Prison System a Costly and Harmful Failure: Report
WASHINGTON - The number of Americans in prison has risen eight-fold since 1970, with little impact on crime but at great cost to taxpayers and society, researchers said in a report calling for a major justice-system overhaul.
The report released on Monday cites statistics and examples ranging from former vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby to a Florida woman’s two-year sentence for throwing a cup of coffee to make its case for reducing the U.S. prison population.
It recommends shorter sentences and parole terms, alternative punishments, more help for released inmates and decriminalizing recreational drugs as steps that would cut the prison population in half, save $20 billion a year and ease social inequality without endangering the public.
“President (George W.) Bush was right,” in commuting Libby’s perjury sentence this year, the report says. “But while he was at it, President Bush should have commuted the sentences of hundreds of thousands of Americans who each year have also received prison sentences for crimes that pose little if any danger or harm to our society.”
The report was produced by the JFA Institute, a Washington criminal-justice research group, and its authors included eight criminologists from major U.S. public universities. It was funded by the Rosenbaum Foundation and financier George Soros’s Open Society Institute.
Its recommendations run counter to broad U.S. public support for getting tough on criminals through longer, harsher sentences and to the Bush administration’s anti-drug stance.
SHIFTING ATTITUDES
But the report cites state and local trends such as medical-marijuana laws as signs attitudes toward punishment may be shifting.
More than 1.5 million people are now in U.S. state and federal prisons, and the number has risen each year from 196,429 in 1970, the report said. Another 750,000 people are in U.S. jails.
Although the U.S. crime rate declined in the 1990s and much of this decade, it is still about the same as in 1973, it said. But the prison population has soared because sentences have gotten longer and people who violate parole or probation are more likely to be imprisoned.
“There is no evidence that keeping people in prison longer makes us any safer,” JFA President James Austin, a co-author of the report, said in a release.
The report said the prison population is projected to grow by another 192,000 in five years, at a cost of $27.5 billion to build and operate additional prisons.
At current rates, one-third of all black males, one-sixth of Latino males, and one in 17 white males will go to prison during their lives.
Women represent the fastest-growing segment of the prison population, the report said. The result is increased social and racial inequality.
“The massive incarceration of young males from mostly poor- and working-class neighborhoods, and the taking of women from their families and jobs, has crippled their potential for forming healthy families and achieving economic gains,” it said.
© 2007 Reuters
Corrections in America continues to be a major problem…
But for some reason we’re more concerned with banning gay marriage. Haven’t heard a whisper about this in any of the “debates.”
Locking people up is a wonderfully profitable business. Besides, being poor makes you “doubly” bad in most cases, all the more incentive to “rehabilitate” an ever larger number.
But, but, it’s a growth industry. Don’t kill the golden bull!!
The Perpetual Prisoner Machine by Joel Dyer, 2000, Excerpts
Not since the Cold War increases in defense spending has any sector of government experienced such dramatic increases in expenditure as those in the criminal justice arena. During the last twenty years, corrections spending has escalated three times as fast as defense expenditures.
In the 132 years between 1852 and 1984, the state of California only built a total of twelve prisons. In the eleven-year period between 1985 and 1996, the state built sixteen more.
Supplying goods and services to prisoners, guards, and police has become a massive market at more than $100 billion annually. Today’s prison industry has its own trade shows, mail-order catalogs, newsletters, and conventions. “Justice” trade shows are no different than a gathering sponsored by the computer or auto industries – a combination of showbiz, commerce, and party.
Many rural communities have become major players in the new prison industry. In an effort to lure badly needed jobs to their communities, many a rural county has turned to prisons as a “recession-proof” economic resource. They don’t pollute, they don’t go out of business, they don’t get downsized.
At last count there were twenty-six private prison corporations, that number is shrinking quickly as the incarceration business is consolidated.
http://theformofmoney.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2007/1/17/2656888.html
Best book on the subject: The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison, by Jeffrey Reinerman. He presents a compelling explanatory theory of the “Pyhrric Defeat,” whereby failure to solve social problems serves powerful interests, both consciously and unconsciously. In other words, when a policy (such as expanded incarceration) fails to solve the real or perceived problem it is supposed to solve, but the failure serves to deflect attention from economic injustice, or creates wealth, or “explains” other failures, the failure is accepted as convenient, and even reinforced with further action. It’s not a conspiracy theory, more of a theory of opportunistic, even passive, social engineering, of which the prison system is but the most destructive example. Read it if you can find it, it’s a great book.
“Prisons for profit?” As long as they make money, it’s a “Go?
