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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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.
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