Child Poverty and How to Stem America’s Prison Madness
Criminals, especially violent criminals, must be punished appropriately for their actions. Many deserve to go to jail.America has followed this simplistic rationale for decades, and our prison population has ballooned to an all-time high. A jarring New York Times story reports that 1 in 99.1 Americans is currently behind bars. The cost for keeping them there last year was $44 billion, and that price is expected to rise to nearly $70 billion by 2011.
These out-of-control statistics are a national disgrace.
America’s disproportionate investment in corrections rather than prevention maintains what the Children’s Defense Fund aptly calls the “Cradle to Prison Pipeline.” This system is a terrible short-term and long-term investment, both fiscally and in lives.
In the short-term, corrections expenses eat up a massive portion of state budgets. The Times reported, “On average, states spend almost 7 percent on their budgets on corrections, trailing only healthcare, education and transportation.” States are forced not to fund other, critical programs because of the inflexible expenses of keeping the prison system running as is. For example, programs to strengthen schools or improve neighborhoods — programs that would help to steer kids away from crime — are scuttled to fund jails.
In the long-term, more and more people will go to jail (as many as 1 in 3 African American males at some point in their lives), destroying an untold number of families. Expenses on corrections will continue to soar, nudging out of the budget more and more of other possible programs.
Without a substantive national effort to help at-risk kids find a path to hope and achievement (No Child Left Behind pays farcical lip service to this), many are falling needlessly into lives of crime and incarceration. Marian Wright Edelman wrote, “High school dropouts are almost three times as likely to be incarcerated as youths who have graduated from high school.” We need to address the root cause of why many people commit crimes–that they feel as though they have no better options.
Many poor black or Latino men commit crimes years after they give up on school and themselves. This tragedy does not have to persist for future generations. We can make changes to provide support and better options for children before they are sucked onto the criminal path.
We can do more to make those better options available at the critical, early stages of life. Let’s invest as much in vaccines as in hospital beds, so to speak, so that the future can hold promise for everyone. As a double bonus, we’ll also have less crime and a lower tab on corrections costs.
The Children’s Defense Fund assembled a thorough and important report on the Cradle to Prison Pipeline and how to dismantle it. Here are their top recommendations:
• Ensure every child and pregnant woman in America health insurance for all medically necessary services now.• Lift every child from poverty by 2015; half by 2010.
• Get every child ready for school through full funding of quality Early Head Start and Head Start, child care and new investments in quality preschool education for all.
• Protect all children from neglect, abuse and other violence and ensure them the permanent families they need when their families break down.
• Make sure every child can read by fourth grade and can graduate from school able to succeed at work and in life.
• Provide every child safe, quality after-school and summer programs so they can learn, serve, work and stay out of trouble.
• End child hunger through adequate child and family nutrition investments.
• Ensure every child a place called home and every family decent affordable housing.
• Ensure families the supports needed to be successful in the workplace, including health care, child care, education and training.
• Create jobs with a living wage.
It’s hard to argue with the final lines of the report’s recommendations:
“Repealing and not extending the tax cuts for the top one percent of the wealthiest taxpayers could provide $57 billion of the entire estimated $75 billion policy agenda listed above. The war in Iraq already has cost over $450 billion through 2007.”
We can do this if we want to. Both Democrat presidential candidates have spoken of the need to make the American Dream reachable for everyone. They must continue to speak to these points directly. All we need to make this happen is the will from our electorate and our leaders.
Dan Brown is the author of the Bronx teacher memoir, “The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.”
Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
Great article Dan. There’s only one problem….it makes sense, and is therefore useless to the u.s. of i govt.
This cruel, prison and gun culture is the society America wants to export to the world as freedom and peaceful democracy. Thankfully it is being exposed as a fraud. The simple gambit by the right of screaming communist or liberal at any idea of a just society is wearing a bit thin.
Just heard on the news that 1 in every 100 Americans are now in prison. That alone should be taken as warning sign that there is something terribly wrong with this country. However, this should be expected because it is directly proportional to an imbalance of wealth and the misappropriation of taxes toward militarism and other dark purposes.
