For a nation proud of its freedom and obsessed with the status of number one, it is somewhat ironic that what America excels at is just the opposite: building prisons and locking people up. We do far more of both than any other country in the world. Consider:
- The U.S. incarceration rate of 760 per 100,000 people is the highest in the world, 1) and far exceeds the fifty-year U.S. average of 110 per 100,000 from 1925 through 1975. 2) That incarceration rate does not include more than 100,000 offenders in prison in U.S. territories or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. 3)
- The U.S., with only four percent of the world's population, has one-fourth of all the world's prisoners. 4)
- U.S. state and federal prison populations increased by a factor of 4.77 (477 percent) in the 30 year period from 1980 to 2009, 5) while the rate adjusted for population- the rate per 100,00 people- increased by a factor of 3.61 (361 percent) 6)
- U.S. state and federal prison expenditures increased by a factor of 3.7 (370 percent) from 1982 through 2007. 7)
- The U.S. federal prison population has more than doubled since 1995. 8)
- Non-violent offenders constitute 60 percent of the U.S. prison and jail population. 9)
- The U.S. incarceration rate for Latinos is 2.4 times higher, and for African-Americans 6.4 times higher, than for the white prison population. The disparity is even more pronounced when women are removed from the equation. 10)
- The number of people held in U.S. immigration detention, and the cost of that detention, more than doubled from 2005 to 2010. 11)
One might think China, with its large population, Communist government and the well-publicized tendencies of its leadership to stomp on human rights, would imprison staggering numbers of people. In fact, with a 2008 population four times larger than the United States, China had an incarcerated population that was only sixty percent of the U.S. 12)
Or, among Western counterparts, one might theorize the Europeans would also possess prison populations that match or exceed the U.S. In fact, the European Union, with a 2008 population that exceeded the U.S. by some 200 million, held in prison a population only one-fourth that of the U.S. 13)
Thus, the obvious question: Is American crime that much worse than the rest of the world?
America and Crime
International comparison on crime is complicated by differences in how individual nations view, categorize and report types of crime, but burglary and homicide are two categories where direct comparisons are possible. U.S. burglary rates are essentially comparable to other industrialized nations while the 2010 American homicide rate of 4.8 per 100,000 population remains high versus other industrialized nations. 14)
What is fascinating, however, is that while Americans tend to believe crime rates are rising, in fact they have steadily trended lower, so much so that in 2010, the per-capita rates for serious crime- including murder, rape and robbery- had fallen to a 48-year low. 15)
Why is crime dropping in America? The most popular explanation is tougher sentencing. Laws were passed by Congress and state legislatures in the mid-1980s to enforce minimum penalties for crime, effectively denying discretion to judges when sentencing. In the 1990s, types of mandatory sentencing came into play: for example, the “three strikes and you’re out” laws. Later came the abolition of parole in many states and the federal system, where a parole board could reward good behavior and rehabilitation, in favor of ‘truth-in-sentencing:’ which effectively meant no discretion for parole boards, resulting in mandatory, full-term prison stays. 16)
Certainly tougher sentencing has an impact on crime rates; how much so remains in debate amongst criminologists.
What is not under debate is that tougher sentencing has led to increased rates of incarceration. Carnegie Mellon’s Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck, Chief of Corrections Statistics for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, studied the marked rise in U.S. prison population growth from 1980 through 1996 and concluded that changes in sentencing policy accounted for 88 percent of the increase, and changes in crime only 12. 17) In 2008, America reached an unprecedented and troubling landmark: One of every 100 American adults was either in jail or in prison. 18) It was changes to sentencing policy that was responsible, as a study by the Pew Center for the States explained:
For policy makers, the 1 in 100 milestone was a reminder that state policy choices have driven the rise in prison populations. The explosive prison growth of the past 30 years didn’t happen by accident, and it wasn’t driven primarily by crime rates or broad social and economic forces beyond the reach of state government. It was the direct result of sentencing, release and other correctional policies that determine who goes to prison and how long they stay.” 19)While we often think of crime in terms of violent and serious incidents, in fact such offenses are only part of the story. No discussion of American crime is complete without mention of illegal drugs. As of 2008, drug offenders accounted for 25 percent of the total U.S. inmate population: up from a mere 10 percent in 1980. 20)
The U.S. ‘war in drugs,’ where illegal drug trafficking and usage is criminalized, is viewed with curiosity from many other nations where drugs have been legalized. Such nations wonder why we treat drugs as a law-and-order versus health problem, why we spend vast sums ($40 billion in 2008) trying to curtail the supply, why 1.5 million otherwise mostly law-abiding citizens are arrested as drug offenders, and why one-third of those are imprisoned. 21)
Whether America should be fighting a ‘drug war’ is an issue for separate discussion, but as America does treat such activity as illegal, we must note that such serves as a significant contributing factor in the nation’s high incarceration rates. A 2009 study by the Justice Policy Institute notes the number of prisoners in state systems due to drug offenses rose by a factor 5.5 (550 percent) over the past 20 years. 22)
Moreover, on the presumption America will continue to criminalize certain types of drugs, we will later examine the cost of incarcerating drug offenders versus cheaper alternatives- notably, probation.
