Kissing ‘tough’ era goodbye

On April 9, President Bush signed into law the Community Safety Recidivism Reduction or Second Chance Act of 2007, which provides $330 million in federal funding for a broad array of programs intended to assist offenders in returning to the community from prison successfully. Less than a year ago, it appeared that only modest legislative support for its passage existed – including no announced public support from Maine’s congressional delegation. Moreover, few thought the second Bush administration would emerge as a likely supporter of progressive criminal justice legislation. Yet in the last six months, the legislation passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support. The act’s passage may signal the end of the contemporary “get tough” era for our nation’s criminal justice system.

The “get tough” era officially started in 1984 with the federal Sentencing Reform Act, which eliminated federal parole, established “fixed” sentencing, and reduced the amount of “good time” prisoners could accrue toward release through good conduct in prison. The nation – tired of crack cocaine wars and gangs – was entering a period of “compassion fatigue” and getting tough on criminals was all the rage. Many more strict sentencing measures would come next – including the “three strikes” law in Washington state in 1993 (quickly adopted and used more extensively by California and other states), mandatory minimum sentencing, and truth-in-sentencing laws (which typically required offenders to serve 85 percent of their prison sentences rather than the formerly more common two-thirds).

The consequence of these “get tough” measures was predictable and predicted: The U.S. prison population soared over the last 20 years. The U.S. prison and jail population increased from 502,000 in custody in 1980 to more than 2.3 million in custody currently.

In April, the New York Times reported that with 5 percent of the world’s population our nation had achieved the dubious distinction of holding 25 percent of the world’s prisoner population. Maine’s state prisoner population – a small-time player by any standard in the national incarceration sweepstakes – increased by more than two-thirds from the end of 1993 to the present.

These figures, however appalling, don’t actually convey the core of the problem they represent. The fact is that imprisoning so many criminal offenders would not be a completely misguided notion if released prisoners did not return to prison at a 70 percent rate, and if so many prisoners released from our jails and prisons – about 700,000 a year – have so little chance of succeeding in the community. This has made incarceration the ultimate revolving door for decades. The Second Chance Act is an attempt to address these problems.

The act’s disbursements include $115 million in competitive grants to state and local governments in support of comprehensive re-entry programs. An additional $55 million in state and local grants are intended to support studies of best practices for community re-entry and measure effectiveness and success. Other awards support an array of innovative pilot programs directed at niche offender populations, including nonviolent elderly prisoners.

While the scope of the legislation is significant, the range and breadth of the coalition behind it is perhaps more compelling. The House version was introduced by Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., and supported by 93 co-sponsors (although none from Maine). The Senate version was introduced by Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., garnered 34 co-sponsors, and passed by unanimous voice consent vote. The final vote for passage in the House was an astounding 347-62 (with 23 members not voting). As Jessica Nickel, director of government affairs for the Council of State Governments is reported to have said earlier this year, “The enthusiasm [for the bill] is just so high. … It has been a true left-right coalition.”

Such an unlikely development may well mark the act’s passage as the beginning of the end for the “get tough” era. Few should mourn its passing.

Robert C. Hauhart, a summer resident of Steuben, is associate professor and chair of the Department of Criminal Justice at Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Wash. He has taught on campus and online for the University of Maine at Machias.