Crime Down: Prison Costs Up
2011-07-09 · Guest: Veronique de Rugy (Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow) · 53:25
Costs of the American criminal justice system
Bob Zadek and Veronique de Rugy discuss the ballooning costs of the American criminal justice system despite a significant drop in violent crime. They explore how the “War on Drugs,” mandatory sentencing, and the influence of prison unions have created a “criminal industrial complex” that prioritizes incarceration over effective social or medical solutions.
Topics: Criminal Justice Reform, Incarceration Rates, War on Drugs, Prison Unions, Mandatory Minimums, Three Strikes Law, Malum Prohibitum, Public Policy
Speakers:
- Bob Zadek – Host
- Veronique de Rugy – Senior Research Fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center
Introduction and the Criminal Industrial Complex [00:00]
Bob Zadek: Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. We’re here every Sunday at noon on 910 AM Fox News Radio. Thanks so much for listening. We are the leading libertarian talk radio show in the Bay Area and, dare I say, around the country. If you have a point of view to share, 800-345-5639. Our operators, all named Francis, are here waiting to receive your calls. Thanks so much for listening.
Throughout our recent history, there has always been some pretty nasty, usually racially driven wave that sweeps the population crying for a governmental solution. Government opportunistic politicians leap into the fray to try to solve what is really not a problem, and we are left holding the bag.
Remember back in the early ’60s, urban renewal was the project du jour. Urban renewal was nasty, ugly, racist stuff designed to tear down perfectly usable housing neighborhoods, tear down all the buildings, build big ugly apartment complexes—think Cabrini-Green in Chicago—put all the blacks and all the inner-city poor into these big buildings to protect the surrounding whites from any contact with them. Pretty nasty business. Discredited. Mayor Daley was a leading proponent of that. Totally discredited, ugly part of our past.
Immigration: a wave, racially driven in my opinion, to get rid of all of “them.” Still with us. Anti-immigration, anti-illegal immigrant. Again, racially driven. And the third that comes to mind, and the topic for today’s show, is crime—violent crime. Remember the Out-of-Towners movie, Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon, where the star of the movie really was the crime in New York City, how ugly it was to live and work in New York City and to visit. Remember Death Wish, the Charles Bronson movie? Again, anti-crime. There was a hysteria that swept the country because of the perceived threat of violent crime. As a result of which, the criminal industrial complex was built. The prison unions acquired enormous amounts of political power. Lots and lots and lots of money was spent on crime, and still is today.
Does anybody know or care how much violent crime exists today? Well, the answer is it is declining profoundly. Violent crime is not—underlined—an issue in our social fabric today. But we are left picking up the pieces of that hysteria 20 and 30 years ago by spending an enormous amount of money on a wholly ineffective criminal justice system that is simply not needed. Yet we are spending buckets and buckets of money on this unneeded, ineffectual system. It’s as if we were suffering, or imagine if we’re suffering from a disease, an illness, and we take an expensive prescription drug and we get better, but we continue to take the drug, spending tons of money on this prescription drug long after the illness has been cured. That is what we are doing today.
The topic of today’s show is the fortune of money we are spending, mostly in a stealth manner—the public isn’t aware of it—on the non-existent issue of crime in America. To help me sort out this important and expensive issue, I’m delighted to welcome Veronique de Rugy. Veronique is a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. She’s a regular columnist for my favorite magazine, Reason magazine. She’s a regular contributor to National Review Online, my favorite online blog, and a regular contributor at Big Government, another of my favorite blogs. Veronique, welcome to the show. Veronique, are you there?
We’re having trouble. Veronique is calling me from a cell phone, so we have some difficulty. I’ll let you know as soon as Veronique is back with us. Sorry for that somewhat technical and short-lived delay.
The High Cost of Incarceration [04:38]
Bob Zadek: So the topic today is the amount of money which we in this country spend on what is really an issue from the past and doesn’t exist anymore as an important issue in our public policy, but yet the money continues to be spent. Remember the hysteria in the ’60s and in the ’70s about being soft on crime? Judges campaigned on the issue. “Vote for me as a judge because I will throw away the key.”
