--Mike Connelly

By coincidence, after the early post today on the ways futurists use to get ordinary folks oriented toward the train whistling down upon them, I run across a piece by a former futurist just now getting out of the business.  Why?  Because the people he advises have become so wary and clueless about the future that his profession overall has just started telling clients what they want to hear rather than what’s actually before them.

I am not quitting this industry for lack of passion, as I still believe -- more than ever -- in using good information and sophisticated analytical techniques to decode the future and make decisions. The problem is, the market for intelligence is now largely about providing information that makes decision makers feel better, rather than bringing true insights about risk and opportunity. Our future is now being planned by people who seem to put their emotional comfort ahead of making decisions based on real -- and often uncomfortable -- information. Perhaps one day, the discipline of real intelligence will return triumphantly to the world's executive suites. Until then, high-priced providers of "strategic intelligence" are only making it harder for their clients -- for all of us -- to adapt by shielding them from painful truths.

Obviously “intelligence” refers to more than spy stuff (or, in the immortal line of Col. Flagg on MASH, “I have nothing to do with intelligence”).  Companies, corporations, non-profits, even government agencies have used the services and reservoir of analyses of this guy’s ilk for years.  The benefit?  “When the intelligence business works, it helps create organizational cultures where empirical evidence and concern for the long-range strategic impact of a decision trump internal politics and short-term expediency. And in the past, many such cultures have thrived in businesses and government agencies alike.”

But with the 2008 crash, consolidations and resulting bigger bureaucracy have hit the business world, and some businesses (think “where I deposit my dwindling savings”) have gotten so much government protection that it doesn’t matter if they plan well.  Now, the same people who were in the market for forecasts about how wonderful everything was going to be now don’t like what they get for their money.  And, since that’s not a good business plan for any forecasting business, the advisors have started tailoring their reports to keep the money coming in.  Hence, this guy leaving the profession.  His conclusion (but read the whole post for the truly interesting detail):

For too many business and government executives, foresight is a luxury that is hardly necessary in this new "hypercompetitive" post-crisis world. Perhaps it's always been superfluous, we just didn't notice. The study of the future used to be easier to sell, maybe because the analysis usually predicted the growth of the consumer economy or the next great gadget. But the future is no longer nearly as palatable, and the customers are less interested. That's too bad, because companies and governments still need help planning for the future. But it takes discomfort, courage and humility to face that future, and who wants to pay for bad news?

It will not always be this way. When the real pain of our losses and poor decisions finally occurs to people, when the last quantitative easing bailout no longer hides the logical incongruities that are fundamental to the system, and when enough people refuse to believe that "the new normal" is normal at all, we will then return to a real discussion of what is next. In the meantime, the remnants of the strategic intelligence world will be happy to take your money in exchange for telling you that everything is fine.

IOW, when The Perfect Storm has done so much damage that even the corkiest head is getting a clue, when efforts to maintain the status quo become more costly, reality will become valuable, and those who have prepared will be the best off.  Sound familiar, dear and cherished readers??

But when does that happen?  Why don’t even those who see themselves as “outside the box” thinkers get that being “outside” a box going down the drain get that we need completely new ways of thinking, not bringing together the usual suspects for the usual patter and usual reports (sorry, I really tried not to bring up that “new and unprecedented” group analyzing why people get incarcerated and what happens again, but I’m weak).

That’s where this guy comes in.  Another consultant to the big org decision-makers.  Time after time, he tells us, he’s seen companies he works with, colleagues who get downsized, whatever, done in by “blinders,” and that got him thinking about how such credentialed and achieved folks could be so, well, blind.  Which led him to The Candle Problem.

You’re given a candle, a box of matches, and a bunch of tacks in a tray.  You’re told you need to fix the candle to the corkboard wall in a way that, when lit, it won’t drip wax on the floor or table beneath it.  Rather than waste your time (especially if you’ve already heard this one), picture what you would do if the tray were empty and the tacks were on the table. . . . Uh huh.  NOW you have it.  And so did the people given the Problem in exactly that way, allowing them to solve it much faster.  (Go ahead and Google it if your brows are still furled.  We’ll wait.)

The thing is that results differed when financial incentives were offered the two groups with the tacks in and the tacks out.   With the tacks out of the tray, the groups with financial incentives solved the problem faster than the groups without incentive.  But with the tacks in the tray and the solution not as conspicuous, the group WITHOUT incentives were much faster.  This is the consistent result of this experiment time after time after time.

Why?  Because of the focus being on simple v. complicated solutions.  Where the solution is not complex and people can have their attention concentrated by an incentive, boom.  They get simple answers quicker than those with no extrinsic incentive.  However, when the solution requires you to think, yes, outside the box and be creative, critical, and not common and familiar, the incentives act to reduce chance-taking, generation of new ideas, to want to avoid mistakes.  As he says,

When you're focused you are less able to think laterally. You become dumber. This is not the kind of thing we want if we expect to solve the problems that face us in the 21st century.

Which explains far more about how we got where we are than even the topics of his post.  It also explains why the first writer’s clients rebel against realistic options that don’t have shiny apples attached, that promise triage and retraction.  Don’t wanna think laterally and you can’t make me.  It’s no accident they both come to the same conclusion about what reality will force decision-makers to do as the 21^st C rolls along.  And, one more time, it’s why cautious, incremental thinking when that rolling is in fact a steam-roller is dangerous and counter-productive, even if it’s painful at the moment.  That’s just as true for Corrections Sentencing and the reforms that will get it to 2020 as for anything these guys talked about.  Dealing with the comfortable will leave clients willing to pay and tell other potential clients, “yeah, these guys are okay.”  But they and those colleagues are just lying down in front of the steam-roller.  Does it make us feel better that these pieces help us to understand why?

--Mike Connelly

Back to the Future Series IV

[In recent years, in various capacities, I've put together several studies that relate greatly to the Corrections Sentencing Reform 2.0 that we talk about here and which can still be tapped legally(!!). We'll post them over the next several weeks both on the daily posts and over in the Special Topics section on the left side of the page. The series right now focuses on a topicmentioned herebut not in great detail. The links referenced are dated and primarily unavailable now, but the bulk of the material should be easily referenced with your good friend Google. We welcome your ideas and comments about this topic and want to extend the discussion to your particular needs and contributions. Thanks.--Mike]

[Yesterday we discussed the general need for TECHNOCORRECTIONS approaches to alcohol treatment in order to reduce correctional resources allocated.  We also pointed to promising pharmaceutical possibilities.  We finish today with a look at genetic options, or what has been called "pharmacogenomics" by those important and intelligent enough to make up big new words, plus a look at how these new options might be managed and delivered.]

The TECHNOCORRECTIONS Approach to Alcohol Treatment--Part Two (2009)

The Potential of Genetics

Indiana University School of Medicine researchers find a sequence variation in a specific gene responsible for production of a protein important in regulating dopamine function. That gene sequence “also contributes to whether or not an individual craves or does not crave alcohol.” One of the researchers says, “Understanding the role of [the protein] in sensitivity to craving may enable the future development of drugs to help alleviate the symptoms of craving, improving the chances that the individual might be able to stop drinking.” Other researchers at the university isolate genes associated with severe alcohol dependence and withdrawal compared to those without severe withdrawal, concluding that “While results from this study do not provide a cure for alcoholism, they do show us a potential avenue for future clinical work.”
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070326181552.htm)
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080923164533.htm)

Work at the University of Illinois-Chicago discovers that “Reshaping of the DNA scaffolding that supports and controls the expression of genes in the brain may play a major role in the alcohol withdrawal symptoms, particularly anxiety, that make it so difficult for alcoholics to stop using alcohol.” The researchers find enzymes that affect this gene expression as well as inhibitors of those enzymes, leading to the possibility of developing “therapeutic agents” to treat alcoholism. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080402084340.htm)

Research at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism target a “brain circuit that underlies feelings of stress and anxiety [that] show promise as a new therapeutic target for alcoholism.” They find “a brain molecule . . . [that] appears to be a central actor in stress-related drinking.” Activating neurochemicals and brain regions that depress stress responses and drug rewards could positively affect resistance to alcohol craving. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080226155537.htm)

Researchers at the University of Virginia and the University of Michigan publish an article highlighting the identification and location of specific genes associated with multiple addictions. The implications are that “we’re narrowing the scope to specific genetic targets. Once researchers can pinpoint exact genetic variants and molecular mechanisms, then we can create much more effective, even personalized, treatments for individuals addicted to a variety of substances.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090310142912.htm)

Overcoming Supply, Monitoring and Delivery Problems

The maker of the drug Vivitrol, which two separate studies found effective along with therapy in reducing days using alcohol, decides to continue making the drug despite the small market for it among possible users. Among the reasons that treatment programs give for not using it and other drugs: a resistance among counseling therapists to drugs to assist abusers, ineffectiveness of the drugs for many abusers, and the expense ($800/mo. for Vivitrol). Other drugs that have found limited marketing success include Antabuse, Campral, and Naltrexone. Makers of Vivitrol assert that their drug is superior because it is injected and releases slowly into the bloodstream over a month, making constant monitoring of treated offenders less extensive. (Boston Globe, March 23, 2009)

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology develop “a sensor necklace that records the exact time and date when specially-designed pills are swallowed, and reminds the user if any doses are being missed.” One researcher notes that “A patient cannot cheat the system by passing the pill past the necklace sensors on the outside of the neck because the signal processing algorithm is smart enough to only look for the pill’s magnetic signature while it passes through the esophagus” [with a 94% successful detection rate]. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080305111857.htm)

An anklet called SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor) detects the wearer’s alcohol levels through his/her sweat (and ethanol vapor) and is uploaded by the wearer to a home modem that transmits its data to the anklet company, which reports violations to the judge. It also detects and reports efforts at tampering. Such technology could facilitate monitoring of the remedial drugs and their intake for better supervision of offender adherence to his/her sentence requirements. SCRAM was piloted early in Oklahoma but not continued at that time, although improvements since might again merit consideration, according to the director of the state’s department of corrections. (http://www.redding.com/news/2007/apr/10/anklets-used-to-detect-alcohol-abuse-in-dui)

To deal with the persistent problem of actual delivery of drug remedies to offenders, that is, the problem of offenders not taking required drugs as part of their treatment, scientists for a project funded by the European Commission develop a “prosthetic tooth, just two molars in size, containing a reservoir, valve and programmable timing controls. . . . In a later system, the team hopes to use radio-frequency identification (RFID) and later GSM telephony to communicate with the system.” A Wired commentary notes that the UK is moving quickly to imbed RFID into offenders for better surveillance tracking, which would seem easily combined with the “tooth” to enhance implementation even when faced with recalcitrant offenders. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080116165627.htm; http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2008/01/arphid-watch-lo.html)

The Dana Foundation publishes a report on a feasibility study considering the “ethical considerations in using pharmacology to prevent addiction relapse” among parolees. The report looks at the use of extended-release naltrexone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of alcoholism. The report was instigated in part because “The gap between therapeutic opportunity and actual clinical practice in addiction treatment (not only in criminal justice populations) is about to widen with the introduction of extended-release versions of existing drugs and rapid advances now being made in the development of other anti-craving drugs and, potentially, vaccines targeted at drugs of abuse. In short, we appear to be on the threshold of major advances in the pharmacological management of addiction.” The report focuses on a variety of methods of delivering the drugs to abusers, ranging from most to least voluntary, concluding that conditions do exist even for the proper ethical use of the more mandatory approaches but leans toward the voluntary. (http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=13932)

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report research indicating the “[e]xplanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information.” They warn, however, that “[e]ven irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people’s abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation.” (http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn.2008.20040?cookieSet=1&journalCode=jocn)

--Mike Connelly

Back to the Future Series IV

[In recent years, in various capacities, I've put together several studies that relate greatly to the Corrections Sentencing Reform 2.0 that we talk about here and which can still be tapped legally(!!). We'll post them over the next several weeks both on the daily posts and over in the Special Topics section on the left side of the page. The series right now focuses on a topicmentioned herebut not in great detail. The links referenced are dated and primarily unavailable now, but the bulk of the material should be easily referenced with your good friend Google. We welcome your ideas and comments about this topic and want to extend the discussion to your particular needs and contributions. Thanks.--Mike]

The TECHNOCORRECTIONS Approach to Alcohol Treatment (2009)

The Problem

A recent report by the National Institute on Drug Abuse notes that “It is estimated that 70 percent of individuals in state prisons and local jails have abused drugs regularly, compared with approximately 9 percent of the general population. Studies show that treatment cuts drug abuse in half, reduces criminal activity up to 80 percent, and reduces arrests up to 64 percent. However, less than one-fifth of these offenders receive treatment. Treatment not only lowers recidivism rates, it is also cost-effective. It is estimated that for every dollar spent on addiction treatment programs, there is a $4 to $7 reduction in the cost of drug-related crimes. With some outpatient programs, total savings can exceed costs by a ratio of 12 to 1.

