At Thursday’s morning press conference, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, police union president Paul Weber and LAPD First Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell (Chief Bratton is on vacation) all announced that they were very much against the early release of as many as 27,000 state prisoners, low-level, nonviolent offenders—an idea that has was proposed by the governor and his legislative partners as a way to shave a necessary 1.2 billion off the state corrections budget—one more needed cut to shore up the $26 billion deficit.
The mayor et al based many of their objections on talking points contained in police union press releases sent out during the week that maintained a ghastly crime wave would result if the prisoner release was allowed to go ahead as proposed. The crime wave predictions were backed up with a bunch of references to studies and stats from the Department of Justice and the Rand Corporation.
However, if one goes upstream of those LAPPL statistics to look at the studies themselves— one finds that the union’s claims are bit, shall we say…..factually challenged.
I’ll show you what I mean.
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BAD NUMBERS
Here is the material taken from the LAPPL’s press release that the LA Times ran entirely uncritically. (Bad LA Times. No Cookie!)
According to the union, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which examined such releases, found that 70% of early-release inmates were re-arrested within three years. The study found 1 in 5 prisoners committed a violent crime after release.
Another study, by the Rand Corp. (“Crime Costs and Public Policy,” January 2009), found that the average prisoner on early release commits 13 new crimes before being re-arrested. Applying these numbers to California’s early-release programs equates to more than 245,000 new crimes and crime victims over the next 36 months.
The first paragraph suggests that the Bureau of Justice found that inmates released early are re-arrested for new crimes at a particularly rapid clip—70 percent within three years.
True? Nope.. Those are just the plain old state recidivism rates for all prisoners that we’ve seen year in and year out in California. They have nothing to do with early release. Statistically speaking, prisoners are no more likely to be rearrested if you let them out early, than if you let them out later. In California we have a lousy recidivism rate—nearly 70 percent. This is for a whole host of reasons that people like me have been shrieking about for a long time. Prisoners need rehabilitation and training while incarcerated, and help with reentry when released,. Plus we need a functional parole system. Blah, blah, blah.
But, we aren’t going to fix those problems this budget year.
Oh, and while we’re at it, of that 70 percent who do end up right back inside within 3 years, the majority are not sent back to prison for having committed new crimes—but for violating the technical conditions of their parole. (For testing dirty. Hanging out in the old neighborhood, or whatever.)
But, again, all this has nothing to do with early release. Zero. Zip.
(By the way, it does not appear to be our local LAPPL folks who up cooked these statistics. I think it was their Sacramento counterparts.)
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AND MORE BAD STATS
The rest of the stats listed above are equally faulty.
For instance, in the LAPPL press release it says that the average early released prisoner will commit 13 crimes before he or she is arrested again, and that a 2009 RAND study says so.
Once again, this is half-truths mixed with utter balderdash.
There is a famous RAND study. For the record, it’s from 1978, not 2009, and it has NOTHING— NOTHING— to do with early release.
More importantly, it DID NOT find that most prisoners committed 13 crimes before they were actually caught.
The 1978 study was done by by a guy named Peter Greenwood and was designed to identify career criminals—mainly burglers and robbers (it was, after all, 1978). Greenwood figured that there was a small percentage of people who committed most of the crimes in any given area. According to Greenwood and his study, the wost of those hard core career criminals committed hundreds of crimes before they were actually arrested. It was a self-reporting study and the guys bragged about how much they’d gotten away with, so there was some dispute about its accuracy. But no matter. Apart from these off-the-charts offenders, most prisoners questioned during the course of the 31-year-old study fell way at the other end of the spectrum.
Thus, if you averaged those hundreds of crimes per person at one end, with the guys at zero at the other end, the teeter totter tipped hard in the direction of the career criminals, and you got an average of 13 (Or 15. There were a couple of similar studies during the late ’70’s early ’80’s.)
In other words, the bulk of offenders did not commit a bunch of crimes before their arrests.
“Applying these numbers to California’s early-release programs equates to more than 245,000 new crimes and crime victims over the next 36 months,” wrote the LAPPL
No it doesn’t. That’s ridiculous.
Hey, I know I’m ranting here about what may feel like small points, but there is much at stake. We have a new budget that has just hacked giant bloody chunks out of our educational system—from kindergarten through the universities. And these crappy, fear-mongering, mendacious statistics have been repeated as if they are the revealed truth in media outlets across the state, including in USA Today—all to justify why we should not use early release to cut the corrections budget.