We spend about $84 or $85 billion a year on the criminal justice system, on incarceration in this country. We do that primarily to solve what is either not a problem at all or a social problem, which is drug use—illegal drug use. Now, we’ve discussed illegal drug use on this show many times, and of course, you know my opinion: that drugs should not be decriminalized. It is, if anything, a social problem or a medical problem, but by no means a criminal justice problem. Yet nonetheless, drugs are handled in the criminal justice system.
The only crime that the public ought to care about is violent crime—crime that we all are concerned about. And violent crime in this country is on the decline. The only thing that’s not on the decline is the amount of money we spend in the criminal justice system because there are so many vested interests, primarily, and especially in California, the prison workers’ unions, who are very active in making sure that the money—the honeypot that is spent for criminal justice—continues. The criminal justice unions in California have spent fortunes of money opposing any statute, any proposed proposition that would soften the sentences or reduce sentencing, because that would reduce the population and reduce their customers. And they’re opposed to that. So we have a system where in this country, all of us taxpayers are spending a fortune for a non-problem. We continue to spend money for the prescription drug after the illness has been cured.
The Politics of “Tough on Crime” [07:00]
Bob Zadek: Remember the judge in New York City? There was a judge who I remember when I lived in New York City named Bruce Wright. Bruce Wright was appointed by Mayor Lindsay. He was a Supreme Court Justice, and he became very well known for affording very low bail to criminals who appeared before him. He acquired the nickname—a charming nickname as it was—“Cut ‘em Loose Bruce.” A catchy name. That was Bruce Wright, and he was pilloried in the New York City press because he was too soft on crime. Well, that was then, this is now. Crime is no longer an issue except for the amount of money we continue to spend for it. I am told that we have Veronique back with us. Veronique, are you with us?
Veronique de Rugy: Hi, Bob.
Bob Zadek: Hi, Veronique. How are you?
Veronique de Rugy: Hi, I’m good. Thanks.
Bob Zadek: Veronique, I think you will agree—and your recent article entitled “Prison Math” proves this out—that we seem to be wasting a bit of money on an ineffective and unneeded prison system.
Does Incarceration Actually Reduce Crime? [12:00]
Veronique de Rugy: I agree with you. I mean, we are not only wasting a lot of money—prison budgets are the second highest state budget after Medicaid, so it’s a lot of money—but we’re also wasting away a lot of lives. And there’s just one thing I would disagree with you about what you said. Your analogy about prescription drugs to cure a disease seems to assume that actually, it is because we’ve spent in the past a lot of money and put a lot of people in jail that this is why we’re not sick anymore. But actually, research shows that it’s not the case. The reduction in crime rates—actually the dramatic reduction in crime rates since the ’80s—serious researchers have shown that probably only 25% of the drop can be attributed to actually increasing the time people spend in jail, leaving 75% of the drop to something else—other factors.
Bob Zadek: And the other factors are, of course, a complex series of social factors, from the general increase in the standard of living in the country and factors such as that. A fairly complex calculation, but I agree with you and I accept your correction happily. I love it when I get to learn from my guests, which is all the time. So I always welcome any corrections.
Veronique de Rugy: Thank you. I mean, I didn’t know any of that. This is what I love about my job. I get to kind of write about things and do research about them and just change my preconception about the world.
The Explosion of Incarceration Rates [15:30]
Bob Zadek: And so we are spending so much money, and there is no systemic check so that governments—state governments for the most part—determine, “Ah, we need to spend less because the problem has gone away.” There’s no system like that where money, once it starts to get spent, ever stops.
Veronique de Rugy: No, it’s really quite dramatic because once laws are put in place to dictate how and why you put people in jail, it doesn’t really matter whether the problem that you were supposedly targeting or whether the issue that you were going to address are still a problem or not.
Bob Zadek: Now, I believe the history of our country has been that for most of our history, we had a very low incarceration rate, and it only skyrocketed quite recently. Isn’t that so?
