Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration [Kindle Edition]

Jacobson was a budget director for New York City who then became the head of probation and later the head of corrections. He thus has considerable experience with the costs of incarceration and how those costs impact the rest of the government's budgets.

In this book he reviews the tremendous rate of increase of incarceration over the last three decades and the costs attendant to this policy. The increased use of mandatory minimum sentences, three-strikes legislation, and the vastly increased use of technical parole violations are identified as the major contributors to these increases. He then reviews how ineffective this has been in reducing crime. Then he makes the case for reducing the rate of incarceration.

His thesis is that for lower grade cases (property crimes; drug crimes; etc.), lengthy prison sentences are both ineffective and fiscally wasteful. He would divert significant resources from this incarceration to (a) more treatment in lieu of custody and (b) other social programs which are also fiscally strapped.

The budget crunch faced by states in recent years he believes provide an opportunity for changes: states simply cannot afford their prisons. Even Louisiana and Mississippi have recently passed legislation which reduce some prison terms.

The book seems to be generally aimed at polilcy-level people. It describes the sorts of legislation that would be necessary, delineates some of the general political forces which are at work and which must be met ('tough-on-crime' attitudes; the prison guards unions; private prison corporations mainly). The book makes a persuasive case in fiscal terms and even on effectiveness (though his claims that we know which programs work and which don't are supported by citations of work and are not entirely convincing).

I was very glad to see a book like this become generally available and hope it gets a wide readership. This society clearly needs to deal with the issue, as we incarcerate people at a rate higher than any other nation in the world. Hopefullyl the book will help initiate and further the debate on the issue.

But it is not a book for general readership. He assumes that if costs can be cut and there is little change in public safety, then there can be little reason to not adopt the suggestions, that only politics is in the way. He makes no moral case against excessive incarceration. This omission means that this is not the book to convince the public, though it certainly should be given due consideration by the general public and policy makers.

I work at a prison and suggested this book to my boss, the Prison Commissioner. He has found it to be true with his 5 years of experience in our prison system and is citing it in presentations before policy makers.

Michael Jacobson, who counts Bernard Kerik as a friend, is an alumnus of Brooklyn College and he also attended the CUNY Graduate Center. His career path took from the New York Office of Management and Budget to the Commissioner of Probation here in New York City to the Commissioner of Corrections. His unique perspective or insight into the criminal justice system comes from his experiences as a policy maker in the Office of Management and Budget and during his time as Commissioner of Probation, Commissioner of Corrections and now as the head of the Vera Institute of Justice. Jacobson's basic premise is that it is not beneficial to public safety and public health to incarcerate large numbers of people as we do today. As he states his purpose is to, "make a substantive and political case so that policy makers can begin to reverse 30 years of prison growth in a way that protects public safety while ameliorating pressing problems of health care, education and deteriorating state budgets." He preaches "reallocation of resources" and "probation and parole reform."

Jacobson recounts how mass incarceration came to be in America. He starts off by making a case for the link between high-profile crimes and criminal justice policy making. Unlike other such areas high-profile crimes tend to lead to more punitive policy shifts in criminal justice arena, but this relationship between high-profile crimes and criminal justice policy obscures the roles of other mitigating factors such as social inequality. Another critique is that alternatives to incarceration and rehabilitation programs are underfunded when most convicted of a crime are not in jails and prisons but they are on parole or on probation. Their sheer numbers, approximately five million, demands that some attention be paid to this population, Jacobson rants. This overuse of the parole and probation system does not serve the best interest of the public, and the state's current fiscal situation makes it unrealistic for mass incarceration to continue. In my estimation, Jacobson has done a proficient job of tying together the empirical work of Western (2006) and Alexander's (2012) polemics and makes a compelling argument as to why mass incarceration must end.