“The failure to treat addicts in the criminal justice system contributes to a continuous cycle of substance abuse and crime. In 1999, 1.5 million minor children—most under the age of 10—had a parent in prison. Fifty-eight percent of these imprisoned parents used drugs in the month before their offense. Children of addicted parents are four times more likely to become addicted if they choose to use drugs or alcohol, and many will also enter the criminal justice system.” (Principles of Drug Abuse Treatment for Criminal Justice Populations, http://www.drugabuse.gov)

The Role of Science

Scientific American runs a long and detailed lead story, “Seeking the Connections: Alcoholism and Our Genes.” The authors state plainly, “With rapid advances over the past 10 years in technologies for discovering and analyzing the functions of genes, researchers are now increasingly able to get at the biological roots of complex disorders such as substance abuse and addiction. The power to examine patterns of inheritance in large populations, and to survey hundreds of thousands of tiny variations in the genomes of each of those individuals, enables investigators to pinpoint specific genes that exert strong or subtle influences on a person’s physiology and his or her resulting risk for disease. . . . Revealing the biological processes that can build and reinforce alcohol addiction will most certainly help to better target existing treatments and devise new ones to break alcohol’s hold.” (March 18, 2007)

Newsweek declares addiction an illness, “a chronic, relapsing brain disorder to be managed with all the tools at medicine’s disposal,” and details genetic research into its biological base in production and reception of dopamine and other neurochemicals as well as vaccines and new drugs to treat it. It quotes the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse saying “In 10 years we will be treating addiction as a disease, and that means with medicine.” That is, of course, if pharmaceutical companies can be convinced of profits and limited in liability and if traditional therapy groups can give up parts of their turf. Specific drugs are cited for their impact, such as Vigabatrin and Camparal for their effect on neurotransmitters; D-cycloserine for its ability to disassociate context with drug use, a common problem in relapse; Provigil for its positive impact on reassertion of “free will” in drug choice; and Naltrexone, which can block drug effects and its injectable form, Vivitrol, which can get around the problem of addicts deciding not to take the drug. (February 22, 2008)

MSN Health & Fitness provides an overview of the biochemical nature of addictions and the pharmaceutical strategies of their treatment, either through blocking receptors with antagonists, fitting receptors with less addictive drugs such as agonists, or partially fitting with “partial agonists,” reproducing a reduced and less dramatic impact. It also details specific drugs, including an anti-drinking drug called disulfiram now used for nicotine addiction and suboxone which has been effective against oxycodone addiction. The article outlines some implementation problems, such as side effects and tailoring dosages and who is allowed to prescribe or administer the treatments, and the concerns that some of the remedies may prove as bad as the addictions. It notes that “The problem is that, while these drugs are statistically successful, they aren’t necessarily instant sobriety in a pill. Some patients still need counseling and group therapy to stay sober. Others won’t find certain pills useful at all. ‘One thing that’s clear is that some of these medications don’t work in everyone,’ says Dr. Frank Vocci, director of the Division of Pharmacotherapies at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. ‘Doctors have to work with each patient on an individual basis and see what works for them.’” (March 26, 2008)

Researchers using MRIs identify “brain sites that fire up more when people make impulsive decisions. In a study comparing brain activity of sober alcoholics and non-addicted people making financial decisions, the group of sober alcoholics showed significantly more ‘impulsive’ neural activity. The researchers also discovered that a specific gene mutation boosted activity in these brain regions when people made impulsive choices. The mutation was already known to reduce brain levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine. The newly found link involving the gene, impulsive behavior and brain activity suggests that raising dopamine levels may be an effective treatment for addiction . . . .” One of the researchers noted that “Our data suggest there may be a cognitive difference in people with addictions. Their brains may not fully process the long-term consequences of their choices. They may compute information less efficiently. What’s exciting about this study is that it suggests a new approach to therapy. We might prescribe medications, such as those used to treat Parkinson’s or early Alzheimer’s disease, or tailor cognitive therapy to improve executive function. . . . The data takes a significant step toward being able to identify subtypes of alcoholics, which could help their treatments, and may provide earlier intervention for people who are at risk for developing addictions. . . . It wasn’t that long ago that we believed schizophrenia was caused by bad mothers and depression wasn’t a disease. Hopefully, in 10 years, we’ll look back and it will seem silly that we didn’t think addiction was a disease, too.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071226003608.htm)

Pharmaceutical Approaches
According to researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine, “An extended-release version of the anti-addiction medicine naltrexone reduces drinking in alcohol-dependent patients within two days of being injected.” They conclude that “Potential clinical implications of the rapid, early onset of effect of this medication’s delivery system for patients who are depended on alcohol include facilitation of early engagement in treatment, motivation to continue treatment, and focus on the goals established in counseling.” (http://www.reutershealth.com/en/index.html)

Aripiprazole, a drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, has potential use for alcoholics, according to scientists at the University of Connecticut Health Center. They conclude that “Because aripiprazole decreases alcohol’s euphoric effects and increases its sedative effects, this drug could be useful in the treatment of heavy drinking. . . . Overall, the findings suggest that ‘additional research on the effects of aripiprazole on the subjective effects of alcohol is warranted.’” (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=aripiprazole-may-be-effec)

The Baylor College of Medicine announces the successful trials of “vaccines that spur the body’s immune system to help even when the pleasure centers clamor for another hit” of abused substances. As one commentary said, “There are many people who have the desire and strength to make the initial step towards abstinence, but then relapse once and get sucked back into the drug’s thrall. Vaccines, along with therapy, may protect former addicts from long-term cravings and spontaneous mistakes.” (http://www.treatmentonline.com/treatments.php?id=1983)

A Boston University School of Public Health study indicates that “[p]eople who begin to drink alcohol before the age of 14 years are not only more likely to become alcohol dependent than those who stay away from alcohol until they’re 21; they also develop dependency faster and have a longer struggle with alcohol throughout their lives . . . .” This research will likely impact how eventual vaccines against substance abuse will be implemented and who will be most likely to receive them. (http://www.medicineonline.com/news/12/5099/Early-drinking-may-speed-alcohol-dependence.html)

Pharmaceutical control of anxiety may allow greater control of alcohol withdrawal symptoms, according to work at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s College of Medicine, as well as preventing the anxiety that can lead to alcohol abuse. Says one of the researchers, “These observations . . . provide an insight into the link between alcohol and anxiety and could be used to identify new targets for developing medications that alleviate withdrawals-induced anxiety and potentially modify a motivation for drinking.” (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080304173356.htm)

UCLA researchers discover how an experimental drug (R015-4513) bound to specific brain cell receptors to stop drunken behavioral symptoms. They hope that their work “may lead to a better understanding of how alcohol works in the brain as well as help develop drugs that prevent alcohol actions, such as a sober-up pill, and alcohol addiction medications and treatments.” (http://research.ucla.edu/tech/ucla05-458.htm)

In a study of 20 smokers/heavy drinkers, Yale University researchers discover that the anti-smoking drug Chantix (varenicline) could also work to cut alcohol use after only one week. “In general, . . . the Chantix group reported less alcohol craving and less of a ‘high’ following the initial alcohol dose. And when given the chance to drink more, Chantix users had less than one drink, on average, compared with the placebo group’s two to three drinks.” (http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2009/03/18/eline/links/20090318elin002.html)

A University of Virginia neuroscientist leads a study to see if a combination of two drugs—topiramate (used for seizures and migraines) and ondansetron (used for chemo-related nausea in cancer patients)—could work to control alcohol dependency. Between the two drugs, they could work to control both before and after alcohol abuse symptoms.

Similarly, a Finnish research team notes that escitalopram (used to treat Alheimer’s dementia) and memantine (used to treat depression and anxiety) have proven useful in combination to treat major depressive disorders in alcoholics.
(http://scienceblogs.com/bushwells/22008/12/uva_alcoholism_researcher_they.php)
(http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2008/11/07/eline/links/20081107elin031.html)

The Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center releases a study indicating that a hormone disorder drug (cabergoline, marketed as Dostinex) decreased alcohol consumption and seeking behavior in rats while leaving those behaviors unchanged regarding water and saccharin, other reward-related fluids. Low doses appear effective, but human clinical trials await. (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223221610.htm)

[Tomorrow we'll look at the genetic ("pharmacogenomics") side of this and how to overcome some of the problems in supply, monitoring, and delivery.  Rest your mind until then.]

--Mike Connelly

We argue here that any Corrections Sentencing reform, to accomplish its stated goals, has to be accompanied by long-term commitment by reformers and mechanisms to oversee and enforce the actual reforms to prevent issues like fungibility, organizational cultures, bureaucratic inertia, and ill-informed triaging from swamping their intentions. It’s nice to find out we’re not a just a lonely voice out in that void. Here is a great op-ed over at The Crime Report (which is a frequent locale for such things) by a nonprofit reentry program director that says everything we say, applied specifically to what is considered reform in New York and New Jersey right now.

You need, as always, to read the full piece (and give Report the hits), but here are a couple of tempter quotes to convince you:

[New York’s and New Jersey’s] sweeping reforms will prove to be effective in cutting down crime and downsizing prisons. But only if they are done right.

Before the New York legislature approves Cuomo’s plan, it is of the utmost importance to set standards for how it will be applied in New York City. What are the goals of the services? What are the expected outcomes? What resources are available?

Those questions must be answered in the legislation to make it work. We also need a system for monitoring and tracking the dollars saved in order to make sure that money goes back into the rehabilitation services provided by the community. . . .

The key question is: where are all of the savings going? From what we have seen in the prisoner reentry field, not enough is going to ATI and reentry programs, the very same programs that save the state money in the first place.

Fortune and other reentry organizations have experienced considerable cuts in funding, including the loss of millions of dollars in local and state-level legislative support. Because of these cuts, vital programs have had to make drastic cuts. . . .

In tough economic times, our elected officials should be strategically investing their limited criminal justice resources to help take proven-effective programs to scale.

Recent reforms to the state’s harsh mandatory minimum drug laws and the closure of surplus prisons was a step in the right direction, but instead of reinvesting the dollars saved in expanding programs that work, since 2008, New York State in particular has experienced a steady erosion of our nationally recognized and highly effective network of ATI and reentry programs. . . .[emphasis added]

A lot more where that came from, as we noted. But consider. Practitioners who have to live and deal with the consequences of reform across the country can repeat everything the writer says, just changing program and organization names. When those of us who’ve been in the trenches all are still singing pretty much from the same hymnal after several years of reform efforts, you can see why Corrections Sentencing 1.0 is going to have to give way to 2.0. We don’t have time or resources any more, and won’t for a long, long time as The Perfect Storm does its damage, for the traditional and limited approaches satisfied with the unsecured incremental as if more bites of the apple will actually be there next year or the year after. Even states like New York which have closed prisons, which we here argue has to be the starting point in order to remove them as the default, are being criticized for not directing the savings back into the positive feedback loop that has to be created. Such reform efforts that don’t even try to monitor whether any savings occur or eventually do make their way to the areas proposed are conspicuously more symbolic than substantive.

The Tulsa foundation that we lauded here for their risk-taking efforts with reentry programs is the example that has to be followed (yes, I’ve worked a bit with them, but they’ve succeeded anyway). They know from the start that they might fail, but the payoffs from success make that chance worth taking. They start out with a plan and measures and feedback and constant reevaluation of performance, and they get results. It can be done.  Experienced practitioners like the writer above know that’s how it has to be done. Let’s just hope she and others can get policymakers to listen before reality comes crashing completely down.

Inside the Silo News

“80 Percent Of Male State Inmates Released In 2005 Arrested Again By 2010”

Connecticut.  Okay, this other study showed that, in our 75 largest counties in May 2002 at least, out of 100 people arrested, 65 were adults.  Of those, 25 cases got dropped.  Of the 40 cases going forward, 11 were acquitted, meaning that our system in those jurisdictions did not find actual guilt in over 55% of arrests.  I've seen presentations finding the arrest to dropped charges percentages ranging from 10% to 67%.  And yet, as this story shows once again, we as researchers and practitioners insist on considering mere arrest, which is due to finite resources in itself highly selective even before human bias, department policies, news headlines, outright corruption (think Tula), etc., decide who gets picked up and who doesn’t, as proof of a new crime.  “Innocent before proven guilty” much?   I know it’s a result of the early criminal justice research being dependent more on access to arrest data rather than other data, which isn’t as true any more, and “the light’s better over here.”  Please don’t tell me about the correlation between arrests and later convictions or incarcerations unless you’re prepared to distinguish how much of that is “arrest is proof of individual inherent criminality” and how much “arrest and most contact with the crim just system is criminogenic.”  It's not that we can't use arrest data if that's all we have, but we have much more now than we used to and so did the researchers in this story.  Yeah, yeah, I know one pathetic little blogger won’t make a difference in the face of all the sunk costs and reputations staked on this unfortunate academic support of negation of a fundamental principle of our constitutional rights, but please pay more attention in the story to the actual reincarceration rate of about 50% after 5 years, which is better proof of new criminality and pretty comparable to other states.  But the 80% will undoubtedly sell more papers and get picked up by more blowdried news readers on tv.