Veronique de Rugy: Yeah. In the ’80s, it was 220 people in jail for every 100,000 inhabitants. And now it is 750 people in jail for 100,000. I mean, it’s more than tripled.
Bob Zadek: And one can ask, does anybody believe that suddenly in the 1980s, we had a wave of lawlessness all of a sudden that we never had before? It just defies common sense to think we just got to be a more violent society on our own. And if you do question that, then you have to say, “Ah, there must have been external factors that account for the incarceration, nothing to do with violent crime per se.”
Mandatory Sentencing and Three Strikes [16:50]
Veronique de Rugy: No. So what happened basically is just the intensification of the War on Drugs and starting putting in place harsher punishment for any people caught, you know, smoking even pot and things like this. And in particular in California—you know that better than anyone—the Three Strikes laws are actually responsible for having put many, many people in jail for extensive periods of time, especially when you double down with mandatory sentencing. I mean, when you double those two things, it’s just responsible for jailing gigantic amounts of people.
The Vested Interests of Prison Unions [18:30]
Bob Zadek: And the statistic you mentioned earlier you shared with the audience, which is that the cost of incarceration in most states is the second highest budget item behind Medicaid. Medicaid itself is a government-created expense. And now we have a second artificial expense, an expense which doesn’t solve any problem. It is profound. And why state governments don’t zero in on this as an easy way to reduce expenditures is just beyond me. It’s totally artificial.
Veronique de Rugy: I mean, think about it. I’m assuming that especially nowadays, there are a lot of people who are employed in the penitentiary system. And the idea is like, if you stop jailing people, these people are going to lose their jobs. And it is possible that some people are seeing the high incarceration rate as a job program.
Bob Zadek: And of course, I remember reading an article—there was a lot written when Governor Cuomo in New York became governor, and he’s been doing, in my opinion, a pretty darn good job in just managing government. He wanted to close a lot of the upstate prisons, which were pretty empty. And the upstate politicians in New York were so opposed to him, they tried to enact legislation to require a one-year warning period before you close an empty prison. And just imagine prison guards wandering around these empty cell blocks for a year with no customers.
Veronique de Rugy: Yeah, I mean, it is dramatic. And you know, this would be a very bad joke if thousands of lives weren’t destroyed. And it’s not just the non-violent, victimless type of people that you jail, but it’s also their families. I mean, many of these people who are put in jail for long periods of time are non-violent criminals, and they have kids, they have families. And when you look at the likely long-term impact on these kids, it’s quite dramatic.
Bipartisan Support for Reform [20:14]
Bob Zadek: And this is all a government-created problem. This is not a problem where government is fixing some external problem. All of this—the effect upon family members—is all government-caused. And what’s really interesting from a libertarian perspective, this is an area where libertarians who focus on the issues, such as Reason magazine—in their, I think it’s the June issue, had an entire issue on this—where libertarians find strange bedfellows, among which is the NAACP, who sort of agrees with a lot of the positions of libertarians about these criminal justice issues. It is an area where the criminal justice system is an orphan. It doesn’t have support among progressives, it doesn’t have support among libertarians, it doesn’t have support among those people who tend to look after the interests of minorities. So it is driven only by probably the social conservatives in the Republican Party, which is really a minority of the voting public.
Veronique de Rugy: But listen, I don’t even know that this is the case because, as you know, I blog at The Corner, and The Corner is a very conservative blog. And Bill Buckley, who started National Review, has declared—and National Review’s position is—the War on Drugs has failed.
Bob Zadek: He wrote—there was a piece in National Review about 20 years ago that I think you referenced.
Veronique de Rugy: Absolutely. In ‘96. And it was a symposium on the War on Drugs, and they say, while we do not approve of drug consumption and things like this, we have to say we think that the War on Drugs has failed miserably.
