Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
U.S. Money for Prisons, Not for Social Services
NEW YORK - Many of those who have lost their jobs and homes in the United States due to the lingering economic recession are ending up in jail, according to a new study released by an independent think tank Thursday.
Due to the prolonged economic meltdown, many states are now making drastic cuts in funding for social services - such as health, education, and public housing - but not on policing and prison improvement and expansion. (photo by Flickr user seantoyer) There is a strong link between poverty and incarceration in the United states, according to the report, "Money Well Spent: How positive social investments will reduce incarceration rates", by the Justice Policy Institute (JPI).
The report's findings on the relationship between poverty and the justice system suggests that more and more people from poor and low-income communities are being arrested and jailed, even though nationwide, crime rates have fallen.
"What we have seen in this research is that there is less focus on safety for the poor and more on policing and arrests," Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Washington-based JPI, told IPS.
The report notes that as prison populations have grown, so too have racial disparities in the justice system.
"This is especially evident in arrest and incarceration patterns for drug offences," said Sarah Lyons, National Emerson Hunger Fellow and primary author of the report, who added that without adequate funding for social services, it is less likely that people will be able to succeed and avoid contact with the justice system.
Despite comparable usage of illicit drugs, in 2008, African Americans, who make up 12.2 percent of the general population, comprised 44 percent of those incarcerated for drug offences, according to the report.
Researchers say that disproportionate enforcement of drug laws in communities of colour destabilises families and communities and decreases the likelihood of positive outcomes for children and other family members left behind.
Due to the prolonged economic meltdown, many states are now making drastic cuts in funding for social services - such as health, education, and public housing - but not on policing and prison improvement and expansion.
There are nearly two million people behind bars in the U.S., most poor whites and people of colour, making the United States the number one country in the world in terms of the imprisonment rate.
The report notes that about 16 percent of incarcerated people also experienced homelessness before being arrested.
"Most of these people are significantly more likely to have both a mental illness and a substance addiction, which frequently go untreated," said Nastassia Walsh of JPI. She said that states with higher high school graduation rates and college enrollment have lower crime rates than those with lower educational attainment levels.
The JPI study points out that the stress of living in poverty is a "risk factor" for experiencing mental health problems, and that many people who want treatment can't afford it.
"More than 50 percent people in prisons are suffering from mental illness of some kind," said Walsh, who holds that increased investment in mental health and substance abuse treatment can improve public safety and reduce criminal justice involvement.
According to the study's findings, investments in job training and employment have been associated with heightened public safety. Youth who are employed are more likely to avoid justice involvement. In addition, people who are incarcerated are more likely to report having had extended periods of unemployment and lower wages than people in the general population.
"It's time for our elected officials to realise that creating safe, healthy communities is a better investment in our country's future than more prison beds," stated Velázquez. "Low-income communities and people of colour are bearing the brunt of this recession, as well as of our policies that have led to mass incarceration."
"By shifting our priorities, we can reduce these disproportionate impacts and make a real difference, especially for our country's children and families," she said.
More funding for affordable housing, education and employment could help turn around the lives of people struggling with homelessness, including children and youth, who are particularly affected by lack of housing, the report says.
'It's a question of where we choose to spend our money," said Velázquez. "Until we quit funneling tax dollars into prisons and policing practices that sweep large numbers of people into the system - many of whom pose little risk to public safety - we should not be surprised to see incarceration rates continue to climb."
Last year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed similar concerns about the lack of progress to end racial discrimination in the U.S. criminal justice system and urged Washington to take practical actions to end unjust police actions against the poor and minorities.
The international body documented a number of cases that showed that police officials in many cities were not only engaged in acts that violated the U.S. constitution, but also the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.
The report's authors urged the U.S. government to take actions to comply with that international human rights treaty.
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
47 Comments so far
Show AllAccording to the NY Times 44 million people in the U.S. now live in poverty, the highest number since stats were taken in 1994. Meanwhile Wall Street firms which drove us into deep recession continue to dole out billions of dollars in bonuses to their own privileged. The disparity between the rich and the poor grows ever larger. What kind of people are we? Should the bonus recipients continue to get tax cuts?
