Pubdate: Sun, 16 Jan 2005
Source: Wisconsin State Journal (WI)
Copyright: 2005 Madison Newspapers, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wisconsinstatejournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/506
Author: Phil Brinkman
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

CRIME HAS BEEN PREVENTED, BUT HOW MUCH?

In one key respect, Wisconsin's growing prison population appears to
be having exactly the effect policymakers intended: Crime is down.

Reported crime in Wisconsin has fallen from 4,395 incidents for every
100,000 residents in 1990 to 3,104 in 2003 - a drop of 29 percent.

That's a benefit often overlooked by critics of tough-on-crime
legislation, especially "truth in sentencing," which abolished early
release on parole, said state Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin,
chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

"Obviously the most important benefits are safer communities and peace
of mind for victims and their families," Gundrum said. "But if we want
to talk about dollars and cents, let's start talking about the
millions of dollars saved by not having criminals committing more crimes."

But no one can say how much crime has been prevented by such policies.
Consider:

. Crime rates have gone down nearly everywhere during the past 10 to
15 years, including in states where the incarceration rate has risen
at a slower pace than in Wisconsin. In New York, for example, the
crime rate plummeted from 6,364 crimes per 100,000 residents in 1990
to 2,713 in 2003, a 57 percent decline. Over the same period, New
York's incarceration rate climbed just 11.5 percent.

In contrast, West Virginia, one of just two states whose incarceration
rate grew faster than Wisconsin's - from 85 people per 100,000 in 1990
to 260 in 2003 - saw a 4.6 percent increase in its crime rate over
that period, from 2,503 incidents per 100,000 residents to 2,617.

. In Wisconsin and elsewhere, crime rates were already falling before
certain celebrated anti-crime policies took effect.

New York City, for example, began "zero-tolerance" policing - in which
police sought to nip crime in the bud by cracking down on petty
offenses - in 1994. But Cambridge University criminologist Michael
Tonry noted that homicide rates had been on the decline there as in
every other big American city including, notably, San Diego, where the
police department had explicitly rejected the approach in favor of
community policing.

Likewise, Wisconsin abolished parole at the end of 1999, even though
the crime rate had been heading down for eight years.

. Most crimes except for the most serious - murder, rape and
aggravated assault - are either never reported or never solved. Unless
they're already serving time for some other offense, the perpetrators
are never caught.

. Most offenders are not under any form of supervision - such as
probation or parole - at the time of their arrest. Corrections simply
didn't know about them. Those include Meng-Ju Wu, 20, accused of
killing three men in Verona over gambling debts in 2003; Brandon
Grady, 30, who beat a 20-year-old Madison escort to death with a
hammer in 1997 than raped and mutilated her body; and Lester
Riesterer, an 83-year-old Manitowoc County man who pleaded guilty to
sexual assault in 2000 and has admitted having 500 sexual encounters
with children over the past 30 years.

Effects on community Incarceration of repeat offenders certainly
prevents some crime, said University of California, Irvine
criminologist Joan Petersilia. But the best research on the question
suggests tough sentencing laws may have contributed to about 15
percent to 25 percent of the decline in the crime rate, Petersilia
said.

"The more interesting question . . . is, at what cost?" Petersilia said.

Even the most intensive supervision of offenders in the community,
where they can continue to work, go to school and maintain family
ties, is cheaper than prison, which costs taxpayers more than $28,000
a year per inmate.

Recent research suggests incarceration on a large scale may even have
the opposite of the intended effect.

In a study of selected poor neighborhoods in Tallahassee, Fla., Todd
Clear of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, found
crime initially declined as the number of young men locked up from the
area increased. But as more were removed, the neighborhood reached a
"tipping point" causing it to destabilize and sending the crime rate
up sharply.

That's because, while police and the criminal justice system play a
part, communities ensure public safety mostly through the informal
social controls of family, friends and neighbors, Clear said. In many
cases, those controls - imperfect though they may be - are provided by
some of the same people who go to prison.

"The bottom line is that young men who are involved in criminal
activity are doing a lot of things in a neighborhood that are not
criminal activity," Clear said. "When you remove them, you remove not
just the criminal activity, but you also remove all the stuff that
they did which was useful."
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MAP posted-by: Derek