Sensible Justice: Alternatives to Prison. - book reviews

Washington Monthly, Dec, 1997 by Joseph D. McNamara

Reader beware: Sensible Justice: Alternative to Prison is not what it appears at first glance. The subtitle of the book suggests, and the bookjacket promises, that the author will explore "creative solutions some states and cities nationwide have devised to tackle America's expensive and controversial prison problem" Instead, David Anderson, a journalist and former member of the New York Times board, provides a more or less conventional journalistic road map of how we made prisons a growth industry.

Granted, there is much to examine concerning the vast increase in the number of Americans incarcerated over the past two decades. It is remarkable that we now have roughly 1.5 million people behind bars and 45 million under some form of penal control -- most of whom have been sentenced for nonviolent crimes. But even in exploring this phenomenon, Anderson oversimplifies, claiming that Republicans, the prison-building industry, and the National Rifle Association were the prime movers in the enactment of more punitive policies. The NRA did call for increased penalties for the use of firearms during a crime as a way of obstructing gun-control legislation, but those sentenced under so-called firearm enhancements make up a minor percentage of those incarcerated. The prison-building lobby came along after the political rhetoric denouncing crime. And although many Republicans like to rage about law and order, the harshest mandatory sentences in history were passed by a Democratically controlled Congress. Likewise, severe sentences-including the death penalty for some 50-odd federal crimes-increasingly have been championed by President Clinton, who has boasted that he must be doing something right because there were more than a million Americans in prison. Anderson also fails to mention that it was Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson who first raised crime as a national issue in presidential campaigns (until then, it was viewed as a local matter), leading to increased publicity and alarm, and producing the present "crisis" atmosphere legislation on federal and local levels.

Moreover, although Anderson does allow that journalists helped create the public fear by sensationalizing crime, he barely scratches the surface of the media's culpability. A media study showed that from 1993 through 1996, while the nation's homicide rate was decreasing by 20 percent, television news coverage of murders rose 721 percent. The present corrupt, racist, violent, and ineffective prison system could not exist without media complicity. A journalist like Anderson could have shed light on a phenomenon that conditioned the American public to approve present policies.

Anderson does deserve credit for pointing out the basic inhumanity of those policies, and through anecdotes he tries to combat the dehumanizing of criminals that allows the present treatment. He weakens his own arguments, however, by supporting unproven claims that tough police methods and the increased number of people confined have been partially responsible for decreasing crime rates over the past five years.

Getting down to the actual task of exploring alternatives to the current penal system, Anderson makes a courageous plea for temperance in a time of public anger over crime, perceived failure of the courts and correctional programs, and increasing political demagoguery. But his arguments are less than compelling -- and unlikely to influence politicians in the current "tough on crime" atmosphere. He praises mentoring by parole agents and others; sentencing to community work, residential confinement, boot camps, drug treatment; and a variety of approaches in opposition to prison. However, he acknowledges that for the most part, evaluation of these programs does not show lower rates of recidivism for participants. Furthermore, some of the programs that claim success are too new to judge and in many cases are evaluated by those running the programs, with the inevitable inflated claims of success. Finally, while he points out that recidivism rates for offenders who have been incarcerated are no better -- and the fiscal costs of incarceration considerably higher -- than the alternatives to prison, this argument is unlikely to sway public opinion. Polls show that Americans are still fearful of crime and angry at criminals. As such, the public is unlikely to be persuaded that tax dollars spent for prisons are wasted. Most disappointingly, Anderson fails to examine what is perhaps the most promising alternative to the current system of mass incarceration: decriminalizing drug use. By the turn of the millenium it is likely that the majority of inmates will be serving time for non-violent drug offenses. Consequently, it's hard to' understand why the decriminalization option doesn't at least bear exploration.

Joseph D. McNamara, retired police chief of San Jose, Calif., and author of five books, is currently a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.