The more difficulty people have in obtaining what they need, the more they resort to crime. Not only that, but it also adds more stress to their lives, and those under stress tend to be destructive, in one way or another, either to themselves, others, or both. Is this not so?
What are you Dan, one of those liberals?
There is not nearly as much profit in Education as there is in the private prison system, small wonder the prison system is where the money goes. Corporate America (Republicans) go where the money is.
Free ALL non-violent offenders and drug “users” and
political prisoners NOW…PERIOD!
(Oh, Yeah, that’ll happen)
CDF’s list of top recommendations are right on the mark. So simple. The last point says it all:
“Repealing and not extending the tax cuts for the top one percent of the wealthiest taxpayers could provide $57 billion of the entire estimated $75 billion policy agenda listed above. The war in Iraq already has cost over $450 billion through 2007.”
This was from another post i wrote today:
I always heard how kids are so important like a tired cliche. I am here to say it is no cliche. This is serious business. There is an imperative as a species of who we Are, what we stand for, Health, guiding morals. These things all start as kids and with kids the cement is still wet, not hard and set. They are malleable and crave our guidance. It is our challenge to show them the right way - despite ourselves.
It is criminal, the racism, classism that exist in the two Americas today.
It’s the WOD stupid!
We fight crime the same way we fight terrorism: by blindly taking revenge on those who offend us. The whole war on crime is just a training ground and indoctrination for getting people to support wars and violent subversion of foreign governments. But of course, the real purpose is not to stop terrorism or crime; it’s to expand the American capitalist empire.
A friend of mine, a public defender, pointed out to me that the extremely harsh laws against sex offenders (a category woefully wide) has since 1998 ballooned the numbers of people who only have a theoretical chance of parole but in reality never get out. She said thousands have been convicted under this law but only about 10 were ever released. Add the three strikes people who go to prison for life at an early age and you’ve got yourself a nightmare. Looks to me like a modern witch hunt.
I really think that most human beings, by nature, are productive people. We, as a species on every continent that we took root, are sufficiently productive if left to our own devices.
The crux of the problem with the poor is that they’ve been robbed of all real estate, property, equity, etc. by an essentially rapine economic system that owes more to the Middle Ages than anything else. People don’t need to be led around on a leash. They need to be given outright TITLED OWNERSHIP of property, land, resources, etc. and the RESPONSIBILITY and EXPECTATION to look out for themselves.
If you look at what is effective in corrections the system would be completely overhauled-
the penitentiary system was a replacement for the dungeons of the 1600’s, But they were modeled on catholic monastic penitentiaries (thus the name from penitance) and after a short while the monks went to the states and told them that it was not successful in reforming the behaviours of monks and so they had doubts about it working for people in conflict with the law.
parole under supervision helps the prisoner transition more successfuly back into society- eassing in with supports.
So many prisoners would do much better in a restorative justice model, many would need a transformative justice system that respect who they are, their reral human needs- but seeks to equip them with skills to answer their needs in a healthy way.
these are all after he fact solutions and of course so much research show that if you correctly empower people in the first instance (highchair interventions- education based- basic quality of life ensured etc… over electric chair interventions)the you do not need to re-habilitate them.
The government is pretending that one percent of its own people are some “other” it treats as a problem not one percent of its societal base.
it is far cheaper to habilitate them in the first place than to re-habilitate them later.
Is the Government a good model for its citizens- are they effective servant leaders?
Are they honest and truthful in all they say and do? Do they maintain strict integrity in business transactions and in their dealings with individuals and organisations? Do they use money and information entrusted to them with discretion and responsibility?
In Canada where I live there is about 0.13% of the population in prison and we are quite concerned about that high percentage. our crime rate is lower because our education rates are higher. Our prison population ethnic-discrimination is reflected in disproportionately high numbers of First Nations people behind bars, this is a result of our mistakes in our reserve system and coercive and abusive residential school system for first nations people years ago.
