Considering the Cost of a Prison Sentence

Missouri judges are looking at the cost of sentences before they hand them down, including the costs prison imposes on taxpayers as one factor in determining a sentence. A few years from now, we'll probably be shocked that we didn't try this until 2010.

It's not a drastic move, despite the reaction of some prosecutors. The dollar figure that a judge sees is just one of many numbers in a report, but it's a wise inclusion and one that could change the way our criminal justice system works -- if it survives the knee-jerk reaction it's already causing.

The New York Times reported this weekend on the move by Missouri's sentencing commission to put these numbers in the hands of sentencing judges. When a judge is determining a punishment, he or she reviews recommended sentences and options, statistics on the likelihood of recidivism (which is a bit troubling, more below) and estimates of the cost of each sentence recommendation.

The tool is available to the public - I gave it a try, creating a fictional man convicted of his second armed robbery. The system suggested that he gets between 10 and 20 years. Ten years cost $145,027 and the bill for 20 years is twice that -- nearly 300 grand. If that doesn't make a judge think twice about the value of that extra ten years and the purpose of the sentence (punishment vs. vengeance vs. rehabilitation) then I don't know what will.

The Missouri Sentencing Advisory Commission says judges have been asking for this data -- and it simply responded to the request.

“This is one of a thousand things we look at — about the tip of a dog’s tail, it’s such a small thing,” Judge Gary Oxenhandler told the Times. “But it is almost foolish not to look at it. We live in a what’s-it-going-to-cost? society now.”

On the other side of the issue are the prosecutors, who point to the suffering of crime victims as a reason to hand down sentences without considering costs.

"Every victim has the right to have each case viewed individually," St. Louis prosecutor Robert P. McCulloch told the Times.

“No one can put a price tag on being a victim,” said Scott Burns, president of the National Association of District Attorneys.

But this dispute isn't about putting a price on victims -- it's about effective justice. Victims don't have a right to vengeance, but they deserve justice. They deserve a system that apprehends perpetrators of serious crimes, punishes them for their actions and works hard to rehabilitate them. Victims deserve a system that works, and they certainly don't have that right now.

We sink somewhere around $200 billion each year into our criminal justice system and we're not getting a very effective return on that monstrous investment. Missouri's efforts are aimed at spending less on long sentences so we have more to spend on an effective system. We should applaud experiments like this and do our best to learn from them.

Now, a note on the recidivism calculation included in Missouri's system. This is worrisome to me, because rather than putting facts in the hands of judges (the cost of incarcerating someone is a fact), we're using numbers to predict what a human being will do in the future. We can't know that, and someone shouldn't be sentenced to more time behind bars because an algorithm thinks they'll commit a crime.

But even though I disagree with the recidivism predictions, they are just numbers on a page, and they're nothing new. As with the cost calculations, judges are smart enough to balance what they see on paper with their evaluation of individual case facts. I think it's better to have both numbers than it is to have neither, and I'm glad Missouri is making waves by providing the cost number. I hope this cost-conscious justice opens some eyes across the country.

Image Credit: AComment