While Americans stand around euphorically sucking on a dollar bill, their country is falling down around their ears. I’m beginning to think there’s something in the paper and ink! It’s disgusting.
That one big number is hard to absorb, but the prison system in Oregon costs about $33,000 per person housed. That’s be the salary of an entry level teacher for about every two prisoners. Nice way to prioritize, eh?
Hardly anyone should be surprised by this. Most in the middle class assume that the system has utilitarian purposes, but, if it did, the outrageous prison-industrial complex could never have formed. The more one learns about the US government, society, and culture, the more one understands that most governmental and other US social systems provide superficial utilitarian justifications for their structures and actions, but have the intent and the effect of fortifying the existing hierarchy/oligarchy.
The American Way is to experiment with solutions to society’s problems for the economic benefits of the experiment. The experiment serves the capitalist’s agenda to keep the rabble’s noses to the grindstone and keep the money flowing to the capitalist. Similar experiments in other places and times cannot be considered because this input does not fuel the economy and may cause the capitalist to lose influence and control over the rabble. The expansion of incarceration is yet another of these experiments. When framed as an experiment, its failure is rationalized. Everyone shrugs and moves on to the next experiment - the capitalist to be enriched, the rabble to bear the costs.
So what is surprising about an American institution that fails to fulfill the needs of our country? All our institutions are failing us.
Hoa binh
We have designed our felony system in order to practice political repression and thus deny a significant number of voters their rights. I have yet to hear a single candidate for office explore and deplore this disgraceful activity, much less pledge change.
John Freeman, you mentioned the salary of a teacher in your post - there’s a direct correlation between education and incarceration. In my experience with jail and a little prison, there was one overwhelming fact: the vast majority of my fellow inmates had little, if any, formal education.
I will make it clear right now that there are plenty of people who deserve to be in a prison because they are violent and a true threat to society. I, as most everyone else, believe that a person who commits a crime must be punished. Laws are made so that a society is possible and we can all enjoy a sense of security and justice in our lives. However, I believe that education is vital to reduce the number of those in jail. Almost all of those incarcerated today have grown up in a world without a chance to realize their potentials and discover the wonders of this world and the possibilities. Instead, those from poor families tend to be the most vulnerable to becoming involved in crime and are the first in line to do what they have learned best, and what they have learned best is how to survive in their world where criminality offers the best hopes of eating and getting by day to day.
For any of the readers who have spent a month or more locked up, they will probably agree with me that there is an amazing amount of prisoners who are extremely talented and intelligent. If only they had been afforded the same opportunities in life as those who were raised in a stable family where hard work and education were seen as essential qualities and ethical values - would they have been attracted to a life of crime and all the misery that entails?
As with most issues, this is a very complicated one. However, I am writing this post to stress merely one area that is the cause of so many ending up behind bars and then having to drag this chain along with them for the rest of their lives when seeking employment, voting, and many other civil rights those who are not felons can take for granted. Everything is against you and the odds of somehow staying out of trouble until you have a stable life and job that pays well enough aren’t very good. Again, this is a stage after imprisonment to educate and support those who are serious about turning their lives around.
This may sound like coddling or being too kind to an ex-felon, but the payoff is well worth it. Your tax dollars won’t be spent on housing yet another prisoner and a person who has made a mistake in their live will have had a chance to become an asset to society and not a parasite.
Not to mention in detail any of the legal troubles an ordinary citizen would have encountered if they had done any of the things our president did during his youth, George Bush’s recent veto of the child education bill is only paving the way for more people to spend some time in their life in jail.
For me, education is the keystone to reducing ctime.
When things go wrong with society, its blame the victims time. The prisons failure story is nothing new. Eighteenth century England locked up all its social problems, mainly the indebted and starving masses. Old ships on the Thames river, the Prison Hulks, kept some of the overflow of incarcerated from the Justice system that thought a hungry child stealing a loaf of bread warranted a decade in goal. Hangings were common. Drunkenness was rife. The government had no answer, but to continue on imperial wars and colonial acquisitions, providing handy destinations for convict transportation. Likewise the government of United States of Israel, is attempting to export its internal problems by keeping attention focused on external enemies of no real threat. The goals are not meant to be a solution for the incarcerated. They are meant to keep the rest of us in line.
dave c said,
“If we end the waste of our tax dollars they call the War on Drugs there will instantly be far less criminals to incarcerate.”
but then what are the police going to do? we can’t have THEM being laid off now can we? we are a “law and order” society!! roflmfao
hybridoma2001 says:
“Your tax dollars won’t be spent on housing yet another prisoner and a person who has made a mistake in their live will have had a chance to become an asset to society and not a parasite.”
then what segment of society CAN the people dehumanize??? we’ve tried blacks, and continue to do so, but it gets us in trouble. arabs are fun to dehumanize. but the best segment are exfelons. if they don’t like it, send em back to the joint! this is a “law and society” nation a la g.w. bushy.
hybridoma2001–Your words are as poignant as I am sure they were, hard learned.
