Good news: Violent crime rate dropping in state, nation

By Barbara Sella

Recent federal and state reports on crime include both heartening and dispiriting news. The heartening news is that a newly released report issued by the State of Wisconsin's Office of Justice Assistance shows our violent crime rate is about 55.9% less than the 2001 national rate and violent offenses in the state have decreased by 12.5% between 1992-2002.

Violent crime is defined as murder, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault and it accounts for only 6.9% of all reported crimes in our state.

The dispiriting news is that both nationally and statewide, the prison population continues to grow. This past August, the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics released a first-time-ever longitudinal study of the number of people held in federal and state prisons. At the end of 2001, 5.6 million, that is, 1 in 37 adults in the U.S. were either in prison or had been.

In Wisconsin, the prison population grew 3% in 2002 to 22,133 incarcerated men and women. One particularly disturbing finding is that female incarcerations have been increasing at a greater rate than male ones.

Since 1995, female inmates have risen by an annual average of 15.2%. By the end of 2002, Wisconsin had 1,354 female prisoners. Equally disturbing is the continued higher incarceration rate for African American offenders.

In Wisconsin, the increase in incarcerations can be traced back to policies of tougher sentencing, truth in sentencing, federal mandatory drug sentencing laws, three strikes-and-you're-out, and the practice of revoking parole for even minor infractions.

On the positive side, some of these policies may be partially responsible for the decrease in violent crime.

On the negative side, incarcerating so many citizens is extremely expensive (nearly $26,000 per prisoner annually in 2002); does little to help those who struggle with mental illness or drug and alcohol addiction (an estimated 60-70% of inmates); and creates a large group of non-violent offenders who often face seemingly insurmountable obstacles once they leave prison. Especially in the current slow economy, those with criminal records and with little or no education find it increasingly difficult to find employment and hence to care for themselves and their families.

The Wisconsin Bishops in their 1999 document, Public Safety, the Common Good, and the Church: A Statement on Crime and Punishment in Wisconsin, asked, "is a policy of allocating so many resources to locking people up without reforming them good stewardship which furthers the common good?"

Observing that most prisoners will some day be released, the bishops stressed that public policies "should serve to reunite the offender with the community and supportive institutions of family, church and neighborhood. Policies should also foster healing of crime victims so that they too can be restored to the community and feel free to move about in it."

The bishops also called on everyone to promote restorative rather than retributive justice: "Reconciliation and restoration are not possible unless those rightly convicted of crimes accept the responsibility for what they have done and acknowledge that their crimes had consequences for others. Neither is restoration possible if law abiding citizens cannot set aside their pain and righteousness in favor of making the community whole again."

Unfortunately, in the face of the immensity and complexity of the problem, it is easy to overlook some of the root causes of crime, such as poverty, addiction and mental illness. It is easy to become discouraged, frightened or vengeful.

People of faith, however, are called to something more than righteous anger and a desire for personal safety. We are called to love and responsibility, to mercy and justice toward all - inmates and ex-offenders included.

Mary Steppe, director of Project Return in Milwaukee, a nonprofit agency dedicated to the rehabilitation of inmates and ex-offenders, notes that where "churches wrap themselves around an ex-offender, they can cut the recidivism rate by 90%."

How people of faith are helping bring hope to those inside and outside our state prisons will be the subject of a forthcoming column.

(Sella is associate director for education and social concerns at the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the civil arm of the state's five diocesan bishops. Its website is www.wisconsincatholic.org.)