The dollars and sense of crime

How'd you like to save some money?

Nothing illegal, in fact you could save money and fight crime at the same time. The typical household in Washington spends $1,130 in tax money each year on the criminal-justice system.

In 1980 that household spent $590 a year busting bad guys. Do you feel $540 safer?

Crime and justice are emotional issues, but sometimes it pays to take a breath and run the numbers.

I was getting worked up about crime last week.

The U.S. Supreme Court was hearing evidence in a case about the way cocaine possession is treated.

You know, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine is punished the same as possession of 500 grams of powdered cocaine.

Most of the users of crack are black, and most of the users of powder are white, so the results are obvious. That had me steaming but also hoping something would finally change.

Maybe it will. Last week there was also a U.S. Senate hearing on imprisonment.

Some of the experts who testified believe imprisonment has gone so far that it is now shaping the society in ways few would have expected.

In the U.S. there are five times more mentally ill people in prison than in hospitals.

And imprisonment has destabilized the lives of many poor black and Hispanic Americans.

It hurts entire communities, not just the people who go to prison.

I was trudging through reports feeling outrage, when I came across something positive and sensible enough to affect the least touchy-feely among us.

It's the tactic taken by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP), which was created by the state Legislature to do no-nonsense studies of public-policy issues.

Last year they looked at crime — no politics, just numbers.

Steve Aos, the WSIPP assistant director, put it this way in one presentation, "How is your portfolio doing?"

Not so well.

Incarceration rates were steady from the 1930s up to about 1980, when the country decided to get tough on crime.

There was a frenzy of prison building, and crime rates dropped as prison walls went up.

But in the early '90s the law of diminishing returns kicked in.

We went from locking up dangerous offenders and habitual criminals to putting away people who were mostly hurting themselves.

The crime rate now drops only about 2 to 4 percent for each 10 percent increase in incarceration, according to WSIPP.

And incarceration costs keep growing.

WSIPP put alternatives to prison through the same kind of analysis. They found there are treatment and prevention programs that burn a lot of money without accomplishing much.

But they also identified some, such as preschool for low-income children, that work and are more effective at reducing crime and more cost-efficient than imprisonment.

Their work should help state government save us some money, or at least spend our taxes more effectively. All we have to do is give elected officials the support they need to change direction without being labeled soft on crime.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.