New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton thinks too many people get out of jail.
During a radio interview, Bratton criticized “well-intentioned” programs to reduce the prison population for endangering public safety.
“There are people in our society, I’m sorry, they’re criminals. They’re bad people. You don’t want to put them in diversion programs; you don’t want to keep them out of jail. We need to work very hard to put them in jail and keep them there for a long time, because they’re a danger to the rest of us, and that’s the reality,” he said, according to Politico New York.
“We can’t lose sight of the fact that we have a hardcore criminal population in this city of several thousand people who have no values, who have no respect for human life.”
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that state and federal prisons had 1.57 million prisoners in 2013, a slight increase from 2012, ending a three-year decline.
Crime has seen large declines since 1991, but the reasons have baffled analysts.
With crime falling, however, prisons remain expensive. Keeping a prisoner behind bars costs an average of $31,000 in state prisons. When the correctional population counts local jails and those people on probation or parole, the figure rises to almost 6.9 million.
Overcrowding in prison is a legitimate concern, especially in California, where the Supreme Court ordered the state to reduce its prison population.
Commissioner Bratton might be correct; too many people might be getting out of jail and endangering public safety. However, no data will emerge for a few years.
Keeping prisoners in jail might not be the best solution, either. Soon, it might not even be financially feasible.
Bratton’s background might make him exaggerate threats to public safety, but early release programs and crime prevention deserves scrutiny to find the most effective ways to reduce crime.