Perhaps the best solution would be to provide ALL lawmakers with a few nights in prison so they can have as well earned a perspective.
Many of those prisoners are working as slaves making everything from clothing to license plates. The prison system is profitable indeed, on so many level.
The prison system puts bread on my table.
I would like to point out a corelation between lack of education and prison as well.
In my state, Colorado, we are 49th in school spending, but 3rd in prison construction. We tend to jail people for just about everything, unless we can screw them by putting them in a probation program, and make them pay for it. We have no industry left to speak of, we’ve lost jobs right and left like everyone else in the country, and still we spend, at least in Boulder county, $2,000 on every plea bargain, and $5,000 on every trial. It costs us $24,000 to lock up someone for a year, but it costs FAR less to give someone a decent education.
The stupidity of locking up people for things like cannabis is awe striking. At least there is some hope, as the voters of Denver just passed a measure to tell the police to make Cannabis related issues their lowest priority. That doesn’t help the rest of the state, however, where there are still stupid fines and jail terms for those caught with any quantity. One town, Lafayette, just had a city council idiot who wanted to pass a law that made ANY possession of any amount a mandatory year in jail. It would have bankrupted the city before the first month was over. The foolishness never seems to end.
We screwed with 823,000 Americans in this country for weed alone, last year, and you can bet the number will be higher this year. The billions spent on this could put those sma epeople to work doing infrastructure repairs, if nothing else.
The hypocrisy of this is just amazing, seeing as how these laws were passed by those who drink and smoke cigarettes. Alcoholic tobacco addicts should not be making decisions for other’s “drug” use. It’s time to end the hypocrisy. We simply can’t afford to keep this up. We already have more people in jail than any other country in the world, and that includes China, who has several times the population and is not a supposedly free society.
I’ve been saying ever since Reagan that the republicans won’t be happy until half of us are in prison and the other half are watching us. Then they can talk about full employment. But this is NOT how Americans should be treating each other.
I am not surprised at all that we keep sticking more low risk people into prison. We are running an anecdote based society. One well placed vaguely real sounding anecdote and we will start wars, incarcerate tens of thousands, reject global warming, destroy the environment, and select leaders.
Seldom does anyone go back and see if there is truth, logic, or results. Typically, we just cut taxes for the wealthy, cut programs for the poor, and move on to the next anecdote.
Half of the U.S. population in State and Federal prisons are n for drug related crimes. It wasn’t that long ago (1930?) that alcohol was considered a ‘narcotic’. If George W. were around then, I guess most Americans would have been locked up. Why do the poor disproportionally make up the majority of drug inmates? In some ways it is because the rich can purchase ‘legal drugs’ with a prescription thereby avoiding any legal hassle while still getting just as stoned as their poorer counterparts.
See the response from Quality Time above–putting these people in prison is a means of disenfranchising the poor and minorities so that their voting rights can be taken away. It’s all a part of the systemic theft of votes in this country by those in power.
MAMMONS, MUGGLES and others have here raised good points. The prison complex functions as our own internal campaign of applied “shock doctrine” economics. It works in a society that loves to punish, that has inherited the Puritans’ notion that if you’re doing well, God loves ‘ya, and if not, you are paying for sins. Making money off of human misery without finding the compassion, ingenuity or motivation to correct it has to count as one of those sins that sears the soul. America has fallen to depravity at every turn, but like the rotting carcas of the great fallen tree, out of its body rise amazing new life forms. Breathe deeply… and embrace your creativity amid this massive transition phase!
Yeah. Like the 70-something grandma here that is going to prison for raising marijuana in her backyard and selling it to supplement her social security. Is she a threat? I don’t think so.
Yet, the organized local meth mob has bought the county law, and operates unfettered.
Go figure.
