Study: public opinion favors
crime prevention
Yawu Miller
A Boston Foundation study found that most Massachusetts residents
favor crime prevention and rehabilitation over mandatory sentencing
and punishment-oriented criminal justice policies.
But, as the participants of a forum at the foundation’s Boston
office noted, public policy has increasingly favored longer sentences
for lesser crimes.
“Politicians and public officials who take their cues from
the public understand the public as wanting them to be tough on
crime,” said state Sen. Jarrett Barrios, who heads the Senate’s
Criminal Justice Committee and is a candidate for Middlesex District
Attorney.
“But it’s a little more nuanced. I think the public
wants us to be tough on the causes of crime.”
According to the Boston Foundation report, 64 percent of Massachusetts
residents said prevention and rehabilitation were top priorities
for dealing with crime while 33 percent identified punishment and
enforcement as priorities.
Similarly, 66 percent of respondents said addressing causes of crime
is the best approach to crime while 29 percent said tougher punishment
is the best approach.
But as Barrios and other panelists noted, when crime gets kicked
around in political campaigns, quick fixes take precedence over
effective strategies.
Take the issue of furloughs — the practice of allowing inmates
out into the community for short periods of unsupervised freedom
before they finish serving their time.
Public policy shifted radically away from furloughs, thanks in no
small part to George H. Bush strategist Lee Atwater who made Willie
Horton a household name, recounting in a political advertisement
the story of the lifer’s murder and rape committed while on
furlough. The Horton incident painted Dukakis as soft on crime and
was one of several attacks that torpedoed his presidential run.
It also gave politicians across the country the impression that
the perception of being soft on crime can be the kiss of death in
a campaign. Democrats and Republicans have since then pushed get-tough-on-crime
policies that featured mandatory minimums for non-violent crimes.
The failure rate for the furlough program was less than one percent,
according to John Larivee, chief executive officer of Community
Resources for Justice, an agency that researches criminal justice
policy.
“You could count on one hand the number of heinous crimes
committed on furlough,” he said.
But politicians played to the Willie Horton image, not to the policy
wonks’ statistics as they argued for more punitive criminal
justice policy.
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld told reporters that prison
should be a “tour through the circles of hell,” where
prisoners are introduced to the “joys of busting rocks.”
Much of that rhetoric was a play to the voters and the media, according
to Lou DiNatale, director of the Center for Economic and Civic Opinion
at UMass. Lowell.
“You only have to be soft on crime once and the media will
kill you,” he said.
As Barrios and others on the panel pointed out, longer sentences
and prisons stripped of job training, educational programs and drug
treatment programs don’t necessarily translate into lower
crime rates. The practice of awarding longer prison terms to non-violent
drug offenders actually increases the likelihood that they will
commit crimes, according to Elyse Clawson, executive director of
the Crime and Justice Institute.
“As you take low-risk people and get them deeper into the
criminal justice system, it increases recidivism,” she said.
Residents of high-crime areas are acutely aware of the problem of
recidivism and are, therefore, biased toward rehabilitation, according
to Rita Poussaint Nethersole, community chairwoman of the Grove
Hall Safe Neighborhood Association.
“When people talk about recidivism, I can think of five people
on my block who have been released from prison,” she said.
“I don’t think being hard on crime means being hard
on a criminal. It means being hard on a whole lot of other factors.”
The panelists stressed the importance of drug treatment programs,
interventions for criminally involved individuals and vocational
training and educational programs for inmates.
The challenge is that while most of the public supports rehabilitative
programs, candidates are less likely to support such programs during
elections.
“You need prosecutors who are going to take chances,”
DiNatale said. “Most district attorneys don’t get into
office taking chances.”
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