Bob Zadek: And what’s really interesting is, as you know, California is under a judicial mandate to get rid of overcrowding in its prison system, and California is really struggling. And a federal judge has ordered California to simply release prisoners. And when I first read of that, I was aghast. “Oh my goodness, we have a judge now running the penal system.” But on reflection, I say if the release of prisoners is selective and you release non-violent prisoners, what a good idea.
Veronique de Rugy: Yeah, I mean, it’s just a problem that releasing prisoners is not going to—I mean, I’m all in favor of releasing those non-violent criminals who should never have been there in the first place. But it’s not addressing the most fundamental problem, that we need to completely change the way those laws are sending people to jail like crazy.
Bob Zadek: And they’re doing so in reaction to public hysteria. And it is in the most crass, cynical way. Veronique, can you define the hysteria?
Veronique de Rugy: Well, the hysteria was stirred up—fear on drugs, drug violence—made people want to strictly enforce laws. And this, perhaps never based on fact, fear of violent crime and distrust of judges, which didn’t allow judges to decide on sentencing. So the states enacted mandatory sentencing, which says, “Judges, you’re too stupid to fix sentencing intelligently, so we’re going to impose mandatory sentencing requirements on you, and we’re going to impose harsh sentences,” which in effect just load up the prisons with people where perhaps the sentence is far too harsh.
Bob Zadek: I agree. Veronique, we have to go to break. This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Veronique de Rugy. The subject is the crime of expensive prisons. Back in 90 seconds.
Malum Prohibitum vs. Malum In Se [26:40]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. Today we are discussing the profound waste of money in these tight economic times, the money we spend on what is absolutely a non-problem, which is violent crime. To help me sort all this stuff out, I’m delighted to welcome Veronique de Rugy.
There are four Latin words, I think, that sum all this up. Being a lawyer, I occasionally resort to Latin, although I by no means speak it fluently. Does anybody? The four Latin words are malum prohibitum and malum in se. Malum is bad. Malum in se are acts that are bad per se. The very act is obviously bad in any culture: rape, robbery, murder are clearly bad. Every culture would consider those acts to be crimes and should be punished, and we are to be protected from them. Malum prohibitum are those acts that are neutral, that are not necessarily bad, but that we pass laws and make them bad. Think insider trading, a topic of a prior show. Think all those other acts that don’t really have much or any victim; they are just—we decided they’re bad. Using marijuana, using drugs is malum prohibitum. There’s nothing wrong with it in any culture, but we decided for whatever reason they are bad. Our prison system is loaded up with people who commit acts that we have just decided ought to be bad for one or the other of transient social reasons. And as a result of which, we end up picking up the tab for the incarceration, for the free meals and the free medical care we give to all of these prisoners, with no benefit to society whatever—indeed, with a detriment.
And couple that with the hysteria which brought about California’s insane Three Strikes law. The Three Strikes law says once you commit your third felony, irrespective of how minor it is, you are put away for life because you are a career criminal. So we end up with—sorry, go ahead, Veronique.
The Aging Prison Population and Recidivism [28:57]
Veronique de Rugy: I just wanted to say, and imagine also the disaster of locking up those small thieves. Like, if you steal something, in some counties in California, I’ve heard it’s labeled as a felony. And you end up locking up some small thieves with violent criminals for very long periods of time. I mean, just imagine the damage that this causes.
Bob Zadek: There was a story about somebody who stole a slice of pizza, and that was his third felony and he was put away for life. That was an expensive piece of pepperoni. And you know, Veronique, I’m sure your study pointed out that as a result of so many prisoners getting long sentences, we have, of all things, an aging population, which means we have a lot of people who are in their 50s and 60s and 70s in prison, which means we are picking up the tab for their medical expenses and all of the other expenses that come with being a senior citizen. And statistics show that the threat of somebody in their 50s and 60s…
Veronique de Rugy: Absolutely. And also, because when you’ve locked up people for so long, the idea that these guys can come out and be rehabilitated and starting making a living for themselves is completely nonsensical. And in fact, that’s why four out of ten people who come out of jail end up back in jail in the short term, like really soon after they get out. They go back in because life on the outside is just not possible if you can’t find a job, if you can’t pay your medical bills. It’s really terrible.
