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.”