Incarceration rates are not mirroring the drop in crime
Florida’s crime rate declined markedly in recent decades. Violent crimes are down. Property crimes are down. Inmate populations since 1978 are up 373 percent through 2010 peaking at just over 100,000. They have dropped slightly, but are expected to rise again beginning in 2021 or so.
And fewer people are being sentenced to state prison. So why the higher incarceration rate?
It’s the “iron law” of prison admissions, according to Len Engel of the Crime and Justice Institute in Boston. Engel provided a statistical picture of the state prison system as background information for the Bar’s recent Criminal Justice Summit in Tampa.
Besides Engel, Gipsey Escobar, director of research and analytics for Measures of Justice, which has been hired by the Legislature to conduct a detailed study of the Florida’s criminal justice system, provided information on how that study will be carried out. That organization is already collecting detailed information from Pinellas and Pasco counties and has the eventual goal of establishing a database for every county in the country.
The iron law, Engel said, is that prison population is determined by the number of people sentenced multiplied by the length of those sentences.
And the hard numbers in Florida for recent decades is crime is down 65 percent, and prison admissions are down 28 percent in the past decade. But the length of sentences has grown by 22 percent, and people are serving more of those sentences, with the length of stay up 18 percent.
“Prison admissions are down but prison stays are longer,” Engle said. “People sent to prison are staying longer. Those who are sent to prison have longer sentences, and they’re serving longer portions of those sentences.”
Those and other demographic trends mean, he said, that Florida’s prison population will begin to rise again around 2021 and “will hover between 95,000 and 100,000 for the foreseeable future.”
By comparison, New York State, which had a comparable violent crime rate to Florida 30 years ago and a lower property crime rate, has had a steeper decline in both categories and has a total inmate population of 51,000.
Other data supplied by Engel showed:
• Between 2007 and 2016, the number of violent offenders in state prison grew from 44,905 to 51,479, the number convicted of property crimes grew from 18,873 to 20,178, those convicted of drug offenses fell from 19,118 to 13,853, and incarcerations for other reasons went from 8,526 to 8,379. Some of the breakout session discussions looked at whether the state was wasting money on long-term sentences for nonviolent offenders who might be helped by diversion programs.
• 29 percent of the prison population has not been convicted currently or in the past of a violent crime.
• 37 percent of the prison population received a minimum mandatory sentence or a sentence “enhancement” under current laws.
• Although the overall prison population stayed about the same between 2007 and 2016, the number of inmates 50 or older went from 15,250 to 23,542, of which 37 percent were convicted of nonviolent crimes. Fifty is a significant age, Engel said, because people age faster in prison and anyone 50 or older is considered elderly, and the older populations also requires disproportionately more health care, which is a major factor in the state’s prison budget.
• Research has shown that older people are less likely to commit crimes than younger people, with criminal activity peaking in late adolescence and declining afterwards.
• Studies have also shown that longer prison stays do not reduce recidivism nor serve as an effective deterrent. Incarceration is not more effective than noncustodial sanctions in reducing recidivism and may actually increase recidivism for those convicted for the first time, for drug offenses, or because of technical probation violations.
• It’s harder in Florida for geriatric inmates with serious health issues or on hospice to get an early release than in most other states.
Escobar said Measures for Justice was formed in 2010 with the goal of eventually getting reliable criminal justice data from every county in the country. After organizing and getting grants, the program spent four years devising a neutral, effective way to compare data, which may be labeled or handled differently in various jurisdictions.
So far the agency is collecting data from parts of six states, including Florida, and has the goal of expanding that to 20 to 22 states in the next two years.
“We have developed a system of measurement. . . for three goals: public safety, fair process, and fiscal responsibility,” Escobar said.
“We analyze it, and run some procedures on it, to create some measures, some indicators of what we call the health of the local criminal justice system. Let’s see what’s working where and let’s see if we can start a conversation, a peer network.. . . The goal here is not to shame, the goal is to start a conversation.”
The evaluation program has established 34 different measurements, and so far no jurisdiction has measurements for all those categories. Wisconsin has 23 of the data points, Utah has five, and Florida has 18, she said.
Florida lawmakers became aware of the program and earlier this year passed SB 1392, which calls for a detailed study of the Florida justice system, initially in Pinellas and Pasco. What’s learned there will be passed to other counties.
Although not mentioned by name in the bill, the language is written to guarantee that Measures for Justice will conduct the two-year effort.
Escobar said the research has already paid dividends. Information showed in Wisconsin that a large number of defendants with low bail amounts were spending a disproportionate time in jail because there was no judge to hear their first appearances, particularly on weekends. That was addressed, the incarceration rate went down, and money was saved.
Likewise the research showed in Philadelphia that there was a high violation rate of a pretrial diversion program. Social services were increased to support the program and the violations declined.
