer’s review of racial attitudes and support for “tough on crime” policies. Researchers have found that if crime is perceived as being disproportionately committed by blacks, whites are more supportive of harsher punishment. Anti-black prejudice is also correlated with greater support for the death penalty. Another study finds that the size of a state’s black population better predicts the incarceration rate than the actual violent crime rate. Anti-black bias is a significant factor in our criminal justice policies.

As some have argued, reforming the criminal justice system is the number one black civil rights struggle of this generation. The so-called civil rights leadership, however, did not get the memo.


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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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America’s Real Criminal Justice “Three Strikes”

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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A multiple murder by two ex-cons in Cheshire, Connecticut and an execution-style shooting of four black youngsters (one survived) in Newark, New Jersey have recently received a great deal of media attention. These very disturbing murders have led some to make renewed calls for the U.S. to again become even “tougher on crime.”

The murder of anyone is a tragedy. There is the horrible loss of life, and there is that painful, empty hole left in the lives of the friends and family of the deceased. We all can empathize with the feelings of despair of the loved ones left behind. Many of us also fear that we could easily have been the victim or that we might be the next victim.

The news media effectively stokes these emotions. The more unusual and the more gruesome a murder, the more likely it will be covered by the news media. If it is bad and shocking enough, the story will be repeated over and over again in the news. We receive the worst possible picture of crime from the daily news.

Although news reports do not encourage clear and big-picture thinking about criminal justice policies, it is important that we do just that. The policies which best satisfies us emotionally may not be the best policies for the long-term health of the society.

In Connecticut, for example, people are calling for new “tougher on crime” three-strikes policies, but these policies would not have prevented the Cheshire murders. These policies will certainly increase the incarceration rate, increase the cost of prisons, but it is doubtful that they will actually reduce the crime rate.

“Tough on crime” is a misnomer. America’s criminal justice policies are tough on criminals but actually easy on crime. This is a crucial distinction that we often fail to make. For example, earlier this year (May 11, 2007) the New York Times reported on a study published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine that indicated that “the practice of transferring children into adult courts was counterproductive, actually creating more crime than it cured.” We are being tough on criminals when we treat juveniles as adults, but we are also creating conditions for there to be more crime—not less. This is not the only “tough on crime” policy that actually helps to create more crime in the future.

The inaccuracy of the “tough on crime” phrase, from a politician’s perspective, is brilliant. It is relatively easy for politicians to increase the number of people in prison. It is far more difficult for them to reduce the crime rate. The “tough on crime” thinking of the past three decades has greatly reduced the pressure on politicians to find ways of actually reducing crime.

While “tough on crime” is good from the perspective of getting a politician elected, it is bad from all others. “Tough on crime” increases the numbers of people in prison, but it does not necessarily reduce the amount of crime. For many years of America’s thirty-plus-year “tough on crime” wave, we have seen both the incarceration rate increase and the crime rate increase. Only policies that have been proven to reduce the crime rate would actually make us safer.

It is expensive to care for a large and growing prison population as we have been doing for more than three decades. Reducing the crime rate would not only save tax dollars, it would likely generate tax dollars because more people would be productive citizens. The high cost of incarceration can also contribute to increasing crime by draining resources away from schools and other programs that could lower the crime rate.

The public needs to demand that politicians reduce the crime rate. Politicians regularly sidestep the issue by talking about policies that will only increase the incarceration rate. We need to force them to focus on the crime rate. We also have to remember that this is not easy to do. But we should not accept an increased incarceration rate as a substitute.

The sad fact is that everyday people kill people. This has been going on for all of human history. Nonetheless, some societies suffer from less violent crime than others. Americans need to be aware that the countries with the lowest violent crime rates are not the ones that are “toughest on criminals.” In fact, among western industrialized nations, the U.S. has (1) the most severe criminal penalties, (2) the most violent crime, and (3) the highest incarceration rate. This is the real “three strikes” of American criminal justice policy. The only way we will change this sorry state of affairs is by ending our “tough on criminals” mentality and by becoming “smart on crime.”

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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Recommended Reading: Anti-Black Sentiments and America's Criminal Justice System

Glenn C. Loury, "Why Are So Many Americans in Prison?," Boston Review.

Black Immigrants in Elite Colleges

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”
--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________

• Douglas S. Massey, Margarita Mooney, Kimberly C. Torres and Camille Z. Charles, “Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States,” American Journal of Education, February 2007, 243-271.

Upon reading my article about the increase in the number and share of blacks receiving college degrees someone responded that I must be talking about black immigrants, not native blacks. It is true that black immigrants are over-represented among blacks attending elite colleges. However, over-represented does not mean that they are a majority. And, furthermore, elite colleges are only a minority of all colleges. The statistics I presented in the “The Truth about Black Students” are for all black students in all colleges, not just black immigrants in elite colleges.

Massey et al. found that in 1999, first- and second-generation immigrants made up 13 percent of black 18-19 year olds, but they represented 27 percent of blacks in elite colleges. Immigrants are found among blacks in elite colleges at twice their rate in the general population, so they are overrepresented. But they are not yet the majority of blacks in elite colleges. The researchers found that more than 70 percent of blacks in selective colleges are “native” blacks.

While the elite college enrollment average for black immigrants is 27 percent of black students, there is variation by the selectivity of the school. Generally, the more elite the college is the higher the share of black immigrants is among the black students. The Massey et al. analysis found that the share is 41 percent for Ivy League institutions but 23 percent for selective public universities.

Massey et al. examined selective colleges. These institutions are elite because most college students do not attend them. My statistics were for the entire nation, not just for elite college attendees. I do not know what share black immigrants make up of all blacks earning degrees. Black immigrant over-representation declines the less elite the school among elite schools. If this relationship were to hold for non-elite schools then nationally immigrants would make up considerably less than 27 percent of black college graduates. Only when someone conducts the analysis on a national sample would we have a good estimate.

Why are black immigrants over-represented at elite colleges? Massey et al. do not provide any clear answers. The socioeconomic and academic profile of native and immigrant blacks in elite colleges are very similar. Once in school, both groups perform equally well or equally poorly. This means that both groups under-perform relative to whites.

There are two hypotheses that can be derived from the Massey et al. analysis about why black immigrants are over-represented. Black immigrants may simply be over-represented among the black students qualified for elite colleges. They may make up approximately 27 percent of qualified blacks and therefore make up 27 percent of blacks in elite colleges. Black immigrants are more likely to be middle class than black natives. Middle-class students tend to have higher achievement than poorer students. So, this might explain why black immigrants are over-represented among the qualified students.

One difference between black natives and immigrants is that black immigrants are more likely to have attended private high schools. Elite colleges probably do have some bias in favor of private high schools in their recruiting and admissions practices. This bias would lead to an over-representation of black immigrants. It is possible for both the qualifications and private school factors to be at play simultaneously.

Researchers need to explore these explanations for the over-representation of black immigrants in elite colleges. If a private-school bias is at work, elite schools should be aware of this and work to correct their recruiting and admission polices.

Rather than have this issue be another one to foment tension between black “natives” and black immigrants, both groups should recognize that they under-perform equally relative to whites. It would make most sense for everyone to work together to improve all black student achievement in elite schools.

Elite schools are important, but we should not ignore the majority of black college students in non-elite schools. I purposely wanted to highlight the growth of blacks attaining associate’s degrees because these students are mostly likely to represent poor and working-class blacks struggling to get ahead. Find out more about average blacks students in “The Truth about Black Students.”

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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