It is’nt just the numbers in prison, but the family members affected. Prison is also just part of the problem, jails in our towns and county’s are filled with people who are often kept short periods, out for a while and back in again. Their jail time often costs them their jobs, their family their home, and always deep financial difficulties. Working with many in the system, there can be no denying that the financial ability of the offender to pay — greatly affects their time served, the sentence and their likelihood of becoming a repeat offender. The system is necessary, there are people who commit anti-social acts who need to be kept out of the public, but for many they and their families are just plain victums of a dysfunctional criminal system. We need reform and we need it now
I had the great goodfortune or lousey misfortune to work in the Calif.Youth Authority(children from ages 8-23yrs)in the 1960’s Back in that day When I went to work, I was told that there was an 80% return rate and everyone accepted that as the norm. It was a lousy attutide then and it still is. We need to change our attitude Nationally and quit locking up the poor and those nonviolent.
AM I MY BROTHERS KEEPER? YOUR DAMN RIGHT I AM< AND so should everyone else be. What have you got to lose? your “stuff” You got here with nothin’and your leavin’ the same way.get use to it!!
dave c said:
“If we end the waste of our tax dollars they call the War on Drugs there will instantly be far less criminals to incarcerate”
True. A NYTimes editorial today lamented that Bush had only dedicated one and a half billion to the WOD this time.
Incarceration is a racket that is rapidly being “privatized.” You are living in a fascist country that is preparing to incarcerate roughly half the population. What are you going to do about it but whine?
Because George Soros put money into this report, stand back and wait for the Conservative Onslaught!
It is obvious by now that lawmakers overreacted to problems of gangs and drugs in the ’80’s and ’90’s, interfering with “those liberal judges” by mandating sentencing minimums. It’s become a travesty of justice, as noted by several posters above. I’m shocked at the growth of the prison population since 1970. We, the land of the “free”, have the largest prison population in the world and the largest standing military force in the world. It’s clear that as a democratic nation we have lost our way.
Kudos to: Hybridoma2001, hedology, WJM, jmndodge, and mambagis for informative and moving posts.
The one statistic the article neglected to mention is that it isn’t just the poor and minorities that are over represented in our prisons. It’s also our mentally ill. Providing the access to mental health care promised way back in the 1960’s as the asylum systems were closed would help in many ways. Instead, the mentally ill end up going without treatment till they end up getting caught doing something as the result of their illness and land in jail or prison where they often languish extended periods waiting for evaluation then for treatment. Then again, while I’ve managed to avoid both jail and prison, I’ve had mental health care (especially through “public mental health” - and even at what are regionally recognized as “good” providers or agencies) that I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemies…so maybe it’s not the existence of care that’s the problem but the competence and professionalism.
chimpinchief November 19th, 2007 5:24 pm
The prison system puts bread on my table.
And you are proud of that?
Giving smallpox laced blankets to Native Americans made money for somebody. And selling your soul, unbridled greed, the Pentagon and the crazy christian zionists all make money for somebody but I’m not proud of any of them and would consider it an abomination to take their corporate money.
The hottest room in Hell isn’t good enough to buy back the soul of Dickwad cheney, GW shrub and the rest of their cabal. After all georgie the good christian killed the retarded on death row. It takes a very cold person lacking a soul to do that.
Some people would rather starve than take dirty money. You need to find a better job. Nothing personal…..
Almost enough private prisons and private armies to take over the US government and keep the revolt at bay. If its done from the inside and quietly.
Dang! We’re already lead by a gang!
Go to You Tube - Masters of War and take a new listen. Written by Dylan in 1963.
It’s about the evils of the US wars of agression but it’s still timely and can be applied to this subject.
Yeah, keep the poor down, send them to jail or to war since the corporate rich have shipped all their jobs to the Third World. We are all so fucked…
Why hasn’t there been a prison revolt on the scale of Attica yet? Or is it coming?
It’s a good thing that they build so many prisons because now there is room for all of those scumbags of the imperium which we don’t execute when we take over. That’s going to be quite a change for them, having to change their suits with their goofy neckties for prison coveralls.
Sen. Jim Webb is on this issue, which is commendable. BUT,
They have yet to consider what is the central point, though,: like Blackwater, the prisons are contracted out, run for profit. There is no incentive for the system to prevent crime or address societal issues or rehab inmates or decrease recidivism. Each time a person doesn’t enter or return to prison, the corporations lose money. Big problems come when corporate values are used to run a society.
In it’s context that is true, but the real underlying problem is that the U.S. intentionally uses the law enforcement and prison system as a means of controlling society and not as a system to ensure that society is guided by moral principles. For instance, the U.S. government makes billions of dollars off of tobacco sales, even though tobacco is scientifically linked to many diseases and cancers, and they make marijuana illegal, even though marijuana is medicinally linked to many cures.
