What's Holding us Back From Real Criminal Justice Reform

All signs suggest that we’re on the verge on real, lasting criminal justice reform. But one human instinct is holding us back: an aversion to admitting that we were wrong. It’s time to admit that the War on Drugs was a failure, that tough-on-crime cost us billions and didn’t actually reduce crime and that short sentences might work just work better than long sentences.

But first we need to admit that things got off the rails a bit.

Peter Neufeld, the Co-Director of the Innocence Project (where I work when I'm not blogging here), told Slate recently that a leading reason we’ve seen so many innocent people spend years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit is that prosecutors, judges, police officers, forensic analysts and others don’t want to admit that they were wrong.

The same holds true for governors, policymakers, corrections experts—and taxpayers. If we could admit that our criminal justice policy since the 1970s has unnecessarily built the world’s largest and most wasteful system, maybe we could move on.

This week, newspapers in Indianapolis and Orlando made convincing calls for state leaders to reconsider the harsh sentences that have bloated prisons and budgets. The human propensity to avoid change and to avoid admitting mistakes is a powerful one, however, and it’s the last thing standing in the way of reform.

Between 2000 and 2008, Indiana’s prison population jumped 41 percent. Corrections costs jumped by 76 percent. During that time the slate legislature passed 117 new laws lengthening sentences, and not a single one for shorter sentences. But the state has shown that it can change—in the last two years, alternatives to incarceration have helped to halve the juvenile prison population. It’s time to take these innovations to the adult population.

Florida spends nearly $100 million a year to lock up 5,000 people serving mandatory drug sentences. The Orlando Sentinel points to a few unbelievable examples, like the 19-year-old woman serving 15 years for selling 25 hydrocodone pills to an undercover officer.

These cookie-cutter severe sentences need to end before our states go bankrupt by filling prisons with people who could have changed their behavior with drug counseling or community monitoring. As UCLA Prof. Mark Kleiman says, swift, sure sentences are more effective—and much cheaper—than unnecessary severe sentences.

Being wrong is human. Some policies will work and others will not. Crime is a complicated, sensitive topic and we don’t want to change our minds every day. But after decades of abysmal failure, it’s time to make a change—even if it feels risky.

Image Credit: Kaiban