Susan Pendergrass speaks with Thomas C. Albus, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, about public safety and criminal justice reform in the St. Louis region. They discuss the limits of risk assessment tools in bail decisions, why the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County have such different homicide rates, the case for judicial discretion over algorithmic recommendations, the connection between education, social capital, and crime, and more.

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Episode Transcript

Susan Pendergrass (00:02):
Thank you so much for joining us, Tom Albus, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. The Show-Me Institute, in the last year or so, we’ve been digging into the issues of public safety and criminal justice reform, because one of our goals is to make Missouri a growth state where people want to raise their families and businesses want to come and open. Clearly, if our cities are perceived as being a place where you can’t walk to your car at night and put your groceries away, then people won’t want to do that. We’ve been trying to understand what’s going on mostly in the St. Louis metropolitan area and have realized that a lot of the issue is a disconnect between what’s actually happening and people’s perceptions. People just perceive St. Louis as a dangerous city. I did a podcast recently with Doug Burris, and he had some encouraging things to say about our prison system. I appreciate you coming on and giving us another perspective, because the most important thing for me is to try to understand this.

Tom Albus (01:20):
Thank you very much for having me. Just so everyone understands, I know Doug Burris very well and think very highly of him. He ran the probation office here in federal court for many years. When I was an assistant US attorney, I was a line prosecutor for many years before I got this job, and immediately before that, I was a circuit judge in St. Louis County, so I was a judge in the state system compared to the federal system. Doug came and helped run the county justice center, and he’s a very innovative, thoughtful person. So I don’t mean to argue with him, but I listened to your podcast with Doug, and one of the things he was talking about was getting people off probation faster, which is fine. You might remember the example he used, the first-degree robber versus the grandmother who cashed her deceased husband’s Social Security check. Those shouldn’t be treated the same, and of course they’re not treated the same now. Alternative probation is a great option for somebody like that grandmother rather than sending her to prison. But bear in mind, if you explain to Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public that this lady cashed $75,000 worth of Social Security checks, do you want to do anything to her? We probably don’t want to incarcerate that person, but the alternative would be probation with a requirement to pay the money back to the extent she can. So no one’s suggesting treating that person the same as a violent criminal, but people do need to have accountability.

Susan Pendergrass (03:13):
About this idea of applying a risk assessment when somebody’s arrested or convicted, so that we’re sure to lock up dangerous criminals and aren’t simply using building more prisons as our policy solution, what do you think is the more efficient use of government resources when it comes to making people feel safer?

Tom Albus (03:42):
You’re absolutely right. We use this risk assessment in St. Louis County. I didn’t learn any of this in law school, but I did feel like it was common sense: does this person have a prior conviction, that person is riskier to let out on bond before trial; is this person under a certain age, that person is riskier. Social scientists create these risk factors, and frankly, I think intuitively anybody, whether they have legal training or not, would apply something similar. They’re fine as far as they go, but when we were in St. Louis County, no matter how many priors the offender had, no matter how young they were, no matter how frequently they had priors, the recommendation was always, well, you’re going to let this person out on bond, and it was just a matter of how many accoutrements to the bond, how frequently they had to check in, and so on. There was no part of the risk assessment where it said this person should be detained before trial, which to me didn’t seem sensible. Some people need to be detained before trial. Another thing these risk assessments didn’t take into account was the strength of the evidence against the person. What if the person was found by police with the smoking gun over the body of the victim? Shouldn’t you take that into account? These risk factors don’t. A lot of times the risk assessment tools are being pushed by NGOs and foundations that, if you look at their website, say their goal is to get everybody out of prison. Again, this is social science, not chemistry. Everybody has a point of view that should be considered, but we have to consider the point of view of the groups pushing to reform how probation credit is counted or to add these risk assessments, because everybody in the criminal justice system has their own point of view.

Susan Pendergrass (05:58):
So what is the reality with the prison population in Missouri? Is it growing or declining?

Tom Albus (06:04):
I believe, and I’ll have to check these numbers, that the Missouri Department of Corrections population is roughly one-third less than it was ten years ago. I believe the United States Bureau of Prisons, the people in prison for federal crimes, is one-quarter less than it was ten years ago, between COVID, a different approach, and the First Step Act. Now, I know you’re very interested in educational policy. What if we had a one-third increase in fourth-grade reading scores in Missouri? Everybody would be pretty happy with that. So here we have these great statistics, but to the extent everything else is equal, if crime is the same and the prison population is down, everybody wants that. But is crime down, and is it down to a level we’re satisfied with?