The justice system sucks. The guy who murdered my cousin in cold blood, while Gary was sitting having breakfast with his family, got 7 years and served three. He then moved in two doors down from my cousin’s parents. Meanwhile, guys that fall behind on their child support are filling our local jails, and minor drug dealers are filling our prisons.
Prison is the new welfare system, the “safety net” for the poor.
We are the richest nation in the world with the highest prison population on the planet. (Over 2 million of our citizens incarcerated).
This is not news to Wall Street; if you want to make a good sound investment, buy stocks in prison construction.
It is hard to believe, but since the founding of our country almost 220 years ago, we have not even come close to realizing the humane societal goals Thomas Paine envisioned for a country to declare itself a conscientious thoughtful democracy.
“When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, then may that country boast its constitution and its government.”
Thomas Paine
A country like this is possible.
Support Dennis Kucinich.
I think there is an obvious correlation between the U.S. having the largest prison population and the greatest disparity in wealth. It’s like reverse Robin Hood: the rich steal from the poor(and the middle class are a part of the poor), the poor, in desperation, violate some law or another, and law enforcement– protecting and serving the propertied class– locks them away in order to make more profits from the privatized jails at taxpayer expense. Then marginal taxpayers can no longer keep up, they get desperate, commit a crime, then go to jail themselves. The predators at the top feeding off the scavengers, killing them off and eating everything themselves.
I do research for a living and one of the curious facts that I came across a few years ago while looking on the SEC web site was that George Bush Sn. was on the board of one of the largest private prison systems in the country.
It gave me a new perspective on the war on drugs.
I see it all now as a war on the underclass.
I really try to keep a positive perspective but some things are so sinister it gives one pause.
Why good people put up with all this I really don’t know.
We all think that it can’t happen to us but it will eventually come around to our doors unless we cower in our homes and start to adopt the rhetoric of the abusers.
Well, if its any consolation, we are going to need MORE prisons after the 08 election
maybe a few tall trees too
Its such a joke ! Lets see , I can live in adjunct poverty and, be out on the streets with no roof over your head,no steady job, sick, and no way to deal with this scary proposition so you do some anti social behavior and get arrested . As a result of this arrest and conviction you get a warm place to stay with 3 squares a day. If you get sick there’s the infirmary and you most certainly learn a trade.
Of course when you are released you have no rights and are branded so that reentering society is very difficult. What happens? Deja-vu
The United States will soon fall behind other wealthy countries (by most measures of prosperity) because we are incapable of developing complex long-term solutions to problems such as crime. Our response to everything is: force, punishment, violence. This approach has not worked for crime and it won’t work against terrorism. Unfortunately, we won’t find that out until we’re practically bankrupt.
We needed a report to tell us that our prison systems need a overhaul?
What our society does not realize is that our overcrowded prison system is a symptom of a bigger problem. Americans need to understand that we need to overhaul our educational system if we want to arrest the dis-ease that is crime.
Well educated people are not the ones that are filling up the prisons…
If you want to arrest the problems with controlled substances (drugs) then legalize them and tax the hell out of them. Why not, we do it for tobacco, it supposedly kills every 6.5 seconds and it is legal.
Now what do you do with the huge amount of people fighting the war on drugs? Hmmm, turn them into ATF and FDA officers to protect the governments tax interests.
Now where can we get about a trillion dollars to make this happen? Oh! That’s right we spent that money on liberating Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t get me started on that missed opportunity to turn Afghanistan’s opium into a cash cow. (TIC).
Stupid Americans…
Just consider crime-ridden prison block amerika a “gated community” like any other Third World jungle enclave. With the “recreational” murder rate the highest in the world, a land that has more people incarcerated than all others combined could simply change the shameful statistics by labelling its love of mayhem not as a crime problem but simply civil war. What else would you call it when the poor are forced to kill the rich in order to feed their families?
And this is the model the neocohen zipper head losers want to impose on the free world. Shove it!
Have you guys checked out WWW.GLOBALGRIND.COM? I read about this story there first! I think it is ridiculous and a waste that so much of our money, as tax payers, go towards keeping people in prison, which only makes them more violent, and resentful. Yes, certain people should be in prison, like killers, child-molesters, people who are a danger to the rest of society. This whole war on drugs is a waste. Frankly, they are probably selling drugs in prison as well. These people should get help, should be educated, there are many more things that could be done to better our society and our future as a country, than crowd the prisons. I think Chris Rock said it best, the reason drugs will never be legalized in the U.S. is because the best drugs don’t come from the U.S., so they loose out on profit. It’s all a business.