In New Jersey, voters and lawmakers gave judges more
power to release low-risk defendants who can’t afford bail, letting them go
home rather than sit in jail while they await trial. In Idaho, a new law
created 24-hour crisis centers to help keep people with mental health issues
from being locked up unnecessarily. Georgia and Louisiana established courts
for military veterans accused of crimes. Hawaii funded programs to help reunify
children with parents who are behind bars.
These are just a few of the hundreds of
criminal-justice reforms that states around the country have put in place over
the last two years, according to a new report by the Vera
Institute of Justice.
While Congress continues to dither over a package of
sentencing and corrections reforms for the federal prison system, the pace of
bipartisan, state-level innovation is an encouraging reminder that there are
ways to reduce the devastating impact of mass incarceration on families,
communities and public safety. Nationwide, more than nine in 10
inmatesare housed in state
facilities, so state reforms reach the vast majority of people in the justice
system.
The Vera report draws three lessons from state
experiences. First, long sentences do little, if anything, to deter crime.
Second, community supervision is often safer, cheaper and more effective than
prison for those convicted of low-level crimes. And third, the path from prison
back to full participation in society is too often blocked by state and federal
post-imprisonment penalties that make it extremely hard to establish a
law-abiding life.
For decades, it was politically impossible to tackle
these issues. But in 2014 and 2015, nearly every state adopted at least one
measure to reduce the prison population, steer people away from prison (for
example, through substance-abuse treatment programs) and smooth the way to
re-entry for those coming out.
Many states have also taken steps to reduce or
eliminate the use of long-term solitary confinement. In 2014, Colorado banned
long-term solitary for those with serious mental illnesses, unless they pose a
physical threat to themselves or others. In 2015, Nebraska banned the severest
form of solitary, which isolated an inmate completely from all contact with
other people.
Other states lowered sentences for drug and property
crimes, increased opportunities for early release, and created housing and jobs
programs to reduce the chances that those leaving prison would end up back
behind bars.
Reforms like these are
often associated with decreases in crime, or at least no increase in crime,
which undermines the argument that public safety depends on doling out the
harshest punishments available. For example, after California voters in 2014
overwhelmingly approved Proposition 47, a measure that sharply reduced
penalties for low-level drug and property offenses, critics warned that jail
populations would spike. In fact, the opposite has
happened.
In Congress, however, some recalcitrant lawmakers
still cling to outdated or incorrect
beliefs about crime and punishment in America. They need to
pay close attention to the ingenuity and the record of the states.
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