“GA Georgia Considers Reforms to Reduce Prison Population, Costs”

Another reform based on presumed savings from preempted prison spending that would have to occur in The Perfect Storm.  What makes this one different than Oklahoma’s, as we’ve detailed here, is requirement of an oversight council to monitor implementation, improvement of the state’s electronic criminal justice info systems, and mandated reporting of performance measures to the council for evaluation purposes.  None of it will be meaningful, however, if the state flatlines or worse on budget numbers so that those “savings” don’t actually happen and front-loading doesn't pay off.  In Missouri’s reform effort, the proposals required documented savings before spending happened, but no indication in the article if that’s what’s happening in GA.  The article is interesting because it outright says that more effective reform would close prisons and legalize marijuana to cut populations and to jumpstart budget reductions.  So, obviously, not the mainstream media.  In any case, a better effort than Oklahoma, not likely as good apparently as Missouri, but at least movement of Corrections Sentencing Reform 1.0 toward 2.0.  In small steps, but that’s how all great journeys begin.  And disasters. (h/t Real Cost of Prisons blog)

“Most Oregon prison deaths unreported to public; 79 prisoners died in custody on 2010-2011”

Not uncommon among state DOCs not to report every death, but that info is usually available in state reports or on request, so the headline isn’t as dramatic as it sounds.

“Billionaire George Soros donates $500,000 to three-strikes drive”

One of three contributors putting over a million bucks into the California campaign so far.  With the corrections officers’ union not as outfront as they have been on the other side, who knows?  Might pass something this time.

“Oregon budget writers, Gov. John Kitzhaber dismiss suggestion of multiple prison closures”

The state’s new DOC director talks reality, possible prison closures to meet awful budget future there, so key legislator labels her “alarmist” and the governor “all but disavowed” her.  Notice the “all but.”  Oregon will close prisons at some point.  It’s too far into The Perfect Storm already.  Sometimes “alarms” are useful things.  Just depends on how clueful key legislators become and how much their delay will cost the state.

Outside the Silo News

Energy Bulletin update

One of your very best sources for info on The Perfect Storm has some good posts up right now on why alternative fuels aren’t going to come riding in to save the day, meaning carbon-based fuels will remain in use for the foreseeable future (and why you should plan your facilities accordingly) and the latest on studies of the uses of fresh water around the world and here at home.

“Texas Water District Acts to Slow Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer”

And, to drive the latter point home, news at National Geographic on how Texas is waking up to the crashing of The Perfect Storm right on top of them.  And discouraging news about how much more it and the other states using the aquifer have been drawing it down in recent years, despite (or because of) the crushing drought there that is predicted to continue.

“Will Hurricanes Topple U.S. Wind Turbines?”

Nice example of how The Perfect Storm has to be looked at systemically and not in the individual silos of economy, climate, energy, water, food, etc.  Press on this end of the toothpaste tube and you get alternative energy systems to deal with escalating production costs of carbon-based fuels.  But the bulge on the other end is the weather you get from the already emitted fossil fuels, whacking down the equal and opposite reaction.  This does not mean all is hopeless, just that we have to think systems, not one fire at a time.  Hard, but not impossible, but time to get started.

Inside the Silo News

“Local re-entry program combats recidivism”

The same people who funded the impressive Women in Recovery program in Tulsa have now brought in the second site of the impressive Center for Employment Opportunities from New York City and are hoping for similar results.  When I mentioned the things Oklahoma is a national leader for, like the Oklahoma Policy Institute, below, I left out the foundation leading the way on these reentry programs (which I’ve been fortunate to work with in small ways).  This isn’t a “here’s our template of what you should do, now go do it” foundation or nonprofit like many.  This one actually gets that implementation tailored to local situations is important and so is long-term commitment.  And this foundation understands that failure is always possible but not to be avoided if you want success rather than applause.  It’s already seeing more of the success.

“For low pay and a chance, NY inmates get to work”

Prison work plans, with “wages” paid for comparison with your state.  Useful and encouraging, but keep in mind the research we cited last week indicating the limited impact of employment on recidivism right now, unless you create hands-on programs like the one just above.

“The Optimal Use of Fines and Imprisonment”

Research analyzing the best mixes of one or the other or in combo.  Important because our inability to afford more beds is going to require us to come up with alternatives that seem punitive and fines just haven’t been seen as sufficient for that in the past.  This at least might get the conversation started about how to make them more legit in eyes of folks wanting payback and how to use the funds collected to make victims more whole, which current reforms give lip service to by sending more fungible dollars to DA offices.

“The High Cost of Prisons: Using Scarce Resources Wisely”

The head of the Vera Institute lauds his organization’s recent report calculating the additional costs of state corrections that usually are found in other sections of the state or local budgets.  The takeaway from the states he emphasizes is not just that they invested in more intensive law enforcement and offender supervision outside the prison walls but that they each put caps on what would be spent and worked from those caps.  New York takes prisons offline, as we advocate here, so they aren’t available as the usual default that other states use when their budgets start tanking.  New Jersey’s governor flat out said, find other ways and stuck to it.  Again, if your state isn’t willing to do that from the beginning, whatever you claim to do as reform will flounder and bluster as budgets do their best just to stay level in The Perfect Storm.

“Only 1/5 of U.S. Inmates Get Maximum Term Reduction Via Drug Treatment”

Average reduction:  8 months.  Also cites the latest fed inmate population increases.  Only 38% over capacity.  Must be nice to have your own money printing press.

“Safety net catches those freed by new guidelines”

Those fed inmates released through the retroactive crack sentence changes.  Nice story on how effective supervision can make the difference.  (h/t The Crime Report)

“Barriers to the Use of Fingerprint Evidence in Court Is Unlocked by Statistical Model”

Sounds a little “barber, haircut” thing, but might bring a bit more certainty to the process if carefully monitored.

“Cannabis Use Doubles Chances of Vehicle Crash, Review Finds”

Sorta kiboshes the old joke we quote here about pot smokers waiting for stop signs to turn green, but the article was very interesting in not citing what comparable crash rates were for alcohol users, cell phone users, and prescription drug users.  When dogs don’t bark, that’s often a response worth heeding, too.

“Senate Backs Crackdown on Drug Dealers, Sex Offenders, People Who Exploit the Elderly”

Virginia considers opening its doors and windows to The Perfect Storm although some legislators there do seem to understand what it will do to the furniture.  And house.

Outside the Silo News

“‘Cohort replacement’: Climate deniers won’t change, but they will die”

Substitute “corrections sentencing reform” for “Climate” and “term limits” and “elections” for “die,” and you get how Corrections Sentencing 2.0 will eventually prevail, and pretty much for the same reasons.

“United States of Dollar Stores – dollar stores see a rise in households making $70,000 a year or higher as a customer base. What does the rise of dollar stores say about the middle class?”

Forget measures like “unemployment rate” that count part-time and/or lower paying jobs replacing those lost.  State budgets are impacted by sales, income, and employment tax revenue, and the real measure of that, beside those totals themselves, are things like the economic gains of Dollar Stores.  Think we’re wrong?  Then explain this.  And predict what happens when just staying level sounds like a good deal.  Then plan your corrections sentencing budgets appropriately.

“2°C warming goal now ‘optimistic’, say French scientists”

No one with their head screwed on tight ever saw this as possible precisely because “Achieving 2°C, “the most optimistic scenario,” is possible but “only by applying climate policies to reduce greenhouse gases,” they said.”   The French models are the first applying new research including cloud reflectivity and CO2 uptake by oceans.  Their take?  5 degrees centigrade by 2100 possible.  But we don’t use that centigrade thing to measure our temperature, so we should be all right.

“Drug problem a major target”

A couple of our predicted mechanisms for dealing with future offenses at work here in Kentucky with this bill seeking to do better tracking of physicians prescribing drugs rather than putting their patients in jail.  Uses a more public health treatment approach and relies on non-criminal justice community efforts and sanctions.  Good two-fer.  Now we just have to hope it works.

“Struggling Cities Turn to a Crop for Cash”

And more decriminalization in the face of budget woes, this time Oakland, CA.

“Everything you know about shale gas is wrong”

When we talk about the difference between the cheerleaders for “all’s well, ignore those energy icebergs, Captain!” and the folks warning us about the problems ahead, have this article handy to compare the use of actual data and long-term trending with the cheerleaders’ data and find out where both get their stuff from.  And never forget, you “don’t ask a barber if you need a haircut.”

--Mike Connelly

“Drinks on Me!!”—Part Three

In our previous posts in this series we’ve detailed how, in The Perfect Storm, states are going to have to set corrections sentencing priorities more intensely than they have to date. That means for most that triaging will have to occur. With the restricted resources they have, what can they fund to maximize public safety and what has to be dumped or placed on others? And who will those “others” be?

States like California and Louisiana (see News post today below) are shunting more of the responsibilities off on counties (or “parishes” as those Bayou nonconformists would have it). According to analysts like David Ball in our last post in this series, that may be fair. Some counties use a disproportionate amount of corrections sentencing resources compared to their fellow counties. Why should the more restrained counties have to pay for “justice” they consider excessive in their own decisions?

We made the point in the last post that states now have the data individually and as a group to identify sentences that are most effective at reducing crime and victimization, at leading to demonstrated lower recidivism than other sentences. We did exactly that kind of analysis in Oklahoma with corrections and sentencing commission data, and Oklahoma’s data system is inferior to many. (Its sentencing commission no longer exists, for one thing. And yes, I did work for it but that fact and its demise are purely coincidental. Swear to God.) There’s no point arguing “incapacitation effect” (no matter how shaky the concept is when truly investigated) if you can identify the sentences that prevent the crimes while the offender is in prison and then minimize crimes after release. Sentences that lead to more crimes than would have been at release are by definition worse sentences. (Yes, there is a logical flaw there. Find it and I’ll hit you with the many more logical flaws in “incapacitation effect.”)

Since the residents of a state can all agree pretty well on what constitutes “public safety,” it’s legit to ask them all to contribute to the common pool of revenue to deal as effectively as possible with that. However, as we noted in the last post, agreeing on what constitutes “justice” (which now is almost solely “retribution” in sentencing discussions despite its long philosophical and religious history, including that Bible book) is much more contentious. Local communities such as counties differ demonstrably and widely on what that entails. And it is only fair that, as a result in these hard times about to get harder, those communities should have to pay for their perceptions of “justice” rather than forcing those who don’t share it to pitch in.

David Ball set out his own recommendation for how this could come about in the post yesterday. There are others, some based on direct precedent of county contributions, others based on analogy to other applications, and we will detail some possibilities shortly. But first, it doesn’t do any good to argue that counties will rebel. Tough. Some states have more control than others, but all states can figure out mechanisms to make at least some of these proposals below work. And just because county politicians can block some of these ideas now doesn’t mean that they can’t be rolled over as fiscal exigency from The Perfect Storm washes away the status quo. Leadership and political guts (yes, not in conspicuous supply pretty much anywhere at the moment, but emergency can bring them forward when it becomes clear) can make the difference. It is going to be increasingly hard to tell the counties and communities that are satisfied with a lesser amount of resources going into corrections sentencing that they have to suck it up and pay for those who are like the drinkers who belly up at the bar over and over when someone yells out, “Drinks on me!!” That is, you’re not talking about all counties rebeling, just those that want to exploit their colleagues. Framed like that, the argument wins itself.

So what are some of these other options? Here are four. You can add your own.

Sentencing information systems—Create comprehensive corrections sentencing data systems, with contributions from corrections, courts, juvenile justice, substance abuse, mental health, jails, and, if you can get it, prosecutors (wouldn’t the fact that prosecutors are generally horrible about transparent data widely disseminated be used by good prosecutors to demonstrate that the defendants had something to hide and benefited from lack of comprehensiveness?). Identify Best Sentences in terms of recidivism and public safety for different offenders (preferably by assessed risk/need levels (yes, both) which should be required performed if not already). Publish the results on a county by county basis and report which counties are disproportionate. If this is all you can get passed, ram it home who’s exploiting the tax contributions of everyone else. Light does cleanse in a lot of germy cases.

Public safety impact statements—Require that every new piece of legislation regarding corrections sentencing be accompanied by the public safety equivalent of fiscal impact statements. With the data we have, we can identify the likely offenders and the likely outcomes of the sentences proposed in the legislation. These can be compared with the Best Sentences and anything above that criterion can be paid by the counties. Again, just because a few very vocal counties and their specific representatives can rile the legislature into passing laws that will increase crime and victimization doesn’t mean that everyone has to pay for it, especially those counties and their representatives that have made clear their satisfaction with lower punishment levels.

