Al Capone, The Sword of Damocles &
the Police: Prisons Budget Ratio
Lawrence Sherman
Institute of Criminology
University of Cambridge
Al Capone
• Very Harmful
• No evidence to prove
his murdering
• Prosecution on tax
evasion
• Died in Prison
Average Charges for MURDER or Attempted
Murder Within Two Years of Probation Start:
Philadelphia
High
Neither
Low
Papers
Richard Berk, Lawrence Sherman, Geoffrey Barnes, Ellen Kurtz and
Lindsay Ahlman 2009 “Forecasting murder within a population of
probationers and parolees: a high stakes application of statistical
learning” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A
(Statistics in Society) 172: 191–211
Lawrence Sherman (2011) “Al Capone, the Sword of Damocles, and
the Police–Corrections Budget Ratio” Criminology & Public Policy
10: 195-206.
Lawrence Sherman (2010). Less Prison, More Police, Less Crime: How
Criminology Can Save the States from Bankruptcy. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Justice Video posted at
http://nij.ncjrs.gov/multimedia/video-sherman.htm .
Neither Crime nor Criminals Are All
Equal in Their HARM
• What does it mean to say “crime”
dropped?
• All crimes are not created equal
• Some far more harmful than others
• Yet governments publish “crime” totals
• Completely unweighted by harm
• Total crime down, homicides X 100
• How to interpret?
Crime Harm Index (CHI)
(Sherman, 2007)
• Tool for combining elements of different weights
into a single scale value
• E.g., murder = 200, car theft = 5, shoplift = 1
• What is 100 crimes in CHI? Example:
10 murders X 200
= 2,000
50 car thefts X 5
= 250
1,000 shop thefts X 1
= 1,000
TOTAL
= 3,250
Cut Costs, Manage Criminals
• Stop summing crimes
• Start weighing harms
• Provide a transparent, total harm “level”
• Not a confusing flood of undigested data
Use Crime Harm Index (CHI)
• Evaluate national trends in harm levels
• Compare police force areas
• Make decisions about criminals
• Apportion CJ costs in relation to harm
prevention benefit
Keep It Simple?
• Manage less harmful offenders in
communit
(key role of police)
• Lock up dangerous people forever
(main role for prisons)
• Keep testing value for money
Apply CHI to Justice
•
•
•
•
•
•
CJ Act 2003
Judge must assess dangerousness
Take CHI Forecasts Into Account
Early diversion for low risk
Probation on tight license
Certainty, swiftness—not severity
Sword of Damocles
• Braggart at King’s
Table
• Not Punished
• Merely Threatened
with Punishment
• Curbed Behaviour
Percent of USA CJS Budgets:
Local Police vs. Prisons
US: 50,000(?) Police Laid Off
Nieuwbeerta, Paul, Daniel Nagin and Arjan A. J. Blokland (2009). “Assessing the Impact
of First-Time Imprisonment on Offenders’ Subsequent Criminal Career Development: A
Matched Samples Comparison” Journal of Quantitative Criminology.
Average Effect of 1st Time
Imprisonment on Post Release
3-year Conviction Rate
1.5
1
0.5
0
Effects of 1st Time Imprisonment
by Age ( All Crimes)
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
-0.5
Average Treatment
Effects of
Imprisonment on Post
Release Annual
Conviction
Which Can Prevent Crime Better?
Prisons?
Police? Probation?
The Politics of Early Release
Petrosino Campbell 2009
Blending Two Thinkers on
Prevention
Jeremy Bentham
Sir Robert Peel
Bentham: Deterrence
• Certainty
• Celerity (speed)
• Severity
Peel, 1829
• Certainty
• Celerity
• Cessation:
--Stopping the crime in
progress
• Abolished death penalties
• Australia?
• Transportation Today
Still Possible
Peel’s Principles 1829
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Minimum Force Necessary
Minimum Cost to Taxpayers
Test of Success: NOT punishment
BUT the demonstrable absence of crime
Prevention, not detection
Management of crime and criminals
Deter, intercept thieves, break up fights
Reserve prosecution for the very worst
Operation Damocles!