Maybe if more people knew about this.
http://www.voy.com/194846/8343.html
nice link, thanks
13th Amendment
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
In other words, slavery is not illegal in the USA if a person has been convicted of a crime. I can just see it now, some large company contracts a bunch of prisoners for workers. I think it was happening in coastal Louisiana during the recent Gulf of Mexico disaster.
They are doing it in Wisconsin with machinists. The prisoners earn a wage, but are charged for transportation and food. It also brings the standard wages down for everyone.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
Don't forget indentured servitude in the military. If Charlie Dickens could see us now! We have made so much "progress". Too bad I can't afford an i-pad
"U.S. Money for Prisons, Not for Social Services"
This is a central issue. It's a societal choice about whether to punish people for not following norms, og encouraging people to comply. Encouragement and mininal punishment is what works to make people support reasonable norms and the consensual aims of society.
It's a main principle of how we liberate creativity in our selves. Or not.
Dick Cheney is heavily invested in the prison industry.
And he should be IN prison rather than benfiting from PIC investments.
If this is true, it should be front page top story on all major news.
Its' very true. Look up CCA, or "Corrections Corporation of America", I believe it's called. They are the ones turning us into the biggest police state the world has ever seen. No other country imprisons as many of it's citizens as we do. But then, no one else is as foolish and follows idiots as easily as we do.
Prisons are good business; how can all those business men resist:
Hum lots of Judges have a little stock in Prison equipment.
Hum Hum I wonder?
corporate prisons
disgusting
corporate prisons
disgusting
Not one among you has anything to do with my class, the 49% of society without 12 years of education who live in the slums class. Tell me true, when has any laboring man been invited home for a meal with you?
So, in complete isolation is the slum laboring class. And the rich ruling class get to police state control us, and by starvation wages enslave us.
And so, when 95% of prisoners in our jails, prisons and insane asylums are laboring men without a high school diploma, and when 25% of all prisoners on earth are inmates of Empire USA, surely such imperialism must hold all world records for cruel and inhuman treatment of political prisoners.
Um... you seem to think you are unique. Poor laboring men (and women) have been to dinner with me, as that describes most people in my family, and some of my friends, and myself in my earlier life before I finally got a college degree at age 50. Nobody handed it to me. I got it over many years while supporting a family.
You should not assume that poor people don't think about issues and write about them. You frequently link laboring with mental dullness. Frankly, I find the stereotype untrue and offensive. I have met many princes of character, sensitivity and thought who work in basements and wear their names in ovals on their uniforms. They have not had privileges and must work to support their families, but that is no indicator of their intelligence.
I do not understand how you can be an advocate of laboring people and fail to see the richness and talent in so many. Please think about it.
Joe
This is why more money is spent for prisons.
Look at the vicious nature of these criminals. This is the product of corporate America.
What will you do?
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/17/video-with-cops-outside-connecticut-home-invasion-turned-deadly/
You're missing the point.
Of course, people who commit crimes should be punished, and of course people who commit violent crimes should be removed from contact with normal society.
But understand this. Punishment does not prevent crime.
The men who attempted to murder the homeowner, who raped and murdered his wife and children, who set fire to the house. Those men _KNEW_ that what they were doing was illegal. They knew that if they were caught, they probably would spend the rest of their lives in prison and, that their lives might end strapped to a gurney in a death chamber.
That didn't stop them from raping and murdering.
The whole point of the article is that we have a choice. We can choose to drive more and more Americans into the kind of meaningless destitution that breeds criminals, and we can accept that more and more of them _WILL_ commit horrible crimes, and we can build more prisons, and more fences around our homes, more guns in our pockets, more police on the streets,... We can become a violent, garrisoned, armed society.
Or, we can spend the money to prevent crime.
Mark Twain once said in half-jest that every dollar we take away from the public schools is a dollar that we'll have to spend on prisons. Actually, he was wrong. I don't know how much more, but it takes more than a dollar spent on prisons to accomodate the kids who turn to crime because of a dollar that you took away from their schools.
