MacArthur Winner: What Mass Incarceration Says About Us

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: And our next guest is one of this year’s winners of the MacArthur Fellowships, which is also known as the “Genius Grant”. Sociologist and criminologists Reuben J. Miller received the prestigious prize for his work, examining the consequences of incarceration on individuals and their families. It’s all the more timely, as crime is a major issue for Republicans in the upcoming U.S. midterms. He speaks to Michel Martin about his work, and the status of criminal justice reform in the United States.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Professor Miller, thank you so much for joining us.

REUBEN J. MILLER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO AND 2022 MACARTHUR “GENIUS” FELLOW: I’m really glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: Well, you know, we know we have to ask you the story of how you found out that you had been named one of this year’s MacArthur fellows, so- called “Genius”, it’s one of the most prestigious, you know, awards in the western world for, sort of, intellectual endeavors. And so, as you know I have to ask, but how did you find out?

MILLER: I was — so, I was — OK. We had some bad work done by contractors and I have to fix a drain. So, I’m on YouTube figuring out how to fix a drain downstairs in my basement. And I get this phone call in the middle of fixing this drain. And then I’m told, oh, you know, you’ve been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. And I just screamed. I just — you know, 60 straight seconds of, just like, oh, you know. Just like — laughing and just — yes, it was an incredible — incredible.

MARTIN: Your work in criminal justice has gotten a lot more visibility in recent years, the whole field has. But for a lot of years, you know, it’s almost like, people doing work in this area were, in some ways, a marginalized group themselves, you know. Spending a lot of time with marginalized people and just — let’s just be clear, it just hasn’t been one of those fields that’s gotten a lot of attention and respect from the outside world. I think that’s fair to say. So, what do you — what went through your mind?

MILLER: All those things — I mean, the fact that this is something I’ve been working on for, you know, close to 20 years. And you feel sometimes like you’re working relative obscurity. I mean, it helps that we have conferences and, of course, activists on the ground doing very important work, and they have long before I got in the game. And there are scholars who’ve been working on these kinds of questions. But largely, as you’ve mentioned — I mean, we this is a group that our country, you know, has learned to ignore. Has learned to overlook. Has learned to be afraid of. And so, to work — to do work, especially if you have something like a vision of justice, you know, on behalf of a group trying to understand their lives. I have spent, probably, close to a decade trying to convince people that these are questions worth answering, you know. It’s just wonderful for the folks who I think have been overlooked, feared, and disdained forever in our country.

MARTIN: So, Professor Miller, one of the things that is powerful about your receiving this award in this year is that this is considered to be the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the era of mass incarceration. And we traced to 1972 for a number of, sort of, a policy reasons. Your work focuses, not just on the effect of incarceration but the long tale of incarceration and the effect that this has both on them and their families and their communities. So, can you just talk a little, you know, about what questions you are interested in in the current moment.

MILLER: Oh, I very much appreciate this question. And that timing is incredible, phenomenal, and very important. I think we’ve recognized as a society that our experiment in human caging, as this move to arrest and incarcerate more people each year, we did this for 27 straight years beginning in 1972. And even with modest declines, we are still looking at somewhere around two million people sitting in a cage on any given day. 19 million people with a felony record. This is incredible. And their life chances are constrained in ways that I’ve tried to document in my work. And it affects their families, and their friends, the society as a whole. So, what does it mean for us to have engaged in these practices? What does it say about us? How do — how did the institutions that we have built? How are they shaped by our fear of violence, and crime, and criminals in this kind of thing? How does it show up in schools and the workplace? So, that’s work that I try to take on.

MARTIN: I do want to talk about the current moment. Because as you and I are speaking now, it’s a couple of weeks before midterm elections in the United States. Very consequential in this country. These elections could determine the composition of the congress, which could — which will have very significant impacts on, sort of, the policy directions that are taken in a number of areas. So, I wanted to ask, you know, what you see in the current trends in how are we talking about these issues right now. I want to point out thought that, you know, our data gathering is very flawed. We depend on, you know, local police departments of which there are thousands to send this information into, be accurate about it, and how they categorize things. But I don’t think you can dispute the fact that murderers, homicides, have increased in recent — in the recent era. If the FBI’s estimate is accurate, it seemed that there are more murders in the U.S. in 2021 than any years since 1994. With the highest murders rate since 1996, if those estimates are accurate. And I think you can, sort of, feel it in the air. What level of gun violence is certainly very noteworthy. Why — do you have a theory about why that is? Like, why is that?

