Statue of Liberty?
America’s penal system is a state of crisis, a new report reveals. So why is Britain in such a rush to emulate it?
It took the US prison population less than 40 years to rise from 300,000 in 1972 to 2.3 million people today. America has become the undisputed global leader in the rate at which it imprisons its citizens, easily outdistancing other high incarcerators such as Russia, Iran and China. Yet, according to a report just published by the respected Pew Centre, harsher sentencing and growing prison numbers are “saddling cash-strapped states with soaring costs they can ill afford, and failing to have a clear impact either on recidivism or overall crime”.
Here heads are turned to the American primaries as the election roadshow rolls on. What we don’t see, or hear about, are the millions who will not be voting for Clinton, Obama or McCain - who will not, in fact, be voting at all. In many American states not only are people stripped of their voting rights as they are jailed but they are also permanently disenfranchised on release. Human rights lawyer Bryan Stephenson, member of Penal Reform International’s American board, estimates that around one-third of black men in Alabama are no longer eligible to vote. Last time round, the Democrat’s failure to right the wrong of disenfranchisement, which they had identified but classed as a low level priority, is thought to have cost them the pivotal Florida election and then the country.
So why does our government, committed as it is to social inclusion, turn for ideas to America where excessive levels of incarceration are creating and maintaining a growing underclass? Why seek answers from a country which jails one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 and for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine. Admittedly, in the main, British delegations are studying ways in which states are trying to dig themselves out of a hole: sentencing commissions to regulate prison numbers in Minnesota, prisoner re-entry in California, the start of Atlantic Philanthropies’ work to examine the damaging imprisonment of the mentally ill, the success of Red Hook drugs court and widespread attempts at justice re-investment in Kansas, Texas and other states, diverting prison monies into effective community solutions to crime.
Nonetheless, rather than spending much time looking for answers across the Atlantic, politicians could look closer to home for solutions in the UK and among our European neighbours. It would be useful to look to countries that have set out to use imprisonment sparingly, like Finland and Denmark, or to Germany which locks up 92 people per 100,000 compared to England and Wales, where a frenzied prison building programme is set to propel prison numbers to a shaming 178 per 100,000. In Scotland new ministers are working systematically to reduce prison numbers and to rebalance the criminal justice system.
Last week, in a shadow green paper on prison reform (pdf), the Conservative leader acknowledged the need to reduce prison numbers but restricted his party to doing so “in the long term in the only acceptable way by driving down re-offending”. Meanwhile, he would be prepared to build a further 5,000 places on top of Labour’s promised 15,000. When it comes to prisons, politicians of all parties fall too easily into costly macho posturing.
Only a few months ago, at the Local Government Association conference in Birmingham, David Cameron said he was not prepared to tolerate what he described as: “a depressing journey … of three-letter acronyms from an EBD unit to a PRU. From the PRU to a YOI. And finally to an HMP.” This would be an excellent place to start by responding to the needs of troubled young people before they get sucked into the youth justice system for the first time, as an extraordinary 93,730 children did in 2006-7. Some time ago a young woman in prison told me:
“We’ve all been through social services, foster [homes], children’s homes, getting kicked out of school, secure units … I’m sure we’ve all been through that road, it’s like a journey and we’ve all collected our tickets along the way.”
For 15 years, successive governments have allowed prisons to rot in a policy vacuum. Now the Tories have turned the spotlight on our most neglected least visible public service, Gordon Brown must reach beyond party politics and establish a royal commission on the nature and purpose of imprisonment. This would be a disciplined, independent group with knowledge and integrity and a mandate, not to wring hands about the mess we’re in, but with the potential to relocate prison as a genuine last resort. This would enable prison to be placed at the far end of an integrated framework for the development of sensible, long-term social and criminal justice policy. The commission would heed, but probably not dwell on, a timely warning from America.
Juliet Lyon is director of the Prison Reform Trust.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
I wonder why, among the industrialized democracies, it is the English-speaking countries that have such a high rate of imprisonment. Where does Canada fit in the list?
According to this web site:
www.sentencingproject.org
These are the incarceration rates for Canada:
1991-92 35,235 (123)
1994-95 38,516 (131)
1997-98 37,401 (126)
2000-01 35,533 (117)
2003-04 34,154 (108)
In Canada, the prison population has a disproportionate percentage of first nations people.
The best revenue source for business in the US is the military industrial media complex.
The second best revenue source is the US prison industrial media complex.
British businesses no doubt want to create the same economic opportunity in the UK that their US brethren enjoy.
“So why does our government, committed as it is to social inclusion…”
Now, that’s a strange assumption!
It seems to me that the current government is working on a deep belief in “social exclusion.” In the “ownership society,” you are expected to be rich (or trying to get rich) or poor (or trying to keep from becoming poor). It is not a government of “social inclusion,” it’s a government that encourages people to amass wealth, and if they don’t, they’re on their own.
I expect the return of Dickensonian “debtors prisons” to return in a big way as we slide down the back of the fossil fuel energy spike.
It should be made clear when a sentence is passed that the prisoner will be beaten, sodomized and otherwise abused while he is in prison. It isn’t just time behind bars is it? The lack of protection of prisoners is extra punishment and illegal.