In Washington state, the prison system has a ten-year plan: They try always to know how many prisoners they will have to house ten years from now and how much it will cost. Their estimates are based on a number of factors, but the most important one factor is the state-wide academic performance of kids in the fourth grade---kids who will be turning 19 and 20 years old in ten years time. I don't know how many other states estimate their long-range prison needs on grade-school tests, but I've heard that the word is out that it's a method that works.
If you have money to spend, and you want to reduce crime, then spend the money like a socialist. If you want to spend MORE money, and have MORE crime, then spend it on police and prisons.
According to a Pew Center study the annual cost for housing an inmate in 2008 was $29,000. For that kind of money, inmates could get an education from a good university.
But, of course, it's not about what is best for society in general. It's about what is best for the corporations that benefit financially from building and operating prisons. What the study did not mention, is how much profit the corporations are making off the backs of those who are locked up in their facilities.
Source: Rueters.com, "Cost of Locking Up Americans Too High--Pew Study", Mar.2, 2009
Agreed. Nobody wants psychopathic murderers walking around. And I do not pretend to understand psychopathy, but I suppose it is inborn in a few people.
But we have to ask ourselves why we have so many people in prison compared with every other country? If poor academic "performance" in 4th grade is a good predictor of future imprisonment, then it is a signal that intervention is required. Poor academic "performance' of kids in the 4th grade can be indicative of a wide range of problems. We should address those problems, not only to reduce crime, but because they are just kids who deserve our support.
Eliminating the stresses of child poverty would be step one. We should reject all educational policy that blithely classifies kids as winners and losers and find the ways to help kids succeed. Mental health care, support services and jobs for those who do not do well in academic pursuits, better support for distressed families, stable and well funded child-protective services would reduce the numbers who turn to crime. Also de-criminalizing drug use and increasing early treatment would help.
Finally, justice should not be dependent on hiring a great lawyer, or on dressing and speaking like a well-educated white person. Besides the skewed laws which punish crimes likely to be committed by the poor while tolerating white collar crime, legal representation and high status image are why the rich frequently get away with crime and so many poor are incarcerated unjustly. Our justice system should within its own structures and procedures guarantee representation and due process.
So many shoulds.
Joe
But the psychopathic murderers ARE walking around: they are in the government and industry.
True. Some psychopaths get to go to Yale, for instance, and then voila, a career in legalized crime. And they do sooooo much more harm than your simple street psycho.
Joe
As Sabocat quoted earlier: "Are there no prisons; are there no workhouses?"
Come on people. The sadists who run the privatized prison system in Amerikkka need the cash flow to pay off the whores, er, I mean the representatives in Congress and The White House. Plus, those cattle prods, tazers, clubs, tear gas and other torture paraphernalia cost money.
The thing that drives me absolutely crazy is that the righties who pushed for this debacle actually STILL try and tell us that "privatization" leads to cost savings. let me give you an example of how that is TOTAL bullshit.
In Colorado, 30 years ago we spent $70 million a year on the "corrections" sector. That covered everything. Now, after Reagan and his PIRATIZATION policies, we spend 11 TIMES that on prisons. $770 MILLION a year. OVER 3/4 of a BILLION, every year. We spend as much on cannabis law ALONE as we used to spend on EVERYTHING. And are we any safer? Hardly.
Oh, and for the record, the current levels of spending mean that Colorado is 3rd in the country for prison spending while we are 49th in education spending. You HAVE a choice. You can either pay to lock people up and ruin their lives, or you can provide them with JOBS and have a happy productive society. You can't do both. My state is proof of that in spades.
What the hell do you expect when you allow your country to be run by those who think they are superior to everyone else? They are authoritarians, and demand the right to screw YOU up for their own amusement. That is why the whole senate is full of millionaires, they have nothing else to do, and they are bored. Politics is nothing but FUN for them. Too bad it allows them the kind of selfish, pig headed arrogance that we've seen for the last 30 years, with the right destroying everything that had been built in the name of "conservatism". They aren't interested in conserving anything, just tearing down everything we already have that makes life livable for US.
