Jurors for Justice

Real ProblemsThe Tipping Point: Over-Incarceration Hurts CommunitiesAn Expensive Failure: The Cost of Our Broken Justice SystemUnequal Justice: Racial Disparities in SentencingReal SolutionsModel Citizens: How Mentors Prevent CrimePower to the People: Jury Nullification as Passive ResistanceAnother Chance: Alternative Sentencing

The Tipping Point: How Over-Incarceration Hurts Communities


The Tipping Point

Most criminologists agree that incarceration, as a crime-fighting tactic, lowers the crime rate to a point; however, there is a tipping point at which there are so many people in prison that crime actually increases. Due to America's "lock-'em-up" mentality and overreliance on incarceration, America, tragically, has gone beyond this tipping point.

Does Increasing Prison Sentences Prevent Violent Crime?

Unfortunately, the answer to this question can't be summed up with a simple "yes" or "no." The relationship between crime and prison is complicated. Increasing the prison population (by locking up more people or imposing longer sentences) does not necessarily decrease violent crime. For example, during the 1990s, some states reduced their prison population while other states increased their prison population; nonetheless, crime rates decreased across the country.

However, it is clear to statisticians and criminologists that increasing the prison population is not a sure-fire way to prevent violent crime. Since 2000, the national prison population has increased by almost 12%, but the violent crime ratehas remained relatively unchanged, decreasing by only 1%. Meanwhile, in New York State, where the prison population has decreased by 14% since 2000, the violent crime rate has decreased by 20%.

Most scholars agree that prison time doesn't exactly prevent crime and doesn't exactly cause crime. Instead, its public safety benefit depends on our ability to calibrate how much to use it. Tragically, the way that America uses prison is nowdramatically off-course.

How Overincarceration Hurts Communities and Increases Violent Crime

America has reached the tipping point; its overutility of prison now disrupts families, increases unemployment, and decreases respect for the law.

The disruption of families is one of the most significant collateral results of overincarceration. Legal anthropologist Donald Braman argues that inmates' family members, mainly their children and and spouses, "do time on the outside." Without a husband or father, the inmate's family is indirectly punished by the legal system. Since kids who grow up with a parent locked up are sevent times more likely to get locked up themseves, such collateral punishment is likely to cause a further increase in the violent crime rate.

Secondly, too much incarceration creates too many unemployable young men. Former inmates are marked forever with a criminal record and an extended gap in their resume. Potential employers are naturally wary, and the employment opportunities for ex-convicts are severely limited. When inmates have trouble acquiring employment, they have trouble successfully reentering society and are much more likely to return to crime.

Additionally, mass incarceration changes the way that citizens think about crime. When such a high percentage of a particular population (poor minorities) are incarcerated, going to jail becomes a right of passage that they expect to undertake. Since the criminal law protects us only when going to prison is a stigma that folks try to avoid, this image of prison dramatically weakens the effectiveness of incarceration as a crime-fighting tool. When citizens think getting locked up is normal, the deterrent effect of the criminal law disappears; people lose respect for the law, for the police, and ultimately for each other.

Finally, incarcerated non-violent offenders learn violent behavior from their prisonmates; when they are released, struggling with the challenges of readjusting to life outside of prison, many of those formerly non-violent individuals resort to violent crime. An article published in the American Psychologist highlighted Department of Corrections statistics showing that 25% of repeat offenders who were initially charged with a non-violent crime subsequently commited a violent offense. The authors commented that "prison serves to transmit violent habits and values rather than to reduce them."

Each of these collateral sanctions is a result of passing the "tipping point" of overincarceration; each result produces an increase in crime or a decrease in overall quality of life; and each can be prevented by altering our nation's policy perspective in regards to incarceration.