- [Narrator] President Trump thinks giving drug dealers
the death penalty could help solve the opioid crisis.
- Some countries have a very, very tough penalty,
the ultimate penalty.
And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem.
- [Narrator] This isn't the first time
the Trump Administration has taken a tough stance on crime.
Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, sent out a memo
directing prosecutors to charge and pursue
the most serious, readily provable offense.
And in the past, Democrats too have been proponents
of tougher sentences.
- When you commit a third violent crime,
you will be put away and put away for good.
Three strikes and you are out.
(applause)
- [Narrator] But do longer and harsher sentences
actually work to deter crime?
- I think the general answer to that is probably not.
- [Narrator] Michael Cholbi is a Professor
of Philosophy at Cal Poly.
- It seems to be that most of the studies
that have been conducted have concluded
that in fact the severity of punishments
doesn't have a lot to do with the overall level of crime.
So to give you just a couple of examples,
the United States has implemented since the 1990s
a great many mandatory minimums.
These are laws that require that offenders
be sentenced to a certain mandatory minimum.
Usually the mandatory minimums are higher
than what the offender would ordinarily be sentenced with.
And the studies that have conducted on this
suggest that we have seen a drop in crime,
but only a small fraction.
Maybe 5% of that can be attributed
to these mandatory minimums, these harsher sentences.
- [Narrator] So what can be attributed
to the drop in crime over the years?
In 1994, President Clinton signed the three strikes bill.
It mandated life sentences for offenders who had
more than two prior convictions.
Since then, the amount of violent crimes
has been cut by nearly half.
However, experts say only a modest amount
of the drop in crime could be attributed to Clinton's bill.
A Government Accountability Office report in 2005
found that the biggest reasons for the drop in crime
were increased employment, increased police presence,
and an aging of the population.
To fully understand why harsher and longer punishments
don't really deter crime Cholbi says we need
to understand how criminals think.
- I think, again, we assign much more significance
to the probability of the punishment occurring
than we do to the severity of it.
- [Narrator] Take John, for example.
John wants to steal this apple.
According to Cholbi, John isn't thinking about
how long he'd go to jail for theft.
But instead he's thinking about whether or not
he'd get caught stealing the apple.
To deter John from stealing apples in the future
it might make more sense to increase
the probability that he'd get caught,
rather than increase the severity of his sentence.
But would something as severe
as the death penalty be a deterrent?
- Probably not, except in atypical
or very specific circumstances.
It turns out that states with the death penalty
have had higher murder rates.
And studies have shown that if capital punishment
has any deterrent affect at all,
it may be too small to be detected.
So why do politicians insist on longer and harsher sentences
when there's no proof that they actually deter crime?
- It's important to realize politicians
are voted maximizers.
- [Narrator] Jim Copland is the Director of Legal Policy
for the Manhattan Institute.
- And so they're not policy wonks
who are trying to go through policy studies
and come up with the optimal policy.
What they're trying to do within their viewpoint
is push policies that they think they can sell
to their constituencies.
So being tough on crime is something that has been
a political selling point by and large.
- [Narrator] As criminal justice reform gains popularity
many worry that the release of prisoners
will lead to an increase in criminal activity.
- We see a lot of red states that are trying
to reduce their prison populations.
And if you do that smartly you can do that without
leading to an uptick in crimes.
- [Narrator] From 1999 to 2012 New York decreased
their state prison population by 26%,
while the nationwide state prison population
increased by 10%.
During that time the violent crime rate in New York
dropped by 31%, while the national rate only dropped 26%.
New York accomplished this with a combination
of changes in policy and practice.
Mandatory minimums were reduced,
and in some cases eliminated,
and parole approval rates grew significantly.
So if politicians are serious about being tough on crime
they should focus on catching criminals,
rather than longer sentences.