But nobody challenged those fallacious numbers. They just repeated them. (Thank you very much mainstream press.)
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THE UNION PREZ AND THE ASSISTANT CHIEF SPEAK
Yesterday afternoon, in addition to pulling apart the studies, I talked at length about the early release issue with both the LAPPL’s Prez Paul Weber (who seems like quite a decent and smart guy)—and with LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell, who is someone I respect enormously and consider a friend.
Once we got past the stupid stats, both men made excellent points that are worth considering.
Paul Weber pointed out that our normal recidivism rates are bound to bounce higher than usual because prisoners—early or not—- are being released into the worst economy and the worst jobs market in 70 years. College graduates are having trouble finding work, he said. So how well is a released felon with few skills going to do? And if he can’t find legal ways to support himself….. he’ll go with what he knows.
Fair enough. Is that reason enough to junk the early release program? I don’t think so. Paul does. But reasonable people can disagree. In any case, he made a good point that must be taken into consideration as decisions are made.
By the time I spoke to Jim McDonnell last night, he said that he had circled around to a new point of view about early release (that also reflected the stand of the California Police Chiefs Association—the Cal Chiefs).
“We’ve worked hard to put people in prison. And many are repeat offenders. But we have to get 1.2 billion out of corrections. That’s the reality. So rather than oppose early release,” McDonnell said, “now we hope to have input over who is released and under what conditions. And then, when they get out, let’s do what we can to set them on the right track.”
Sounds good. I think we’d all be down for that plan.
Listen, everyone understands that California faces very, very tough budgetary choices right now—all of them bad. But let’s not make those difficult choices even harder by obscuring the truth about the issues at hand with lies, damned lies, and statistics.
As for the media outlets who repeated those bad numbers without ever once bothering to check them, shame on you.
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The corrections piece of the California budget will be again discussed and put up for a vote in August.
Let’s hope this time the discussion is based on facts.
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Photo by Brian Vander Brug for the Los Angeles Times
Oh please let all those bad men out. I’m getting so lonely without my papi.
I didn’t even read the entire post. It’s just amusing when a liberal tries to use statistics to support a point that goes completely against common sense.
A clue to finding money to fund prisons by releasing drug pushers….
Statistics/data can be interpreted in different ways according to one’s presuppositions. All research has, a confirmatory bias: You find what you’re looking for (or you don’t find it). Nothing else. Then you
start over again.
While I don’t doubt your interpretation of statistical studies, I side with Weber on this one. If people coming out of state prisons (with a criminal record) can’t find stable, legal work, what are they going to do? They certainly aren’t going to leave the state to look for work.
The problem with Paul Weber’s argument is that by his reasoning the state would *never* release prisoners. It’s always difficult for them to find work with felonies on their records, regardless of the economy or the length of sentence they served. He’s basically changing his reasoning to support the same conclusion after being shown his first argument was unsound.
Ms. Fremon – On this subject, you are so so wrong. Parolees re-commit crimes in ten folds. We usually only catch them for one good solid arrest (and hopefully -in Gods grace he is convicted in court), out of like maybe 10 to 50 unknown acts. You dont even realize how many criminal reports are taken of unsolved crimes daily in LA – the majority of them being committed by your so called “low level” assholes.
I have debriefed hundreds of criminals and you should really hear what they have to say – when they are telling the truth on their criminal adventures.
Celeste: AND MORE BAD STATS…the LAPPL press release…says that the average early released prisoner will commit 13 crimes before he or she is arrested again.
Poppy: We usually only catch them for one good solid arrest…out of like maybe 10 to 50 unknown acts.
I suspect that Poppy’s knowlege and experience is accurate. If the LAPD statistics are bad, then it’s because they leaned on the side of being conservative.
But, an analysis shouldn’t cover just the number of crimes but the severity of them.
Remember the serial killings from a released prisoner earlier this month? North Carolina Police Probe Why South Carolina Serial Killer Was Released From Jail Before Killing Five People
As I stated in the post above this one, “Who will explain the arguments against the “faulty numbers†to the first family who suffers an attack or death by one of the released prisoners?”
When you think that you are helping one group, you may be hurting a larger group. Be careful with you social causes lest you make things worse.
What an incredibly tiny point you make.
The impact of releasing 27,000 70% snakes, regardless the reasons they were born or morphed into snakes, is that at a minimum, tens of thousands of Californians will be bitten that otherwise would not.