Susan Pendergrass (07:04):
And is it? People are talking all over the place, including leadership in St. Louis, about how much crime is down. But when we’ve talked to people on the street or had public events, people don’t feel like crime is down. People still see panhandling and graffiti and public disorder. People still don’t want to park their car and walk to a baseball game downtown. Everyone knows you leave your car unlocked because you’re going to get smashed and grabbed anyway. There isn’t a perception that St. Louis feels safer.

Tom Albus (07:38):
Right, and it’s a complex situation regionally. The city of St. Louis, to its credit, has reduced homicides from the mid-200s in 2020 to about 140 in 2025. That’s 50 homicides per 100,000 people. The national average is in the high single digits, so it’s still very elevated in the city of St. Louis. Now you go across Skinker to St. Louis County, where I was a judge, and we’re sitting at roughly the national average in the high single digits. A trend you don’t hear much about is that’s a much elevated rate over the last 10 to 15 years in St. Louis County, maybe 2x or 3x higher than it was 10 to 15 years ago. Then you go across the Missouri River to St. Charles County, and they’re looking at about one murder per 100,000 people. So it’s a big difference as you proceed west on Highway 70, and one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.

Susan Pendergrass (08:50):
What’s been going on in St. Louis County that it’s gone up?

Tom Albus (08:56):
I don’t really know the source of it, but we are dealing with a lot more violent crime in St. Louis County than we did, say, twenty years ago. For example, even though we’ve got approximately four times more people living in St. Louis County than in St. Louis City, we only have about one-third as many homicides every year as the city. Yet we’ve got 200-plus people awaiting trial for homicide in St. Louis County. That’s really the focus of the prosecutor’s office, and rightly so, but they didn’t have the capacity twenty years ago to handle the rate of homicides they’re seeing now, and this backlog is a consequence of that, in my view.

Susan Pendergrass (09:48):
Plus clearance rates haven’t really improved. A lot of the crimes identified as murders aren’t getting solved.

Tom Albus (09:56):
If you look at it, the City of St. Louis Police Department would say their clearance rate has gone up quite a bit, and those are statistics the city updates every day on the police department’s website. At some points they’ve recorded a clearance rate of over 100 percent in the last year because they’re solving historical cases in addition to new cases as they come in. So they’ve gotten their clearance rate very high, and that’s important too, not only for how long you’re going to sentence someone, but because people need to understand that if you commit an offense you’re going to be called to account. Chief Tracy in the city is proud of his clearance rate going up, and he’s right to be.

Susan Pendergrass (10:39):
What are your thoughts on mandatory minimums when judges have discretion?

Tom Albus (10:46):
Mandatory minimums exist in state and federal crime. You could say someone is in prison for second-degree murder and subject to a mandatory minimum of ten years, that’s true, but I don’t think that’s what people are really thinking about when they raise this issue. There are very few people incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corrections who are there only because of a mandatory minimum that the judge would have preferred to sentence below but wasn’t able to. There was a lot of that when I first became an assistant US attorney 25 years ago with the crack cases, where you could get a five-year mandatory minimum for a very small amount of crack. That was passed by Congress in the Crime Act of 1994, and those ratios have since been changed by Congress. People will talk about nonviolent offenders, but a drug dealer, to me, is not a nonviolent offender. We’re not talking about crack as much anymore. We’re talking about fentanyl, and everybody knows what happens when you come into contact with fentanyl, roughly two hundred Americans a day die from fentanyl overdoses. I would consider that a violent crime, not to mention that firearms and violence often go along with drug dealing. The whole point of my visit with you is just to say these are not easy questions to answer. But if somebody came into your neighborhood and was dealing fentanyl to anybody who wanted it and had money to pay, I would be concerned. Maybe strictly speaking that’s not a violent crime, but it’s a very dangerous, antisocial crime.

Susan Pendergrass (12:42):
So you see these nonprofits and NGOs saying, let’s clear the prisons, let’s put more people on ankle monitors, let’s stop building these massive prisons, Arkansas is building a billion-dollar prison, and there are a lot of foundations saying we could be smarter about this. It sounds like you don’t completely align with that thinking.