Vouchers to counties based on sentencing impacts on public safety—With your sentencing information system and commitment to Best Sentences, you can identify the trends in offenders and their numbers by county and project those forward into the budget period in question. From that, you calculate what terms those offenders would receive under Best Sentences and how long they would be likely to serve. That will be your baseline for what each county can receive from the state as a voucher for corrections sentencing services. They go above that, they pay the difference. They stay below it, keeping offenders at home, they get to keep the change. Think county commissioners, scrapping for dollars like everyone else, wouldn’t think twice about one of their judges deciding the county should pay the freight for a woman caught stealing less than $700 in purses just because he’d gotten tired of dealing with her, like the judge in the first post in this series? This, of course, does mirror a few systems like this around the country, particularly in juvenile justice, but there’s no reason except “we don’t do that here” to keep it from being applied to adult corrections sentencing on a broad basis. That’s not good enough any more.

Assignment through state funding caps—This is actually where most states will end up either overtly or de facto if they don’t choose to be more innovative. It’s where California is now and Louisiana is heading. It’s what you get when you close prisons or federal courts say “no more room at the inn.” This would be more explicit in that the states would tell the counties that “here’s how much you’ve got this year based on past trends and what we cut out of that, spend it how you will, but, once you hit your mark on prison receptions, you’re done.” The counties that do rebel successfully against more direct efforts to control will find themselves here, regardless of their “political power.” The smarter ones will want to cut deals early on to have a say in how it happens and how much they get. That will likely leave out the more punitive counties, which are bellied up to the bar, drunk, suddenly surprised when the bartender hands them their tab. But in any case, state corrections sentencing around the nation is already in this position, faced with no place to put these guys, crowding county jails until they can’t take any more, and most realizing that moving toward private prisons will mean contracts that are tight enough to force the cutting onto other law enforcement and criminal justice, screwing up public safety but making crime feel very comfortable and looking forward to its future. (You English teachers with your “run-on sentence” crap? Get your own blog.)

Almost all the states will be faced with these kinds of necessary options (North Dakota will, too, once its boom bottoms). States faced with major triaging do what every government in history does—they force their costs onto other actors. Since we can now separate the public safety from the retribution aspects of sentencing with much greater specificity and since just a few counties drive the latter beyond the norms set by the state, it is legitimate and long past fair for the state to require that the non-public safety parts of sentences be funded by those who insist that their “justice” is worth the extra crime and victimization that occur because dollars are diverted from more public safety-effective activities. 

It doesn’t have to be the quickly planned and hold-your-breath approach of California. It can be planned out much better with all the data that we now have. But it will happen, as these early states are showing. No county should be forced to tell its residents that their lives will be more endangered, their kids less educated, their roads and bridges less safe, their food and water more dangerous, their economies less developed than they should have been simply because some counties wanted to hammer their felony convictions more than those beleaguered counties chose to do themselves. And the counties that continue to desire to drink up at someone else’s expense need to learn to pay their own bills.

Inside the Silo News

“Don't Blame Judges for Racial Disparity”

Families Against Mandatory Minimums weighs in on the findings we discussed the other day that federal prosecutors are the ones driving the disproportionate minority representation and other forms of disparity in our federal corrections sentencing.  The title probably gives away their position.  They’re trying to clamp Congress before the calls there for more mandatories hit critical mass.  We’ll see if it works. 

“Inmate advocates question state's commitment to prison healthcare”

Another story pointing to fears of “window dressing” in California’s current effort to deal with that fed court ruling.  Pretty good “he said/she said” article.  The future will tell which was hooey.

“Senate takes another swipe at privatizing prisons next week”

Florida’s efforts to institutionalize its inability to adjust flexibly to The Perfect Storm by cementing contracts with private prison providers who have no incentive to limit inmates or crime continues.

“Amid applause, accolades, House moves to save Jefferson County prison”

And more Florida wisdom, trying to prevent prison closures when their fiscal future requires that they do.  Of course, The Perfect Storm can’t hit Florida, don’t you know.  Not even literally.

"Plan to reduce number of inmates in Pennsylvania faces critics"

Shocker.

Outside the Silo News

“Jindal proposes state budget and layoffs”

If any state epitomizes the future of The Perfect Storm, it’s Louisiana, whacked by extreme weather and awry efforts to plumb ever-tougher to reach energy resources.  And what is Louisiana planning now?  “I’ll take ‘closing prisons and moving inmates to those parish things they use because they never heard of counties’ for $1000, Alex.”  Don’t laugh.  Your future.

“Experts plan for climate change as fate of all life put at risk”

In case you need a reminder about what The Perfect Storm is bringing.  Already.

“Psychologists fear US manual will widen mental illness diagnosis”

Quick and dirty overview of the controversy the psych folks (psychiatrists and psychologists) have been having about their latest version of their primary diagnosis book.  The title gives you the gist, but the tie to what we talk about comes in our belief here that a feature of Corrections Sentencing 2020 will be a move away from using corrections as the dumping ground for the mentally ill.  If, however, the definition of those considered mentally ill keeps expanding, the threat could be that it basically covers everyone, making distinction of who should be removed from correctional mental health that much harder.  So we’ll keep an eye on both the outcome of the dispute and what the changes do to our stats and possibilities for correctional mental health.

“Group goes to court over SC inmate mental health”

As if on cue to prove the point we’re making above!!!

“Studying the Energy Trap”

US using less gasoline, driving fewer miles, but spent $100 b. more on gasoline last year than year before.  Welcome to the world of harder to get at and harder to process oil (which our blowdried media cheerleaders never question the energy spokespeople on) used more by more and more nations.  An essential and continuing problem to deal with in The Perfect Storm.

U.S. State Science Standards Are “Mediocre to Awful”

Our confidence in evidence and research to inform intelligent policy depends on intelligent people able to understand and support the evidence and research intelligently.  Feelin’ good about the title?

“EPA: US needs $300B in sewer, water work”

Over next 20 years.  Major part of what we talk about here when we say that infrastructure demands will eat up whatever little surpluses may come available for state and local budgets, leaving corrections sentencing living with (actually, hoping for) stable, level budgets at best for the foreseeable future, even without figuring in The Perfect Storm and the effect it will have on infrastructure, too.

“Move Over, Police?”

One set of possible responses to The Perfect Storm that we highlighted here talked briefly about the use of private responses to get crime rates down.  Here is a more fleshed out discussion particularly of business improvement districts.  We harp here regularly that the so-called effect of imprisonment on the crime drop of the last couple of decades, as delineated in statistical models, never included many other influences that have also been put forth as causes, such as changes in consumer confidence and in attitudes about institutional legitimacy, immigration, abortion, video game growth, removal of lead from the atmosphere, better impacts of psychotropic drugs, etc.  This adds the possibility that growth of private policing may have had a significant impact.  Again, did you ever see that in those models claiming prison has a 25% impact on cutting crime?  (HINT:  the answer starts with “no.”)

“Report: Calif. first grader suspended for 'sexual assault'”

The title just really says it all, doesn’t it?  And more.

“Golfer stabbed in the leg after trying to play through”

And to finish with a double dose of dumb.  Guy may lose the leg, artery severed (and yes, the course marshal told them they could play through).  Keep in mind when we hear that Texas is ground zero for intelligence in dealing with The Perfect Storm and future Corrections Sentencing.

--Mike Connelly

“Drinks on Me!!”—Part Two

Yesterday we discussed three recent sentencings in Oklahoma that seemed much more about the judge’s reaction to the defendant’s attitude and how the judge thought the defendant should be acting than anything having to do with reasoned decision-making. If you were to ask any of those judges why a 10-year sentence is better than a 9 or an 11 or why they always base their punishments on multiples of 6 instead of 3 or 4, if either of the judges who sentenced their defendants to life were asked why, given that “life” isn’t life (hence, “life without parole”), they didn’t sentence to life plus one or more years since the crimes were so heinous and the attitudes so bad, they wouldn’t be able to answer you if the fate of the world, or more importantly, themselves, depended on it.

That’s because sentencing in almost all cases is ritual, not decision-making, our legal system’s version of burning of offerings, cleansing the community of the sin and only secondarily concerned with what outcomes might result. Well before sentencing commissions, state court administrators had enough data for decades to identify recidivists and the sentences they received in order to see what patterns of success or failure resulted. That the notion clearly never entered their minds tells you what you need to know about any long-held concern about the effectiveness of what they do, despite whatever pronouncements they issue about stating the reasons for a sentence at judgment or about deterrence or rehabilitation or desistance from crime. Jerome Frank long ago pointed out that the judicial system is basically a symbolic system with the robes and raised seats and barriers from the public to prove it. Sentencing is mainly just more of the same. The idea of what the “best sentence” might be for a given offender with a given offense, despite the treasure of data we now have from courts, sentencing commissions, corrections, substance abuse agencies, juvenile justice, etc. (no, leaving DAs out wasn’t an oversight), will just draw smiles or shakes of heads. That’s not what they’re about. That’s not ritual and symbolic gestures.

It’s not that best sentences can’t be determined with significant specificity now. Britain’s Ministry of Justice has annual reports on which sentences do the best job if minimizing recidivism and maximizing public safety are your goals. If a judge here in the US were to pronounce clearly that deterrence of the defendant’s future criminality is their sentence’s purpose, he could measure that and compare it to other judges and their varying sentences. What they couldn’t measure would be the retributive effect if that’s their main goal. They don’t measure and they don’t analyze, so what do you think they’re really all about?

The problem for us, of course, as we noted yesterday, is that they’re making these overwhelmingly retributive sentences based their own personal and their local community’s values and desires for retribution, not those of the people actually paying the bulk of the bill for those sentences. And with no effort to determine how the latter might differ from the local community’s. Actually, they know. I got many an earful from non-urban judges in Maryland about how they didn’t want to be bound by sentencing guidelines of those pinkos in Baltimore city. That the folks of Baltimore city are paying a large share of the costs of the harsher values and desires of these judges’ sentences, again, was completely outside their mindset. Our conversations would have been over quickly had I noted the essential unfairness of that.

If you think this is just more peculiarity of one particularly demented blogger, well, you’re wrong. A perfectly sane professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, David Ball, has been lighting up the debate recently with some thought-provoking articles on the topic. His academic work can be found here and here, but journalistic summaries by him and a reporter can be found here and here for shorter reading.

First, the interpretation:

The burden of paying for [the prison] system falls on all Californians.

But a third of the state bears greater responsibility for our overcrowded prisons than their fellow residents, according to a recently released study from Santa Clara University’s law school. W. David Ball, a criminal law professor and the study’s author, devised a new statistical measure to determine how many new felons a California county can justify sending to prison each year.

In his report, titled “Tough on Crime (on the State’s Dime),” Ball argues that 18 counties consume far more prison spending than the rest of the state when violent crime rates are factored in. . . .

The first of Ball’s findings is that rates of violent crime – murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault – have almost zero bearing on the number of prison sentences handed down in California counties. A regression analysis revealed violent crimes account for only 3 percent of what happens with incarceration numbers. That number is too low to be statistically significant. . . .

In his own words:

During the years of the study, for example, Alameda County and San Bernardino County had similar population sizes and similar rates of violent crime, but San Bernardino County sent at least twice as many people to prison each year and had more than twice as many people in prison. Alameda and San Bernardino have the same crime problem. The only difference is that San Bernardino used a state resource -- prison dollars -- much more readily. Alameda is getting $9.2 million of the realignment budget. San Bernardino is getting more than twice that: $25.8 million.

San Luis Obispo County and Santa Cruz County had similar population sizes. Even though Santa Cruz suffered from much greater levels of violent crime, San Luis Obispo sent more people to prison almost every year, and had more people in prison every year but one. Accordingly, it's getting more money for realignment.

The irony here is that Alameda and Santa Cruz have already been getting the short end of the stick. The state has always paid for prison, but it has never before paid for in-county dispositions such as probation and jail. So it seems as though San Luis Obispo and San Bernardino are being doubly rewarded: with fully-subsidized state prison beds before realignment, and with more realignment dollars after realignment.

And he kindly proposes a remedy:

. . . a proposal to split large states into smaller, unified criminal justice units, wherein all of the features of criminal justice, from policing to imprisonment to post-release supervision, are under the administration of a single agency with an overarching budget. This would allow localities to retain their local decision making, but it would internalize the costs of those decisions; it would also encourage the various parts of the criminal justice system to consider how the actions of one part affect resources available to other parts. . . .

You should read the academic work to get the full flavor and details, but you get the idea. In California, some counties use disproportionately more prison resources than others. True in other states? Was in Oklahoma last time I checked (the analysis is available if you want to see it, just e-mail me). Stories on the disproportionate use of the death penalty in Arizona and Nevada point to similar problems, if more narrow, elsewhere, as well as noting that, when the counties themselves have to pick up the tab, their officials start to make noises.