Theories of Just Punishment
Why should offenders go to prison? This was a question asked in a national Public Opinion Strategies poll in September, 2010. The principle answers, from high to low in terms of percentage response, were: protect society, rehabilitate, punish, provide justice to victims, and deterrence. 23)
|
These responses mesh well with the ‘theories of just punishment’ described by University
of California – Riverside professor John Perry and Stanford University’s Ken Taylor:
Intuitively, we think of just punishment as punishment that "fits" the crime. But what exactly does that mean? What does it take for a punishment to “fit” a crime? |
Alternatively, you could think that punishment is about extracting retribution – an eye for an eye. In that case, a punishment would fit a crime, if the pain or harm imposed on the criminal was proportionate to the pain or harm that the criminal imposed on its victim.Perry and Taylor go on to state,
It could also be the point of punishment is to rehabilitate the criminal. In that case, the punishment fits the crime only if it helps to make the criminal a better person. But it seems a little odd to think of this as a theory of punishment, exactly. You rehabilitate people by treating them or educating them? You don’t really punish a person when you treat or educate them. At a minimum, punishment requires condemnation. And what about the victim? Isn’t he at least owed some restitution?
Actually, we’ve just introduced two more theories of punishment. The restorative theory of punishment requires the criminal to make restitution for his crimes. The denunciaton theory of punishment says that just punishment should express society’s collective condemnation of the criminal and his acts. 24)
By any measure -- deterrence, retribution, restitution, rehabilitation or social denunciation -- we suspect our prison system is riddled with moral imperfection. Moreover, it's not at all clear that our prison system has a well-thought out conception of "just" punishment at its core. We suspect the system rests on a hodge-podge of hardly thought out, politically driven practices that respond to panic and fear rather than being the product of deep philosophical reflection on the nature of just punishment.” 25)The implication is one or some combination of these punitive goals drive our system of criminal justice and why people are imprisoned. But what if these concepts of just punishment are not the only reasons people are incarcerated in America? What if other, more sinister motives are in play?
Racism surely plays a role in the American penal system given the discrepancy between white, black and Latino incarceration rates. Consider apartheid South Africa in 1993, which had an incarceration rate for black men of 851 per 100,000 population and which, at that time, was a nation almost universally scorned as racist. However, just eleven years later, the U.S. incarceration rate for black men was 4,919 per 100,000: a whopping 578 percent higher. 26)
Likewise, America’s disparity between ethnic percentage rates of incarceration versus percentage of overall population is striking. Perry and Taylor call the prison system “one of the epicenters of racial inequality in America” and note:
African Americans make up roughly twelve percent of our total population, but over forty percent of the prison population. Latinos make up thirteen percent of the total population, but twenty percent of prison inmates… If current trends continue, one-third of all black males and one-sixth of all Latino males will go to prison during their lives, as opposed to one in seventeen white males. 27)Racism is not the only sinister motive behind why so many Americans are in prison, unfortunately.
There is also need for profit.
However distasteful that may be, incarcerating people for profit has indeed managed to establish a homestead in the U.S. penal system, and no issue has shed more light on the problems inherent to private prisons than has illegal immigration.
Immigration and Incarceration
Any poll of hot-button issues in American dialogue for the past decade would include illegal immigration. It’s a matter on which most every citizen has an opinion even if they don’t necessarily understand root causes- which, in the case of Mexican illegal immigrants, is principally economic and stems from America’s own doing. 28) [See Of 'illegals' and corn]
For an illegal immigrant in America, incarceration is increasingly part of the penalty for getting caught.