The Dilemma of Rehabilitation [31:50]
Bob Zadek: Well, that raises an interesting question, Veronique, with really profound libertarian overtones as well. And the question I struggle with is this: one of the goals of the prison system is rehabilitation, so that these criminals can re-enter society and not commit crimes again. Which means things like education and job training. Now, in my head, the problem I have is, how can you justify society spending a lot of money on job training, on education for somebody in prison, unless you spend at least the same amount of money per capita on everybody who’s not in prison? You can’t give somebody who committed a crime a social advantage as opposed to people who have never committed crimes.
Veronique de Rugy: I agree with you, except that the whole band-aid of providing education for people who are in jail is just that—a band-aid. Two wrongs don’t make a right. And the problem is like these guys should not be in jail in the first place. Sure, if you’ve killed someone, if you’ve raped someone, if you’ve robbed a bank—I mean, there are a lot of crimes that, as you said, they’re bad, bad, bad. But people who are drug users, especially marijuana users, they are no victims. They should not be in jail in the first place. And while I actually don’t glamorize the use of drugs—I actually think that probably people shouldn’t be using them— I still think that people should be also free as long as they don’t hurt other people to consume drugs. I mean, I don’t necessarily approve of it, but my opinion doesn’t matter as long as they don’t violate other people’s property rights and they don’t cause trouble. These people shouldn’t be in jail in the first place. And that’s the real problem. And you’re not going to make it okay by educating them. But so I mean, I understand your dilemma for sure.
Decriminalization and the Obama Administration [35:46]
Bob Zadek: And I wonder, you know, one of the cures that I think would appeal to a lot of my audience is at least the cure of the economic issue, not the societal issue of putting away people for non-violent crimes, which I’m opposed to. But one of the economic cures is states should be more aggressive than they are in selling prison labor. Now, I know some of your colleagues at Reason have considered this issue, but there’s money to be made and very interesting issues to be raised in allowing the prison system to sell prison labor to private businesses for the highest bidder—that is, people who will pay the highest per hour to buy prison labor. This gives prisoners some work to do instead of lifting weights and watching Oprah, if she’s still on the air, and it allows prisoners to somewhat pay for their own work.
Veronique de Rugy: I have no issue with this, as long as they are people who are not in jail for wrong reasons. I have absolutely no objection to this. But I also don’t understand why states are not dramatically opposed to the War on Drugs, because it is because of the War on Drugs—I mean, 60% of people who are in jail are non-violent offenders. And mainly, basically, it is through the War on Drugs. I mean, think about it. It is quite dramatic. Our prison population is made of non-violent people who are in jail for drug-related issues. It just to me it’s unbelievable the cost that it imposes for no good reason.
Bob Zadek: And what’s interesting is the economic benefits to cash-strapped states would be so immediate. The moment a state legalizes or decriminalizes—to use a more neutral word—decriminalizes dealing in drugs and using drugs, the moment it’s decriminalized and at the same time give amnesty or releases prisoners who are doing drug-related time, the economic benefit would be immediate with no social cost whatever. It’s profound. And yet states—California being the most recent example—states just can’t seem to move. California came really close at about 48% to cross that bridge and decriminalize drug use and drug sales.
And then we have the Obama administration, which is going back on Obama’s promise in the ‘08 election. Obama promised during the election not to enforce federal drug laws against anybody who was in compliance with a state law on medical marijuana. And now Obama has gone back on that promise. It’s astonishing to me.
Veronique de Rugy: And it makes no sense because who are the people he’s talking to? I mean, in the best-case scenario, he’s talking to uber, uber, uber social conservatives. And I can’t imagine that this is, you know, the audience he’s catering to. It makes no sense.
Bob Zadek: It astonished me when Obama and Holder announced that they were going to rescind, they were going to withdraw Obama’s campaign promise and not enforce federal drug laws against medical marijuana users if the state allows it. It seemed so irrational to me because, as you pointed out, Veronique, he’s appealing to this tiny base who he’s not going to win over anyway. He’s never going to get their vote because they are the most extreme conservatives in the country. So why would he do it? It defies logic.