So let’s pull this together before moving on to other possible remedies. The Perfect Storm will keep whacking traditional correctional budgets, as meager and bone-picked as they’ve been in recent years. States need to figure out how to triage the most important and medium important functions from the less and non-important. Data exist now in abundance to start distinguishing which sentences are effective for public safety goals of sentencing such as deterrence and rehabilitation that result in less recidivism. Research using the data can also now delineate much better the likely crimes and victimization caused by diversion of funds into imprisonment of one offender beyond their "best sentence" versus the alternative crime prevention programs and policies that that money could have funded, nulling out the famous “incapacitation effect” (always suspect anyway for a variety of reasons from offender substitution in crimes committed like drug distribution to the increased number of total lifetime crimes committed by originally low risk offenders being incarcerated with higher risk ones).

The data cannot, however, determine whether “retribution” has occurred as desired. As the examples above from CA, NV, and AZ show, “justice” (which is virtually synonymous with “retribution” now in our criminal justice system) varies from county to county within states. Despite that variation, the less retributive counties still have to pay for the more retributive ones, and the result is clearly at least a few counties bellying up to the bar for a lot more drinks when it’s clear someone else is picking up the bill. As states decide how much corrections they can afford, it would be derelict of them, regardless of county “political power” in the state, not to at least document what the impact on their systems of the free bar is. Everyone in a state may have very similar views of “public safety,” but local communities have very different views of the “justice” add-on. Maybe the states should still pick up the tab for the first but make the counties and communities start paying for anything past the two-drink minimum.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at some ideas besides Professor Ball’s about how that can be done. You’re welcome.

--Mike Connelly

Back to the Future Series II

[In recent years, in various capacities, I've put together several studies that relate greatly to the Corrections Sentencing Reform 2.0 that we talk about here and which can still be tapped legally(!!). We'll post them over the next several weeks both on the daily posts and over in the Special Topics section on the left side of the page. The series right now focuses on a topicmentioned herebut not in great detail. The links referenced are dated and primarily unavailable now, but the bulk of the material should be easily referenced with your good friend Google. We welcome your ideas and comments about this topic and want to extend the discussion to your particular needs and contributions. Thanks.--Mike]

“Knowledge is Not Power in Criminal Justice Debates; Knowledge Is Irrelevant” (1995)—Part Three

Kaminer, Wendy (1995), It's all the rage: Crime and culture. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (292 pp. ISBN: 0-201-62274-2).

Anderson, David C. (1995), Crime and the politics of hysteria. New York, NY: Times Book. (291 pp. ISBN: 0-8129-2061-9).

[Yesterday we presented David Anderson's discussion of media coverage of crime "hysteria."  We finish this series with some ideas about the lessons for future corrections sentencing policy when the next wave hits.]

Kaminer and Anderson converge on many points-the role of stories in criminal justice policy making, the plea for more objective deliberation, concern for truth in an environment rewarding distortion, the prevalence of the "therapeutic" culture in our consideration of victims and offenders, the public denigration of criminal justice research and statistics, and others. They also share the comfortable writing styles of expert journalists who have thought and cared deeply about their subjects. In criticism, they each would have benefitted from comparison of today's situation with similar hysteria in the 1930s and 1960-70s when similar books were published. Attention to how crime as an issue rose and fell in those periods might help us to predict where the current period will go. They each also left the general reader with the impression that criminal justice research and statistics are far more telling and complete than they presently are.

The biggest problem with each book, however, as they each admit, is, at the end, the reader is left asking, "So where do we go now?" The problems are so large and the remediations offered so limited. To their credit, they do manage to point potential policy makers and practitioners in fruitful directions, even if their "maps" are substantially incomplete. For instance, each shows that the "hunker down" strategy is highly dangerous and should be avoided in "Hortonization." However, the usual alternative, seen in Massachusetts after "hunker down" failed, of relating supporting statistical proof and research findings is also almost always a guaranteed loser. "Educating the people" with rational demonstrations of scientifically derived results will only convince those already so inclined or without strongly held opinions, rare in a period of "Hortonization." At its worst, it simply continues the alienation of the public from those responsible for its security.

Criminal justice policy makers and practitioners faced with this situation, especially judges in community sentencing or corrections heads with pre-release programs, must instead learn to develop convincing stories to compete with the familiar tales of "Hortonization." For example, if challenged with specific names and faces victimized by offenders meeting "Hortonized" criteria, one might use the same stories to justify the programs and approaches under attack. When the couple terrorized by Horton vented their hurt and grief publicly, officials would have been much better off to produce victims of offenders who had not gone through furlough and to point out that, while tragic, the "Hortonized" victims were far fewer in number. The problem, of course, still remains that people who were not victimized because furlough or other programs worked cannot be known and showcased. It does, however, move the policy makers' approaches into more personalized presentations which resonate better in an expressive period and perhaps make people more open emotionally later to the more objective information.

Anderson briefly presents another option, that of reframing the debate, where possible, along lines that both sides outlined by Kaminer can agree to-more support of crime victims. Kaminer is right to be suspicious of contributing to the damaging effects of encouraging people to consider themselves victims or of overemphasizing victims' rights when a free society needs legal fairness for all. Nevertheless, Anderson's concern about restoration of the social contract can provide a focal point linking the social good to the individual victim. Crime will only be incrementally reduced and never solved, but its consequences can be more ameliorated through effective victims' policy with greater agreement among the competing stories. Once the various sides establish cooperation and trust in these areas, they might find their other stories have common enough elements to start building agreement in the more intractable policy areas. Then, as people feel more secure, even in a world with crime, expressiveness ("rage" to Kaminer; "hysteria" to Anderson) may subside and allow particular and incremental solutions to take hold. The resulting cycles of synergies will thus become positive instead of negative, as we see today and in these useful books. It would at least give hope, as both authors conclude, that "Hortonization" could be controlled, a boon to all criminal justice policy makers and practitioners.

--Mike Connelly

Man walks into a bank, gives the teller the predictable note. He receives $7,193 in return. He is captured, charged with first-degree bank robbery. DA asks for 30 years. On an 85% of sentence time served offense, the robber is looking at 24+ years minimum. Judge gives him life in prison. Says the bank employees were traumatized and the robber wasn’t penitent enough.

Woman needing money to pay bills after losing home for not paying them and her mother sell $31 worth of pot, mother has grandson help with the change for a $20. Both women first-time sellers but use, have pot on them when arrested; however, no prior convictions. No drug court available in their county, take blind plea although pre-sentence investigation has assessed woman as “high” risk to stay on drugs. Judge gives woman 10 years for distribution, 2 for possession, run concurrent. Mother got 30-year suspended to be able to care for woman’s four children. Judge says woman not remorseful enough and still tries to justify actions. Judge retires, replacement makes last four years of sentence “suspended.” Woman’s first parole opportunity in three years.

Heroin addict repeatedly steals purses from stores to fund habit. Shoplifts two purses, one priced at $275, the other at $380. Judge tires of frequent return visits to his bench. Calls woman “poster child” for why thieves should go to prison. Sentences her to life in prison. No reporting on his judgment of her remorse or penitence. Split Court of Appeals upholds sentence, but dissenting judge calls sentence “miscarriage of justice.”

You can draw your own conclusions (and if you’ve concluded, given my recent retirement from the OK Dept of Corrections, that these cases were Oklahoma cases, you’re 1 for 1 so far, but many states have cases like these). However, let’s consider a couple of things you may not have thought of yet. First, look at the dollar amounts involved--$7,193, $31, and $655. In the case of the repeated offenses of the addict, let’s assume that her crimes may have reached the level of the first offender in any given year, although that is a lot of purses. Hers is the only case about which an objective observer (aka, none of the judges) could be considered an annual affair. The other two, maybe, maybe not. The offenders’ sentences will cost the state of Oklahoma between $14,000 and $20,000 a year for at least a couple of decades in two cases, and for at least 3 years in the $31 case.

I’m not going where you think I am, at least not completely. No talk here of how we could be putting that money into education and safe highways and health, etc. No, I’m going toward the many crimes that will be committed and the many people who will be victims now because those judges decided to be “tough on crime.”

Wha . . . ? But look at the examples set. Think of the crimes those people won’t commit because they’ve been “incapacitated.” Look at the savings on crime and victims. Sorry. Won’t wash. The difference between what the OK DOC will spend on those offenders and others like them and the dollar amounts of their crimes could have been spent on the many public safety effective programs and community efforts that have been shown, in fact, to prevent far more crimes and victims from occurring. That’s what the “reinvestment” in justice reinvestment reforms is supposed to be about.

By insisting on putting these people in prison, especially for far longer than even DAs in Oklahoma (those well-known hug-a-thuggers) in the first case, the next judge in the second, felt deserved, the dollars more effective in crime prevention and protection of public safety instead will go to keeping those offenders in prison for longer than necessary periods. In the meantime, crime, especially violent crime, in Oklahoma remains much higher than the national average. But those judges made their “tough” points.

Which leads us to the second consideration. Do you think those judges would have sentenced to those levels had their individual counties had to pay the full expense of their decisions instead of charging their judgments to the credit card of taxpayers across the state? Do you think the county commissioners who paid the bill, the other county officials including the sheriff, would have been as supportive of those decisions when the impact came out of other important county budget items?

If you take a busload of people to a bar and tell them, “Drinks on Me!!,” will they drink as much as they would if they had to pay their own tab? Sure, some will, for a variety of reasons. But some of them will drink more if someone else is paying. Some will drink a lot more. Ronald Reagan could tell that story about government and taxes much better than I do with his eyes closed . . . and often did. Bada boom!! He doesn’t count only when it comes to sentencing people to prison and not having to pay for it? (Of course, he also orchestrated a major reduction of California’s prison populations while governor there, so we know who he hugged, don’t we?)

One of the featured components of our predicted Corrections Sentencing in 2020 is that states will start forcing counties to pay more for the decisions of their sentencing practitioners, one way or another. We’ve already seen it in a big way in California, the harbinger of the rest of the nation as a rule, and other states are playing around the edges. But The Perfect Storm will bring on more immediate and direct activity in coming years. States will simply not be able to keep picking up the tab when that means roads and bridges go unrepaired, classrooms have 40-50 kids in them, and residents start looking longingly at Costa Rica for health care.

More importantly, when faced with providing the most and best public safety in such straits, dollars going to prisons when they could be more productive in law enforcement, juvenile justice, treatment and prevention, mental health care will be triaged in those directions. States will be forced to think in terms of how much public safety does a given sentence for a given offender provide and in terms of how much counties should be required to pay when those local jurisdictions with their local and particular perceptions of “justice” insist that the sentence should be higher (and crimes and victims, too).

This concept isn’t unique to us here. David Ball at the Santa Clara University School of Law has done some really pathbreaking work and proposed at least one way to address the concerns. We, of course, in our modest way, have a few other options that states might consider as they move in this direction. What are they? Well, you’ll just have to come back tomorrow to find out. (Hey! Who threw that?!)

--Mike Connelly

Back to the Future Series II

[In recent years, in various capacities, I've put together several studies that relate greatly to the Corrections Sentencing Reform 2.0 that we talk about here and which can still be tapped legally(!!). We'll post them over the next several weeks both on the daily posts and over in the Special Topics section on the left side of the page. The series right now focuses on a topic mentioned here but not in great detail. The links referenced are dated and primarily unavailable now, but the bulk of the material should be easily referenced with your good friend Google. We welcome your ideas and comments about this topic and want to extend the discussion to your particular needs and contributions. Thanks.--Mike]

“Knowledge is Not Power in Criminal Justice Debates; Knowledge Is Irrelevant” (1995)—Part Two

Kaminer, Wendy (1995), It's all the rage: Crime and culture. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (292 pp. ISBN: 0-201-62274-2).

Anderson, David C. (1995), Crime and the politics of hysteria. New York, NY: Times Book. (291 pp. ISBN: 0-8129-2061-9).

What is important in criminal justice debates are the stories the various sides conjure and sell to the public and, through them, to policy makers who may otherwise know better. Because crime is so intractable, fueled by so many factors easy to fit into the explanation du jour, and resistant to conclusive research, news and popular media seeking consumers and politicians seeking votes use stories to convince a fearful, confused, and angry public to pursue their agendas. "The vast majority of voters who hear these stories," Kaminer tells us, "have no way to confirm their veracity and perhaps little inclination to do so. Which side do they believe? They believe the side that seems to share their values and ideals, trusting them to tell the truth" (p. 158). With so much at stake for the storytellers in terms of votes, viewers, and readers, criminal justice practitioners may well wonder if that trust is well placed.

Not usually, according to David C. Anderson, crime reporter and former editor of Corrections magazine, in Crime & the Politics of Hysteria. Despite the need for factual and objective information to guide public debate and policy making in criminal justice, he says, the media and politicians have succumbed to what may be called, in my term, the "Hortonization" of the debate and process.