Those with too much should NEVER be allowed to run for office. They will skew EVERYTHING towards themselves, because they LIVE by greed. The last 30 years is a perfect example of that. And when it comes right down to it, they are truly UGLY people who have NO redeeming purpose for being alive. This country would be FAR better off without them. They offer nothing and want to lock us all up for not being rich. I say we should remove their wealth from them, leave them on the street somewhere, and we will just see how much God wants them to be rich. If that is true, they will be again. If not, what have we really lost? just another greedy, selfish jerk off who wants to tell us all how to live. Oh, and I'd LOVE to see them out hunting for a gig like the rest of us. Turnabout is fair play, after all. They have ruined us, I think it's only fair that we do the same to them.
"Those with too much should NEVER be allowed to run for office. They will skew EVERYTHING towards themselves, because they LIVE by greed."
You are absolutely correct. Unfortunately, the wealthy have now taken complete control of our government.
According to information readily available on the internet, half of our members of Congress are millionaires, and the same is true of the Supreme Court.
This is certainly not a "cross-section" of the American public!!!!
Need I say more??????????
Perhaps if so much was not spent on futile debilitating wars, the country would have money for health, social programs and general prosperity.
I and probably many others have advocated dissolving the Durand line, since in reality it exists only on paper. There might actually be a glimmering of sanity and hope ahead as long as the 2% who like the spoils of continuous war don't sabotage the process:
"An Afghan bone for Obama to chew on"
By M K Bhadrakumar -Always a good read
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LI18Df02.html
If you would like to see where we are headed, read London's "The Iron Heel."
The Oligarchy that controls the two-backed beast (one back has an "R" and the other a "D." If you pull them apart and squint down the gap, you will see a handful of very wealthy and powerful individuals and corporations pulling the strings. They don't care which side wins for they own them both) wants a society of hungry, homeless, ill, serfs who will work for a few cents or a meal for their families. These serfs also provide endless cannon fodder for our wars of greed and power.
I have an army manual covering the treatment and use of civilian forced labor. Do you think perhaps that they have already planned ahead? Remember the KBR no-bid concentration camps? I certainly have not heard of them being dismantled and returned to farmland.
Do you have any documentation about the KBR camps? Not that I doubt you at all, but if I say it without backup, people will think I am crazy.
Joe
Here are a few links.
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1940
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/kbr-awarded-homeland-security-contract-worth-up-to-385m
http://infowars.net/articles/february2008/210208Camps.htm
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1062
Read the text of the Executive Orders in the last link. Camp locations are also listed.
There are any number of links on the subject.
Thank you minitrue. I took a look and will read more.
Joe
'twas ever thus. Welcome to AmeriKKKa!!!
This article raises an excellent issue that usually gets lost along with poverty and homelessness, as well as racial discrimination in America that makes Europe look like Mickey Mouse. Politicians on both sides of the aisle only deal with those issues around election time and then forget about them.
There are over 2.4 million behind bars and 35% of them have committed public order crimes that do not warrant incarceration but this is no surprise since investing in people has a low priority in the USA.
A larger threat to American society is political crime which goes unpunished, that affect human and civil rights and other freedoms that have been curtailed. Of course, Americans have been taught that these crimes, ie the security state, are not to be considered criminal but for their own good in the fight against terrorism.
It's the Prison Industrial Complex [PIC] and this is the way they increase profits. They bribe the representative to pass laws to increase incarceration rates and then bribe judges to dole out prison sentences. Just recently 2 judges in Pennsylvania were found guilty of incarcerating juveniles and had received $2.6 million by the PIC for doing so. Their is a lot of corruption in the prison system, from construction contracts and contracts to provide services to the prison. This self processed "christian country" houses about 1/2 of the world prisoners. With 6% of the worlds population the USA has 1/2 of the worlds prisoners and the USG constantly attacks the Taliban? The USA's defense budget exceeds the defense budget of the rest of the world combines and houses 1/2 of the worlds prisoners. The only growth industries in the USA, Pentagon/spy agencies, prisons and weapons.Their is something wrong with this picture, but then god works in obvious ways to reveal hypocrisies that is the USA.
It may be that the USA houses 25% of the world's prison population rather than 1/2, so I may stand corrected.
Arbeit macht frei
Recently visited local humane society shelter to give a few animals some exercise/play time. The caged dogs looked out with huge, mournful eyes and a hopeful energy. Then, I noticed several young men, hardly more than teenagers, in their white county jail uniforms. What hope do they have??