MILLER: I think there are a lot of factors that lead to things, like, additional homicides in a given year. I mean, certainly we’re in the middle of a pandemic. I think that doesn’t help with the kinds of social tensions that erupt, that produce things like killings. I mean, so the literature tells us that most murders that happen happened within networks. People tend to know each other. It’s — they’re not — like, random acts of violence. They tend to be tensions that erupt within networks of people. And so, during something like a pandemic, in moments of real economic strain, even if there’s help from the federal government, not being able to work, not being able to leave at home. Like, these things lead to tensions that erupt in things like community violence. I’d like to say something about this report though, and I’m glad the way you framed it. So, there was a 30 percent rise in homicides between 2019 and 2020. The next year the report says that crime stayed roughly the same. This represents the absent flows of crime that happens cynically (ph) in our country. We know that every decade or so, that there is something like a crime spike. But what I’d like to say is that, when you look at these numbers, in relation to the longer trends, not just in the last 20 years, if you look at it over the last hundred years, we’ll see that even at that rate, that the spike that we read in 2021 looks like about half of what the right was in the 1990s. You know, close to half what the rate was in the 90s. So, we’re actually in a period of relative crime decline. But what we’re looking at is a spike from one year to another in the middle of a global pandemic.

MARTIN: It’s interesting to hear you say that because, as you know, this is an election year, and crime is always a political issue in one way or another. You know, we have waves of discussion about these issues. In some eras, people are very keen to take what is perceived as a tough on crime posture and had some penalties and things on that. Sort of, in other eras people are very interested in rethinking certain practices. It seems that, you know, in the era of social justice protests, there was a lot of discussion about rethinking some practices. It seems very different now. What are you seeing?

MILLER: I see a return to the narrative of the 1990s, to the super predatorial narratives. To the narratives of the tough on crime movement. I see in some places where there’s a discussion about, you know, what to do about violent offenders. I mean, we saw this in the beginning of the Trump administration who ran as the so-called law and order president, this is what he said. And so, you know, the Biden ministration has moved away from that. But the ideas around criminal justice that emerged in the racial justice era have really been contorted — I’m thinking specifically about the defund movement. And defund is being this albatross that’s put around the neck of candidates who are not say, so-called tough on crime. And so, the defund movement is really about redirecting resources. The defund movement has really been about making sure that communities have the things that they need, at least, this is my reading of it. The defund movement, in some ways, reflects the positions of people across the political spectrum. So — and if you ask a police officer if they should do social work, they’ll tell you, no, in a heartbeat. They’ll say, no. This isn’t in my job description. This is too much for me to do. I’m overworked as it is. If you ask someone who’s involved in a portion of the, kind of, racial justice movement that we see today, from a police and social workers, they’ll tell you, absolutely not. They’re not equipped for it. You can’t respond to a mental health crisis or you can’t respond to any kind of domestic unrest. Every move can’t be with a gun. The first response can’t be with a gun. The first response can’t be arrest and incarceration.

MARTIN: Given though that this is an election year, it is a fact that there is a lot of political energy in the electoral space directed to crime as a political issue. I mean, according to “The Washington Post’s” reporting, Republicans have spent some $203 million for 600 unique ads focusing on crime. Republicans have spent about $76 million on ads slamming comments by Democrat, real or imagined, as the reporting says about defunding the police. And frankly, you know, according to another poll, the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, you know, 94 percent of voters say that crime is an important issue. And so, given that, are you concerned about, sort of, policy initiatives arising from that, or do you just see it as this more, sort of, an atmospheric response to boast an election, and a sense of unease that people feel?

MILLER: I’m concerned about the policy response that might follow because, you know, policy makers tend to follow the political winds of it — of the moment. For sure, I’m concerned about that. But I also see this as a response to a global feeling of unease, some of which is produced by folks taking advantage of this moment that we’ve come out of. And I’m not pretending as if, you know, crime doesn’t harm people, or that communities aren’t harmed. That this isn’t real. That people don’t have these sorts of experiences. What I’m suggesting is that we are not in a historic rise in crime. We’re hovering around where we have been for some time. And as far as the politics of it are concerned, I see — I’m both concerned but also hopeful about it some steps that we’ve seen in the political space.

MARTIN: Like, what steps are you hopeful about?

MILLER: There have been a lot of serious initiatives that are starting to think carefully about what it means to have engaged in a mass incarceration. For example, the Department of Housing and Urban Development sent out a memo just trying to understand what fair housing looks like in the era of mass incarceration. That’s not exact language. The exact language has to do with fair housing for people with, you know, and thinking about people criminal records. How might the Department of Housing and Urban Development respond to the needs of so many housing unstable people who were, at one point, completely excluded from access to public housing. And in some areas, they’re allowing people to be — to have housing stability, to access public housing. The literature tells us that if someone with a criminal record is able to live somewhere, is able to find work, is able to feed their families, that they don’t engage in crime again. So, this is one of the best crime fighting tool is to stabilize groups that are coming out of jails and prisons. And policy makers across the country are taking this on.

