Fair Pricing for Justice and Prisons

Incarceration rates have risen profoundly nationwide in the last 30 years, costing states almost $48.5 billion annually, according to UC published research, and it doesn’t stop there. As the costs to the states rise with the increasing prison population, so do the financial burdens on the families of those incarcerated and to taxpayers across the country.

While criminologists agree that there are more effective ways to implement justice while downsizing prisons, most serious efforts toward positive change have been stalled by financial bureaucracy.

John Eck and Francis Cullen, faculty members in the University of Cincinnati College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services, looked at the underlying reasons for the boom in state-funded incarceration as opposed to community-based rehabilitation and found one common denominator –– money.

“The prosecutors and judges responsible for putting people behind bars have little to no reason to reduce prison use,” says Eck. “They work for cities and counties who do not pay for the prisons. The states foot the bill for prisons through taxpayer dollars and it pays off for them at election time to have that tough-on-crime image.”

MONEY TALKS

So if the motive for states and counties to keep things status quo is a financial one, Eck says the likely catalyst that will bring effective change is indeed the same –– money.

So Eck and Cullen, in collaboration with Cheryl Lero Jonson, assistant professor of criminal justice at Xavier University, propose seven options to incentivize a reduction in prison use and instead implement more community-based rehabilitation and other crime prevention approaches. They explain these options as “managing common-pool resources” and have published a paper detailing these efforts in the November issue of the journal Victims and Offenders titled

“Putting a Price on Justice: How to Incentivize the Downsizing of Prison Populations.”

DIVERSIFYING RESOURCES

Eck explains the economic conundrum as a common-pool resource because, “just like a fishery, you have a limited quantity but many users can access it. The more people that attempt to use common-pool resources, the less available it is to others.”

One proposal would rebate to counties the state’s prison budget and then charge counties for the number of people they incarcerate

(currently they pay nothing for sending offenders to tax-funded state prisons).

A surplus in their prison budgets at the end of the year could be spent any way the county decides, but if they run out of money, they would have to raise those costs through local taxes.

Another proposal puts a limit on the number of correctional-facility days a county can use in a year. States would set the standard for the optimal number of days to be allocated annually at a lower rate than the current number. Based on the population per capita by counties, they could not surpass that number. This puts pressure on judges to more accurately weigh the relative seriousness of offenders and their crimes and will hopefully incentivize local counties to explore creating community-based programs for low-risk offenders.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TOOLS

The research also points to shame as another powerful motivator

that has had positive impact for conservation issues in other public offices. The states could publish a public list of counties that use the highest number of prison days per capita annually. This could have a powerful impact on the growth of industry and communities in those counties.

The authors considered the need to fine-tune each proposal to make these plans more practical. For example, Eck says tolerating leniency for crimes such as mass murder wouldn’t qualify for these quotas, and states with the death penalty could, by default, be creating an incentive to kill prisoners in lieu of paying for their prison stays.

In light of the individual adjustments that are likely necessary for counties to eliminate potential abuse of certain policies, Eck says there are many positive results from each of their proposals.

“The proposed options could strongly influence counties to concentrate their efforts on evidenced-based community rehabilitation and crime-prevention programs and less on incarceration,” says Eck. “These options could also change the way judges and prosecutors run for office by encouraging them to focus more on reducing crime and the costs related to imprisonment.”

As is typical with most positive change, however, Eck says there will be challenges with any kind of criminal justice reform in this country. But the proposals are worth taking into consideration, after all, in 2001 Eck helped Cincinnati implement community problem-oriented policing in the wake of riots that year.

By using data to solve the problems that led to crimes in the first place, these changes helped to reduce Cincinnati’s crime rate and the number of people arrested. The ideas seemed outlandish when first proposed, Eck notes, but more than a decade later they are working well and widely embraced in Cincinnati.

University of Cincinnati Criminal Justice Department

The nationally ranked

School of Criminal Justice

holds the number one ranking for research productivity and recognition in U.S. News & World Report as one of the top three doctoral programs in the nation.