Illegal immigrants have been one of the principle drivers in ‘making an industry’ of private prisons in America, given immigrants are generally held not in federal, state or local government facilities but rather in privately-held prisons. In 2007, 49 percent of all immigration beds were managed by private firms, whereas only 8 percent of state and federal beds were managed privately. 29) The largest corporations behind these private prisons include Corrections Corporation of America, The GEO Group, and Management and Training Corporation (MTC).
Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the largest. CCA’s Washington lobby spent more than $18 million between 1999 and 2009, with most of that between 2003 and 2007 when it averaged $3 million in lobby expenditures per year. 30) Federal agencies lobbied by CCA included the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Bureau of Prisons, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and others. The goals in targeting these agencies are obvious: influencing immigration policy, influencing labor regulations (given prisoners are paid extremely low hourly wages, on par with slave labor anywhere else in America or the world), seeking support for greater outsourcing of federal prisoners to private prison systems, the privatization of BIA prisons, etc. 31)
While these firms actively lobby for passage of laws that directly benefit bottom lines through matters like tax breaks, incentives and shelters, what is reprehensible is that they also lobby for laws that will directly increase the number of people that will be imprisoned.
Lobbying is actually one-third of a potent triad that includes campaign contributions and cozy government relationships; a triad which was carefully designed and cultivated with one strategic goal in mind: more prisons, and more profit. 32)
It becomes more and more galling the more one thinks about it. How ethically inept is a corporation which actively lobbies for stricter immigration laws resulting in the incarceration of more people, where the lobbying is driven simply by a lust for profit motivated by the desire to fill prison beds and/or build more prisons?
It’s like the cart driving the horse: in a rational world, societal needs alone would dictate who is to be imprisoned, not corporate greed.
Arizona’s controversial Senate Bill 1070 is probably the poster-child for corporate influence peddling in search of legislating increased incarceration. Officially called the “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”, better known as S.B. 1070, the law gives to the police the power to question anyone whom they believe may be in the country illegally, and to detain anyone who cannot prove they are in the country legally. Beyond the concern racial profiling would be the basis for most stops for questioning, the expected result of enacting the legislation was more people placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody: meaning a need for more immigration detention beds. 33)
Interestingly, S.B. 1070 was conceived and drafted at a meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), 34) a conservative organization that has consistently been the source of criticism from groups like Common Cause for legislating policy from behind closed doors. 35) That ALEC meeting included CCA officials, and when the bill was brought to the floor of the Arizona House, 36 representatives co-sponsored: two-thirds of whom were either at the ALEC meeting or were members of ALEC. 36) An investigation by In These Times concluded:
“Some backers of S.B. 1070 are wrapping themselves in the flag all the way to the bank. (Our) investigation shows that the bill’s promoters are as equally dedicated to border politics as they are to promoting the fortunes of private prison companies, like Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group, which stand to reap substantial profits as more undocumented residents end up in jail.” 37)The Problems with Private Prisons
Privatized prisons face many problems that don’t apply to the public prison system.
Franklyly, the very concept of corporations running prisons for profit is dubious given the shareholder-driven incentives to maximize profit invariably lead to cost-cutting measures in matters where skimming the budget is both dangerous and inappropriate.
Take under staffing. When profit is in play, there’s often pressure to do more with less, particularly with personnel. It is one thing if your local Safeway or Target under staffs the check-out line given customers are merely inconvenienced; it is quite another in a prison were both guards and prisoners are subsequently placed at additional and unnecessary risk. Risk may also accrue given the corporate desire to minimize costs may mean that private guards are not trained the same level as government peers.
Salary-wise, private correctional officers are underpaid versus public counterparts. Department of Labor statistics for 2008 showed private guards earning just 75 percent of the median salary of government guards- 38) meaning the best guards likely won’t be working in a private prison if there is choice between the two systems. Turnover rates also tend to be higher for private prison guards: in Texas, one study showed the annual turnover rate for private correctional officers to be more than three times higher than for government peers. 39)
Violations of human rights and incidents of violence are also higher in private prisons: more assaults occur, both inmate-on-inmate and inmate-on-staff, versus in public prisons with comparable security levels. 40)
The Costs of Incarceration.
