Uneasy Peace by Patrick Sharkey

Author:Patrick Sharkey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Fig. 7.2 Policy responses to the urban crisis: The new compromise

Even if some of these reforms are soon undone at the federal level, states have taken more aggressive steps to reduce the size of the incarcerated population. Texas has reformed its parole and probation system to reduce the rate at which former prisoners return to prison, and it has been a leader in the use of drug courts that divert low-level offenders away from prison. Connecticut has implemented a series of policy changes designed to make the state a “second chance society,” to use the term coined by Governor Dannel Malloy. The state has reclassified the crime of drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor, reformed the parole system, and proposed raising the age of criminal responsibility for most crimes from eighteen to twenty-one.

And dozens of states have passed legislation that allows local jurisdictions the chance to reform their criminal justice systems in ways that create savings, and to reinvest those extra resources in programs designed to serve former prisoners more effectively and reduce violence. These reforms are part of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, a movement to convert a portion of the massive resources devoted to criminal justice into new investments designed to support communities.47 The ideals behind this movement are powerful, and in some states and localities, the reforms that have been implemented have led to important improvements in the way returning prisoners are integrated into communities.48

However, the shortcomings of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative reflect a larger problem with the array of efforts at the local, state, and federal levels designed to reform a prison system that has grown to a size that no one could have imagined fifty years ago. The movement focuses entirely on the system of criminal justice and on the population of people who move through that system. It relies on resources that are saved by making the criminal justice system more efficient, and it uses these resources to reinvest in more effective programs to divert offenders from entering the prison and to better serve those leaving it. In some places, it has reduced the size of the incarcerated population and led to more effective programs for returning prisoners. But it is not designed to generate new resources for the communities where violence is concentrated, or for the institutions that are crucial to ensuring that children never become enmeshed in the criminal justice system.49

As with almost all reforms implemented over the past several years, this movement is guided by the goal of justice but ignores the need for new, substantial resources to build stronger neighborhoods. The details of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative illuminate the central problem with the new compromise: The shift away from punishment and toward justice has not come with an equally strong movement away from abandonment and toward investment.

Reducing the prison population, which has grown to a level that is internationally unprecedented, is a fundamental challenge for the United States. By itself, however, it is not a valid approach to reducing violence or confronting urban inequality.

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