Tough on Crime is Tough on Taxpayers

American politics is full on commonly used (and overused) clichés. If you think hard enough, you may have many of them on many different occasions. Whether it was a stumping politician shaking hands and kissing babies or whether you attended a town hall meeting, you have heard “I represent the little guy” or “I want to work for you”. In the most recent election cycle, the most used cliché had to be “we’re taking our country back”. But the universal phrase that has been most frequently on either side of the aisle is “I’m tough on crime”.

Being tough on crime had its start as a GOP campaigning point. Drugs were becoming a major problem. And after that, guns were added to the drug problem. The final part of the equation was the addition of gang activity. The evening news reported crime after crime after crime and it seemed not enough was being done to curb the problem. The best solution, it seemed, was to get “tough on crime”. The plan for being tough on crime became catch the drug users (as opposed to drug dealers), put them in jail, and throw away the key. Being tough on crime did not begin and end with drug-related offenses. Other offenses, most notably those involving handguns, were included in the “tough on crime” category, as well.

As various election cycles arrived, it became time for the GOP to talk about being tough on crime. They now had numbers to validate how dangerous people with their deadly handguns and illegal drugs had been taken off the streets, presumably making the streets safer. This provided the track record they need to establish their “tough on crime” policies. And by making voters feel safe, this pretty much guaranteed their re-election. Democrats eventually took notice of how creating and drafting tough on crime policies turned into re-election victories. They, too, began to draft their own policies, make their own speeches, and lock up drug users, as well. Thus, the cliché of being “tough on crime” become a fixture in American political discourse.

Now, let’s fast forward to 2010. The United States population is roughly estimated at around 360 million people, which is roughly 5% of the population of the entire world. The United States prison population exceeds 2.1 million people…which is 25% of the world’s incarcerated population. Our prison population is twice that of China and their population exceeds 1 billion people.

Also in 2010, there was born an intense focus on government spending. Many citizens, along with advocacy and grassroots began to question where their tax dollars were going. In an effort to establish common ground on this issue, some unlikely partnerships began to take shape. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Former Secretary of Education Rod Paige, and David Keene, formerly of the American Conservative Union joined NAACP President Ben Jealous to launch a campaign to influence state budgets and federal policy in order to reduce incarceration.

Recently the NAACP released a report entitled, Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate, Under Educate. The report offers details on how our habit of excessive spending on incarceration ultimately undermines the ability to fund educational opportunity. One of the more surprising figures given in the report shows that during the last two decades, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of state spending on higher education. NAACP President Ben Jealous offers being “smart on crime” as the alternative to being “tough on crime”.

In Arkansas, we expend almost $24,000 per prisoner compared to approximately $8,000 per public school pupil. It would seem that the state of Arkansas was paying close attention to those expenditures. In this most recent legislative session, Democratic and Republican lawmakers, along with prosecuting attorneys from across the state worked to draft a bill that decreased the recidivism rate, lowered the prison population, and kept violent offenders behind bars.

According to surveys from the Pew Center on the States, Arkansas is second to only Alaska with a recidivism rate of about 44%. This meant that in 2004, almost 2,772 offenders returned to prison within three years of their release. Just in case you were wondering, footing the bill for these 2,772 prisoners is roughly $66,528,000.

What began as a common cliché to address a common issue has now become the common ground for which lawmakers from both parties can develop solutions that work for everyone.