Crime and Punishment
Plainly put, there are too many people incarcerated in the U.S., and the situation has gotten worse over the years. That conclusion is inescapable. I’ve spent some time looking through Department of Justice statistics on crime and punishment and comparing U.S. incarceration rates to those of other countries. The U.S. doesn’t necessarily lead the world in overall crime rates, but it leads in incarceration rates, although inaccurate reporting in some countries affects the data.
The costs associated with keeping people in prison, at all levels, is unacceptably high in both financial and social terms. The average cost per prisoner is around $25,000 per year, based on Department of Justice data from several years ago. The social costs are more serious. When a person is locked up in prison, his (prisoners are overwhelmingly male) entire life is changed, and not just by the amount of time spent behind bars and the abuse he suffered while there. He spends the rest of his life marked as an “ex-con” and suffers the impact of that label forever. That suffering is shared by his family and, worse, by his children.
Is there anything we can do to reduce the number of Americans in our prisons and jails? I think there is.
According to the Department of Justice:
As of June 30, 2008, over 2.3 million inmates, or one in every 131 U.S. residents, were held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails, regardless of sentence length or conviction status. Since yearend 2000, the nation’s prison and jail custody populations have increased by 373,502 inmates (or 19 percent).
Prisons don’t resolve the problems of society, and they accomplish little by way of rehabilitation. What they do mostly is exact society’s revenge through denial of freedom and infliction of abuse at the hands of other prisoners and sometimes correctional officers. People rarely come out of prison as better citizens, ready to contribute to society. Recidivism rates make that point, as do the often insurmountable obstacles prisoners face after they’re released.
I think we need to take a completely different approach to the concept of punishment for convicted criminals:
— Incarcerate only those offenders who constitute a reasonably predictable physical threat to the rest of society. We gain nothing from paying the room, board, and administrative costs of people who aren’t going to hurt us.
— Punishments other than incarceration can be just as effective and provide equal deterrence — loss of reputation, heavy fines, serious community service, confiscation of gains from criminal activities, and prohibition from engaging in certain activities or professions in the future.
— Don’t incarcerate drug users and low-level dealers. All that accomplishes is turning otherwise normal people into actual criminals. (Legalizing, taxing, and controlling currently illegal substances is the best solution, but that’s a topic for another day.)
— Those people who are convicted of crimes but not incarcerated should be on probation for the time they would have been in prison. Violations of the terms of probation would result in incarceration for the original full term of their offense. This provision for probation wouldn’t necessarily apply to just first-time offenders. Judges and/or juries could decide on a case-by-case basis, with potential to physically harm others as the standard.
Policies such as these would protect us from physical harm, save a lot of taxpayer dollars, and result in more positive outcomes for the offenders involved. Frankly, I don’t care if white collar criminals serve time in prison because they aren’t going to be beating and shooting people on the streets. The same is true for drug users and low-level dealers, provided they aren’t violent and likely to commit violent crimes in the future.
Is there some risk in these policies? Sure. But I doubt that the risk is any greater than what the present system generates. Many people come out of prison more violent than they were when they went in, which means we gain nothing at all by locking them up.
(Department of Justice information and statistics on prisons can be found here, here, and here.)
(This article was also posted at Opinion Forum.)
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Murderers must simply rot in jail.
I believe there are some prisoners in the U.s. that need to be released except murders child rapist and such but I do believe rehab which most prisons don’t have and there is some who don’t belong. I think Obama needs to pass the law they have to serve at least 70% of there time but to be evaluated before release. I stand firm on some of our laws but I have a 29 yr. old son who had his eyes blown out 2005 by a convicted felon who by the way who was wanted in 3 different counties in Floeida all he got for everything was 3 yrs inprison for having a handgun and 5 yrs. probation for blowing my son’s eyes out what is the just in this let me speak out to congress
i did 6 years in the adx super max prison in florence CO and im out here doing well after 15 years in prison and i changed because i wanted to, but we need to help these people when they are there and when they come out in order to keep our communities safe.