Don’t Unleash Criminals on a Closed-Down Society

I have serious reservations about the editors’ of the New York Times’s distaste for incarceration:

Releasing these prisoners during this crisis is not just an act of mercy to protect prisoners’ health, and the health of the prison staff. Fewer sick inmates means less strain on the already burdened prison hospital system. The system was ill equipped to provide proper care to the elderly and sick even before this crisis. A 2016 report from the Department of Justice found that 17 percent of medical positions in prison hospitals were unfilled, and that 12 Bureau of Prisons facilities were so understaffed that they were at “crisis level.” Releasing high-risk inmates will free up limited resources within the prison health care system to better treat those who remain.

A 2016 study from the Brennan Center for Justice found that there was no compelling public safety reason to incarcerate 39 percent of the inmates in state and federal prisons, about 576,000 people. Elderly Americans are especially unlikely to commit further crimes once released. The United States Sentencing Commission found in 2017 that offenders over the age of 65 had just a 13.4 percent chance of being rearrested in an eight-year period after release, compared to a 67.6 percent chance for those under age 21. The report concluded that “recidivism measured by rearrest, reconviction, and reincarceration declined as age increased.” There are more than 10,000 people over the age of 61 in federal prison. Many elderly inmates have been in prison for decades after receiving long sentences in the tough-on-crime 1990s. Many would be good candidates for compassionate release now.

I think they would be largely right if offenders were being imprisoned for the crimes they committed but, frequently, they are not. That is a consequence of prosecutorial and judicial discretion and the two working together.

There are three different kinds of plea bargains: fact bargaining in which the defense stipulates certain facts in exchange for the prosecution not bringing up certain other facts; charge bargaining in which the accused agrees to accept a charge lesser than the one of which they are accused; and sentence bargaining in which the sentence is reduced.

How many of those whom the NYT editors would release are actually guilty of serious, violent crimes? There really is no way of knowing.

I also think that the editors are exaggerating the problem. There are presently 2.3 million people in prison. Accepting their figure of 100 deaths in prisons due to COVID-19, that means that it is safer to be incarcerated in a U. S. prison than it is to be a resident of New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.

I also think that the irony of their position is lost on them. We presently have a couple of hundred million Americans virtually under house arrest. Their sympathy is reserved for those actually convicted of crimes.

Finally, I can’t help but wonder if the shooting spree going on in several of Chicago’s neighborhoods is not related to the release of prisoners from Chicago’s jails using just the logic the NYT editors are employing.