Criminal Behavior

“Everybody in the whole cell block,
Was dancing to the jailhouse rock.”
- lyrics, Elvis Presley, Jailhouse Rock

The NY Times published an interesting story on effectively dealing with repeated drug offenders.

“How do you force criminals to change their behavior? … the US criminal justice system has been spectacularly bad at answering this question. America is the most punitive nation in the world, with 2.4 million of its citizens behind bars and another 5.1 million on probation or parole. Yet … two-thirds of released prisoners commit another serious offense within three years.”

Judge Steven Alm of Hawaii realized that the current policy didn’t work. Most probation violations went unpunished and he might see an offender only after dozens of violations, at which point his choices were: let the violator off with yet another warning or send him to prison for many years.

Jerry Lum of Honolulu, a meth smoker since age 14, spent nearly half of his 42 years behind bars but continued smoking meth. “I could game the system,” he says. “I used to be late to see my probation officer — sometimes, if I knew my drug test was going to be dirty, I wouldn’t even show up.” Officers usually looked the other way. Given the lengthy paperwork involved, there were not enough hours in the day to write up every infraction.

So Judge Alm changed the rules with a new program called HOPE. ALL parole violations would be punished. He rewrote the paperwork so it would take only minutes to fill out and simplified the court procedures down to 7 minutes per parole violation. Drug tests were made random – parolees call each night to learn if they are to be tested the next day. Participants who test positive for drugs are arrested on the spot, tried within 72 hours, and sentenced to jail for two to five days.

“After just six months, HOPE probationers were 93 percent less likely to miss an appointment with an officer or to fail drug tests. Since most HOPE participants were able to quit drugs and hold down steady jobs, many stopped resorting to crime. … Though HOPE cost $1,400 more per probationer than the old system, it saved the state $6,000 per probationer in reduced incarceration costs.”

Bottom Line

“Cesare Beccaria, an Italian philosopher and arguably the first criminologist, wrote in 1764, “The certainty of a small punishment will make a greater impression than the fear of one more severe.” Several generations of experts reached the same conclusion: Punishments are more effective when they follow closely after crimes, and when they are levied consistently.”

Jerry Lum has not spent a day in jail since joining HOPE. “I hate to say it,” he says, “but I’m the type of person that — when I wasn’t supervised — I kept screwing up. If I’m supervised, no problem.”