Tom Albus (13:13):
Everybody should know where everyone is coming from. You probably recall about ten years ago, when Governor Parson first became governor, Missouri was in the same boat. They said they didn’t have a lot of money, certainly not enough to build new prisons, and Governor Parson said we’re just not going to go down that road. As I said, we were able to reduce our DOC population in Missouri substantially, by a third, and the need for those new prisons went away. Statistically speaking, we’re doing better in 2026 than we did in 2020, notwithstanding the fact that we have a third fewer people in prison. That’s a good thing. But if a foundation comes in and says, well, we have this risk assessment tool, and it’s just science, nothing to it other than science, I’d suggest everyone go to that foundation’s website and see what their mission statement says. This is social science, not physics or chemistry or biology. Everybody has their political point of view, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that it’s a no-brainer, that you just use this risk assessment, let everybody off probation, and everything gets better and cheaper, a win-win-win. I just don’t subscribe to that.

Susan Pendergrass (14:45):
I saw a case, not in Missouri, of a guy accused in a terrible case involving a child, whose risk assessment was very low, but the nature of the crime was terrible. He was let out and reoffended. I remember thinking the risk assessment didn’t do its job because it didn’t pick up on this particular person’s potential for criminality. In a world with finite resources, what do we do to make St. Louisans feel safer?

Tom Albus (15:31):
That’s what’s so thorny about it. When I was sitting as a judge, sometimes I’d think, what would my wife think, or my mother, or a friend, about this particular person, risk assessment tool aside. For example, if someone’s on bond for a felony and then arrested for a new felony, that gets them a point on their risk assessment. But I think a lot of Missourians would say, I don’t care if you get one point or ten points or thirty points, if we’ve already let you out on bond and you committed a new offense, that’s it, you’re not getting another chance. And then we get into, well, was it a violent crime? If he stole a car on Monday and then steals another car the following Monday, some people would say we just can’t accept that, it’s absurd. I think people are at least entitled to that opinion, even though it’s contrary to what is supposedly following the science.

Susan Pendergrass (16:32):
So do we put more discretion in the hands of judges?

Tom Albus (16:35):
Again, I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the judge can’t override the assessment. I overrode it all the time, and my colleagues did too, because that’s the role of the judge. One thing that came up, you may have followed, there was a juvenile assessment tool that was frequently followed, and the juvenile officer or judge was very reluctant to go against the risk assessment for the juvenile. That got the police up in arms, and there may have been some legislation around it. But the judge should always be able to go against the risk assessment. And as I mentioned earlier, what about a written confession? There’s no question the person did it. You’re presumed innocent at trial, but we can weigh the facts against the person in terms of setting the bond.

Susan Pendergrass (17:34):
Yeah, I think my biggest issue with the perception of public safety in St. Louis, when I lived right between Skinker and DeBaliviere, near Delmar, was just a lack of the rule of law around me. People ran stop signs and stoplights, and there were smash-and-grabs, and someone could commit a crime and get on the MetroLink and get away. We all kind of agree that the MetroLink stations feel really dangerous. We’ve all just accepted that we have to keep floodlights on the outside of our house. Living in the city of St. Louis, which I love, you just develop this tolerance for the fact that crime is going to happen around you and there’s nothing you can do about it. I didn’t feel like the police were really enforcing the small things, and people were getting away with big things too. I wonder what the fix is for that.

Tom Albus (18:40):
Right, and another thing being debated is that you need police officers, and we have perhaps fifty percent fewer police officers policing the city of St. Louis than we did ten years ago. That’s not a good thing. I am in favor of having police officers in the neighborhood. When I was an AUSA, I would go to neighborhood meetings and try to understand what was going on. I never heard anybody say we want fewer police in our neighborhood. I always heard people in every neighborhood saying we want more police, this corner’s a problem, please take care of it. It’s a challenge for the city of St. Louis, and I wish them nothing but the best in getting as many more police officers as they can.

Susan Pendergrass (19:28):
Yeah, and 911 is a bit of a problem too. People complain about not being able to get through. We have 28 different systems, and the city-county line makes it all very confusing. Talks of merging the two always seem to result in nothing, but as you just mentioned, the difference in the murder rate between one side of the line and the other, something needs to be done to fix that.

Tom Albus (20:01):
I always go by the murder rate, because those all get called in. There’s also a difference in how frequently a car break-in might get called in across different areas of our region, so you can’t necessarily rely on all statistics. But homicides get called in, and homicides are a good indicator of the overall safety of a community.

Susan Pendergrass (20:24):
So generally, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you do? Is there anything you would change within the probation, pretrial, and prison system?

