Barry Latzer - The Myth of Overpunishment: A Defense of the American Justice System and a Proposal to Reduce Incarceration While Protecting the Public

Justice is on trial in the United States. From police to prisons, the justice system is accused of overpunishing. It is said that too many Americans are abused by the police, arrested, jailed, and imprisoned. But the denunciations are overblown. The data indicates, contrary to the critics, that we dont imprison too many, nor do we overpunish. This becomes evident when we examine the crimes of prisoners and the actual time served. The history of punishment in the United States, discussed in vivid detail, reveals that the treatment of offenders has become progressively more lenient. Corporal punishment is no more. The death penalty has become a rarity. Many convicted defendants are given no-incarceration sentences. Restorative justice may be a good thing for low-level offenses, or as an add-on for remorseful prisoners, but when it comes to major crimes it is no substitute for punitive justice. The Myth of Overpunishment presents a workable and politically feasible plan to electronically monitor arrested suspects prior to adjudication (bail reform), defendants placed on probation, and parolees.

The MYTH of OVERPUNISHMENT

FIRST EDITION

Copyright 2022 Barry Latzer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 9781645720324 (Hardcover)

ISBN: 9781645720331 (ebook)

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BY SENATOR TOM COTTON

BY ANY INFORMED MEASURE , the criminal justice system in the United States is extraordinarily lenient. In fact, it is more lenient than at any point in our history. This is true if measured by the number of criminals who face consequences for their crimes through arrests and convictions, but also if measured by the consequences that we impose. Many readers may be surprised by that fact, especially if they have consumed much of the fashionableif ill-backedtalking points that are popular among decarcerationists and soft-on-crime advocates today.

Virtually everyone in the United States knows someone whose life has been touched by crime. Some have experienced serious crime, or have even lost a loved one to senseless violence, while others have experienced the violating feeling of being victimized by petty theft or vandalism. A substantial number of Americans have also been connected, whether directly or indirectly, with someone who has been arrested for a crime at some level. Yet despite the commonality of personal experience, the rhetoric surrounding criminal justice policy is not only heated but often mostly devoid of fact. So, when I was asked to write a foreword for a new book by Dr. Barry Latzer, one of Americas preeminent criminologists and an expert with a knack for cutting through the fact-free vitriol on this topic, I was intrigued.

According to popular belief, the United States locks up vast numbers of people for minor crimes or low-level offenses, such as minor drug possession or mere administrative infractions, and those offenders are subjected to severe sentences that are decades longer than necessary. Advocates of this view attach scary labels like mass incarceration, as if swaths of people are being indiscriminately rounded up and herded into prisons in scenes reminiscent of concentration camps. The result, allegedly, is that our criminal justice system wastes shocking amounts of money on lengthy sentences for minor offenders, and that those offenders only become more crime-prone as a result of their unjust incarceration. Such talking points are typically followed by proposals for reform that purport to focus the justice system on violent and serious criminals by drastically reducing enforcement of other offenses. It would be a compelling argument, if only it werent based entirely on fiction.

There is a group of activists that has taken this false narrative a step further, arguing that the justice system hasnt expanded to inadvertently ensnare small-time offenders, but that the system itself was designed as a tool of oppression from the beginning. According to this theory, the very existence of criminal punishment in the United States has never been anything other than institutionalized racism, bigotry, and class-based hatred, used by the rich and powerful to keep everyone else down. This, too, is nothing but fiction.

The truth, as Dr. Latzer makes clear, is that in the United States, low-level offenders dont go to prison for any significant length of time. Typically, such offenders dont go to prison at all, instead receiving slap-on-the-wrist consequences like fines, community service, or probation. The drug offenders who see more than nominal prison time are incarcerated for drug trafficking offenses, not low-level simple possession offenses, and even they do not drive our overall incarceration rates. Criminal justice defendants are not systemically targeted for their race or affinity group, either. And the vast majority of offenders with lengthy prison terms are behind bars for violent offenses, especially murder, aggravated assault, and rape.

What, then, of the point that the United States has such high incarceration rates? Its true that the United States in the last several decades has reached historically-high prison population numbersboth in terms of absolute numbers and per-capita rates. But those who claim that this proves their theory of overincarceration are able to see only one small part of the picture.

In the last half-century, crime rates skyrocketed as criminal leniency views reigned supreme, peaking in the 1990s before the public awakened and demanded stronger law enforcement. Taking back American streets and communities from unfettered violence naturally resulted in more convictions, and inmate numbers swelled. Technology, including everything from security cameras to ballistics and nationwide, searchable databases, has also made it easier to solve crimes than at any point in the past.

Despite improvements in and emphasis on law enforcement, the vast majority of crimes in the United States never result in so much as an arrest, much less a conviction or prison sentence. Less than half of reported violent crimes in the United States ever result in arrest. This is true even for murder (undoubtedly the most serious criminal offense), as four out of every ten homicides are never cleared.

The numbers are worse for rape and robbery, where two-thirds of offenders arent caught. And more than 80 percent of property crimes are never solved, either. Those who focus on comparing incarceration rates in the United States to incarceration rates elsewhereor to incarceration rates of the United States in decades and centuries pastmiss one simple point: The right number of inmates should be determined by how many people commit crimes. And by that metric, the United States has a serious under-incarceration problem.