Lurking Legislators, Please Read This
Connecticut Has Done Something Remarkable With Crime – The state cut incarceration in half, while crime plummeted.
In 1999 Connecticut had so many people in prison that it paid to send 500 of them to be incarcerated in Virginia. Nearly 25 years later, the state has not only sliced its number of imprisoned people in half, but been able to close more than 10 prisons while keeping its crime rate at its lowest level in more than 40 years.
“It is kind of remarkable,” said Mike Lawlor, a former state legislator and state official who has worked on these issues for 30-plus years. “We could probably close a few more.”
Connecticut currently runs 13 prisons, which house about 10,000 people. Two-thirds of these are serving sentences; the other third are those who have yet to be sentenced. (Five of the closed prisons have been mothballed, meaning they could be reopened if needed.) The state’s rate of 155 people imprisoned per 100,000 residents is now the ninth lowest in the country and well below the national average of 350 people per 100,000.
Google says Delaware has 631 per 100,000. Almost double the national average of 350 per 100,000. Blue, but progressive?
It is time to do away with cop culture and all of it’s tentacles.
Delaware incarcerates so many people because it has the 2nd highest recidivism rate in the country. Sen. Pinkney’s SB4 probation and parole reform will go a long way to change that.
True, and Marie’s bill will help. but the culture in the department is to make the process an obstacle course for the probationer. I navigated the system back in ’09 for about 20 months. Level 3 status, the most restrictive, is replete with bureaucratic traps that make compliance extremely difficult for most folks trying their best to successfully. I had a fair amount of support but the 4 months I spent on level 3 was more difficult in many ways than custody. Just mt 2 cents.
Appreciate your perspective as a returned citizen Joe!
Would like to see only the violent in prison, and addiction treated as a medical condition, this would be a powerful way to be done with “cop culture” and mass incarceration. I will not live to see it, but any progress beats none. We’re on the cusp of a generational change as we Boomers check out at an accelerated rate, hope those to follow will do dramatically better then us.
Overall crime down. Rapes and murders up. Yay Great policy unless you’re a human.
https://news.yahoo.com/2021-connecticut-overall-crime-down-040100981.html
https://ctexaminer.com/2022/09/26/downward-trend-in-violent-crime-increase-in-reports-of-rape/
Hmm…
Thanks for the link. College closures in CT reduced sexual assault and rape offense during the pandemic. Now rates are up a bit, but not back to pre-pandemic rates.
Most trolls are at least smart enough to not include links that disprove the point they are trying to make.
Reports of rape are up. It has always been an underreported crime, so it’s not clear evidence of an increase in rapes.
It could be that more victims are willing to undergo the brutal interrogation that usually accompanies claims of sexual assault.
That said, I’d talk these stats with lots of salt, because they’re comparing the last non-pandemic year with the first two pandemic years.
Most murders are domestic. People had to stay home.
Burglaries take place when nobody’s home. With everybody at home, opportunities were fewer.
In robberies both perpetrator and victim have left home.
And so on.