Anderson follows two tracks in his book: (1) an in-depth examination of the criminal career of Willie Horton and the crimes for which he received notoriety and (2) an analysis of how and why they played into the "politics of hysteria" of the title. These are told against the framework of what he refers to as the five elements of crimes guaranteed to draw media sensationalism and public fear, as Willie Horton did:

1. ". . . the crimes were luridly violent, involving homicide, rape, or aggravated assault that resulted in serious injury."
2. ". . . the victims were middle-class, usually white."
3. ". . . the victims were wholly innocent . . . typically attacked while going about a familiar daily routine."
4. ". . . the criminals appeared to have chosen their victims entirely at random."
5. ". . . the criminals usually had some history of involvement with the criminal justice system, suggesting that if the system had only worked better, the terrible crime might have been avoided" (pp. 5-6). Any combination of four of these elements in the crime "signified an event that invariably stirred broad outrage and often provoked a political reaction" (p. 6).

As a crime reporter, Anderson says he understood that these crimes constituted a small minority of crime in America. "Why," he asked, "give them so much more than their share of attention?" (p. 9). The answer, he concluded, was "the extent to which crime in general had eroded the social contract. . . . [T]he Willie Horton stories suggested that the government could no longer provide [the guarantee of security]" (p. 11). Therefore, despite the substance and reality of crime, public perceptions and "Hortonized" stories ruled, and stoked demands for action to demonstrate control and express public concern, exactly as Kaminer discussed.

In this context, Anderson offers a good discussion of "expressive justice," that is, "laws, policies, and practices that are designed more to vent communal outrage than to reduce crime" (p. 14). The dominant mode of thought arriving with the Puritans, expressive justice, fell back into the Enlightenment philosophy of the Founding Fathers and the Eighth Amendment. It has risen again today as the motivation behind emphasis on, for example, the death penalty and mandatory sentencing laws, despite their dubious effect on crime. Says Anderson, ". . . effectiveness in controlling crime does not appear to be the point. Fearful people take comfort in the idea of a mandatory sentence. . . . As important, demanding tough sentences and voting for them give people a way to feel as if they are doing something, a way to handle fear" (pp.18-19).

The renewed focus on expressive justice owes much to the Willie Horton episode of 1988, which added two new elements distinguishing today's expressiveness from earlier times. First, "it makes special room for crime victims, allowing them to use politics as personal therapy, a device for managing their particular anger and grief" (p.20). Second, "it makes a target of the criminal justice system, if not government in general-the authorities cannot expect to renege on the social contract and get away with it" (p. 21), words with more meaning after April 19, 1995 [the Oklahoma City bombing]. This is indeed ominous for the nation. To Anderson, ". . . the more the expressive approach dominated debate, policy, and law, the longer it would take for the United States to gain control of its crime problem. The syndrome could easily perpetuate itself..." (p. 24).

According to Anderson, the rise of expressive justice resulted from the growth of the mutually reinforcing drug and gun subcultures at a time of declining government resources to meet the subsequent increase in crime. The news media could have helped to explain the problem and the difficulties of its solution, especially without more funding, but, instead, it opted for "Hortonization." "...the daily diet of crime coverage only increased the general sense of fear and confusion" (p. 53).

As Anderson demonstrates, Willie Horton himself serves as an example of media failure and misuse by politicians and hypesters. Make no mistake-his crimes were repugnant, as discomfortingly described by Anderson. But his actual criminal profile would be familiar to any law enforcement or corrections official. He was not the special demon created by the media and political admen, someone who murdered, mutilated, and sodomized teenage boys and then was released haphazardly on furlough on an undeserving couple. His participation in the boy's murder, according to the evidence provided, was secondary. Moreover, his failure in the furlough program was due to an uncommon lapse in sponsorship selection. In fact, the Massachusetts furlough program, similar to those throughout the country, had a 99.5 percent success rate and substantially reduced recidivist crime below rates predicted without the program.

These objective facts, however, did not impress once "Hortonization" had occurred, as Kaminer would have predicted. Understanding how furloughs had a net improvement on recidivist crime "requires a mathematical calculation and a bit of psychological work-willful separation from sympathy for the victim immediately at hand in favor of the more abstract concept of public safety" (p. 10). In an age of expressive justice, this is unlikely. Rather, it is easier "for the news media or politicians to fan outrage over victimizations that occur than to stir public opinion in favor of those that are prevented, especially when the prevention, however real, appears on the surface to transgress common sense" (p.110). In fact, Anderson notes that critics of the furloughs "were openly contemptuous of people who cited statistical findings documenting that prison furloughs posed no real threat to public safety. For a time, . . . , 'statistics' became a code word for softness on crime and callousness toward its victims. . . " (p. 201).

The Willie Horton case brought together a sensationalistic newspaper (The Lawrence [MA] Eagle-Tribune) and opportunistic Republican state legislators out to damage Governor (and Democratic Presidential candidate) Michael Dukakis. Dukakis, as was shown frequently in the 1988 campaign, needed little help damaging himself. He and others in his administration at first adopted an arrogant "hunker down" approach that blows up impressively when media attention is high. By the time talk shows, Reader's Digest, and the focus groups and Lee Atwater of the Bush campaign finished with Willie, the offender had gained as large a role in American history as the man who lost largely because he could not handle Horton literally or figuratively.

As noted, Anderson laments "Hortonization" and the general direction of criminal justice in this period of expressiveness. In answer to his own question, "[i]f crime continues to drag down a society's morale and the prospects for crime control remain uncertain, why shouldn't people use the political and legal systems . . . [to] buck up morale . . . [and] gratify emotion, whether or not they achieve a more practical result?" (p. 268), he poses two responses. One emphasizes the success of various programs in actually controlling crime at much less cost than the less successful prison-building and punishment stressed by expressiveness advocates in the name of crime control. Another points to the immorality of expressiveness as it sacrifices truth to fear, "just as wartime passions nurture propaganda" (p. 270).

More fruitful policy practically and morally, he says, would focus on more and better rehabilitation and restoration of victims than currently provided. Money spent on these efforts and on alternatives to incarceration would be more cost-effective than prisons. Moreover, this redirection from expressiveness might short-circuit its appeal and put us back on a more rational track. It "would constitute a renegotiation of the social contract. The state would admit the truth it now avoids: It cannot control crime completely. And it would guarantee to make victims whole when crime occurs. The taxpaying, law-abiding citizen would have less reason to feel betrayed" (p. 276). While he cannot be sure of success, "the idea establishes the proper context for debate" (p.276).

[So, after reviewing the two books, where are we in terms of knowing what to do when these situations occur again, in your state and/or sweeping the nation again?  The conclusion of the essay offers a few ideas.]

[Reversing our usual order of presentation today because the "Outside the Silo News" has a lot of meat to it.  At least we think so.]

Outside the Silo News
Texas as Ground Zero for The Perfect Storm and Its Impact on Corrections Sentencing

Considering this story again predicting very high gas prices by summer (actually May), this one showing that NASA debunks the “solar activity” theory of climate change and warning that time is running out for positive human action, and this one on the way that media coverage can increase or decrease attention to and concern about that change, you probably don’t need much more confirmation that weather and energy parts of The Perfect Storm are already here. And after our story yesterday about Texas towns trucking in water and this one today on what the drought there is doing to rice production in the state, you maybe don’t need convinced that Texas isn’t just a high incarceration state trying very imperfectly to set a model for reversing that honor but also the place where the conjunction of prisons and The Perfect Storm are most likely to meet in Texas-sized ways. (Don’t worry, Oklahoma or the other drought-predicted, prison-incapacitated states of the Southeast, you’re also on the list.) But here’s what just might save the day, make people take the threats seriously all across that region, starting in Texas but applied to all of the states there:

“Here’s A Reason to Care About Climate Change: It Could Ruin Texas Football”

“Fallin highlights more cuts to Okla. income tax”

When we’ve talked about the problems with Oklahoma’s version of corrections sentencing reform, we’ve highlighted the poor likelihood that “savings” from dollars that were never going to be spent on corrections would actually be available for reinvestment into the programs that were going to produce the savings. One reason was the policy above, which will cut a billion dollars from state revenues, to be made up by closing tax credits like child care and personal exemptions by state taxpayers. The article notes that the governor is also calling for increased spending on transportation, education, etc. What it doesn’t mention is corrections, which will have to front-load the money expected to be saved, which projections indicate will be a quarter of a billion dollars over ten years. A nice chunk of change to point to when the governor gets asked where the dollars will come from for the tax cut. Of course, it will never get there because the reform expands private prisons, which have strong political support in the state and will, with their political allies, undoubtedly find ways for productive uses of the “savings.” None of these possibilities was discussed by the workgroup putting the reform together although the tax cut was already on the table. But if it’s not “inside the silo,” it clearly doesn’t count.

Legal Pot Tales

Couple of articles on the whats and wherefores of currently and maybe future legal marijuana. This one talks about the medical utility of pot for rheumatoid arthritis and other painful ailments and the search for synthetics to get around the legal issues. This one hypothesizes on the ramifications of legalization and decriminalization on the heels of Washington state’s initiative in November. Remember that one of our predictions for Corrections Sentencing 2020 is exactly decriminalization (we’re not bold on the legalization stuff, but we may be being conservative). The impact on prisons would be immediate and significant and without engendering the negative public response other decriminalizations would bring. We’ll see if we and this article are right pretty quick. Stories about state legislators outspokenly supporting the effort suddenly and mysteriously being investigated by the DEA probably won’t help much, admittedly.

“Civil suits decline in state, as more are choosing mediators”

Another of our Corrections Sentencing 2020 predictions is that more criminal matters will be taken civil as the triaging takes prison bedspace away for lower level offense convictions. Stories like this show the window opening for more civil activity as well as for more restorative justice efforts, which are also part of that prediction. Still off aways, but not that far.

“How Super Is Superhero Justice?”

Okay, an analysis of justice as retribution in comic book world. So what? Well, the author argues that this reflects major currents in our social perceptions of justice. I would go further and argue that many practitioners in corrections sentencing believe they’re wearing invisible capes and they re-enact these little drawn dramas in their heads every time they walk out the door in the morning. So, the problems with comic book justice literally become the problems we’re facing as The Perfect Storm blasts onshore.

“How Game Theory is Reinventing Crime Fighting”

Sounds like more of the above, but the title is really misleading even as it’s intended to be read. This story is really about recognition by several states that the old box of corrections sentencing now circling the drain was never what we thought it was, despite the comic book tales we’ve told. Brings in The New Jim Crow concept but tempered by David Kennedy’s work on guns and gangs in Boston. (Tells a Kennedy story about walking in a suit through a ghetto area and thus being mistaken for a “fed.” I went on a county jail tour once with a sheriff who informed me and my suit that the inmates had me pegged as “FBI.” Power felt cool.) The ending is good, quoting the retiring Texas legislator most responsible for that state’s reform, reiterating the points we make here: “The message he would deliver to any public official interested in following the Texas model is to figure out what your desired results are, measure how well you are getting there and require that the programs show their results toward that goal.” Get that? Set your cap from the start, get your evaluation component set up, and sanction the practitioners who don’t hit the stated objectives. If your state’s reform doesn’t start and end with this, broadly announced and actively enforced, then you’re not doing reform. You’re probably doing a comic book.

Inside the Silo News
“State suspends plan for new prison”

A week after saying a 120-bed private medium facility for special needs inmates was needed, the Montana DOC backs off, pending an assessment of future population increases and a recommitment to reentry programs. You can draw your own conclusions about what happened here.

“Helping Ex-Inmates Find Jobs Has Limited Potential: Research Review”

New articles in Criminology & Public Policy. Saving graces: participation in jobs programs may send positive signals for inmates with future evaluators and may still be important “catalysts” for crime reduction, even if recidivism doesn’t really drop.

“Debate on Florida private prisons hinges on cost”

The state, as it should, requires demonstrated 7% savings from private prison providers, but supporters argue that’s too much or shouldn’t be required or something. If passed, the bill in question will privatize 27 state prisons and work camps, cutting 4300 state prison jobs. Good case study for other states considering similar paths.

“Increase in Long Beach crime brings calls to hire more officers”

Gee, cut cops on the street, your crime rates go up almost 10% after years of decline. Hoodathunk? Anecdotal, sure, but verification that, if we cut swift and certain in the name of severity, we can end up with the worst of all worlds. As if four decades of that experiment hadn’t already shown that.

--J'me Overstreet

“Why do you need a formal program, aren’t your managers doing this anyway? They may be demonstrating mentor behaviors but they are focused on the objectives of the company. The mentor is focused on the professional development of the mentee. The roles are fundamentally different, that’s why structured mentor programs never pair mentors with their direct reports.”[1]

The benefits to a formal mentor program are numerous. It’s a win-win situation. The company wins, the mentor wins and the mentee wins. Some of the benefits are:
--Mentee experiences enhanced development

--Mentee attitudes are influenced towards a positive professional company image

--Mentees learn the companies unwritten rules and how to successfully navigate, making their productivity increase

--Companies typically see increased retention and reduced turnover

--Mentoring is the most cost-effective staff development tools a company can implement

It’s important to formally select and train individuals to serve as mentors. During this selection phase, you are seeking staff that has a willingness to help others in the company promote and grow in their contributions. Mentoring skills can be taught; however you are looking for staff to serve that already have a track record for the following behaviors and skills on the job:

· People-oriented
· Open-minded
· Flexible and dependable
· Empathetic
· Can maintain confidentiality
· Collaborative
· Active listening skills
· Exceptional communication skills
· Ability to follow through with supervision and monitoring of mentee

Formal mentor programs that fail, typically fail due to the lack of specific goals that are established in the beginning. Clarification of roles and responsibilities for both parties, if left undetermined, will also lead to failure of the program and ultimately the relationship. Formal mentor programs need a system of monitoring and supervision built into the program.

