Evidence-Based Corrections and the Hotel California

Brian Paciotti, Ph.D.
Chief Research Officer
Evidence Based Business
www.evidencebasedbiz.com

The current crisis over the management of California prisoners reminds me of Jared Diamond’s book about the collapse of human civilizations.  He shows how subtle, yet persistent social, environmental, and health problems may lead to more collapses among contemporary societies—unless people make better choices.  The mismanagement of the prison system is unlikely to directly lead to California’s collapse, but it could be a major contributor to catastrophic problems.  For example, by declaring “war” on crime and drugs we place a huge segment of our population behind bars.  Keeping 170,000 felons behind bars in California is expensive, and over time, huge amounts of money is being diverted from education and health to fund the broken prison system.  Without attention to rehabilitation, people are funneled in and out of human warehouses that can create entire generations of future criminals. 

Maybe the scenario described above is alarmist, yet the problems are immense in California prisons.  Most of the prisons are operating at nearly double capacity, guards use large amounts of expensive overtime, a federal judge ordered a receiver to take control of prison healthcare, and the California Little Hoover Commission has called the parole system a “billion dollar failure.” ¹   Although the problems are complex, researchers contributing to the evidence-based corrections movement have diagnosed many of the problems that face the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), and have solutions—that if effectively implemented—would likely bring the crisis under control.²   Indeed, evidence-based management of correctional institutions is working in other states (e.g., Texas, Missouri), and can work in California. 

With an academic research background, I joined the CDCR as an internal research analyst to help close the “knowing-doing” gap by implementing evidence-based correctional programs.  However, I soon realized that unlike some areas of management (e.g., human resources), there is much less consensus about “best practices” for managing criminals.  For example, some people believe in rehabilitative approaches (treatment) whereas others prefer deterrence and incapacitation models.  Moreover, peoples’ beliefs tend to be overly simplistic and reactionary to specific events.  This is unsurprising; crime is scary, and the media generates biased “news” about crime and criminal justice.   To magnify the problem, politicians take advantage of peoples’ fear of crime as a platform for votes, and then create dramatic “solutions.”  In contrast, like most scientific approaches, evidence-based corrections assumes that human behavior is complex, and acknowledges that some people will respond to treatment, while others may not, and may need to be locked up for most of their lives. In sum, I believe that the CDCR will continue to face growing problems until Californians accept more realistic theories about crime and criminal justice.  I outline below a few of the striking problems I observed at the CDCR, and conclude that each of them originates from a lack of knowledge in the area of evidence-based corrections.  

The Hotel California 

Although California once embraced rehabilitation, the “public safety” or “lock em’ up” ideology is deeply entrenched among many citizens, politicians, and CDCR employees.  Interestingly, public safety refers to keeping inmates safely locked up, and the CDCR is very good at this—very few California inmates ever escape.  What most people forget, however, is that almost all inmates eventually return to our communities, and in California, prison gangs sometimes have greater influence on inmates than reform programs.  Moreover, California voters and politicians have created a legal system in which all inmates must go on parole upon release (a clear violation of evidence-based management), and it is easy for parole officers to send them back for minor infractions.  This “catch and release” system may partly explain why California has one of the highest recidivism rates in the country, and has led many people (and inmates) to refer to the CDCR as the “Hotel California—you can check out, but you seldom leave.”  To magnify the problem, some rehabilitation programs are proven to reduce recidivism, yet the CDCR has yet to fully consider and implement such programs.  CDCR officials continue to favor the “human warehouse” model. 

The Reform Effort

When he became governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger mandated the CDCR to move back towards a rehabilitation model.  The reform quickly lost steam when two CDCR directors quit their posts, seemingly discouraged by roadblocks from “special interest” groups.  A summary by the California Little Hoover Commission suggests that the prison guards represented by the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) worked hard to move the governor back towards the public safety model.  In general, some people worry that the CCPOA has too many incentives to expand the prison population, and support the “catch and release” parole system.  In addition, the guards seem to have developed an informal system to build up expensive overtime payouts. Even worse, some of the guards have developed a code of silence to prevent other employees from reporting horrible events such as prison guards organizing inmate-on-inmate gladiator-style contests.³ Of course most prison guards are honest, and they perform an important service for the state.  My greatest concern is that the CCPOA union is extremely sophisticated at influencing politicians, and they have a lot of power to block reform efforts, especially when most people have limited knowledge about the issues. 

Within the CDCR, I witnessed two important processes to implement reform.  First, the CDCR hired consultants and state employees to develop a strategic plan for the reform effort.  Although the strategic plan was an important step, I was surprised to see how many times the document was revised, and how much attention it received in contrast to operational issues.  Although operational meetings did occur, I believe that on many occasions, people who actually cared about real reform became lost in strategic issues at the expense of dealing with important operational problems.  And of course, the people favoring the warehouse model were only too happy to see staff and executives get distracted in their constant revision of the strategic plan.

Second, the CDCR implemented a performance measurement system.  This story starts with the New York City Police Department (NYPD), where Chief William Bratton created a well-known performance measure system called COMPSTAT.  The force learned to effectively analyze and graphically present detailed crime statistics from particular police beats within the city.  Bratton wanted his police force to be held accountable for crime rates.  Crime rates dropped in New York, and Chief Bratton was happy to take credit.  Many criminologists, however, argue that social forces other than police influence crime, and it is possible that the NYPD benefited from naturally declining crime rates. 

Chief Bratton recently moved to Los Angeles to start a new COMPSTAT system. This gave the CDCR an opportunity to view the system in action, and within weeks they had all of the top executives looking at detailed correctional statistics ranging from staffing rates to prison assault incidents.  The system can be criticized due to its hundreds of unclear measures, data quality problems, and declining attendance by key executives.  However, the largest problem is that the system seemed to have the purpose of creating an illusion that an evidence-based movement was underway. We can hope that when the political winds stabilize towards a unified goal of real evidence-based corrections, the COMPSTAT program can provide information for an evidence-based management system.

Many of my former CDCR colleagues continue to fight for evidence-based corrections, and I wish them well.  I am hopeful that Californians will learn more about criminal behavior and its management so that we can close the Hotel California and open a more humane and effective system of justice. 

Footnotes:

1.  California Little Hoover Commission    

2.  Center for Evidence-Based Corrections, UC Irvine
     Understanding California Corrections: Summary

.    Washington State Institute for Public Policy
     “Evidence-Based Adult Correctional Programs: What Works and What Does Not”

3.  Gladiator-style fights contests in Corcoran State Prison

Posted on July 17, 2007

 
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