Tom Albus (20:38):
No one likes to think about building more prisons because it’s very expensive and it’s kind of the last tool in the toolbox. But in the city of St. Louis, they took out of service and knocked down the medium-security institution known as the Workhouse. That’s not available anymore. So the only place state court judges in the city have to put offenders being detained pretrial is the Justice Center downtown, and that’s at capacity. I would want a lot more police officers, and I probably would want some more places to put the real repeat offenders, the antisocial people, certainly the violent people, so they are incapacitated and out of our community. People who commit Class A or Class B felonies, or new felonies while on probation, parole, or pretrial detention, they still get bond because we’re out of places to put these people. And as we all know, we’re talking about a very small percentage of our community committing these serious crimes. Then we could go back to people having more social capital in the community, people looking out for them, and not letting teenagers or young people be directionless. I see a lot of that when I sit in a courtroom in the city or county, people who just don’t have a plan for their lives and don’t have people in the courtroom supporting them. That’s what I would really change.

Susan Pendergrass (22:17):
Yeah. I mostly study education policy, and St. Louis Public Schools has a chronic absenteeism rate of about 55 percent. I don’t think they even know where those kids are. Until we fix some of those things and somebody’s keeping track of these teenagers, I don’t see their propensity for committing crime going down. I believe first you fix the education system, before they get to the criminal justice system, but unfortunately we don’t have that right now in St. Louis. Well, I appreciate you coming on and giving a different perspective. I’ve heard more than one person, not just Doug Burris, say that risk assessment is going to be the way to fix the problem, and it’s good to hear a different perspective that it comes with a lot of caveats, at minimum.

Tom Albus (23:09):
Right. There are a lot of good people working on this problem, but it’s just not a problem that has a silver bullet, that I’ve seen in 25 years.

Susan Pendergrass (23:18):
Good to know. Well, thank you so much, Tom. I really appreciate it.

Tom Albus (23:21):
Thank you very much, Susan. Thanks for having me.

Produced By Show-Me Opportunity

The post A U.S. Attorney’s Perspective on Criminal Justice Reform with Thomas C. Albus appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

This decrease follows some recent reforms, including improving parole and probation practices, expanding community-based treatment for mental health and substance abuse, and raising the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 years. Now, the legislature is considering other reforms. One would amend sentencing guidelines to allow judges the discretion to give an alternative sentence to imprisonment for certain non-violent crimes when appropriate. Additionally, lawmakers are examining regulations regarding occupational licenses for ex-offenders that can shut them out of jobs and increase the likelihood they return to prison. Reforms like these can provide taxpayers with the best public safety return on their investment make a lot of sense.

The post Good News-Criminal Justice Reform Headed in the Right Direction in Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

While persons are legally responsible for the costs of their board bills under section 221.070, if such responsibilities fall delinquent, the debts cannot be taxed as court costs and the failure to pay that debt cannot result in another incarceration.

We previously wrote about the plight of “pay to stay” debtors prisons. In short, courts were locking people up for not adequately paying the fees associated with their previous incarceration, triggering an awful cycle. The Show-Me Institute joined in filing a friend of the court brief on behalf of George Richey. We are grateful to Mr. Richey, among others, who chose to challenge this practice. We look forward to more victories in our search for sensible criminal justice reforms.

The post Missouri to End Debtors Prisons appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In effect, the counties are operating debtor’s prisons.

George Richey is one person who has had a run in with these board bills. According to the Missourian,

Of the $3,226 assessed to Richey in 2015, $3,150 is for board at $35 a day.

Almost 2 1/2 years later, Richey is still paying for that bill, with a balance of around $1,600 left as of May. That is, until he was hit with a new board bill in 2016 of an additional $2,275—the result of being jailed because he couldn’t fully pay the first bill.

Missouri is not alone in this practice. According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, “as of 2015, at least 43 states authorize room and board fees and at least 35 states authorize medical fees to be charged to inmates in either state or county correctional facilities.”

Through his public defender, Richey filed suit against the state of Missouri seeking to end the practice, and Missouri’s Attorney General lent support to Richey’s effort, noting in an amicus brief filed with the Missouri Supreme Court, “De facto debtors’ prisons have no place in Missouri, and I am proud to stand up against a system that seeks to treat its poorer citizens as ATMs.”