Veronique de Rugy: I have no idea. Don’t ask me to rationalize President Obama’s decision. I can’t.
Bob Zadek: So here we have a problem where, Veronique, as you pointed out, the state is spending a fortune—or all states. I think you pointed out it was nationwide $52 billion. In your article, you pointed out it was 7% of all general fund spending was on criminal justice. And that money produces only a detriment and no benefit and no protection to society.
Veronique de Rugy: Yes. And then you have to add the cost of the federal War on Drugs, which is a whole other level of cost. But yeah, I mean, it makes no sense. And I’m you know, the thing that’s really horrible and great at the same time about the War on Drugs is give it another 10 years, there will be no more War on Drugs, and no one will ever even understand why there ever was a War on Drugs, except that, you know, millions of lives will have been ruined by it.
Bob Zadek: It was no different than Clinton’s welfare reform. You had Marian Wright Edelman and many others saying, “Oh my God, kids are going to be starving to death. It’s the end of society.” And it was only after we bit the bullet and we rescinded 40 years of failed welfare policy, nobody even noticed except we spent less money. It’s the same issue.
Drug Use as a Medical Issue [44:40]
Bob Zadek: This is Bob Zadek. I’m talking to Veronique de Rugy. The subject is the crime of expensive prisons. Back in 90 seconds.
Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show. I’m your host, Bob Zadek. Today we are discussing the crime of the criminal justice system, the fortune we spend, indeed we waste, on incarceration of criminals who should not be incarcerated.
Veronique, I’m sure your study pointed out that as a result of so many prisoners getting long sentences, we have, of all things, an aging population, which means we are picking up the tab for their medical expenses and all of the other expenses that come with being a senior citizen. And statistics show that the threat of somebody in their 50s and 60s…
Veronique de Rugy: I just wanted to add one little thing for our listeners who think that actually consuming drug is not, you know, doing nothing and think that it’s actually really wrong, right? And I mean, I would just argue that it may be, but obviously the way we’re handling this problem, if it is a problem, is not working.
Bob Zadek: And the way to handle it, if anything, is to describe it as a medical problem, not a criminal justice problem.
Veronique de Rugy: Exactly. And so it’s not working. Even if you think that consuming drug is a horrible thing that is destroying lives—which it is in some cases, absolutely—what we’re doing in order to cure it is actually really absolutely not working. I mean, we’ve put millions of people in jail for this. I mean, there’s as much drug consumption as there used to be. It is the cause—I mean, because it’s illegal, it’s the cause of much criminal activities, police corruption and things like this. And I think that the people who studied—and I’m not one of these, but I read a lot of that literature—who studied what actually how you could address the drug problem, I mean, aside from decriminalizing like Bob you said—even though I have to say legalizing is an easier word for me to say—but so aside from legalizing is actually doing a lot of prevention. Prevention is what works, not putting people in jail.
The Four Purposes of Incarceration [49:22]
Bob Zadek: In other words, why not adopt for the drug problem, if you think it’s a problem, the same approach more or less we adopt with cigarettes? Imagine if we put people in jail for smoking cigarettes and for dealing in cigarettes. It’s the same issue. Once you stipulate that it is a health problem, then the solution is a health solution.
Veronique de Rugy: The cures are very different from the one we’re supposedly using. And in the same way as prohibition for alcohol, you know, led to dramatic violence and corruption in America, the War on Drugs is leading to as much violence and corruption, if not more, because it’s been going on for much longer. And anyway, it is time we stop this charade of trying to pretend that we’re trying to do something. And in fact, you know, I’m always wondering why the Democrats are so lame and not fighting up and arms about this issue, because poor people are the one and black people are the one who end up in jail. And if they care so much about poor people, you know, why don’t they actually campaign strongly, vigorously on this issue?