In addition to selecting the right individuals to participate, providing those individuals (now mentors) formal training, support and the time to participate, you must make the right matches. The relationship of trust between the mentor and mentee will be critical to their success and the achievement of established goals.

[1] http://www.managementmentors.com/resources

--Mike Connelly

Last week we ran a series on TECHNOCORRECTIONS, the use of surveillance, pharmaceuticals, and genetic engineering to sanction and control behavior, the use of which raises serious questions of human ability to remain human in its use. While the ideas of using GPS or antiabuse as sanctions and controls on criminal activity shouldn’t strike anyone as odd by this time, the genetic component of TECHNO might raise an eyebrow or two. Are we saying that genes control criminal behavior? Are we crazy?

We’ll leave the second question aside and point instead to a couple of recent articles that do indeed describe well a genetic side, if not determinant, to offenders’ actions, while at the same time emphasizing how important the offenders’ environments are, too. This article, for example, using studies of twins identifies

three groups, or pathways, found in the population: life-course persistent offenders, adolescent-limited offenders and abstainers. Moffitt suggested that environmental, biological and, perhaps, genetic factors could cause a person to fall into one of the paths. . . .

Adolescent-limited offenders exhibit behaviors such as alcohol and drug use and minor property crime during adolescence. Abstainers represent a smaller number of people who don't engage in any deviant behavior. . . .

"The overarching conclusions were that genetic influences in life-course persistent offending were larger than environmental influences," he said. "For abstainers, it was roughly an equal split: genetic factors played a large role and so too did the environment. For adolescent-limited offenders, the environment appeared to be most important." . . .

"If we're showing that genes have an overwhelming influence on who gets put onto the life-course persistent pathway, then that would suggest we need to know which genes are involved and at the same time, how they're interacting with the environment so we can tailor interventions," he said. . . .

And this article details the discovery of the areas of the brains that are “abnormal” and associated with self-control problems, particularly addictions, showing that the abnormalities come before the addictions rather than the other way around. What’s hopeful about this is that the addicts have siblings with similar abnormalities but who have managed to develop resilient mechanisms of self-control, indicating that we might be able to come up with therapies for the addicts as well. Environments again seem key.

I have a post in mind for when I have time that considers more implications of these findings for what we do in Corrections Sentencing, but for now let’s just note the TECHNO part of this. With the use of viruses to insert genetic material into cells and other techniques, bioengineering is progressing rapidly. If/when specific genes are identified that impact undesirable behaviors (not determine but influence, given a particular environment, as described), can you imagine the social pressures to do something about that? You wanna be the one to tell a crime victim’s family that, yeah, we could have stopped that, but we didn’t want to? That’s why we need the institution we outlined in that series last week. But this post is to show you what’s happening with the research and what could happen down the road, prepared for it or not.

So stop rolling your eyes. The day isn’t far away. No money for all the inmates, but a genetic therapy that makes those beds far less necessary. You ready?

--Mike Connelly

Back to the Future Series II

[In recent years, in various capacities, I've put together several studies that relate greatly to the Corrections Sentencing Reform 2.0 that we talk about here and which can still be tapped legally(!!). We'll post them over the next several weeks both on the daily posts and over in the Special Topics section on the left side of the page. The series right now focuses on a topicmentioned herebut not in great detail. The links referenced are dated and primarily unavailable now, but the bulk of the material should be easily referenced with your good friend Google. We welcome your ideas and comments about this topic and want to extend the discussion to your particular needs and contributions. Thanks.--Mike]

“Knowledge is Not Power in Criminal Justice Debates; Knowledge Is Irrelevant” (1995)—Part One

Kaminer, Wendy (1995), It's all the rage: Crime and culture. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company (292 pp. ISBN: 0-201-62274-2).

Anderson, David C. (1995), Crime and the politics of hysteria. New York, NY: Times Book. (291 pp. ISBN: 0-8129-2061-9).

If Isaac Newton had tried to solve crime instead of gravity, we would not know his name. Although the arrogance of physicists who study the easiest of materials and yet call themselves "hard" scientists is a worthy topic, the issue here is really the intractability of crime as a social problem. When dealing with the nonhuman realm, the world can be convincingly described in rational terms with impressive statistics and modest embellishment. When dealing with any human realm, and particularly crime, rationality and statistical surety fail in the face of more elaborate stories. The two books above address some of the reasons why and the implications for those who would attempt to enforce criminal justice somewhat sanely.

Wendy Kaminer, former public defender and author of a leading critique on the therapeutic culture, I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, knows better than to try to "solve" crime in her book It's All the Rage. Her goal is professedly more modest: "to help rationalize our discussion of [crime problems]" (p. 8). Debate in criminal justice, she says, is "strikingly irrational, as are many criminal justice policies" (p. 6). Liberals, with their emphasis on pleasant human nature and prevention of crime, simply talk past conservatives, with their emphasis on unpleasant human nature and punishment of crime. Their stories of the causes of and solutions for crime are presently "ruled by politics and fear and the mindless exchange of attitudes that dominates the worst talk shows. . . " (p. 9). They trade fact for myth and fail to realize that ". . . there are no sweeping solutions to the problem of violent crime. Any progress we make will be discrete and incremental; only the symbols [they use] have sweep" (p. 7).

Although her central concerns are public perceptions and factual ignorance of the death penalty and its application, Kaminer proceeds through a veritable catalogue of criminal justice topics made interesting by her accessible writing style and humor and her pointed insights. In rough order, she covers: offenders as "guilty victims" and the abuse excuse; trials resembling talk shows and their "culture of therapy"; Bernie Goetz and fighting victims; violence, voyeurism, and vengeance in American media and culture (TV violence gets so much attention, she claims, because it can be handled easier than real violence, so we gain the illusion of control over something); perceived oppression and claims of injustice as questionable but powerful and popular justifications of crime; families of murder victims on both sides of death penalty questions; the doubtful need of special input of victims in court decisions (Kaminer states, "Victims have moral claims to be treated fairly, with sympathy and respect, but they do not have rights . . . : the state isn't threatening their liberty" [p. 77]); the counterintuitive effects of laws such as "three strikes," mandatory minimums, and structured sentencing; the doubtful effectiveness of community-oriented policing in traditional police bureaucracies; federalization of crime, especially juvenile crime; the questionable but popular utility of boot camps and the 1994 crime bill; the practical pros and cons of gun control; the agreement between liberals and conservatives on the need for community and character-building, but disagreement as to what they mean; and the 1960s as a time of moral absolutism as well as relativism.

The common thread in this eclectic and exhaustive list is the lack of accord between reality and descriptions of it in the midst of the current climate of fear and hype of crime. One of Kaminer's most telling insights is that "Fear of crime has indeed supplanted fear of communists. . . [T]here are striking similarities between the war on crime and the war on communism . . ." (p. 263). In these kinds of political struggles, "truth is less important than choosing sides; or, you might say, in a political struggle, there are no truths independent of politics. Truth is a matter of ideological, not factual correctness" (p. 89).

Thus, what "Mr. Spock" might call "fact," such as statistical evidence, is not as effective as "a sound bite" (p. 143) and has variable impact, depending on the depth and intensity of opinion it confronts. ". . . information," says Kaminer, "may act on weak opinions, shaping what people believe; strong opinions act on information, shaping what people know" (pp. 107-108). The result for those who would contribute rational, scientific fact to the debate is discouraging. In fact, Kaminer points to the "futility of research on criminal justice"-"Knowledge is not power in criminal justice debates; knowledge is irrelevant" (p. 225).

What is important in criminal justice debates are the stories the various sides conjure and sell to the public and, through them, to policy makers who may otherwise know better. Because crime is so intractable, fueled by so many factors easy to fit into the explanation du jour, and resistant to conclusive research, news and popular media seeking consumers and politicians seeking votes use stories to convince a fearful, confused, and angry public to pursue their agendas. "The vast majority of voters who hear these stories," Kaminer tells us, "have no way to confirm their veracity and perhaps little inclination to do so. Which side do they believe? They believe the side that seems to share their values and ideals, trusting them to tell the truth" (p. 158). With so much at stake for the storytellers in terms of votes, viewers, and readers, criminal justice practitioners may well wonder if that trust is well placed.

[Tomorrow we’ll get David Anderson’s take on that answer.]

--Mike Connelly

Almost as if the Heavens were listening, here comes this nice piece at GOVERNING describing California's possible move through an initiative toward the kind of budgeting we hail below as inevitable for serious states trying to do serious things, including effective corrections sentencing policy in The Perfect Storm.  You need to read the whole thing, but here's a bit to tempt you and show where we and they are on the same page:

The 22-page document is ambitious in scope; indeed, many of its most important provisions seek to return fiscal sanity to California. To begin with, it would implement performance-based budgeting for all public agencies, requiring both the state and local governments to establish clear goals and focus their spending on achieving those goals.

GPAA also would make it easier for taxpayers to see what they're getting for their money. Transparency would be further be promoted by a provision that would require the legislature to devote part of its session to performance reviews of programs.

The measure would advance the cause of fiscal responsibility by actually forcing leaders to pay for the things they want to do. Lawmakers or governors who want to add costs or reduce revenue by $25 million or more would first have to identify where the money would come from.

It also would move California to a two-year budget, forcing budget writers to plan ahead and making it harder to substitute temporary gimmicks for needed reforms. The state would be required to develop and publish five-year budget forecasts, another provision that discourages gimmickry. [emphasis added]

Not quite the "zero-increase budgeting" point we made for Corrections Sentencing but it would have much the same impact.  Identify your resources the best you can as far out into the future as you dare with credibility (five years is about as far as anyone should go, says the guy whose sentencing commission once made him do twenty-year population projections).  Create a monitoring process to guarantee that dollars and the outcomes they're buying are actually there.  Spell out where the dollars are coming from for your new proposals before you dedicate them elsewhere.  It won't take most policymakers performing such tasks to realize they're operating with a cap on spending, like Texas did when it did its corrections sentencing reforms.  And then most of those will realize that they can't run the status quo anymore within those restraints and only heavy-duty triage of substantial spending will allow them to have any flexibility at all.  In corrections sentencing that means starting with prison closure(s) and not calling in private prisons which have no incentive at all to reduce spending, crime or victimization.  Those of us who have been professional budgeters as well as corrections sentencing policy types may have a leg up on seeing this at this point, but the day will come.  Soon.  Good to see that some states are already trying to get on the path. 

[Note that the article just refers to all this as "fiscal sanity," as opposed to, you know, continuing to do the same thing . . . you get the idea.  It's also known as reality, which will impress itself on us more greatly and undeniably as The Perfect Storm plays out.]

--Mike Connelly

Started reading this article because the decay of our existing infrastructure is a major topic here, due to the impact it has on public safety that Corrections Sentencing folks don’t normally think or care about and to the acceleration of that decay in the face of The Perfect Storm (temperature changes, extreme weather destruction, declining gasoline taxes as energy costs drive people off roads, etc.). (For a great but depressing website showing the grades and details of all the states by the American Society of Civil Engineers, just go here, but be alerted that the highest grade for anyone for anything is a C+. Wow, sounds like high school. And overall the nation gets a D with a price tag of $2.2 trillion. Yes, trillion.) But as I read it (as you have by now as well), I realized again how familiar all the arguments are about funding public policy areas that aren’t backed by enough public resources to attain what is expected of them. Like Corrections Sentencing. This quote sound déjà vu-ish?

“Every dollar spent in keeping a good road good precludes spending $6 to $14 to rebuild one that has deteriorated,” says Reinhardt. “This is another example of kicking the can down the road -- a case of bad governing that has a huge future cost.”

What, no prevention? Waiting until something goes wrong before we do anything, even though that ends up costing us tons more? No, I’m not talking about health care or mental health, doof, I’m talking about Corrections Sentencing. “Bad governing that has a huge future cost.”

The author falls prey to the old “well, your criticisms are worthless if you don’t propose solutions” BS, but he makes up for it by proposing nonsense—making maintenance budgets “sacrosanct” and creating a maintenance “czar” . . . bwahahahahaha. Actually, the only way you get where he wants to be is to go through a costing out, priority setting process that says “okay, we’ve got this much money, where does it go? What gets first funding, what gets triaged?” The point isn’t that you actually don’t increase funding for anything or that your budget is flat (although it will be in most cases for years to come, especially once you figure in increases for energy, water costs, weather emergencies, etc.). It’s that you set your priorities and figure out what gets funded from that, not the old “here’s what you got last year, plus or minus.” IOW, you start with zero-increase for everyone, same budget as last year, everything on the table, then fit it to whatever more or less money you have this year.

