Quattrone Center for the Fair administration of justice

Dates: Tuesday, March 10th OR Thursday, March 12th

Location: Online! See e-mail for the link

Website: https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/quattronecenter/

Fair administration of justice

This week, we are talking to the Quattrone Center For the Fair Administration of Justice. The center seeks to use data to inform systemic solutions and reform to the criminal justice system. From their mission:

The Quattrone Center is a first-of-its-kind organization focused explicitly on inter-disciplinary, data-driven policy level research and recommendations designed to address the system factors that lead to criminal justice error. Rather than focusing primarily on individual cases or on remedying past errors, the Center works to identify institutional and policy-level barriers to fairness and accuracy and then to implement solutions that prevent future mistakes. The Center focuses primarily on two types of error: (1) wrongful arrests, incarcerations or convictions; and (2) policies or procedures that result in disparate outcomes among similarly-situated individuals. We analyze these situations using a broad range of techniques with proven success in reducing errors in such diverse industries as healthcare, aviation, and manufacturing, among others. Housed at the Law School, the Center draws on Penn’s unrivaled interdisciplinary strengths, involving scholars from disciplines across the Penn campus, including Business, Communications, Criminology, Engineering, Medicine and Public Health, and Social Sciences.

To read more about their mission and how they impact the justice system, check out their website here: https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/quattronecenter/about-us.php

Before we talk to them about their work, let’s take a look at why they do this work and seek change on a national level. While we generally have faith in the criminal justice system, advancements like DNA testing and better science have shown that innocent people can often be jailed alongside criminals. Read on for a snapshot look at the incarceration system in the United States.

go directly to jail

For a vast number of people in the United States, a life behind bars is a grim possibility. As of 2021, there are over 5 million people under the supervision of the criminal justice system, with almost 2 million of them incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. Not only is that a staggering number on its own, but that is roughly 20% of the entire world population of imprisoned people. The United States only accounts for 5% of the world’s population. The United States houses more people in jail than the bottom 194 countries in the world combined.

Even though we incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, our imprisonment rates have started to decline in the last few years. Of course, this decline seems paltry in the face of the exponential prison growth of the last 40 years. You can see on the chart below the growth, both in terms of how many people, total, are in prison, as well as how many people per 100,000 of our population.

It would be easy to suggest that we incarcerate more people than anywhere else because we have more crime, but that would not be an accurate picture. If the United States did, in fact, experience more crime than other countries, we would see incarceration rates spread across the population proportionately. The United States population is made up of a majority of caucasians, but they represent a very small portion of the jailed population. Conversely, minorities of the population represent the majority of the jailed population. Additionally, lower income sectors of the population spend far more time imprisoned than do other sectors. (Of course, there is an entire complicated discussion on the cycle of poverty and its intersections with crime, but we definitely don’t have the time to get into that here.)

To read more and see where these charts and graphs come from, please check out “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2025 (found here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html )

For more insight, check out this detailed graph:

You can see the original graph (and detailed breakdown in a slide carousel) here: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2025.html

the prison issue - myths

Of course, the issue of prisons, incarceration, and prison reform is an incredibly complicated one. There are reams of paper and pages of internet space devoted to the discussion and we certainly cannot solve it all here. And, as a reminder, there is always a bias in the information presented. The information presented here is largely from the Prison Policy Initiative, a non-profit, non-partisan group devoted to researching and publishing on the issues of mass criminalization and incarceration. It is as close to neutral as I can find.

We know there is no ‘quick fix’ to our incarceration problem. Though our crime rates have decreased significantly since the 1990s, the vast majority of our incarcerated population is not behind bars for violent crime. Many people are actually imprisoned without even being found guilty of a crime, as they are unable to pay steep bail rates while they await trial. But we will quickly explore the 5 biggest myths surrounding mass incarceration

Myth #1 - Crime is up, and immigration and criminal legal systems reforms are to blame

Especially around elections, we hear about how ‘crime rates are rising’ and it’s often bandied about on social media and neighborhood apps. Often, whomever is citing ‘rising crime’ blames the opposing political party and policies. But the data matters tremendously here, despite what people might see and feel as a result of social media and political posts.

Additionally, very little crime is committed by non-U.S. citizens. National arrest data is not broken out by citizenship status, but in jails, where people are detained after arrest, roughly 3% of all people jailed are non-citizens. Simply being detained in jail does not mean guilt (only waiting on trial or chargers), it is likely that less than 3% are actually guilty of crimes.

Realistically, while crime rates have fallen, the opposite feels true because of vocal detractors to prison and criminal justice reform measures.

Myth #2 - Releasing “nonviolent drug offenders” would end our mass incarceration issue

Drug possession is still routinely punished harshly. Drug convictions remain a huge portion of the federal prison system. Police make almost a million drug arrests each year, and they are more likely to be for drug possession rather than manufacturing or selling drugs. However, drug offenses still only account for 1 out of ever 5 people in prison or jail. See the circle graph earlier in the reading to see just how many people incarcerated are for something other than drug offenses.

Myth #3 - By definition, “violent crime” involves physical harm

Violent crime sounds scary and terrible! But the terms ‘non violent’ and ‘violent crime’ have such a wide array of definitions and uses, it’s almost useless to use them in a policy discussion. Many laws use the term ‘violent’ to a wide range of acts, including those that don’t involve any physical harm. Burglary, for example, is generally classified as a property crime but in some states if a weapon was present or the crime occurred at night, even if no one was in the building or got hurt, it could be prosecuted as a violent crime with a long prison sentence and a ‘violent’ record. In other places, purse snatching or manufacturing methamphetamines is considered ‘violent’.

Myth #4 - Some people need to go to jail to get treatment and services

Of course, many people in the criminal legal system have a lot of needs, many of them unmet. But prisons and jails are designed for punishment, not care. Those who need medical care are often denied or restricted from these services. We know that medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use is the best care we can offer. But only a small fraction of all jails can provide this kind of care, so drug treatment patients are often cut off from their medications. Between 2000 and 2018, the number of people who died of intoxication while in jail increased by almost 400%, mostly within a single day of being admitted to jail.

Additionally, those who have mental health problems are often relegated to solitary confinement with little to no access to counseling. As a consequence, suicide is the leading cause of death in local jails, with far greater numbers than the general population. Jails are simply not set up to provide safe detox or therapeutic facilities to those who need it most.

Myth #5 - People who imprisoned for violent or sexual crimes are too dangerous to ever be released

Of course, it sounds scary and we want to lock away scary people to keep them from ever harming anyone else. But that means we accept the fact that people are incapable of rehabilitation, which we know is not necessarily true. In fact, people convinced of sexual assault and homicide are the people least likelly to reoffend after they are released. People convicted for any violent crime are less likely to be re-arrested after their release than all those convicted of property, drug, or public order offenses. For a truly serious discussion regarding the end of mass incarceration, one would have to look at the way we lock up violent offenders for decades longer and continue to enforce harsh restrictions after their release. Recidivism data doesn’t support this result. Those convicted of violent and sexual offenses are actually the least likely to be rearrested.

One of the reasons there is a lower recidivism rate is explained by age. Age is one of the main predictors of violence, and the risk for violence peaks in adolescence or early adulthood and then declines with age.

Unfortunately, we don’t know the exact answers to ending mass incarceration, though there are certainly many ideas. It will take the concerted effort of a great many people and lots of new ideas to formulate solutions to ensure we no longer lead the world in imprisonment.

Tune in this week for a fascinating discussion about policy, justice, and how the law works for and against people in this country.

works cited

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/16/americas-incarceration-rate-lowest-since-1995/ft_21-08-12_incarceration_2-png/

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/02/americas-incarceration-rate-is-at-a-two-decade-low/