Like all issues that politics touches, criminal justice policy can get stuck in partisan shouting matches. But, criminal justice reform is actually one of the most fertile grounds for bi-partisan policy making.
For a long time, I considered criminal justice reform to be out of the cards in Tennessee. But, after Governor Bill Lee’s round table last Wednesday with conservative leaders including Newt Gingrich, Rich Perry, and Pat Nolan, I am starting to think there is hope. Lee’s February proposals are a vital first step to reforming the state’s expensive and ineffective system.
What’s Not Working: Billions of Dollars to Ruin Lives
Currently, the state spends over $2 billion on “corrections” which adds up to $23,468 per prisoner. With one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, Tennessee sends 853 out of every 100,000 people to prison and 1,962 out of every 100,000 Black Tennesseans. For context, if Tennessee was a country, it would send more than twice as many people to prison than one of the world’s largest authoritarian regimes — Russia, which incarcerates 332 people per 100,000.
That rate of incarceration is excessively punitive especially because over 50% of inmates are pre-trial and have not been convicted. While waiting for trial, prisoners rack up debt from inability to work and face harsh conditions. Over 100 lives were lost in Tennessee prisons in 2019 (before COVID-19). Some of these people never had the chance to exercise their sixth amendment right to a speedy and public trial.
It would be one thing if this punitive incarceration made Tennessee safer, but it doesn’t. Tennessee has the 3rd highest violent crime in the nation and a recidivism rate of 47%, meaning almost half of released prisoners re-offend. As Tennessean’s, we are essentially paying $2 billion dollars every year to ruin inmates’ lives, and we aren’t any safer for it.
A Two Step Solution: Reduction and Reentry
So how do we rethink the system? There are two steps. The first is to provide alternatives to incarceration for low-level, nonviolent offenses, such parole violation and drug possession. Incarceration for those two things do little to nothing to reduce crime rates. Yet, more than half of Tennessee’s prison admissions are for supervision violations. Tennessee began to reform sentences for drug possession last year, and Lee’s proposals would and should increase alternatives to incarceration such as mental health and addiction therapy.
The second step is to transform how prisoners reenter society. Over 95% of prisoners in Tennessee are not serving life sentences, so they will reenter society. What we don’t want is what we currently have where 47% of those people end up back in prison.
The prison system’s needs to ensure that re-entry provides former inmates with the means to make a life outside of crime. That is vital for the dignity of former inmates and the safety of neighborhoods. The only way to do this is to invest in rehabilitation, readjustment, and reentry programs. A good example is Georgetown’s reeducation program which allows inmates in Maryland to work towards high school or college degrees while in prison. The program decreased re-offense rates by 43%.
The Magical Mix: Cut Costs, Cut Prison Population, Cut Crime Rates
It is paramount to understand that Lee’s reforms are not red or blue. It is just good policy: cut costs, cut the prison population, and cut crime rates. The Federal Government is figuring out that magical mix. The bi-partisan First Step Act passed under President Donald Trump did exactly those things.
But, Tennessee cannot and should not wait around for federal action. Advancing reforms is handled most efficiently at the state level because only a small fraction of Tennessee inmates are held in federal facilities. States across the U.S. like Virginia, Illinois, and Maryland have passed or started to pass reforms this year, and Tennessee should follow suit.
While criminal justice reform can be made out to be a progressive issue — it isn’t. It is an everybody issue. Having lived in Tennessee for 18 years, I can safely say that the state is full of the most well-meaning and common-sense people I know — both Democrats and Republicans. Lee’s policy proposals reflect that well-meaning, common-sense bend of Tennesseans.
NYU Law Professor and criminal justice reform activist, Bryan Stevenson, points out in his novel, “Just Mercy,” that the true measure of the character of a people and of a state is not how well we treat the best among us, but how well we treat the disfavored and the condemned. Does Tennessee have what it takes to rethink how we treat the accused and convicted? To change how we show justice to those we may at first think are not even deserving of our mercy?
For the first time, I am starting to think that Tennessee might just have what it takes. Governor Lee’s proposals represent not only an important overlap between Republican and Democratic politics but between good policy and good treatment of one another. It is one of those rare areas where it is so unabashedly clear that what is good for another individual — in this case the thousands of Tennessee’s accused persons — is good for each of us too.