Kamala Harris - For California Attorney General 2010

Smart on Crime: More Safety at Less Cost

By Kamala D. Harris
August 14, 2009

When the California State Legislature reconvenes Monday, dealing with the corrections crisis will no doubt be on the top of everyone's "to do" list. The Governor signed a budget requiring a $1.2 billion reduction in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation budget, and a panel of three federal judges recently ordered a cap on the state prison population that could result in the release of more than 40,000 inmates. If ever there was a time to think outside the box and break with the approaches of the past, the time is now. We have to do something different.

Over the last thirty years, California's prison population has soared. In 1980, California had a prison population of about 24,000 in a state of 24 million. Today we have an inmate population of 172,000 out of 36 million people. This means that since 1980, our population has grown by 50% while our prison population has grown 617%.

Today, the majority of those inmates are not first-time offenders. Each year, approximately 70 percent of those released from California prisons commit another offense, resulting in the highest recidivism rate in the nation. These repeat offenses are preventable crimes that claim more victims and harm communities' quality of life. It costs on average more than $10,000 to prosecute just one felony case, and about $47,000 per year to house each inmate in prison. Every time an inmate is released and commits a new crime, local and state jurisdictions pay those costs over and over again. Most importantly, individuals and communities pay the highest price when they are re-victimized by crime. To keep our communities safe and use public money wisely, we must insist that people coming out of the criminal justice system become productive citizens and stay out.

In San Francisco, I have developed a smart on crime approach: we must be tough on serious and violent offenders while we get just as tough on the root causes of crime. In my office, we have raised felony conviction rates and sent more violent offenders to state prison, at the same time we have launched innovative, cost effective approaches to reduce recidivism and break the cycles of crime.

Four years ago my office pioneered a model reentry initiative called "Back on Track" to reduce recidivism among nonviolent offenders. Back on Track combines accountability with opportunity to ensure that first-time nonviolent drug offenders are held accountable, stop committing crime and become self-sufficient.  In Back on Track, offenders plead guilty and commit to strict court supervision as they complete an intensive personal responsibility program. They get trained for a job, go back to school, get current with child support, enroll in parenting classes, and become positive contributors in their communities. The program encompasses swift sanctions for making bad choices and clear incentives for good ones. As a result, less than 10 percent of Back on Track graduates have re-offended compared to a 54 percent recidivism rate statewide for a comparable population of offenders. We have achieved this success at a fraction of the cost of traditional corrections approaches. Back on Track costs about $5,000 annually per participant, compared to between $35,000 and $47,000 for a year in jail or prison. 

To graduate, Back on Track participants must be employed or in school. The program has been selected as a national model by the National District Attorney's Association and at least two jurisdictions have replicated the initiative. We are proving that preventing recidivism is both doable and cost-effective.

This is just one example of what can be done to improve public safety and break the cycle of crime. Being smart on crime requires changing our thinking. Albert Einstein once said, "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." The State of California is at an economic crossroads that demands new approaches. With a genuine investment in breaking cycles of crime, we can improve public safety at the same time that we save precious public resources. That is smart on crime.

Source: CriminalJustice.change.org

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