Okay, I started as a budget analyst who had to try to convince his agencies to go “zero-based budgeting” in a time of state surplus. I wrote a dissertation on state budgeting. I do get the problems with what I’m talking about. But that’s not the same as saying that there’s no way you can just flat out cap what you’re going to spend and say figure out other ways. In fact, that’s exactly what Texas did when it moved to corrections sentencing reforms a few years back.

This story from Alaska shows that Texas is once again being held up as the model for what’s possible in corrections sentencing reform. The talk is about the upfront funding Texas did to put money into diversionary treatment and community incarceration programs, falling for the “we’re saving billions ten years from now, so let’s spend that now to save it” argument. As events are since showing, it’s very doubtful Texas would have spent anywhere near that amount of money, but that’s not the point. The point for all of us to emulate is that Texas went into the process from the beginning, as this article relates, with a set cap on what was going to be spent. The legislature was under orders, we are not going to build those prisons (so much for “saving” the money) so find what else we can do with those would-be inmates. IOW, cap the possible spending, zero increase, and spend what you have left.

You may think I’m splitting hairs here, but I’m not. There’s a significant difference between a state that starts its reform process with “we’re not spending, no way, no how, so now what do we do?” and one that starts with “let’s look around at what might happen and how and then kumbaya around whether we want to do anything about it or not.” As a counter-example to Texas, let’s look at what’s happened in Oklahoma.

In Texas, all parties were on board, with strong leadership from both parties and both houses, the courts and governor not majorly objecting. They had a target to hit and went for it. In Oklahoma, the Speaker was the only political figure in significant support while the other Republicans didn’t want to cross him publicly (Democrats in Oklahoma hold their meetings at a table at Starbucks now). As they did after some minor reforms, they’ll wait until the lights are down and then attack what they don’t like. And, since the governor’s legislative liaison is a former senator who strongly supports private prisons (well known for their prison population control efforts) and strongly opposed reform in the legislature and since the Attorney General has been quoted saying he doesn’t want to do anything jeopardizing Oklahoma’s “progress” in corrections sentencing (nationally high incarceration rates coupled with nationally high crime rates), you sorta doubt they’ll sit on the sidelines after the term-limited Speaker is gone next year. (The Speaker’s already-named successor has been given private plane tours of private prison efforts by private prison companies already.)

This points to a major difference in the two settings. Texas had marching orders and resource control, and policymakers were expected to pursue the single common goal. Oklahoma had no discussion of future available funding, and policymakers and stakeholders who had to be “bought in” with promises for their political interests. The result in Texas was a reform package that is still heralded and copied a few years later. The result in Oklahoma was a Christmas tree with pork ornaments for those who had to be dragged in while the parties who originally sought the reform were left pretty much stunned about how weak the package is. (And that’s before the backsliding and axing that will occur once the Speaker is out and no one is there to seriously monitor what happens to the money divvied out, the money “saved” from spending that Oklahoma wouldn’t have done but fronted by money from the state Department of Corrections, which is actually trying to get something long-term done for the state. The only “monitor” in the reform is that Attorney General we talked about, oddly with no skills for such monitoring and evaluating in either his or his staff’s backgrounds.)

I’ve mentioned before that Texas itself has already backslid some. 2000 new prison beds, although no new prison yet, although that’s not a ringing endorsement that all new money will go into treatment and non-prison sanctions. And the House leader of the reforms is stepping down this year while the Senate leader is a Democrat in a state dominated by Republicans. We should never judge or laud a reform’s success until it’s had time to settle, but it does look like, however many steps Texas takes back (hopefully not like Kansas to this point), some steps forward were attained. That wouldn’t have worked nearly as well if they hadn’t taken the prison increase off the table from the start.

In The Perfect Storm, when so many other pressures like infrastructure repair will compete for increasingly scarce program dollars, it won’t be enough to just take new prisons off the table. As Texas shows, if more beds still are an option, they will be an almost immediate response to population increases even with the best intentions for treatment and diversion. Those beds will have to be extinguished, not there, disappeared, unavailable. Only by making the starting point the closing of prisons and pulling those funds directly out of the budget will states be able to cost out both the overall state programming and specifically their corrections sentencing budgeting in ways meaningful enough to allow adequate planning of public safety maintenance in The Perfect Storm. Zero-increase budgeting for corrections sentencing will mean cost-effective public safety programs prioritized over less public safety-effective prison spending.

Go ahead. Roll your eyes. But in five years when state budgets are still only level at best, most still far below their inadequate spending of the mid-00s (when Texas could believe it would have money for its reforms just by capping prisons), and when state agencies would kill to have the same budget next year as they had this year guaranteed, get back with us. We’ll already be in those states that figured it out a couple of years before. Maybe even Texas.

--Mike Connelly

Last week we made the point that it’s not always “bad” reporting that causes problems in seeing reality well enough to make good decisions. Sometimes the problems come from reporting that seems to be authoritative but actually reflects the reporter’s lack of real understanding of what’s going on, becoming too reliant on one or two sources who have agendas to push and axes to grind that aren’t immediately apparent. The example we gave was how Oklahoma reporters tend to repeat the agenda of the state drug court bureaucracy, despite the thorough criticism a recent audit exhibited, which those of us who actually know the numbers behind drug court “success” there and what’s left out by its advocates (who also are authorized to manage them) more than share.

It’s not just corrections sentencing, though. Finance blogs have been doing a wonderful job this week dissecting the recent unemployment numbers, explaining the models and algorithms and how they’re used, resulting in numbers that do not reflect the total reality but are used politically as if they did. Here and here are a couple of really good analyses that will require you to be sitting down and probably buckled in because the convolutions that the statistics go through to get into the mouth of your blowdried evening newsreader are truly astounding. The overwhelming impression is that no one really knows what the “unemployment rate” really is, maybe what gets reported (doubtful), maybe something else.  (To keep you from purging, we'll leave out the whole "the job growth was almost all part-time jobs" problem with the numbers that you had to dig into the reporting to understand.)

The next impression is simply the point we were making with our post. The problem is more than the loss of legitimacy when public policy and its creators spout numbers that the experience of the public tells it that just can’t be true. When decisions are based on a misleading or outright wrong depiction of reality, they will, except through the very best of luck, not live up to predictions and promises. The incentive of policymakers, if the erroneous depiction makes them look better, is clearly to run with the irreality, especially if they can blame the eventual failures on others or, better, have been term-limited out before the crap comes down. In the meantime, at best, time and resources are wasted; at worst, the situation becomes even worse and the solutions become more costly, painful, and liable to fail.

That’s why we need to start being much more vigilant now in both calling out the superficial reporting and insisting that policymakers come to the table ready to deal with complete and thorough examination of their situations, including, in corrections sentencing, likely revenue availability as well as likely prison populations. Since we’ve detailed why the former is unlikely to reflect the past, we just cannot assume that the resources will be there for the latter even if they stay stable, much less grow. Those populations will have to shrink in virtually every state, meaning closure of facilities and diversion of remaining funds into better policies to improve public safety and reduce crime rates than prisons have ever been. However, the worse the reporting and the more it’s allowed to happen unchallenged, the harder those decisions will be.

So please send us any examples of these kinds of articles you run across, or even just those that you suspect but can’t prove. We’ll be glad to take them on and to publicize both them and the problem. And for free!! That’s better than pretending you’re saving money on prisons that you were never going to spend anyway!! Just e-mail us. We’ll be eager and waiting.

--Mike Connelly

I’ve looked for the quote but can’t find it anymore. Went something like this: In the US and Britain, a study will be titled “The Effect of X on Y” while in Europe or Asia the same study will be titled “The Effect of X on Y . . . in a Small Southwestern Village . . . 1990-2000.” The point being, of course, that we don’t tend to count for differences of region or time, IOW, the contexts in which studies occur, very well. Sometimes it doesn’t matter, say, if we’re studying the pathway of a virus infecting a community, since we assume that humans in one place and time are like others (that’s always true . . . right? right?).

But when we’re studying people from different cultures, with different values, under different pressures, maybe it’s not wise to assume that a program that worked in Maine in the 1990s will work in Louisiana in the early 2000s will work in Idaho now. One of the things I’ve appreciated about the continuing effort to track the impact on crime of incarceration is how the early blunt instrument studies have given way to more nuanced “early days, big impact, mid-days, not as much, by now, negative return on investment.” One of the things I curl an eyebrow at is how we assume that programs with social entrepreneurs and with uniquely open policy windows open uniquely wide and resources in flush economic times and, especially, with one type of culture should be equally successful across this entire country. Not that we shouldn’t look to see, but there’s a definite possibility, IMHO, of overselling and risking all our efforts being discredited when that one doesn’t hold true.

Maybe I’m sensitive to this because I come from poli sci, with a particular interest in both federalism and in history, in recognizing that states really are different from each other in important ways and how they got that way. There have been some great books in my waayyy too long now life that get at this in a big way: Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America, Peirce and Hagstrom’s The Book of America, Daniel Elazar’s American Federalism, David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, Kevin Phillips’ The Cousin’s War. (Apologies to the authors I’m not citing, but those are the ones I can see on my shelf from where I’m sitting.) Ingesting them goes a long way toward understanding why the South and Southwest have the incarceration rates they have, for example, and why they’re really not going to come down through marginal efforts that can be wiped away once attention is turned. A long way toward understanding why New York’s law enforcement approach to stopping crime can be effective there but not so much in a place like Oklahoma City (where you’ll be shunned or skinned if you suggest something from New York City). You get the idea.

The latest effort on your bookstore shelves (or electronic bits) right now is Colin Woodward’s American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. In a way, as he admits, much of this book owes much to the authors I mentioned above, but Woodward blends those books with his own theses in a way to produce a unique and valuable work of his own. One that should be required reading for every criminal justice course, but never will be.

Basically, Woodward tracks the major settlement groups from our original colonization from their initial grounding through their dispersion across the country and parts of Canada and Mexico up to the present day. Of course, some groups came later and dispersed later, but the concept of dominant cultural value strains shaping life and behavior in particular regions of the nation is well demonstrated. Yes, yes, television and the Internet and the automobility, we know, but he provides many examples of how, even with these and other homogenizing factors, you can still predict much about an area just from who settled it centuries ago and why that still makes one area different from another.

From the text:

America’s most essential and abiding divisions are not between red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals, capital and labor, blacks and whites, the faithful and the secular. Rather, our divisions stem from this fact: the United States is a federation comprised of the whole or part of eleven regional nations, some of which truly do not see eye to eye with one another. These nations respect neither state nor international boundaries, bleeding over the U.S. frontiers with Canada and Mexico as readily as they divide California, Texas, Illinois, or Pennsylvania. . . . Few have shown any indication that they are melting into some sort of unified American culture. On the contrary, since 1960 the fault lines between these nations have been growing wider, fueling culture wars, constitutional struggles, and ever more frequent pleas for unity.

At different times in US history, some areas have dominated culturally, economically, politically, with national policy fluctuating accordingly. For the last several decades the South in particular has driven the national car, also explaining a great deal about the Corrections Sentencing policies that we discuss here. Since it’s doubtful that a region distinguished by values detailed herein for essentially three “nations” comprising “the South” will fully embrace Corrections Sentencing Reform 1.0 or 2.0, we would predict that the leadership for the triaging necessary to get through The Perfect Storm will have to come from outside that area’s range of ideas and actions. And won’t start out a national movement. After you read the book, let’s get back together and see if your prediction is the same as ours.

There’s a lot of history in this book (beware if you hate that), and the organization was a matter of choice by historical periods rather than one “nation” at a time from start to finish. That might annoy or confuse things for some. But it’s fascinating to see how the American history you slept through with Coach Whatever in high school is so different when you see events from the eyes of all the different cultural perspectives that Woodward details.

And that’s why this is a valuable book for those of us Outside the Silo in Corrections Sentencing policy. This nation is not an “Effect of X on Y” nation despite needs to publish research. Context makes a difference, location makes a difference, time period makes a difference. There is no guarantee that a program working right now in your state would have worked ten years ago or ten years from now, much less transfer to the other ten “nations.” We have to start asking these questions and get the cultural lay-of-the-land before we tell policymakers and citizens of these states that we’ll “get these results and you can do this with the payoffs.” It’s not something most of us were trained for and isn’t really at all Inside the Silo. But we can’t afford failures and overpromising when our credibility is on the line and when we may only get one bite of the apple. We certainly won’t get a second bite if we badly misread where we apply “solutions.” Culture matters, history matters. "One size doesn't fit all" anymore for policies than it does for offenders.  We ignore that at our risk. Fortunately for us, we have great guides like those I named. And this guy Woodward.