Deferred Prosecution
• You are under arrest
• We can charge you
• Put you in Jail
• But we suspend action
• So you can go straight
• Go to drug treatment
• Get a job
• Do Restorative Justice
• Relocate
• “Turning Point” Plan
• Or-- we will prosecute
The Regulatory Pyramid
Certainty, Swiftness:
the Project Hope Example
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Hawaii Offender Probation Enhancement
Chronic Drug-Abusing Property Criminals
Drug-Testing as a condition
Failure COULD mean 5 years in prison
Typically failure had not been reported
5, 10, 15 times—no sanction
17th time? Or 19th? Or 13th?
Unexpected, sudden, very severe penalty
How Does HOPE Improve, In
Theory?
• Certainty—call every day, Mon-Fri
• Swiftness—Immediate processing of tests
Immediate jail time
• Severity-------Low at first
Steadily rising with repeats
How Does HOPE Improve, In
Effects?
• Randomized Controlled Trial
• Prison Days 50% lower for HOPE
• New Crimes 50% lower for HOPE
• NIJ to replicate in multiple states
Risk-Based Policy:
Foundation of Cost-Effectiveness
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pew Trust Report
Parole Guidelines on Release
Virginia sentencing Guidelines—risk, not desert
RAND 1982 Report on Selective Incapacitation
Idea rejected by 1986 NAS Report on Error
False positives too high for values
But prison rate has tripled
False positives are embedded in sentencing
Actuarial Risk could keep them out, not put
them in
Police as Offender Managers
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Classify Risks
Prosecute highest risk, maximum prison
Divert Lowest Risk, minimal cost
Manage for desistance
More emphasis on offender-victim future
Test specific tactics—RJ, drug treatment,
even “transportation” by consent
Where to Start
• Not Hard-Core Recidivists
• Diamond Districts results (Met)
• But where diversion alone does best
• First Offenders—or early
Turning Points
• 500 Offenders
John Laub
• Age 70
• In & out of crime
• Key Turning Points
Robert Sampson
Big Ones
• Partner (spouse)
• Job
• Change of community
• Cut off ties to old friends—family!
Relocation Strategy:
Funding Incentive, All Stages
Prisoner Resettlement
Re-Location “Experiment”
• Whether they went back to their “hood”
• Unrelated to their choice
• Most US states require same community
• Louisiana does not
David S. Kirk
“A Natural Experiment on Residential
Change and Recidivism:
Lessons from Hurricane Katrina”
American Sociological Review 2009
Cause and Effect
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
If re-imprisonment rates differ
“Returners” higher than “Relocaters”
Likely to be caused by relocation
Not self-selection bias
But were they unknown to police?
QUESTION: long-term effects—not 1-year
Would three years be convincing?
3-Year Results: Brand new
Relocation  Less Prison?
Four-Year Re-imprisonment Rates
(Louisiana or other states)
1-Year
Returners = 26%
4-Year
65%
Relocators = 11%
35%
1-year Difference
3-year Difference
= 15% raw, 58% relative
= 30% raw, 54% relative
Further the Better
For every ten miles they moved from
their old neighbourhood, at one year out,
One Percent Less
Re-Imprisonment
Managing Offenders in Community:
Summary
•
•
•
•
Regulatory Pyramid
Escalating control, sanctions
Low to moderate severity
But also individual needs, crime by crime:
--restorative justice
--relocation
--drug treatment
--curfews
--not associating with other offenders
“Turning Point Policing”
(funded by Monument Trust)
1. Develop Risk Assessment Tool UK
2. Develop Damocles Tactics
3. Divert sample of first offenders to
Damocles
4. Then test overall forecast-based triage
Randomized Controlled Trial RCT:
COMPARISON or NET difference
140%
121%
120%
100%
100%
Court
Offender
s (n=59)
101%
80%
71%
71%
60%
49%
40%
28%
20%
Yr (-2)
Yr (-1)
Yr (+1)
Yr (+2)
DC
Offender
s (n =
62)
Research & Development
• British Society for Evidence-Based Policing
• Testing “rehabilitative policing” or “Offender
Desistance Policing (ODP) or “Turning Point
Policing”
• Managing desistance as a lifelong task
• Comprehensive studies of what works
Thank You
Lawrence W. Sherman
Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental
Criminology
University of Cambridge