What: Book reading, signing, Q&A, conversations, great food and drinks
Where: Book Passage, the bookstore at the Ferry Building, San Francisco
When: Wednesday, Feb. 25, 6pm
See you there!
Event page
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Wed, Feb 25, 6pm: SF Release Party for Cheap on Crime
What: Book reading, signing, Q&A, conversations, great food and drinks
Where: Book Passage, the bookstore at the Ferry Building, San Francisco
When: Wednesday, Feb. 25, 6pm
See you there!
Event page
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Upcoming Events
This is a big week!
On Wednesday 2/11 you're invited to attend the UC Hastings release party for Cheap on Crime, held at the Alumni Reception Center at 3:30pm.
And on Friday 2/13 you're invited to attend the Hastings Law Journal symposium on federal sentencing reform, which, among other topics, will include a panel on the economics of sentencing inspired by Cheap on Crime.
If you can't catch any of these, do not despair: there will be a community release party for Cheap on Crime on 2/25 at Book Passage, the bookstore at the Ferry Building, at 6pm.
Not Long Sentences or War on Drugs: Problem Is Prosecutorial Discretion
My colleague John Pfaff from Fordham (who is quoted extensively in Chapter 1 of Cheap on Crime) is an economist, and has tested the various explanations given for mass incarceration. His conclusion: the main cause for prison growth was not an increase in sentencing or the war on drugs. The problem is prosecutorial discretion.
"I understand where they come from. It’s true that legislators have passed a lot of new, tougher sentencing laws over the past 30 or 40 years. And it’s true that we have increased the attention paid to drugs. But in the end, there are other things that play a much, much bigger role in explaining prison growth. The fact of the matter is in today’s state prisons, which hold about 90 percent of all of our prisoners, only 17 percent of the inmates are there primarily for drug charges. And about two-thirds are there for either property or violent crimes."
. . .
"What appears to happen during this time—the years I look at are 1994 to 2008, just based on the data that’s available—is that the probability that a district attorneys file a felony charge against an arrestee goes from about 1 in 3, to 2 in 3. So over the course of the ’90s and 2000s, district attorneys just got much more aggressive in how they filed charges. Defendants who they would not have filed felony charges against before, they now are charging with felonies. I can’t tell you why they’re doing that. No one’s really got an answer to that yet. But it does seem that the number of felony cases filed shoots up very strongly, even as the number of arrests goes down."
"I understand where they come from. It’s true that legislators have passed a lot of new, tougher sentencing laws over the past 30 or 40 years. And it’s true that we have increased the attention paid to drugs. But in the end, there are other things that play a much, much bigger role in explaining prison growth. The fact of the matter is in today’s state prisons, which hold about 90 percent of all of our prisoners, only 17 percent of the inmates are there primarily for drug charges. And about two-thirds are there for either property or violent crimes."
. . .
"What appears to happen during this time—the years I look at are 1994 to 2008, just based on the data that’s available—is that the probability that a district attorneys file a felony charge against an arrestee goes from about 1 in 3, to 2 in 3. So over the course of the ’90s and 2000s, district attorneys just got much more aggressive in how they filed charges. Defendants who they would not have filed felony charges against before, they now are charging with felonies. I can’t tell you why they’re doing that. No one’s really got an answer to that yet. But it does seem that the number of felony cases filed shoots up very strongly, even as the number of arrests goes down."
Reentry to Nothing
My terrific colleague Alessandro de Giorgi has an excellent series of posts on the Social Justice blog, titled Reentry to Nothing. They are based on ethnographic work he is doing and expose the difficulties of making life work on the outside.
#1 - Get a Job, Any Job
At 1:30 p.m. I get a message from Melisha, who tells me that her job application at the Walmart in East Oakland had been turned down after they performed a background check on her:
Hi bra happy Memorial day. It all bad for me sad … about the Walmart job … that Walmart did a nationwide check everthing came back from fines old address criminal record from Arkansas. Cant nobody say I didn’t try … sad … my life is fuck up. Is there any kind of away you can get that removed for me … don’t u study criminal justice. I need u on this bra I’m stress now I try to tell Ray
#2 - The Working Poor
#1 - Get a Job, Any Job
At 1:30 p.m. I get a message from Melisha, who tells me that her job application at the Walmart in East Oakland had been turned down after they performed a background check on her:
Hi bra happy Memorial day. It all bad for me sad … about the Walmart job … that Walmart did a nationwide check everthing came back from fines old address criminal record from Arkansas. Cant nobody say I didn’t try … sad … my life is fuck up. Is there any kind of away you can get that removed for me … don’t u study criminal justice. I need u on this bra I’m stress now I try to tell Ray
#2 - The Working Poor
Ray tells me they are desperate for money. He has only been able to work for a few hours a week at KFC since being released from jail last month. He still works on call for $8.00 an hour and makes less than $200 each week. Meanwhile, Melisha has been unable to find any job—despite filling out applications at McDonald’s, Pack n’Save, Ghirardelli, and several other places—and her SSI payments were suspended while she was in jail.
Alex: Right now … The two of you, how much cash do you have?
Ray: Nothin’.
Alex: Nothing?
Ray: Zero. Pennies. Oh, here you go [searches into his pockets, then opens his hand to show me a few dimes]. That’s our savings right here. Oh yeah … And our free cookie [hands me a greasy paper bag from KFC with a half-melted chocolate chip cookie inside].Alex: A free cookie?
Ray: Yeah! Free cookie, from KFC. Free cookie, that’s all we got right here.
Ray: Nothin’.
Alex: Nothing?
Ray: Zero. Pennies. Oh, here you go [searches into his pockets, then opens his hand to show me a few dimes]. That’s our savings right here. Oh yeah … And our free cookie [hands me a greasy paper bag from KFC with a half-melted chocolate chip cookie inside].Alex: A free cookie?
Ray: Yeah! Free cookie, from KFC. Free cookie, that’s all we got right here.
I follow Rico to the last room on the left, which is occupied by one of his old friends. Peering through the open doors, I see only decrepit rooms with littered floors. In some, people are sitting on their beds eating, smoking, watching TV, and arguing loudly. All residents of the premises share two bathrooms and showers. Like the rest of the building, they are filthy. Hip-hop music blasts from the surrounding rooms, including the one we enter. There, two middle-aged white men, whose teeth are mostly missing, are smoking crystal meth. They become nervous at the sight of me, but when Rico reassures them that I’m not a cop, they intently inhale the vaporizing crystals again. After a few minutes of silence, Rico explains that the building was formerly the site of a transitional housing program for recovering drug addicts. Now it is just a ghetto building with cheap rooms for rent. Since Rico is no longer on parole, he cannot go back to the halfway house; moving here may be his only option, because the landlord does not require a deposit or credit report.
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