William R. Kelly, professor of sociology
and director of the Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research at the University of Texas at Austin, discusses
his new book, "Criminal
Justice at the Crossroads: Transforming Crime and Punishment," and the costs of mass incarceration. The following is
a transcript RAPHAEL POPE-SUSSMAN:
Hi. This is Raphael Pope-Sussman for the Center for Court Innovation. Today I'm speaking with William Kelly,
professor of sociology at the University of Texas, Austin, and the author of the new book, Criminal Justice at the
Crossroads: Transforming Crime and Punishment, from Columbia University Press. Professor Kelly, thank you for speaking
with me today, and welcome. WILLIAM KELLY: It
is my pleasure. POPE-SUSSMAN: Why is this a crossroads
in the American criminal justice system? KELLY:
I believe we're at a decision point that was triggered from the recession that began in 2008, that caused states
to start taking a hard look at how they spend money. They began to realize that crime control was a very expensive
proposition, and that began the discussion affecting about how might we go about doing this differently, primarily
motivated by trying to save public revenue. That seems to have begun to evolve into a broader discussion of, not
only saving money, but trying to be more effective in how we go about the business of administering criminal justice.
It's a crossroads because of the opportunities that have been presented by economic
considerations, really a fair amount of lead from the U.S. Justice Department. Eric Holder, when he was the attorney
general, launched a discussion about being “smart on crime.” And those types of phrases and that type of thinking
has really begun to take hold. POPE-SUSSMAN:
Your book explores the origins and evolution of America's fixation on this idea of being “tough on crime.” Can
you give our audience a sense of what that's translated into in terms of policy? KELLY:
Beginning in the early 1970s, we shifted policy rather dramatically from focusing more on rehabilitation than on
punishment. The events of the 1960s, 1970s--high crime rates, race riots, campus protests, led to the evolution of
a focus on controlling crime primarily through the mechanism of punishment. That policy, at the time, made really
quite perfect intuitive sense. The problem is disorder; the remedy is punishment. Policymakers got it; the public
got it. That launched decades of what we call “crime control,” or “tough on crime” policies that led to, among other
things, a really substantial capital investment in things like prisons, extraordinary expansion of the criminal justice
system, fundamental changes in statutes like sentencing laws that shift discretion away from judges to more determinate
sentences that, in the end, are more severe, changes in parole policies and laws that keep inmates in prison longer
and longer. As the dust has settled on 45 plus years of tough on crime policy,
we see the largest prison system in the world. We are the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world.
I think the public is getting to be familiar with the statistics that we have 5 percent of the world's population,
but 25 percent of the world's inmates. The image that the world has about the U.S., is the use of incarceration,
which is certainly a distinguishing point, but that's not the end result of the reach of the American criminal
justice system. It is much bigger, much broader, and deeper than that. Jails serve to incarcerate huge numbers of
individuals on a day-to-day basis. Probation and parole, versions of community supervision, also have very extensive
reaches in terms of supervising and trying ...
