$296 Billion Per Year on Criminal Justice Buys Very Little Safety
Improving safety and reducing the harm caused by our criminal justice system requires a reevaluation of priorities and spending.
Landwebs
By spending roughly $296 billion per year on criminal justice, a large majority of which is apportioned annually to policing ($115 billion) and jail, prison, parole and probation costs ($80 billion), the United States is pouring money into a system that doesn’t make our communities safer, reports Nicholas Turner, President & Director, Vera Institute of Justice, in an op-ed for Forbes. Studies show that even a few days of incarceration increases the likelihood of a person’s future engagement with the criminal legal system. More than 70 million people in this country—one in three adults—have a criminal record, with roughly 45 million having a misdemeanor conviction. Although these convictions often involve low-level offenses, like loitering or trespassing, research shows that people with misdemeanor convictions can face a multitude of cascading collateral consequences, including a lifetime of lower wages.
One study in Alabama found that more than 80 percent of people gave up things like food, rent, medical bills, car payments, and child support to pay down their court debt. In response, some cities have taken steps to decriminalize their communities. Research in Boston found that declining to prosecute people for misdemeanors like disorderly conduct and shoplifting substantially reduced their probability of future involvement with the criminal legal system. Turner insists that initiatives like this are necessary and that we must stop criminalizing poverty, substance use and mental health issues, end the overreliance on police and, instead, promote alternative approaches, such as violence interrupter programs that dispatch trained, unarmed civilians, to help people in crisis, and use those billions to invest in the things that actually promote public safety by helping people thrive, like better health care, including mental health care; housing; job training; schools; and drug treatment programs.
