New National Report on Sentencing Reform Should Be Applied to California Prisons

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Barbara Owen
Professor
Department of Criminology
California State University-Fresno

Introduction

As California leads the nation in irrational prison policy, a new report calls for major reforms to reduce the prison population. Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America's Prison Population, is co-authored by nine leading criminology and penal experts from around the country and relies on a thorough review of recent research into crime and incarceration. Several of these authors have researched the California system which serves as a cautionary tale of political and policy missteps.

Under current sentencing policies, the state and federal prison populations will grow by another 192,000 prisoners over the next five years, according to the report. Such an increase will force the nation to spend an additional $27.5 billion in prison construction and operation costs over the five-year period, in addition to the $60 billion now spent annually on corrections. In California, the annual cost is quickly approaching $10 billion per year. Recent legislation has called for many more billions to be spent on prison construction.

This growth in imprisonment is largely due not to rising crime rates but to changes in sentencing policy that led to dramatic increases in the numbers of felony convictions. This resulted in more prison sentences and increasing the length of the prison stays themselves. The report cites extensive research suggesting there is little relationship between fluctuations in crime rates and incarceration rates. The study highlights that minorities are more likely to be imprisoned than whites, noting that incarceration rates for blacks and Latinos are six times higher than for whites. If incarceration rates were race neutral, prison populations would drop by half.

“The number of people incarcerated has skyrocketed over the past three decades and yet there is little if any scientific evidence of a causal relationship between crime rates and incarceration rates," said James Austin, president of the JFA Institute and report co-author. "A major reason for the rise in prison populations is longer prison terms. But there is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer. The report provides a practical roadmap for reducing prison populations and more effectively addressing crime by adopting sentencing policies that are now being used in a number of red and blue states."