Last week, the Show-Me Institute joined the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, the Fines & Fees Justice Center, the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, and Fair and Just Prosecution in submitting an amicus curiae brief to the Missouri Supreme Court. The brief notes that the current system burdens both the individuals being fined as well as the courts, and that there are other, more effective ways to collect debt. The filing concludes:

Jail debt, when imposed on indigent individuals like Mr. Richey, is irrational, unjust, counterproductive, and likely unconstitutional.  This Court should reverse the trial court’s denial of Mr. Richey’s motion to retax costs.

There are plenty of opportunities for criminal justice reform in Missouri, and we have written about many of them in the past. Often such reforms focus on how to maintain public safety while reducing costs to taxpayers. This effort, however, focuses on protecting the liberty of individuals from pernicious government. We hope the courts will agree.

The post Show-Me Institute Issues Brief Regarding “Pay to Stay” appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Workforce development wasn’t just mentioned in the speech—it was singled out as one of the two most important policy priorities moving forward. Patrick Ishmael has been out in front of this issue, writing on the importance of workforce development, particularly in the area of vocational training. Readers of this blog may also have seen posts by Emily Stahly on the potential for charter schools to help give Missouri a more skilled workforce, and by Abigail Burrola on how a focus on industry-recognized credentials could better prepare our high-school graduates for good jobs after graduation.
• Infrastructure was the other issue designated as a top priority, particularly the pressing need to fund necessary repairs and improvements to Missouri’s highway system. Back in 2016, Joe Miller wrote a comprehensive paper on options for funding the Missouri Department of Transportation. More recently, Graham Renz and Patrick Tuohey have advocated for user fees as the best way to fund our state’s transportation needs, whether through a gas tax or some form of tolling.
• The Governor noted the drain on the state’s finances caused by Missouri’s high incarceration rate and his desire to avoid building more prisons. Ways to help keep prison populations down include reform of laws governing mandatory minimum sentencing and efforts to help ex-offenders enter the workforce, as Patrick Tuohey has written.
• The need to control the growth in the cost of the state’s Medicaid program was also discussed. Elias Tsapelas has not only written on this topic, but has also looked at measures being taken in other states to address the problem

Even topics mentioned only in passing during the speech have been covered by Show-Me Institute analysts, including telemedicine, tax credit reform, and educational challenges facing children with autism and other disabilities.

It’s encouraging to hear that so many long-overdue reforms may be on the docket during the current legislative session. As we watch to see if 2019 will bring important changes to Missouri policy, we’ll continue to research and advocate free-market solutions that will help move our state forward.

The post State of the State Highlights Show-Me Research appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri leads the Midwest in incarceration rates, and we’re eighth highest in the nation. We just recently lost to Kentucky our position of having the highest incarceration rate for women. If we do nothing to slow the flood of new inmates, Missouri will need to spend about $485 million in the next five years to build and operate two new prisons. For comparison’s sake, the entire budget of the state Department of Corrections is $725 million in 2018. (It was $580 million in 2006.)

According to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ 2016 Profile of Institutional and Supervised Offender Population, 41 percent of inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent and/or drug-related crimes. These two offender groups, incidentally, are the fastest-growing populations since 2011. Missourians could save hundreds of millions of dollars if courts had the flexibility to sentence these offenders to treatment programs or probationary periods prior to locking them up—while still retaining the ability to protect us from violent or habitual offenders.

Furthermore, research indicates that large sentences are not as effective a deterrent as swift capture and conviction. And large sentences are expensive, and not just in terms of the public dollars used to house and feed inmates. They also impose a significant cost on families and make it harder for ex-offenders to re-enter the workforce and become productive members of society.

The good news is that there is a better way.

Other states, such as Texas, have found ways to increase public safety and reduce recidivism while reducing public spending on prisons. Reducing mandatory minimum sentencing in certain circumstances is a part of that public policy strategy. Let’s return to judges the discretion they need to separate violent offenders from those who pose less of a threat. To do nothing will put greater pressure on public coffers while offering no respite from crime.

The post Reform Missouri’s Mandatory Minimums appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The case is fairly straightforward, and our testimony is brief. Because Missouri’s incarceration rate is so high—8th in the nation—we are on course to need two more state prisons at a cost to build and operate of $485 million over the next 5 years. Giving judges the flexibility to avoid mandatory sentences where there are extenuating circumstances will not only save taxpayers money, but also reduce the burden on individuals trying to piece together their lives.

The post Reducing Mandatory Minimums appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

THE SOLUTION: Relax harsh and automatic sentencing laws that drive up costs without increasing public safety.

Courts should have the flexibility to sentence nonviolent offenders to treatment programs or probationary periods prior to locking them up—while still retaining the ability to treat violent or habitual offenders appropriately.