Nearly $75 billion was spent by federal, state and local governments on corrections in 2008, mostly on incarceration. 41) Given a 2008 U.S. incarceration rate of 753 per 100,000 population, that means the average cost per inmate was roughly $32,600. And a 2009 study by the Pew Center for the States noted the average daily cost of imprisonment was $78.95. 42)
However, these are only the direct costs of imprisoning someone. America’s high incarceration rates affect the economy in other ways, particularly the loss in productivity when people are no longer working due to imprisonment.
Indiana University’s Katherine Beckett and Princeton’s Bruce Western contend that in the short-term, imprisonment lowers U.S. unemployment metrics by removing people from labor force counts, but in the long-term raises unemployment through reducing job prospects for the formerly incarcerated. 43)
Western and the University of Washington’s Becky Pettit subsequently expanded on the matter, noting the adverse economic affect of imprisonment extends beyond ex-convicts to their families, too:
The influence of the penal system on social and economic disadvantage is seen… in the family lives of the formerly incarcerated. The social inequality produced by mass incarceration is sizable and enduring for three main reasons: it is invisible, it is cumulative, and it is intergenerational. The inequality is invisible in the sense that institutionalized populations commonly lie outside our official accounts of economic well-being. Prisoners, though drawn from the lowest rungs in society, appear in no measures of poverty or unemployment. As a result, the full extent of the disadvantage of groups with high incarceration rates is underestimated. The inequality is cumulative because the social and economic penalties that flow from incarceration are accrued by those who already have the weakest economic opportunities. Mass incarceration thus deepens disadvantage and forecloses mobility for the most marginal in society. Finally, carceral inequalities are intergenerational, affecting not just those who go to prison and jail but their families and children, too. 44)While no one disputes that violent and chronic offenders must be imprisoned, the Pew study notes incarcerating non-violent offenders does not make sense either economically or in terms of public safety:
“The expense of locking (serious, chronic and violent offenders) up is justified many times over. But for hundreds of thousands of lower-level inmates, incarceration costs taxpayers far more than it saves in prevented crime. And new national and state research shows that we are well past the point of diminishing returns, where more imprisonment will prevent less and less crime… Our ability to keep communities safe depends more than ever upon our ability to better manage offenders on probation and parole.” 45)Improving the System
Crime prevention programs have been shown to reduce policing, judicial and penal system costs. A U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance report states programs encouraging the social development of children, youth and families in reducing delinquent behavior provides returns ranging from $1.06 to $7.16 for every $1 spent, while programs oriented toward reducing opportunities for victimization produce returns ranging from $1.83 to $7.14 for each dollar spent. 46)
A study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) concluded a one-half reduction in incarceration of non-violent offenders would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion, with $7.6 and $7.2 billion of that going to relieve stressed state and local governments, respectively. Moreover, their review suggested this savings could be achieved with no appreciable deterioration in public safety. 47)
The 2009 study by The Pew Center for the States notes the primary community-level corrections programs- probation and parole- have seen larger population growth versus prisons yet have seen far smaller budget growth. In fact, for every new dollar received by probation and parole, prisons received seven. The study also notes the huge discrepancy in the average daily cost of supervising a probationer ($3.42) versus the average daily cost of incarcerating someone ($78.95). 48) It is why the report described community corrections as “big promise, little support.”
What we see in U.S. criminal punishment is a hand heavy in terms of retribution and deterrence and light in matters of restorative justice: restitution and rehabilitation.
Moreover, for a nation that values money so highly, it is troubling to see so many non-violent offenders locked up given the high cost to society in lost productivity, especially when probation provides a very cost-effective alternative. Fiscally, It is troubling when so little is spent on preventive crime measures given the high return on investment for such programs.
It is troubling to see an American mindset that desires black-and-white, one size fits all sentencing when discretion much better suits the individual and nuanced nature of crime, and it is troubling when offenders are no longer rewarded for good behavior or their work towards rehabilitation.
Perhaps most troubling is an American belief that anything may be privatized, including penal systems; prisons are the perhaps the consummate example of where the private sector cannot do for profit what the public sector does without.
America’s goal of being ‘tough on crime’ is worthwhile as long as the result is sound both fiscally and operationally. However, the cost-benefit ratio of imprisonment versus reduced crime for the current system is well into the realm of diminished returns, and operationally the higher return on rehabilitation and restitution is slighted at the expense of retribution and deterrence. Truly achieving a status of ‘tough on crime’ may mean re-balancing the equation.
As America’s incarceration rates indicate, its penal system is wrought with problems.