America loves it’s prison system. It makes great TV on MSNBC’s “Lock Up”. America should just lock everyone up and get it over with.
Well the prison-industrial complex, along with all the lawyers, judges, court officers must be truly satisfied with their job security prospects.
All they have to do is have their Goons, aka the Police, keep busting non-violent folks for minor offenses and then the courts can railroad them into accepting a plea bargain and shorter jail sentences. Repeat cycle, load, rinse, etc, ad infinitum.
The only things the UK government are committed to are privatisation, the free market and Americanisation. I note that the Lib Dems have now sold out and are pursuing the same path to power. As for American ideas of justice, they are much the same as British ones, and warped by an Old Testament denial of redemption and embrace of vindictive retribution. Making the prisoner suffer is all that matters. Hence the distaste for the law (especially human rights law) and readiness to embrace the idea of extrajudicial killings, as in tonight’s disgusting new drama on ITV.
The probable reason that the anglophone countries have similar trends is that they’re more susceptible to US influence and pressure due to the shared language.
No, you’re reading it the wrong way. America was a British colony — and we took most of its bad habits (economic caste, militarism, etc.). Around 1800-1840 or so the balance of population shifted, and America’s population was greater than its former host country. Also, England had no separation of church and state, compulsory church attendance at various times, and apparently the parishes were also responsible for duties related to conscription on occasion.
Don’t forget its despotic rule over much of the world, mass shipping of convicts for petty offences (cheap/forced labor) to the penal colonies, the opium wars, their role in causing today’s mess (drawing up the colonial borders) in Africa, the mideast and elsewhere.
The more I research the genealogy of one set of my great-grandparents who were born there, the more I see why they got the hell out. Kids were still working the mines in the early 1840’s.
The question is where we — the huddled masses — are supposed to go now. No place to run. Will the bottom 90% be forced to stand its ground sometime in the next 5-25 years or so? It’s clear that our economic system is on its last legs.
Hey, our judicial/”corrections” system is big business. Little if any has been exported YET. We need the employment even if pay for it comes from the rest of us - who haven’t yet been sent up river. What happens to the unfortunate yucks who do time is much less interesting to the rest of us than, say, Monday night football. Don’t mess with big business!
OLD BADGER TOO: You nailed the mindset that races towards the punitive. I know 2 people who watch that disgusting TV show COPS where police knock down doors of people and arrest them as “live action.” These humiliating measures that should elicit empathy instead make those watching feel superior. I guess this is the modern adaptation to “Lives of Quiet Desperation.” To those who watch, the fact that others suffer more makes them feel better about their own useless lives.
Medusa asked: I wonder why, among the industrialized democracies, it is the English-speaking countries that have such a high rate of imprisonment.
Some years ago, I came across a plausible theory. Many of the statesmen who rebuilt the European industrialised democracies after World War II had been imprisoned by the Nazis. They had first-hand experience of prison and injustice, unlike their counterparts in the UK and the US.
It is sad to see that Britain is following our failed prison policies, but “business is business.”
The American people would be horrified at the level of abuse in the US prisons, but then again, we aren’t speaking up loudly enough about Gitmo, etc., so maybe we wouldn’t care.
I’ve worked as a contractor in several maximum, minimum and medium security prisons in New York State. I didn’t witness any abuse in the maximum security settings as we were separated from the prison population at large, but was very uncomfortable about acts and attitudes I witnessed in the other settings. Many of our military guards came directly from the US prison systems via the Reserves and National Guard. More discomforting is the fact that they will eventually be returning the their former jobs with a new level of “education.”
Time to reorganize the whole penal system, starting with early childhood education and interventional programs, decriminalizing certain victimless crimes like marijuana possession, and giving judges discretion in sentencing. Three strikes and you’re out maybe alright for baseball and serious and violent offenders, but it ties the judges hands, as do minimum sentences. We’ve all heard of the guy that got life for stealing a few video tapes, it being his third offense.
I would like to add the following to NoLiesPlease post.
* Prisons are big business for builders, contractors and suppliers and provide jobs in rural areas. Therefore they NEED residents.
* Prisons are our chief approach to mental and emotional problems among the poor.
* The poor self-treat for depression with illegal drugs thus adding to the prison population.
* Prisons are dumping grounds for poorly educated and hopeless people who cannot find a job.
The prisons’ state functions are threefold:
1. Isolate dangerous people from the population
2. Punish crime
3. Prepare prisoners to re-enter legal society
The courts and prisons do a pretty poor job of all three.
The types of things that will get you into jail are pre-defined to be acts most likely to be comitted by the poor. Bombing countries who have not attacked us, negligence of dams and infrastructure, sending kids to kill and be killed based on lies, mortgage fraud etc. etc. have not resulted in anyone in jail, although the human misery they cause far exceed Johnny-Too-Bad’s mugging.
The courts and prisons use the poor and Black populations to feed the prison-industrial-complex. We must take the profit motive out of prisons. Instead we should be building clean energy plants, high speed rails and other things to give jobs to residents in prison based communities. We need to eductate prisoners and potential prisoners to earn a living legally.