New Report: Modernizing America’s Criminal Justice System 

To improve the system, policymakers must first invest in it  

NEW YORK, NY —America’s criminal justice system is struggling. Police staffing rates have been dropping since the Great Recession; prisons and jails are increasingly violent; court backlogs keep growing; essential crime data are not collected; and essential criminology research is not conducted. Yet neither side seems interested in addressing these issues. The left fixates on perceived injustices in the system, while the right too often concerns itself with making punishment more severe. Neither side has pursued the necessary first step of investing in the current system.  

In a new report, Manhattan Institute fellow Charles Fain Lehman argues America’s increase in violent crime is itself a product of fiscal neglect of the criminal justice system over the past decade. Lehman encourages policymakers to replicate past examples of federal policymaking in which lawmakers used the power of the purse to dramatically improve the criminal justice system’s capacity to control crime. He argues doing so again could get each side closer to achieving their ideal system. To do so, Lehman proposes a $12 billion, five-year plan to bring our system up to date. The spending breakdown includes:  

• Hiring police officers: Allocate $10 billion to hire 80,000 police officers in major cities. Police hiring is one of the most well-supported ways to control crime; one study finds that a 10% increase in police employment reduces violent crimes by 13% and property crimes by 7%.    
• Rehabilitating failing prisons and jails: Allocate $500 million to rehabilitate failing prisons and jails with a carrot-and-stick approach. This money could be used to support prison order, evidence-based rehabilitation practices, and to reduce violence, drug use, and suicide deaths in prisons.    
• Expanding research funding: Allocate $1.5 billion to the Office of Justice Programs for research, evaluation, and statistics. Those funds would cover a dramatic expansion in research funding, as well as funding for establishing national standards for criminal case management and setting up a “sentinel cities” program for timely crime-data reporting.  

Though these proposals may seem costly, it would be a drop in the federal spending bucket. And more importantly, it would go a long way in not only restoring peace but making America’s criminal justice system one that the nation can truly be proud of.   

Click here to view the full report.