The Raise the Age movement advocates for 17-year-olds to be prosecuted in the juvenile court system unless certified as adults due to the nature or severity of their crimes. Raise the Age would mitigate much of the need to retrofit adult prisons to protect minors, and would offer minors educational and rehabilitative services.

WHO ELSE DOES IT? Currently, 45 states do not presume that 17-year olds should be tried as adults. Nine of these states have passed Raise the Age laws since 2007.

THE OPPORTUNITY: In addition to the cost savings from having to house fewer inmates or not having to retrofit adult institutions for minors, there is the potential for a substantial benefit in human capital if nonviolent and drug offenders are sentenced to treatment or probation instead of being warehoused in state institutions with few opportunities for self-improvement.

KEY POINTS

• Passing Raise the Age would not prevent judges from prosecuting 17-year-olds as adults if they were repeat offenders or if their crimes were especially serious.
• Other states have cut incarceration rates responsibly, reducing costs and increasing public safety.

SHOW-ME INSTITUTE RESOURCES

Blog Post: “Criminal Justice Reform: Addressing the Costs of Incarceration”

Blog Post: “Criminal Justice Reform: Raising the Age”

Blog Post: “Criminal Justice Reform: Mandatory Minimums”

For a printable version of this article, click on the link below. You can also view the entire 2018 Missouri Blueprint online.

The post 2018 Blueprint: Sentencing Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• Barry Langford, Chair of the Columbia College Criminal Justice program. Langford has taught at the school since 1994.
• Aaron Hedlund,  economics professor at the University of Missouri and visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis.
• Nicole Volkert, former prosecutor and municipal judge. Volkert has served both Monroe and Montgomery Counties and a legal advisor to the Columbia Police Department
• Jennifer Bukowski, a criminal defense attorney with over ten years of experience. Nicole founded the Bukowsky Law Firm seven years ago after serving as a public defender for three years.
• Eric Schmitt, Treasurer of the State of Missouri, elected in 2016. Previously, Eric served in the Missouri State Senate

The 90-minute presentation was packed with information. Panelists discussed criminal justice theory, the process and players from arrest to parole, over-criminalization, and the deleterious role of fees and fines, along with possible reforms. Some of the latter the Show-Me Institute has discussed before, including the cost of incarceration overall and reforms such as Raise the Age and reducing mandatory minimums. Panelists even pointed out the positive effects that education choice can have on incarceration likelihood.

The entire presentation is now available online (click above). The Show-Me Institute is grateful to everyone who participated.

The post Criminal Justice Reform Panel in Columbia appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to the National Institute of Corrections, “The crime rate in Missouri (2015) is about 18% higher than the national average rate.” Missouri is also eighth in the nation in its incarceration rate, imprisoning 530 people per 100,000 population in 2015.

Then there is the cost. The Department of Corrections budget has grown from $580 million in 2006 to $710 million in 2016. In the last five years that growth has been driven chiefly by adult institutions. The only good news in Missouri’s prison data is that as of 2012, Missouri paid $22,350 each year per inmate, well below the national average of $32,142.

Missouri is not alone in struggling with crime and incarceration rates. High crime rates in the 1970s led many state legislatures to adopt harsh sentencing guidelines, including mandatory minimum sentences for various crimes. The states embarked on “throw the key away” crime control measures that increased the prison population at great public expense. But research has shown that there are diminishing returns to harsh sentences—they don’t always result in a reduction in crime. States have been reexamining their sentencing laws, and the results are promising. Early research from around the country suggests that some criminal justice reforms, such as those that address mandatory minimum sentencing, can reduce crime rates and save states money. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has published an excellent paper on the matter.

According to the Missouri Department of Corrections’ just-released Profile of Institutional and Supervised Offender Population (page 33), of the 30,754 members of the prison population, 41 percent are there for either nonviolent crime (7,377 inmates) or for drug-related crimes (5,403 inmates). These two offender groups, incidentally, are the fastest-growing populations since 2011. Imagine how much Missouri could save if courts had the flexibility to sentence these nonviolent offenders to treatment programs or probationary periods prior to locking them up—while still retaining the ability to treat violent or habitual offenders harshly.

Furthermore, imagine the benefit in human capital if nonviolent and drug offenders were sentenced to treatment or probation instead of being warehoused in state institutions with few opportunities for self-improvement.

