Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am delighted to be here at the invitation of the committee. I felt it was important as a former U.S. government official to recognize the great friendship we have and to appear before your committee and to share the American experience.
You introduced me as a former member of the United States Congress representing the State of Arkansas. I also served in the George W. Bush administration as head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, or the DEA. Then I was also undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security. So I have a long career in law enforcement, leading large agencies, as well as being a trial prosecutor as a former U.S. attorney in the 1980s during the administration of Ronald Reagan, which was really the beginning of our “get tough on crime and drugs” in the United States.
I'm here because I signed on to a “right on crime” initiative, which is an initiative led by a group of conservatives in the United States who support a re-evaluation of our nation's incarceration policies. So I'm only here to tell you a little bit about the American experience, certainly not to be wise or provide many insights into what you're doing here in Canada.
In terms of the American experience, though, what motivated me to sign on to this “right on crime” initiative was two principles. One is fairness, and the other is the long-time conservative principle of cost to the taxpayers. So those two motivating factors support a re-evaluation of U.S. incarceration policy.
You know the history in the United States. One out of every 100 adults in America is incarcerated. It's a total prison population of 2.3 million. In 1970 it was only one out of every 400. The United States has 5% of the world's population, but 23% of the world's reported prisoners. The incarceration costs are staggering, anywhere from $18,000 to $50,000 per prisoner per year, depending upon the state and the level of security in the incarceration. And that cost is very challenging for many states, so the cost is a motivating factor to do a re-evaluation.
Here's a little bit of some of the things that have happened in recent years.
The conservative leaders supported this re-evaluation. It's really at the federal and the state level. At the federal level we had a crack cocaine mandatory minimum policy, which really resulted in a one-to-100 disparity between the lengths of sentences for crack cocaine versus powder cocaine. That means if you were an African-American and got arrested for a certain quantity of crack cocaine versus a white American who had the same amount of powder cocaine, your sentence would be much, much longer.
So as a result of the concern on fairness, there was a final congressional action that reduced the mandatory penalty for crack cocaine offenders and to try to eliminate this disparity and unfairness. There continues to be a debate over mandatory minimum sentence at the federal level, but much of the action is at the state level in the United States, and I'll just quickly tell you about two states as examples. One is Texas, which is known as being a tough-on-crime state. Their conservative Republicans joined with liberal Democrats in adopting city-based funding to strengthen the state's probation system in 2005; and then in 2007 they decided against building more prisons and instead put their money in improved community correction approaches, such as drug treatment courts, which I'd love to talk more about.
The reforms are forecast to save $2 billion in prison costs over five years. Most of the savings went into community treatment for the mentally ill and low-level drug addicts and their treatment. Crime has dropped 10% from 2004, the year before the reforms, through 2009.
Last year South Carolina adopted reforms that will reserve costly prison beds for dangerous criminals while punishing low-risk offenders through lower-cost community supervision. The legislation was a bipartisan effort, with strong support from liberals, conservatives, law enforcement, and the judges. The state is expected to save $175 million in prison construction this year, and $60 million in operating costs over the next several years.
In my introductory comments I would emphasize that we are re-evaluating. We have a high incarceration rate, and it is very expensive. There is also is a desire to make sure we have a system that is fair, and that we are working particularly with drug offenders.
Again, I was head of the DEA, and I want to be known as being tough on drug problems, but at the same time we want to make sure that if they have an addiction problem they get treatment with accountability. That's the drug treatment core program, rather than simply incarceration, for the non-violent offenders.
Secondly, we have to look at who we're housing, to make sure we put our resources behind those who pose a harm and a danger to the public.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for this opportunity to be with you today. I look forward to having a dialogue as the morning goes on.