BOOKS
The Cost of Crime By Michelle Bryant Illustration by Eric Moe
Despite crime rates being at a historic low, the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to achieve an 80 percent recidivism rate. We’ve spent $1 trillion during the past 40 years on criminal justice, not including $1 trillion more on the war on drugs. William Kelly, a professor of sociology at The University of Texas at Austin, lays out a plan for fixing a broken criminal justice system illustrated by real-world examples in his latest book, The Future of Crime and Punishment: Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money. “At the end of the day, I don’t see us making the kind of changes we need to make unless there is broad public support for it,” 12 Life & Letters | Fall 2016
says Kelly, who wrote his book to be accessible to a general audience of informed and interested readers. His book covers an array of issues that are interrelated to the bigger picture of crime — mental illness, substance abuse and public health —and what we can do about it.
Why Punishment Doesn’t Work for Everyone If you take a quick look at some of the prevalent characteristics of offenders who are in the criminal justice system, 40 percent have a mental illness and nearly 80 percent have a substance abuse disorder. Moreover, 60 percent of people in U.S. prisons have had at least one traumatic brain injury, which has
profound neurocognitive implications that bear directly on behavior and criminality. “The failure to appreciate all of that has lead us to unacceptably high recidivism rates,” Kelly says. “The reason punishment doesn’t work is because punishment does nothing to fix bipolar disorder. It does nothing to fix addiction. You can’t punish behavior out of people who don’t respond to punishment the way folks without those impairments and disorders do. “The unfortunate thing is this is not new,” Kelly says. “We’ve known this for some time now, but we still keep crossing our fingers and sending people up the river and assuming that’s going to make things better.” In fact, the deeper someone goes into