When minimum-wage fast food or canon-fodder jobs can attract the creme, how does one plan a life with a felony conviction??
Have we sentenced a multitude of once promising young men and women to permanent servitude? Oh, yes, they also worked efficiently at my next stop, the recycling center.
As it has been said: "Socialism or barbarism!".
And we've got barbarism...
Do any of you suppose those at BP will join the prison system for their crimes against humanity and nature?
Na, they'll just lock up the poor sucker who lifted cheese from the grocery store.
Do you recall the story here on CD? 8 YEARS IN PRISON FOR STEALING CHEESE!
Prisons are the new money maker.
Once the British Prison system was filled with people stealing loaves of bread or Cheese, and the "Prison ships" filled to the brim , the Empire started shipping its excess population of Prisoners to "The Americas".
It rather ironic that the 13 colonies in becoming the "United States of America" learned that they could in fact make money off an ever expanding prison system on the behalf of its Corporations.
Just as it ironic that the "Tea Party" held in Boston Harbor targetted the Corporation called "The East India Company" while the "Tea Parties" of today advocate even more Corporate rule.
You can't make this stuff up. It like some great big joke is being played.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
In my Deep (ly Indoctrinated) South state the unemployment level has exceeded the national average for half a decade. The only big business being built right now is a private prison in the central eastern part of the state. The public TV "Nightly Business Report" heralded this "good news."
Arianna Huffington has been taking guff from the corporate McNews "reporters" who have recently interviewed her over the title of her latest book that includes the language "Third World America." The scoffers included the well-heeled black female reporter on the PBS News Hour.
I visited the large wasteland, post apocalyptic apartment complex of a former black female co-worker of mine yesterday. 90% of the apartments were vacant and good third of them had windows boarded up from crime and vandalism. It's not even safe to walk to and from the bus stop down in there. The slum lords running it do no repairs. I would commit suicide if I had to live in such a place. At night it must be an absolute horror. Our ruling elite and McMedia whores should all be locked up in such places for 3 to 5 years.
Always good to have thoughtful articles about our ridiculous prison system.
Although, I did misread one of the lines in the article as saying, "it is less likely that people will be able to succeed and avoid eye contact with the justice system"
Hmm.
The problem with our prison system is that 60% of it shouldn't even exist. Drug use should not be a crime, that is a mental health issue which should be addressed by Doctors.The real crooks, the rapists, child molesters, robbers,violent crimes, and of course my favorite "white collar crime" is all that should be in prison. That's about 750,000 people Nationwide. The rest, the other 1.25 million should be anywhere but prison.
However in order for our Justice system to keep lots of high paying jobs, they must put the poorest of us in jail. For a Country that boasts so much about Freedom, they sure do spend allot of time trying to take it away from folks. The amount of whitecollar crime and Judicial crimes has trippled in the last 10-20 yrs. It was introduced by Reagan in what he called deregulation, and has mushroomed into the biggest Heist Americas ever been the victom of. Of course all looking quite legal since they paid the Lawyers, and Judges to change the rules to fit their needs. Not the needs of any ole American just a certain group. This particular group, the Corporations has proved to be quite cunning, and good at committing acts that destroy small towns, and even cities, without so much as paying taxes either, and they get away with it 100% ,but let one of their employees bend a rule, or steal some change, and it's off to jail with you looser !
If O.J. got off because of his money ,and so did Michael Jackson, both of which were charged with very serious crimes, but The Movie Stars that get busted drinking all have to go to rehab and jail , what is that message supposed to send out.
If you murder someone, or rape them, and you are a rich man, you go home....If you get caught drinking, and smoking pot, even if you are rich, but you are a woman, then you go to rehab, and jail (some of the guys too but they get lots of chances first) ! So you are better to just kill someone in this country, and you have a better chance of going home than if you got high.....Our Country has some really strange priorities. Fireman = $30,000 a yr. Football Player = $30 million a yr. ,School Teacher = $34,000, Actress $34 million, Politician = $160,000 but Payoffs to Politician =$160 million.....we just got our values turned around.Flip Flop
America, the Land of the Fee and the Home of the Grave.