Criminal justice reform is enjoying something of a moment, with politicians and pundits alike touting the need for drastic changes in the way the United States treats those who break its laws.
Our criminal justice system is clearly broken. There are 2.3 million Americans behind bars — by far the highest share of any country. And there are four times as many incarcerated Americans as there were four decades ago.
Numerous proposals are aimed at addressing these realities, including the abandonment of mandatory minimum sentences, a reduction in the use of solitary confinement and the use of drug treatment and other intervention methods as alternatives to incarceration.
But there’s one potential reform most politicians won’t touch, and it could be called the third rail of criminal justice reform: Leniency for violent offenders.
Few, if any, of the reforms being discussed aim to reduce punishments for violent offenders. In July, when President Obama commuted the prison sentences of 46 federal prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug crimes, he made it clear that he had “no tolerance” for violent offenders.
One of the most ambitious bills being proposed — The Safe, Accountable, Fair and Effective (SAFE) Act, introduced in the House of Representatives by Republican Jim Sensenbrenner and Democrat Bobby Scott — wouldn’t address violent offenders. In fact, it aims to reform criminal justice laws for nonviolent criminals so as to “concentrate prison space on violent and career criminals.”
But here’s the hard truth: Focusing on nonviolent offenders won’t reduce America’s sky-high prison population by that much. Utilizing the Urban Institute’s Prison Population Forecaster, The New York Times’ Erik Eckholm found that decreasing drug admissions to half their current levels would lead to a decline in the prison population of just 7 percent.
That’s because a majority of prisoners doing time in state prisons (where 86 percent of prisoners are housed) are there for violent crimes.
This has several possible implications for policymakers. Does it mean that a high prison population merely reflects the efficient nature of our justice system? Or should we ask whether it is worth sentencing people to decades or a lifetime of imprisonment for a single violent act?
How that question is answered will go a long way to determining what it looks like when the current trend toward criminal justice reform takes its course.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