MARTIN: The Biden administration announced in early October that he would seek pardons for all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession. He called and governors to do the same. And that he initiate — he would initiate an administrative review of federal marijuana scheduling. Now, you know, people have pointed out that, I think, about — what, 6,500 people were convicted of simple possession between 1992 in 2021. But are there really that many people who would be affected by this? It doesn’t seem that there are really any people actually serving time in federal prisons right now, solely for marijuana possession. Doesn’t affect people who have been convicted of selling or distribution. So, is this really a significant step?

MILLER: I think so, in part, because I’m an optimist, but I think so for this reason. You know, the tough on crime era was largely initiated by federal law but also by federal pronouncements, one example of this. So, when President Clinton, in 1996, in the state of union address and announced to the world that we will take crime fighting to housing. You know, within six months, the number of evictions increased based on people with criminal records. And the number of applications that were denied to people based on and having a criminal record almost doubled. So, on the one hand, the federal government has no control over what, for example, private landlord do. And the federal government only sets guidelines for even what local housing authority agency do. But this symbolic move, this announcement of this terrible thing had awful ripples across the country and created a wave of housing instability that we’re now still recovering from. And that Hud (ph) is taking up now in this new moment. Well, that was a symbolic move largely because the federal government was responding to things that it didn’t have full control and capacity over it. And it was only directing public housing agencies. And in the same way, this move for this very low hanging fruit, people who are accused of marijuana possession, I think could send a similar signal. Most of the action happens at the state level, not the federal level. And there are already something, like, 19 States that have gone further than the federal government and there are attempts to either decriminalize or legalized marijuana, including my home state of Illinois which takes this next step, which I think is very important. They retroactively expunged the records of people who are convicted of marijuana possession and — which even leads into some ways into distribution. And the reason why that this makes me hopeful is because it opens a door for us to think more carefully and critically about more effective reforms. For example, I think we have to rethink that this dichotomy between drug use and drug distribution, between drug users and drug dealers. Most people sell drugs to use drugs. Most people sell drugs because they’re broke, because they’re in poverty. Drug dealing is a crime of poverty in the same way, in my opinion, that drug users. And I think that we have to push, in every moment, our politicians to think more carefully and critically but the whole of society in more robust.

MARTIN: You’re not in the business of, sort of, advising — you know, politicians on how to talk about things — — except to the degree that you would want your work and your, you know, research-base, database, reality-based work to inform the decisions that they make. But this has been a very difficult period. I mean, living through COVID, coming out of COVID, it’s been a very unsettled time in this country and people are understandably afraid. Even if some of these events have not happened to them, there have been some just eye-popping incidences of violence that have just really disturb people. How do you want us to talk about these issues and think about these issues? You know, recognizing that — you talk about, you know, violence often being within networks, you know, and also being somebody that primarily affects people of color. Well, those are primarily the victims, too.

MILLER: That’s absolutely right. That’s absolutely right.

MARTIN: So how do you want us to think about this, and talk about this, as we go forward?

MILLER: I have a — this is a fairly big ask. But I think that we — what’s very important for us to do in this moment is to take — is to expand our imaginations about the kind of probe (ph) that we want. You know, what do people need to thrive? Not just me as an individual, but us as a group. Us as a society. So, when someone breaks a law, what we tend to do is say, what do we need to — in what ways might I be able to make myself safe? And to do that, I have excluded this person from all manner of things. OK. So, the person who commits a crime, gets released into a world where there’s nothing for them. There are no jobs, there’s no housing, there’s no access that — the access to their family is limited and this is because of the thousands of laws and policy that we have written that make this so. And so, what the literature tells us is that when people are housing unstable, when they’re unemployed, when they’re down and out, that crime rises. That we create the conditions for more crime, not less. And what I’m suggesting that we do is we create the conditions for less crime. That we think about thriving in these communities that are often under invested. It is not surprising that we see more, for example, crimes of this sort in some communities than others. It is unsurprising, because the people are unstable. They live precarious lives. And we have addressed their precarity if we want to see a world with this less violence. In other words, if we think about thriving, we’ll get safe, you know. But what we’ve done is we’ve thought about safety. And we’ve not only not gotten safety, but no one, at least, in these areas are thriving in the ways that I think we’d like to see.

MARTIN: Professor Miller, thank you so much for talking with us. And I do hope you’ll keep us posted on the work that you continue to do going forward.

MILLER: Thank you. This has been wonderful. Thank you.