The model reforms ALEC recommends are known at the Justice Safety Valve Act, and have been introduced in the Missouri general assembly as HB1037 and HB1046. If these reforms can do what they have done elsewhere—protect Missourians while avoiding unnecessary sentencing and costs—they are well worth consideration.

The post Criminal Justice Reform: Addressing the Costs of Incarceration appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri has twice the number of nonviolent offenders in prison [as] it did in 1994. The number of new inmates in 1994 was 4,857; in 2009 it was 7,220. The cost per inmate is now $16,456 per year or about $45.00 per day. The total appropriation to the Department of Corrections in 1994 was $216 million now it is over $670 million—an increase of over 300 percent[.] Worse yet, Missouri’s recidivism rate is 41.4 percent within two years.

Price is also concerned with inconsistencies in sentencing across the state’s judicial circuits. The average sentence for the lowest sentencing circuit is 4.5 years and for the highest circuit is 9 years.

The Chief Justice shares the same opinion that most citizens have about crime—violent, dangerous criminals need to be incarcerated—but he doubts the effectiveness of locking up first-time offending drug and alcohol addicts. Price states boldly: “We also know that simple incarceration, no matter how expensive, does not cure addiction. Treatment with strict judicial oversight does.”

If newspaper editorials are any kind of indication, the idea that we need a cheaper and more humane way of dealing with drug offenders and the like is extremely popular. Hopefully, political inertia will not doom such a worthy cause.

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We have all undoubtedly felt overworked and underpaid, and during a recession, the proportion of the labor force feeling this way has surely increased. As Judge Price pointed out, those who make some of the most important decisions throughout the entire criminal justice system — state prosecutors — are being spread thin. This is a worrying state of affairs if we want prosecutors to make well-considered decisions. People work better when they are happier — it’s as simple as that.

One of the most pressing issues mentioned in Judge Price’s address is the state’s overspending on the incarceration of nonviolent criminals, something that Show-Me Institute research assistant John Payne mentioned in an earlier blog post. This is a situation resulting from too many restrictive laws that have resulted in the criminalization of nonviolent offenses, such as transactions involving drugs, alcohol, and even prostitution. Regardless of how one feels about the morality of such activities, it’s hard to justify expending so many resources on their prosecution when the core functions of the judicial system — protecting life, liberty, and property from actual direct, measurable harm — is suffering from a lack of resources.

Too many people are being arrested and tried for crimes that have no complaining victim. As Reason editor Radley Balko has observed, “Because there is almost never a complaining victim in vice crimes, law enforcement officers must go to extraordinary lengths to investigate and prosecute these crimes. This leads to all sorts of other problems, including invasions of privacy, entrapment, and police corruption.” The situation has also led to inconsistency in prosecution throughout Missouri. The toughest counties are prosecuting five times as many offenders as the most lenient counties.

Judge Price has has offered a rather convincing reason to change these policies, and to decrease the rate of prosecution and incarceration of nonviolent criminals — because we can’t pay for it. What’s even more convincing is that we cannot afford to pay for the proper treatment and rehabilitation for these offenders. Price outlines how poorly the system treats people who haven’t directly harmed anybody else, by tearing them from their lives, throwing them in a “concrete box with very expensive guards, feeding them, providing them with expensive medical care, surrounding them with hardened criminals for long periods of time, and separating them from their families who need them and could otherwise help them[.]” What’s worse, while in prison, some of them are being trained by full-fledged violent criminals on how to further divide themselves from mainstream society. These people are also citizens, and deserve to be given a chance to reintegrate into society.

Price provides some sobering numbers:

In 1994, shortly after I came to the Court, the number of nonviolent offenders in Missouri prisons was 7,461. Today it’s 14,204. That’s almost double. In 1994, the number of new commitments for nonviolent offenses was 4,857. Last year, it was 7,220 — again, almost double. At a rate of $16,432 per offender, we currently are spending $233.4 million a year to incarcerate nonviolent offenders … not counting the investment in the 10 prisons it takes to hold these individuals at $100 million per prison. In 1994, appropriations to the Department of Corrections totaled $216,753,472. Today, it’s $670,079,452. The amount has tripled. And the recidivism rate for these individuals, who are returned to prison within just two years, is 41.6 percent.

