Advocates for significantly reducing the nation's prison populations are overlooking the negative impact that releasing large numbers of individuals incarcerated for violent offenses will have on the poor neighborhoods where the ex-convicts will likely live after their release, a fellow with a conservative think tank argued during a recent event in New York.

A drastic and sudden prison population reduction would set up the relatively small areas of the country where crime is concentrated for a return to the lawlessness of decades past, said Rafael Mangual, who is also the deputy director of legal policy for the Manhattan Institute, during a lecture on Wednesday at the Harvard Club.

The event comes as criminal justice reformers are calling greater attention to the nation's incarceration rates, arguing that the "tough on crime" movement of the 1980s and 1990s disproportionately impacted minorities, through a large increase in convictions that many argue was driven in part by factors such as race and access to quality education. States and communities throughout the country in recent years have enacted a broad range of policy changes with the goal of reducing jail and prison populations.

Decrying liberal advocates for drastically reducing prison populations as "playing with fire," Mangual noted that many do not live in poor neighborhoods such as the Brownsville and East New York sections of Brooklyn, New York, where crime figures have made a recent resurgence, even as overall figures for New York City suggest that the city overall continues to be a safe place to live.

"It's frustrating, mostly because it's not going to be those folks who are going to have to deal with the consequences of those decisions," Mangual said. "It's going to be done on the backs of people who already have enough to deal with."

Mangual cited several examples of individuals who committed crimes not long after being released from prison, after participating in plea deals that reduced their charges and their time behind bars.

He believes that conviction records can understate the severity of the violent conduct exhibited by convicts, who often have failed to take advantage of repeated chances for rehabilitation.

"Prison is already reserved for the worst offenses and the worst offenders," Mangual said. "By the time someone gets to prison, chances are they have already received and blown the second chances that so many in the reform camp say the current system denies them."

The event offered a 180-degree view compared to a Tuesday forum in the city at Hunter College on the problems of mass incarceration and how, according to those panelists, factors ranging from selective policing and prosecutions to cash-based bail can tilt the playing field against the poor and people of color.

Among other topics, the Hunter College forum addressed a City Council vote on Oct. 17 to close the notorious prison Rikers Island by 2026 and replace it with four new facilities to be scattered throughout four of the city's five boroughs. The new jails will be built to hold half as many inmates combined than the 7,000 Rikers currently houses.

The goal, according to the city, is to improve conditions for incarcerated people by shrinking the size of the facilities and offering more job training, education and mental health services.

During Wednesday's event, Michael Meyers, an audience member who serves as executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition, asked Mangual whether he does not believe in the concept of rehabilitation or support the concept of plea bargaining.

Mangual responded that rehabilitation is absolutely possible, but that successful programs are often costly and difficult to manage on a large scale.

He voiced support for increased mental health services for those released from prison and acknowledged that without plea bargaining, the nation's already overloaded courts would likely be overwhelmed with cases.

Mangual also pushed back against studies that suggest that those released from prison do not commit new crimes, questioning whether reports that only look at recidivism rates over a three-year period, as opposed to a nine-year period, present a sufficiently accurate picture.

He argued that over a longer period, those with histories of committing violent offenses simply may have more time to get caught.

"Mass decarceration is not going to be good for the communities that are going to be forced to absorb the lion's share of [former prisoners]," Mangual said. "Yet advocates and policymakers continue to choose danger cloaked in the language of social justice."

--Additional reporting by Reenat Sinay. Editing by Katherine Rautenberg.

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