T O EN F J TM U U.S. Department of Justice R ST A I P C E E D B O J C S Office of Justice Programs F A V M F O I N A C I J S R E BJ G O OJJ DP O F PR National Institute of Justice JUSTICE SENTENCING & CORRECTIONS Issues for the 21st Century September 1999 Papers From the Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections No. 4 Reforming Sentencing and Corrections for Just Punishment and Public Safety Directors’ Message It is by now a commonplace that the number by Michael E. Smith and Walter J. Dickey of people under criminal justice supervision in this country has reached a record high. As entencing courts and corrections agen- safety is and how correctional agencies can a result, the sentencing policies driving that cies are not communicating about what contribute to it. It also requires disciplined number, and the field of corrections, where matters. When imposing sentence, a fact finding and reasoning by sentencing the consequences are felt, have acquired an S unprecedented salience. It is a salience defined judge rarely states clearly the purpose of the courts—an application of the rule of law sentence or the process by which corrections familiar in every area of the law but this one.2 more by issues of magnitude, complexity, and is expected to achieve it. When correctional expense than by any consensus about future directions. agencies are left guessing, they revert to rou- ■ ■ ■ tine administration of the generic penal meas- The nature of public safety Are sentencing policies, as implemented through ures (prison, probation, and parole) and let correctional programs and practices, achieving offenders under supervision in the community revisited their intended purposes? As expressed in the movement to eliminate indeterminate senten- decide who will earn revocation. n the press and in political discourse, cing and limit judicial discretion, on the one “public safety” usually means more arrests, I hand, and to radically restructure our retribu- If courts and correction are to work in har- more illicit drugs seized, more sentences to mony (which our collective interest in justice tive system of justice, on the other, the purpos- incarceration, and fewer reported crimes. es seem contradictory, rooted in conflicting and public safety requires they do), more These definitions have achieved currency values. The lack of consensus on where sen- than incremental investments in generic penal because publicly accountable officials do tencing and corrections should be headed is measures are needed. Major restructuring is know how to arrest and imprison offenders, thus no surprise. called for—restructuring of penal and cor- have built a substantial capacity to do so, and Because sentencing and corrections policies rections law, and restructuring of correctional do know how to count crime complaints. strategies and penal measures.1 have such major consequences—for the allocation of government resources and, more But experience has taught us that rising num- Imaginative sentencing judges and innovative fundamentally and profoundly, for the quality bers of arrests and prisoners are often indica- of justice in this country and the safety of its community corrections professionals have the tors of the absence of public safety. Similarly, citizens—the National Institute of Justice and the practical knowledge necessary to begin that a falling crime rate can be cause for alarm Corrections Program Office (CPO) of the Office restructuring. The transformation will not be when it means only that citizens despair of of Justice Programs felt it opportune to explore easy, as it requires a fresh look at what public them in depth. Through a series of Executive Sessions on Sentencing and Corrections, begun Research in Brief CONTINUED ... 2 Sentencing & Corrections Directors’ Message reporting crimes or when fear of crime so public safety change and move in different restricts their activities that they are afraid to directions all the time. CONTINUED ... leave home. It makes no sense to find public safety where the crime rate in an area has But if public safety were defined, as it should in 1998 and continuing through the year 2000, be, by the degree to which people and prop- practitioners and scholars foremost in their fallen to zero, but where teenagers roam erty are free from the threat of harm in par- field, representing a broad cross-section of the parks in a vain search for robbery victims points of view, are being brought together to who are home behind double-locked doors. ticular places and at particular times, publicly find out if there is a better way to think about In other words, threats to public safety cannot accountable officials would face the daunting the purposes, functions, and interdependence be measured by numbers of arrests and pris- prospect of creating the conditions of safety in of sentencing and corrections policies. oners or by aggregate crime data. They are the many places and at the many times in which they do not exist. We suggest that pub- We are fortunate in having secured the assis- local in nature, arising in specific places— lic safety is defined as it is today because tance of Michael Tonry, Sonosky Professor in that park, on this street corner, in this of Law and Public Policy at the University of house—and they often exist at certain times those officials as well as the body politic lack Minnesota Law School, as project director. and not others. confidence in government’s capacity to pro- duce the real thing. One product of the sessions is this series of These features make aggregate crime and papers, commissioned by NIJ and the CPO as justice statistics virtually useless as measures What public safety is the basis for the discussions. Drawing on the of public safety and introduce a level of It turns out to be too easy to say what public research and experience of the session partici- safety is not. What is needed is a rudimentary pants, the papers are intended to distill their complexity to which publicly accountable understanding of what it is: a condition, spe- judgments about the strengths and weaknesses government officials have an understandable of current practices and about the most prom- aversion. They can with some confidence cific to places, in which people and property ising ideas for future developments. promise more arrests, prison cells, and are not at risk of attack or theft and are not prison time for convicted offenders. They perceived to be at risk. Such places would The sessions were modeled on the executive cannot with the same confidence claim to likely share the following characteristics: sessions on policing held in the 1980s and 1990s under the sponsorship of NIJ and understand what makes a certain street cor- ■ A set of generally agreed-upon rules of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ner dangerous or, more to the point, what behavior. Those sessions played a role in conceptualizing might be done to make it safe. The agencies community policing and spreading it. Whether of government know relatively little about how ■ A shared appreciation that rule-breaking the current sessions and the papers based on to make neighborhoods, parks, bus shelters, will be punished. them will be instrumental in developing a new street corners, and bedrooms safe. Nor is ■ A further appreciation that playing by the paradigm for sentencing and corrections, or there a budgetary or bureaucratic reward for rules will be rewarded. even whether they will generate broad-based doing so, in part because such things are not support for a particular model or strategy for measured. For those who administer conven- Viewed this way, creating and maintaining change, remains to be seen. It is our hope that tional correctional agencies and for almost public safety requires teaching the lessons of in the current environment of openness to new everyone else concerned (except those at risk ideas, the session papers will provoke com- responsibility and accountability and reinforc- of crime victimization), defining the public ment, promote further discussion and, taken ing them in raising children, supervising ado- safety problem as “too many offenders, not together, will constitute a basic resource docu- lescents, and producing law-abiding young enough cells” works better. ment on sentencing and corrections policy adults. These are tasks for parents, neighbors, issues that will prove useful to State and local What public safety is not schools, churches, athletic teams, community policymakers. service groups, the labor market, and—on Public safety must be more than an increase what needs to be relatively rare occasions— Jeremy Travis in the number of imprisoned offenders. It Director a local police, probation, or parole officer. cannot be the same as a lower crime rate— National Institute of Justice This is not work that can safely be left to an expression of aggregate data reflecting the U.S. Department of Justice sentencing judges and correctional agencies. volume of complaints about a host of different Larry Meachum It will require imposing penal measures on crimes committed in divergent communities Director convicted offenders but it cannot be achieved where the facts and circumstances affecting Corrections Program Office by that means. U.S. Department of Justice Sentencing & Corrections 3 The community policing safety, the particular places where that offend- imposition of sentences randomly or example er is likely to be found, and the relative plau- deliberately outside a range agreed, This conception of public safety has animated sibility of penal measures available to reduce expressly or implicitly, to be justly community policing. Instead of riding around those risks. In subsequent sections we show deserved and socially necessary pun- in a patrol car waiting for the chance to arrest how, if courts are to impose sentences in ishments.