Your claiming that Chief McDonnell has become more enlightened philosophically is laughable. The dude read the tea leaves and moved on to damage control posture. It really is hilarious that here, you praise practical thinking in reaction to a practical problem, yet the main thrust of your thread is an academic distinction that does nothing to ameliorate the very real tragedies about to befall many innocents.
I hear valid points from both sides but no one can seem to answer this question for me, what is the big difference between releasing parole violators now as apposed to a couple months from now when their scheduled to be released? They’ve already served their time and are doing extra for a missed appt., dirty drug test, etc. Right now hard core criminals are not being tried better yet convicted because the jails are so full with parole violators. Due process, right to a speedy trial, blah, blah…violent offenders walk without seeing the inside of a court room. I wish someone would please shed some light on this for me.
In my opinion, the three strikes law is the “culprit” that is causing the over crowding in the prisons. For instance, it makes no sense to sentence someone who has a stolen battery in their possession to 20 tears in prison, or someone who has been caught with drugs to to 35 years, especially when someone has been convicted of voluntary manslaughterwil be sentenced 5 years.
This system is crazy, unfair and totally against the constitution. The punishment is not fitting the crime. Plus money that it costs to hoyuse and maintain an imate is outrageous. Most of the working people have to survive on much less.
Alsao, the guard in the prisons are no more that glorified “babysitters’. The inmates are NOT being rehabilitated or taught how to manage when they are released. They are thrown out of the door with twoo hundred dollars and told hit the street and “see you next month”. In my opinion, the inmates are “set up to fail”. From what I have seen the whole prison systems do not help the people become better citizens. Even the ones who may have had potential have lost it after going through the prison system.
Maybe if some changes are made “within” the system, there would be less people committing crimes ans redturning to the prisons.
DB: I hear valid points from both sides but no one can seem to answer this question for me, what is the big difference between releasing parole violators now as apposed to a couple months from now when their scheduled to be released?
What’s the difference between letting lake water through the dam slowly or opening up the flood gates and letting it out all at once?
Woody Says:
July 27th, 2009 at 6:26 am
DB: I hear valid points from both sides but no one can seem to answer this question for me, what is the big difference between releasing parole violators now as apposed to a couple months from now when their scheduled to be released?
What’s the difference between letting lake water through the dam slowly or opening up the flood gates and letting it out all at once?
Who said they would open the flood gates, when has California ever done anything in a timely manner, there’s going to mountains of paperwork and they’ll come out just like they always do just a couple months earlier. It’s ridiculous to think they are just going to round up 42,000 inmates and say “O.K.,you can go now!”
If more of the important CDCR people would “Visit” their be- loved prisons they wouuld get agood prospective of how these prisoners act. Just look at them, watch them with people on the outside,watch the courtisy given to other inmates, to visitors in general. There hygene and “drab uniforms” sparkel better than the US Navy that also wears the same outfit!I have visited four Cal State prisons and have seen conditions grow worse within them,from plain blue shirt and jeans to “Plastered Up” CDC(R) Prisoner stenciled out fits! What the hell is wrong with CDC people anyway….
What about looking into the cases of some of innocent locked up in prison and releasing them. We better all believe that there are some in there wrongfully convicted. A lot of innocent people are sent to prison because police are known to get false confessions from jail house informants for deals. I should know this very well my husband was convicted that way. But we are not bitter because God will take care of all of this. So just keep praying all the truth of all the dirt in our justice system will one day come out.
How about releasing those in need of treatment for drug use and locking up the politicians that are everyday criminals with lame ass excuses when they buy a whore or accept a bribe!
However, if one goes upstream of those LAPPL statistics to look at the studies themselves
[…] was much quarreling in the past two weeks about the proposed $1.2 billion dollars that is slated to come out of California’s […]
Here’s a thought. maybe the sentences for drug users and white collar offenders being locked up for way longer than they should be with murderers, gangsters, and rapist is causing some of this criminal behavior in what would be good non violent men that mad a mistake…
If you take a 30 year old selling enough pot to support his own personal habit ($100/a month), throw him in jail on a conspiracy charge because of a plea deal with a big time dealer…what do you think you will get after he has been incarcerated for 10 years with murderers, gangsters and rapists? and he has never had so much a speeding ticket?
just a thought….long sentences of non violent men with violent men will create a criminal?