Prisoners here still get to vote so ethnic predjudice does not remove those people from having a say, could that be a motive in America- locking up people who will vote for someone else?
or is it the free labor force it provides now slavery is technically illegal? IS it a way to filtre public funds into private pockets there?
Let’s declare a real war on poverty and take POWs. lnstitutionalize these children at birth raise them by the state until the age of eighteen then they can join a Job Corps, Peace Corps or the military; after which they could get a college degree or get occupational training then get a job. We have canidates who declare all must buy health insurance by law. What’s the punishment fines that one can’t pay or jail time where heath care is provided by the state?
Lodowick writes:
“Prisoners here still get to vote so ethnic predjudice does not remove those people from having a say, could that be a motive in America- locking up people who will vote for someone else?”
In answer to your question — I offer the following Leonard Cohen song lyric:
“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died (…)”
Lodowick — another way to answer would be…
everyone on the outside is also “in jail”
peace
This is another disgrace of our rich country, blessed by nature with everythng we need to live a good and peaceful life. We are in Charles Dickens mode. Arrogant, stingy, self-righteous and small-minded leaders would rather put people in prison than help families. They have built up all kinds of self-serving rationales for this. Meanwhile, they are doing very well. Think of the warden in Shawshank Redemption.
We do war because it makes big fast money for some, while a percentage of the young and poor are sent far away into hell to kill and be killed, maimed. The rest of us pay for this in taxes and diminished quality of life, thinking we need to do this to be safe. Many depend on army bases and such for their daily bread and careers.
Prisons are now similar, a big embedded, intertwined system that serves many functions beside isolating, punishing or rehabilitating convicts. Prisons and prison services are increasingly privatized and profitable. We use them in place of drug treatment programs, help for emotional and mental illness, assistance for those who are suddenly poor and cannot figure out how to recover. One bout with illness or unemployment that prevents someone from paying bills can lead to crime. Some states use prison as a source of labor, robbing the population of those jobs.
Sentences are often irrational. The laws are inconsistent and depend so much on the class and race of the accused. An alleged crack user can get more years than a pre-meditated murderer, depending on who they are and how much they can pay for defense. The drug trade is hardly affected. I do not even understand why marijuana use should lead to prison sentence, except that it used to be considered a black drug in the fifties, as opposed to say martinis.
Families are broken up. Innocent children have to go to foster care, which again we pay for. Even telephone calls, the one emotional lifeline for many whose families live too far away to visit, are often provided at inflated cost by those hooked into the prison-industrial-complex.
The taxpayer pays dearly for this crazy system, the biggest and worst in the world. Families suffer.
Whenever you see something that appears to be irrational and destructive, chances are someone is getting rich off it. These would be respectable, tanned and well-dressed people living in enormous tasteful homes in the suburbs.
We need to give young people jobs and useful education. (To me useful includes spiritually strengthening things like music, literature and art). We need to help prisoners get back on their feet. We need to make life less scary. We need mental health workers, and drug rehab workers. We need to lend a hand to young people to help them from becoming parents too early and to help them be parents if they do. We need to establish new and positive industries to employ the rural people whose current source of income is working at the local prison.
Please forgive this long blog. I don’t know how to be more pithy.
Forgot to say - if you see a relative or neighbor in trouble, lend a little hand; get off the computer (yeah me too), turn off the TV, shut off the cell phone, stop text messaging and be where you are. Be kind to young people - they need friends to help them. It’s not much and it’s not going to change the system, but one person can set the tone locally and help people from doing things that will get them put away.
America hates you, most especially if you are an american.
Foriegners: if somebody from the U.S. tries to tell you how to do something treat them as you would treat an armed crazy person. We have more people in prison than any dictatorship per capita. Our health care costs more and serves a smaller percentage of the people than any industrialized nation. Our farms are poison factories. Our schools turn out illiterates that believe the sky god will protect them from the consequences of pollution. I could go on but you get the idea.
Ignore anything anybody from the US says. Well except this; see if I’m not right.