By David Trone
I tell those considering a career in business that you have to get comfortable with failure. That’s how you figure out what works and what doesn’t. To find the right way forward, you study those setbacks, collect data, and change course accordingly. Setbacks are not failures unless you fail to learn from them.
Ideally, this would be true in the public sector as well. But the recent chest-thumping about “getting tough on crime” suggests those in charge have learned nothing from one of the biggest public policy failures of the last half-century.
Several decades ago, American lawmakers from both parties decided that ramping up punishments would reduce crime. As a result, the U.S. incarceration rate more than quadrupled between the mid-1970s and mid-2000s, becoming the highest of any country in the world. Annual corrections spending climbed from $21 billion in 1982 to almost $80 billion today.
What we did not get for this massive outlay of taxpayer dollars is perhaps most telling. The deluge of prison spending made no noticeable dent in recidivism: Nearly half of inmates who leave state prisons are back within three years, roughly the same rate as 30 years ago.
Fortunately, thanks to a number of bipartisan criminal justice reform bills enacted over the last several years, we now have a very good idea of what does work to protect public safety and control and the costs of incarceration.
A recent Pew Charitable Trusts report found that raising the thresholds for felony theft does not lead to higher crime rates. These thresholds set a monetary amount at which a misdemeanor theft becomes a felony (and usually at least a year in state prison). In some states, the amounts are woefully out-of-date due to inflation: a 1985 threshold of $500 should be twice as much in 2015 dollars.
More than 35 states have raised their thresholds since 2000, and Pew’s analysis found that doing so did not compromise public safety. There was no difference in the property crime trends between states that changed their felony definitions and those that didn’t. Moreover, Pew did not find any relationship between threshold levels and rates of theft. For example, Pennsylvania, with a $2,000 felony threshold, has a much lower property crime rate than Florida, which has a $300 threshold.
These theft reforms, and many other criminal justice reforms around the country, show that we can cut criminal penalties and protect public safety at the same time. They also keep minor offenders from being saddled with felony records that hamper their ability to find jobs and support their families.
Retailers should understand this better than anyone. At Total Wine & More, I rely on data on our employees, which include many ex-offenders, or returning citizens. We were the first retailer in the U.S. to “ban the box” on our employment applications that asked about previous felony convictions, ensuring that our recruitment efforts are open to all applicants.
What we found is that returning citizens are strong team members who appreciate their second chance and work hard to make the most of it. We actually see lower turnover with returning citizens than with other employees—and lower turnover leads to better customer service and increased customer loyalty, both of which are essential to success in retail.
Are we concerned that returning citizens might steal from the company? We have a robust loss-prevention program, and our data shows no degradation in our numbers and no evidence of additional theft since we began hiring returning citizens.
My hope is that other businesses look at this giant labor pool and ask, ‘Why shouldn’t I use them?’ Our experience suggests that if you rely on information and not assumptions, there is no reason not to.
Decision makers in government should also look at the data rather than be charmed by get-tough rhetoric. In both sectors the data suggest new approaches are needed. Without it, we will not learn from our failures. And that is something to be very afraid of.
David Trone of Bethesda, Maryland, is the founder of Total Wine & More.