Reentry: The Nation Reacts
A National Poll
"Lock 'em up and throw away the key" has been the American political mantra for dealing with crime for decades now. While America may seem ambivalent about the answers to some of our serious problems today, with two million people in prison, more than any other country in the world, it is the conventional wisdom that voters are convinced that more punishment means less crime.
But perhaps not. The results of two Zogby International public opinion polls about American attitudes towards imprisonment, rehabilitation and reentry of prisoners into their home communities and to juvenile crime and imprisonment, indicates that if given the opportunity to consider unassailable facts - even in an area most know very little about - Americans are more able to see the truth of things than many pundits believe.
We commissioned the first survey of 1,039 voters nationwide in early 2006 as part of our Centennial Celebration. The results, which surprised and even stunned, experts in the criminal justice field, revealed that Americans understand that policies of prison as punishment-only, with little or no rehabilitation, and no reentry services after release, combine to produce a cycle of incarceration that neither increases public safety nor keeps prisoners from returning to prison. This cycle supports the status quo. The public, we now know, supports changes that will break the cycle.
This is the status quo today: There are 2.2 million Americans in prison, but 700,000 of them are being released every year. The recidivism rate is 65-70% so that most are back in prison within three years of release. This cycle is kept securely in place by a politically influential prison-industrial complex and elected officials afraid to be labeled as "soft on crime", despite ever-rising costs.
The Zogby poll reveals that the American public recognizes the system's failures:
Almost 80% of the voters responding felt either fear or great concern upon learning that 700,000 inmates are being released every year and that the vast majority of them go back to prison within three years.
With those concerns in mind, by an 8 to 1 margin (87% to 11%), the U.S. public is in favor of rehabilitation services for prisoners as opposed to a punishment-only system. Of those polled, 70% favored services both during incarceration and after release from prison.
One-third of those polled felt that the likelihood of new crime was greater after prison than before; half thought the likelihood was just about the same.
By strong majorities, Americans feel that a lack of life skills, the experience of being in prison and the obstacles upon reentry into the community are major factors in the re-arrest of prisoners. Four of every five (82%) citizens polled felt that a lack of job training was a very significant barrier to avoiding subsequent crime. By similar majorities, they thought that medical care including drug treatment and mental health services, family services, the availability of public housing and student loans are important services that are not being provided.
Of those polled, 44% felt that planning for reentry should begin at sentencing and only 7% were not in favor of planning for reentry. When asked about pending federal legislation that would allocate millions of dollars for prisoner reentry services (The Second Chance Act) 78% were in support and 40% expressed strong support.
America's apparent eagerness to stop the existing cycle of incarceration and crime gives those of us in the field the support we need to design and propose an informed approach to reentry. We need reentry programs that come from active community participation and that encompass the complete array of human services denied to returning prisoners.
Based as we are in California, NCCD has already designed and is beginning to introduce reentry programs here that identify the strengths and weaknesses in the existing range of local reentry services. We've developed a short-term plan of action to build on the strengths and fill in the gaps. We've defined important areas where State governments can better support local reentry efforts. This process is modeled after NCCD's successful efforts in assisting more than 50 communities across the nation in their efforts to reduce juvenile violence.
The return of hundreds of thousands of mostly non-violent prisoners to their communities every year without anything to help them stay out of prison is a crime in itself.
There's nothing ambivalent about the American public's reaction to this criminal justice nightmare - they want it fixed with smart new approaches, not knee jerk reactions.
An NCCD Commitment
Over the past 25 years, our criminal justice policies have swelled the number of Americans locked up in prisons and jails. A variety of new laws and "tougher" sentencing policies produced a vast expansion of incarceration with over two million Americans in prison. NCCD has consistently opposed these policies, maintaining that a punishment-only system is extremely wasteful of taxpayers' dollars. Moreover, there are enormous collateral damages to the families of prisoners and the communities in which they lived prior to imprisonment. Also, there is very little scientific evidence that mass incarceration has made our communities any safer.
What is now becoming clear is that expansion of incarceration in prisons that offer little or no rehabilitation actually endangers public safety. The president of John Jay College, Jeremy Travis, has written a new book entitled But They All Come Back. He reminds us that over 95% of prisoners will return home, many within a few short years. There are close to 700,000 persons released from prison each year. With high rates of illiteracy, drug addiction, and mental health issues, the substantial majority of these released prisoners are ill-equipped to do anything but return to lives of crime. It is estimated that over two-thirds will be rearrested in two years. Others will return to prison, not for new crimes, but for violating the rules of their parole. In California, the Little Hoover Commission evaluated the prison system and described the situation in the Golden State as "a billion dollar failure."
Across the nation, only a tiny percentage of prisoners receive any educational, vocational, counseling, or addiction services. Many have severe mental health issues that go undiagnosed or untreated. There are few programs across the country that are designed to prepare ex-prisoners to make it on the outside. Further, released prisoners face a dizzying array of barriers that prevent them from getting public housing, qualifying for educational loans, receiving job training in the community, or even being able to vote. The result of these circumstances is a public safety nightmare that extends to the families and children of released prisoners.
We at NCCD believe that focused attention on positive and meaningful reentry must be a core component of our crime-control policies. There are early efforts in some states and by the U.S. Department of Justice, but there is virtually no rigorous research guiding us to the best evidence-based practices to help released prisoners become law-abiding and productive members of our communities.
As NCCD moves into its centennial year in service to America, we will increase focus on improving reentry services and attempting to remove barriers to successful returns to the community. We expect to commission a public opinion poll to see where the citizenry stands on this topic. There are plans for an NCCD national summit conference on reentry that will be held in conjunction with New York University Law School. We will convene young people at John Jay College to listen to their thoughts on how to improve the criminal justice system. The NCCD PASS Awards are searching for the best media coverage on this critical topic. NCCD is also about to release a comprehensive statement on the best researched approaches to sentencing-the last NCCD policy statement on this topic was in 1992.
The political rush to embrace mass incarceration has been a disaster at so many levels. And now the "chickens are coming home to roost" as these policies threaten to create even worse problems in the future. NCCD will remain focused on reforms that increase safe alternatives to imprisonment, reduce obscenely long prison terms for most offenders, and restore sound judicial judgment in lieu of the political hysteria that has dominated the criminal sentencing process. The Council knows that improving our knowledge of "what works" in reentry is vital to the future of our communities.
Barry Krisberg, Ph.D., President,
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
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