Getting Tough in Nevada: What have We really Accomplished?

 

The standard response to crime during the past two decades has been very consistent throughout the country: get tougher and tougher.  Most politicians and law enforcement officials continue to believe that the only way to reduce crime and make our streets safe is to increase the rate at which we incarcerate convicted offenders.  This policy is based upon the belief that potential criminals will "get the message" and refrain from committing crime (this is part of what's known as "deterrence theory" - in this case "general deterrence"), while those offenders who are actually sentenced to prison will "learn their lesson" and refrain from crime upon their release (known as "special deterrence").

The results of "get tough" policies (which began in the early 1980s) nationwide has been a three-fold increase in the overall incarceration rate (both prisons and jails) and a rate of those sent to prison that increased four-fold.  In Nevada in the early 1980s the rate of those sent to prison stood at around 168 (with about 1,500 inmates), while currently it is almost 600 (an increase of 256%).

So what has been the result?  Are we safer from crime both here and across the nation?  Nationwide the overall crime rate (crimes "known to the police") in the early 1980s was around 5800 (per 100,000), while in 1996 (the latest year where national figures are available) it stood at 5043, a modest drop of 13%.  (This decrease masks a huge increase during the late 1980s and in spite the much publicized recent drop in crime, our current rate is more of a leveling off from earlier periods.)  The decrease can be attributed mostly by a decrease in such crimes as burglary (down 43% - mostly due to increased home protection and the more lucrative illegal drug trade) and robbery (down 20%).  However, offsetting these decreases were large increases in aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft (up 37% and 9% respectively).  The murder rate declined by around 30% (after rising by about one-third in the late-1980s), while rape remained about the same.  (Victimization surveys - which involve interviews with randomly selected citizens - show a drop in violent crime during the early 1980s, followed by a rise in the later 1980s and a decline during the first half of the 1990s.)

What about Nevada?  I examined two years for which I have complete data, 1983 and 1997, for comparison.  While the rate of imprisonment went up by around 256%, the overall crime rate decreased by a modest 14%.  The overall rate of violent crime rose by around 16%.  Our ranking among all states remained the same for violent crime (7th) and improved somewhat for overall crime (moving from 2nd to 5th). Population growth (a favorite culprit as a cause of crime) increased by about 72%, much lower than the increase in incarceration.

I appears that increasing the rate of imprisonment has not had much of an effect.  One could argue that some of these crime have decreased and hence imprisonment may be at least somewhat effective.  The problem with this argument is that during the past couple of decades, during the largest buildup of prison populations in American history, one offense accounts for most of the increase: drugs (mostly possession), which accounted for almost one-half of the increase in the prison population, rather than serious violent or property crimes.  Consider this startling fact: court commitments to prison for murder declined by 12% between 1980 and 1992. while commitments for drug offenses increased by a phenomenal 1,046%, according to Department of Justice data!  And the targets of the imprisonment binge have been minorities (especially blacks) and women. 

Specifically, the incarceration rate for blacks increased ten times faster than for whites; currently the black incarceration rate is almost eight times that for whites!  For women, their imprisonment rate increased from under 10 to almost 50 during the past 20 years as their numbers in prison jumped by 450% from 1980 to 1996.  Not surprisingly, the crime that was most likely to send both of these groups to prison was drugs.  For women, whereas in 1986 only 12% were in prison for drugs; by 1991 this percentage had gone up to one-third!  Similar increases occurred for blacks as a whole (in 1995 about one-half of Hispanics and blacks sentenced to prison were convicted on drug charges!).  (Data on the racial distribution within Nevada's prison system is inconsistent.  One recent report says that over 30% are African-American (and Hispanics constitute 8% of the total), while another puts the figure at 27% (with Hispanics at 12.5%).  Either way you look at it, minorities are disproportionately incarcerated in Nevada's prison system. (In a survey of Nevada's prison population I conducted in 1980, whites constituted 63% of all inmates; recent reports put this percentage at around 56%.)

Nevada's incarceration rate can also be attributed to the "war on drugs."  According to my 1980 survey, among those incarcerated in Nevada's prisons, only 7.8% had been convicted of a drug offense.  According to a report by the Legislative Counsel in September, 1994, almost 20% of those incarcerated were convicted of a drug offense, more than doubling of the percentage in 1980.  What is even more interesting is the fact that in 1980 almost one-half  (48.7%) of the inmates had been convicted of a violent crime; currently just over one-third (34%) were convicted of a violent crime.  The proportion incarcerated for property crimes has remained virtually the same (26% in 1980 and  24% currently).  In other words, we have not increased our "toughness" on violent criminals (despite the rhetoric that we should, echoed by Nevada's politicians consistently for the past two decades), only on drug offenders. 

The failure of this imprisonment binge to make people safer from violent crime is even more dramatic if we examine crime data from a few selected cities.  Between 1992 and 1996, for instance, murder went up by 70% in Los Angeles, by 80% in Phoenix and by 90% in both Oakland and Memphis, with more modest increases of 20% in Milwaukee and Rochester.  But look at New Orleans - their murder rate went up by 329%!.  The people in this city were four times more likely to be murdered than they were in the early 1970s, yet Louisiana's incarceration rate increased five-fold during this period of time!

For specific groups, the situation got much worse.  While in 1987 the death rate from murder for men between 15 and 24 was 22 (per 100,000), in 1994 it was 37 (compared to a rate of only 1.0 for his British counterpart).  For young African-American men the situation was even worse: their death rate from homicide doubled between 1985 and 1993 to a rate of 167!  This was even worse for this group in New York City: their rate in 1993 was 247!

Obviously, despite some recent drops during the past couple of years, the overall picture is nothing to brag about.  I don't know about you, but I don't feel much safer than I did 20 years ago.  And, frankly, I believe that politicians and law enforcement officials, in their rush to sound "tough" and get more votes, have committed a huge hoax upon the people and have wasted our money.  Billions of dollars worth. In fact, the expenditures on the criminal justice system increased from $10 billion per year in the early 1980s to around $100 billion today; spending on prisons rose a phenomenal 1500% during this time!  For Nevada, the amount of money spent on prisons increased from around $68 million during the 1979/81 biennium to an astounding $273 million during the current biennium (1997-99).

In spite of overwhelming evidence that our incarceration binge has failed to protect us, recent reports in the Las Vegas Review Journal indicate that our officials are going to continue doing the same, including spending almost $100 million on a 1500 bed expansion of the prison at Indian Springs.