Bob Zadek: And of course, on the issue on the War on Drugs—by the way, of course, even the phrase “War on Drugs,” you can’t declare war on a noun. And any war on a noun has to fail. War on drugs, war on poverty, war on whatever the war du jour is, it has to fail. We have to lose those “wars.” And if we think back to the ’20s when we had prohibition, prohibition created organized crime as it exists today. Without prohibition, organized crime would never have accumulated all of the power and the wealth which got them started to be so powerful in our country for a hundred years. And just as prohibition created organized crime, so the War on Drugs creates the criminal conspiracies that live off illegal drug use and the gang violence that follows with it. So the War on Drugs is itself the problem, not the cure by any means.
Imagine a prison system where all we had in jail were people from whom we need to be protected.
Veronique de Rugy: Or who need to be punished for what they did.
Bob Zadek: Or who need to be punished. And you know, I find a parallel. The failure of public education, in my opinion, Veronique, started when society delegated to the educational system the tasks that parents were doing badly. Once parents stopped being good parents—teaching children about safe sex and about morality, teaching children about hygiene, instilling values—we transferred those assignments to the education system. We overburdened the education system and it failed. Well, now we are transferring to the criminal justice system what is really a medical problem, and now the criminal justice system is starting to fail because we’ve taken away from the criminal justice system its core mission, which is to protect you and I from people who are threats to us. Once you expand the mission…
Veronique de Rugy: You can imagine how much better cops would be doing their jobs or how much more time they would have to actually solving real crimes if they weren’t always busy going after small drug dealers and drug users and medical marijuana dispensaries in California. And how much more time and better judges would be if they didn’t have to see one drug dealer after another and instead, you know, be in the business of judging real criminals.
Conclusion: A System Beyond Logic [52:30]
Bob Zadek: You know, the purpose of incarceration—there are four purposes of incarceration: to prevent more crime from occurring by putting away the perpetrator, rehabilitation, retribution (punishing somebody who did a bad act), and deterrence (if you fear getting caught, you won’t commit the crime). And if we apply those four tests to incarceration of drug users, it flunks every single one of them. So the very purpose of incarceration is silly. It’s the wrong cure for the wrong problem. And that’s where we have failed. And as Veronique has pointed out, the failure is profoundly expensive upon society. And now more than ever, when society is looking for ways to become leaner and meaner and get back to its core mission. Government must get back to its core missions, and the criminal justice system must get back to its core mission, which is protecting me and my property from somebody who wants to do harm to me, and get out of the other businesses that the criminal justice system is in.
Veronique de Rugy: One of the things that you said I think is very important. You said that one of the goals of the criminal system, one of the reasons for putting people in jail, one of the reasons is like we’re thinking to impose a strong disincentive for people to actually behave badly. And who doesn’t it work with? You know, it doesn’t work that well for people who are poor, right? Because what you’re giving up by going to jail is actually not that much. In fact, to some extent, you’re going to be fed—I mean, if you survive, of course, because I guess the violence in prisons is quite dramatic—but you get sometimes like a really seriously better life. And so that the disincentive doesn’t work that well. But it also explains how as we became wealthier in the ’80s and the ’90s, crime rates went down across the board for everything—property crimes and actual murders and things like this—and it’s because actually people had more to lose. But still, the people who have the least to lose by being thrown in jail are poor people. And that’s why, I mean, it is really a system that’s unbelievably unfair to them.
Bob Zadek: That’s a great point you made to close with. There was a story in California, Veronique, which you may have noticed, about some fellow who robbed a bank for a dollar because he wanted the healthcare he would get in jail. That’s what it has come to.
This is Bob Zadek. I’ve been spending a wonderful hour with Veronique de Rugy. We’re talking about the crime of the criminal justice system, the waste of money. This is an area where progressives and libertarians and conservatives ought to all agree. Let’s take on the prison unions, close up the prisons, release the non-violent criminals, and only put the bad guys away. Bob Zadek, back next Sunday. Hope to speak to you then. Thanks so much.
Veronique de Rugy: Thank you, Bob.