However, one of the characteristics of great individuals, and of great nations, is the ability to rationally acknowledge problems and then correct them. Is the United States such a nation?
Footnotes
1 “OECD Countries with the Highest Incarceration Rates: US and Israel Top List,” Howard Steven Friedman, The Huffington Post, July 29, 2011.
2 “10 Statistics You Should Know About Our Prison System,” Criminal Justice USA, May 17, 2011.
3 “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” The Pew Center on the States, March, 2009.
4 “10 Statistics You Should Know About Our Prison System,” Criminal Justice USA, May 17, 2011.
5 “Key Facts at a Glance, Correctional Populations,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 17, 2011.
6 “Key Facts at a Glance, Incarceration Rates,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 17, 2011.
7 ““Key Facts at a Glance, Direct Expenditures by Justice Function, 1982-2007,” U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 17, 2011.
8 “10 Statistics You Should Know About Our Prison System,” Criminal Justice USA, May 17, 2011.
9 “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration,” John Schmitt, Chris Warner and Sarika Gupta, Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010.
10 “Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment,” Peter Wagner, Prison Policy Initiative, June 28, 2005.
11 “The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in the Immigration Detention Business,” Detention Watch Network, May, 2011.
12 “The Prison System,” John Perry and Ken Taylor, Philosophy Talk, May 22, 2011. 13 Perry and Taylor, ibid.
14 “Crime in the United States,” Wikipedia, November 11, 2011.
15 “America’s Serious Crime Rate is Plunging, But Why?,” Chris McGreal, The Guardian, August 21, 2011.
16 “Justice in Trial, Sentencing and the ‘Tough Crime’ Movement,” The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, 2011.
17 “Population Growth in U.S. Prisons, 1980-1996,” Alfred Blumstein and Allen J. Beck, The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
18 “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” The Pew Center on the States, March, 2009.
19 Pew Center on the States, ibid.
20 “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration,” John Schmitt, Chris Warner and Sarika Gupta, Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010.
21 “Failed states and failed policies: How to stop the drug wars,” The Economist, March 5, 2009.
22 “Pruning Prisons: How Cutting Corrections Can Save Money and Protect Public Safety,” Justice Policy Institute, May, 2009.
23 “National Research of Public Attitudes on Crime and Punishment,” Public Opinion Strategies, September, 2010.
24 “The Prison System,” John Perry and Ken Taylor, Philosophy Talk, May 22, 2011. 25 Perry and Taylor, ibid.
26 “Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment,” Peter Wagner, Prison Policy Initiative, June 28, 2005.
27 “The Prison System,” John Perry and Ken Taylor, Philosophy Talk, May 22, 2011.
28 “Of ‘illegals’ and corn,” Stephen Mitchell, Justice and the Common Good, October 21, 2011.
29 “The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in Immigration Detention,” Detention Watch Network, 2011.
30 Detention Watch Network, ibid.
31 Detention Watch Network, ibid.
32 “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies,” Justice Policy Institute, June, 2011.
33 Justice Policy Institute, ibid.
34 Justice Policy Institute, ibid.
35 “Legislating Under the Influence- Money, Power and the American Legislative Exchange Council,” Common Cause, 2011.
36 “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies,” Justice Policy Institute, June, 2011.
37 “Corporate Con Game- How the private prison industry helped shape Arizona’s anti-immigrant law,” Beau Hodai, In These Times, June 21, 2010.
38 “A Brief History of Private Prisons in Immigration Detention,” Detention Watch Network, 2008.
39 Detention Watch Network, ibid.
40 Detention Watch Network, ibid.
41 “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration,” John Schmitt, Chris Warner and Sarika Gupta, Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010.
42 “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” The Pew Center on the States, March, 2009.
43 “How Unregulated is the U.S. Labor Market? The Penal System as a Labor Market Institution,” Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett, The American Journal of Sociology, Volume 104, Number 4, January, 1999.
44 “Incarceration and social inequality,” Bruce Western and Becky Pettit, Daedalus, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 139, Number 3, Summer, 2010.
45 “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” The Pew Center on the States, March, 2009.
46 “Investing Wisely in Crime Prevention- International Experiences,” U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, September, 2000.
47 “The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration,” John Schmitt, Chris Warner and Sarika Gupta, Center for Economic and Policy Research, June 2010.
48 “One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections,” The Pew Center on the States, March, 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment