NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL: …In recent polls asking about the most important problems facing the country, crime ranks way at the bottom. That’s because crime is at its lowest levels in decades, even while overstuffed prisons cripple state budgets.
A familiar retort is that crime is down precisely because the prisons are full, but that’s simply not true. Multiple studies show that crime has gone down faster in states that have reduced their prison populations…
Dire warnings that crime would go up as a result were unfounded. Over two years, the recidivism rate of former three-strikes inmates is 3.4 percent, or less than one-tenth of the state’s average. That’s, in large part, because of a strong network of re-entry services… (more)
EDITOR: We met Cliff Schaeffer two decades ago when we both were working for drug policy reform. Cliff maintained that no real reform would ever take place until the cost of putting people into prison became onerous, probably the next time we had a deep recession.
We didn’t agree then. We do now.