Price observes that if the state government were run like a business, these wasteful practices would have been done away with years ago. “Business” may not be the most convincing metaphor to use, because one of the classic economic justifications of government action, particularly the justice system, is that public goods are not optimally provided by markets. Some economists, however, have suggested that many aspects of government action that are commonly justified in terms of their status as public goods, including some within the justice system, can’t correctly be considered public goods:

The standard economics approach to delineating the optimal set of the state’s functions is unsatisfactory.² In particular, when economists such as Joseph Stiglitz (1988: 24) indicate that “a primary role of government” is to provide the legal framework “within which all economic transactions occur,” not much is said about the desired content of the laws, and how it might affect the desirability or efficiency of their enforcement. Besides, there is typically no mention of nonstate enforcement mechanisms and their relationship to those of the state. The impression is created that all conflict resolution in economic life is in the unavoidable domain of the state. That impression is in contrast with the empirical evidence (see, e.g., Greif 1997, Gow and Swinnen 2001, and Waldmeir 2001).

This confusion is related to the use that is made of the concept of public goods as being nonrival in consumption and nonexclusive (Samuelson 1954: 387–89). If these goods are to be provided at all, taxes and the related state’s coercion are necessary. However, which goods are truly public? Is the justice system the domain of the state because the relevant services are a public good? Clearly, that cannot be said of all such services. Then, which “justice services” constitute a public good? Is the lighthouse, the favorite textbook example of a public good, a public good? Ronald Coase (1974) has shown that lighthouses in 19th century Britain were operated and financed privately. This finding, however, has not prevented the lighthouse to continue serving as the primary example of a public good in many textbooks (e.g., Stiglitz 1988: 75).

There may be fewer public goods in real life than typically assumed. As a result, the necessary (or desirable) scope of the state’s activity may be narrower, too. Some of the goods declared “public” may in fact be private goods, pushed into the state’s domain by public intervention that has eliminated or undercut the possibility of voluntary private financing of these goods. In other words, some uses of the theoretical concept of public goods may inadvertently constitute ex post justifications for the results of previous expansion of state activity.

Judge Price is not an economist, but by questioning whether the routine prosecution and incarceration of nonviolent offenders for committing consensual crimes actually provides more value than cost for the people of Missouri, this may well be the type of argument he was trying to make, using different terminology. Price is suggesting that it’s time for a more thorough analysis of which interests are truly being served by prosecuting many types of nonviolent offenders, and whether such prosecution actually provides results that could be considered a public good. His address doesn’t contain all the answers, but it’s the starting point for a worthy debate.

In times of fiscal crisis, it sometimes becomes necessary to embark upon a new policy path, and welcome changes that we might otherwise avoid. Whether Judge Price’s recommendations are inspired by a concern for justice or for more practical financial reasons, this would be a positive step for the government to take. The judiciary appears to be willing to do its part in order to withstand the jolts of the recession, but are the other branches of government also up to the task?

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Geisman’s view has been challenged by William Ray Price Jr., Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court, who last week called for increased drug court funding.

From the Post-Dispatch:

“We know drug courts work. We have more than 8,500 graduates,” said Price, who is seeking $2 million more a year for drug courts. “We know the tremendous savings that result from drug courts in Missouri.”

As for studies about drug courts, Price had this to say in his speech to the state House and Senate:

At one fourth to one fifth the cost of incarceration, more than one half of drug court participants graduate, and recidivism is only in the 10 percent range. The last five meta studies on drug courts, from all across the United States, have shown that drug courts reduce crime from 8 to 26 percent.

As the editorial board of the Post-Dispatch noted, this is the low-hanging fruit in our justice system. I will reiterate that the cheapest of all alternatives here is to not to criminalize the behavior of nonviolent drug offenders at all, but since that is not currently on the table, drug courts are an improvement over prison — even if you think people who consume politically incorrect substances should be forced by the state to change their behavior.

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• Drug courts need more funding. This is the low-hanging fruit in criminal justice reform — the chance to save serious money by ending the cycle of crime and keeping nonviolent, drug-related offenders out of prison. A lack of funding means state leaders aren’t serious.

• Leaders in rural counties must start to deal with nonviolent offenders in their own communities. If their prosecutors and judges insist on sending everyone to prison, then local taxpayers should be forced to pick up the tab.

• And, Gov. Jay Nixon should convene a panel of top law enforcement, legislative and judicial officials. Their task over the next 120 days should be to develop a plan for closing five of Missouri’s 21 adult correctional institutions over the next five years — one a year for five years — using part of the savings to support alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent offenders.

I agree that all of these would be positive developments, but I will note that we could save even more money if the state did not attempt to force people to abstain from certain vices.  Oh, well — baby steps, I suppose.

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