How to address a 'jailhouse nation'

Perhaps most of us are familiar with the statistics: with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, the United States holds roughly a quarter of its prisoners: more than 2.3 million people, including 1.6 million in state and federal prisons and more than 700,000 in local jails and immigration pens. Further damning stats: the U.S. incarceration rate has risen sevenfold since the 1970s and is now five times Britain’s, nine times Germany’s and 14 times Japan’s. At any time, one in 35 American adults is in prison, on parole or on probation. One-third of African-American men can expect to be locked up at some point, and one in nine black children has a parent behind bars.

We are, according to The Economist (June 20-26), a “jailhouse nation.” While many bewail this situation, this article asks how to make America’s penal system less punitive and more effective.

 

 

The first step is understanding the extent of the problem and clarifying what it does or does not mean. Some like to say that the decline in America’s crime rate in the last several decades is due to the increase in incarceration.

While it may be true that “in the 1980s expanding prisons … did help slow the rise of crime by taking thugs off the street,” the article says, “mass incarceration has long since become counter-productive.”

For example, the article points out, the number of prisoners over the age of 50 has more than tripled since 1994. “Many of these people are no longer dangerous, but locking up the elderly—and treating their ailments—costs taxpayers a fortune, typically $68,000 per inmate each year.” In addition, the longer prisoners are inside, the harder it is for them to reintegrate into society.

Prison has had a huge effect on working-class families, especially black ones. “Among African Americans aged 25-54, there are only 83 free men for every 100 women,” the article says. “Men behind bars cannot support their offspring, and when they are released, many states make it preposterously hard for them to find jobs.”

In my volunteer work with people in poverty, I’ve seen that having a felony on one’s record makes it almost impossible to get a job. Employers won’t even consider a person’s application, no matter what the circumstances of the crime or that they have served time for it.

So what does this article recommend?

1. End the war on drugs. In fact, the drug war is ebbing: in 1997, drug offenders were 27 percent of all prisoners; now they are around 20 percent.

2. Amend or repeal rules that prevent judges from judging each case on its merits. State and federal “mandatory minimum” and “three strikes” rules compel courts to lock up even relatively minor repeat offenders for most of their lives.

3. Reduce the prison population. “There are roughly 165,000 murderers and 160,000 rapists in U.S. prisons. If America released every single prisoner who has not been convicted of killing or raping someone, its incarceration rate would still be higher than Germany’s.” But it would be a start.

4. Don’t lock up people for so long. Some 49,000 Americans are serving life without the possibility of ever being released. (In England and Wales the number is 55.) “A 50-year sentence does not deter five times as much as a 10-year sentence (though it does cost over five times as much).” Money wasted on long sentences is not available to spend on catching criminals in the first place, which is a more effective deterrent.

There are reforms happening, but more is needed. The article concludes: “There is no single fix for America’s prisons, but there are 2.3 million reasons to try.” We all can add our voice to needed reform.

War on the poor

The 2012 documentary The House I Live In by Eugene Jarecki finally came up in my Netflix queue, and I watched it, spellbound. Afterward, I thought, had I seen it in 2012, it would have made the top five of my year’s top 10 films. And not because of its technical expertise, though it’s fine. No, because it is so important.

Some people hear that and think, I don’t want to be preached to; I don’t want to feel guilty; I don’t want to have to think about hard subjects. Your reaction is up to you, but for what it’s worth, this film offers good insights into a larger reality that may change or enhance your perspective.

House addresses the war on drugs. It looks at its beginnings during the Nixon administration, when drug abuse was not particularly a problem in terms of crime, but it drew voters. So there you go.(Interestingly, Nixon stipulated that two-thirds of the funds go toward treatment. That's far from the case today.)

The film uses historical footage and many interviews. The most engaging interviewee, in my mind, is David Simon, creator of The Wire, an outstanding series that first played on HBO. He is articulate, knowledgeable and passionate. He speaks not only from his head knowledge but from his experience as a reporter working with police in Baltimore.

The film also gets personal. Jarecki narrates it and notes that it began as an exploration of what happened to the son of the African-American woman, named Nannie, who worked as his parents’ housekeeper and helped raise him. Partly because of her being gone while working for the Jareckis, she intimates, she wasn’t around her adult son as much, and he got into drugs and eventually died of AIDS from a contaminated needle.

The film goes on to explore the judicial system that has filled our prisons with nonviolent offenders whose crime is often selling drugs. Because of harsh sentencing requirements established by Congress during the Reagan and Clinton administrations (and carried on by others), judges are handicapped in handing out sentences to those found guilty of drug offenses. Jarecki interviews a judge in Iowa who eventually resigns out of frustration about the harsh mandatory sentences.

He also interviews a prison guard in Oklahoma who loves his job but comes to see that the judicial system is broken and that most of the prisoners he oversees should not be there.

Who benefits by putting nonviolent drug offenders in prison for five to 20 years at a time? Politicians who win votes from a fickle and ignorant populace. Private prisons who rake in billions of dollars housing nonviolent prisoners at a huge cost to taxpayers (more than $20,000 per year per prisoner). Corporations who get all these poor people off the streets.

Simon says at one point, “They might as well say, Let’s get rid of the bottom 15 percent of the population.” That’s the effect of this so-called war on drugs. It destroys individual lives; it destroys communities. It costs all of us.

Simon points out that it also hurts police and fighting violent crime. He says that when police go out and arrest people for possessing drugs, they make money. First, they confiscate whatever drugs or money is on the people they arrest (and get to keep it). They get paid extra for overtime, since it takes time to do the paper work. And at the end of the month, they can say they made 60 arrests, which looks impressive to the public and their superiors. Meanwhile, a detective may work hard on a murder case and make one arrest in a month. He gets no overtime pay and little credit from his superiors because he hasn’t brought in money to the department.

In other words, the war on drugs is a moneymaker for those in power. But for most of us, it’s not. Instead it takes our resources and invests them in prisons and police rather than in education or health care. It ties up the courts with cases that need not even come to the courts.

Jarecki interviews offenders and family members. He notes that for years the war on drugs was a war primarily on young African-American men, who were filling the prisons and unable to get jobs when they got out, since they were felons.

Simon points out that when an economy fails a community, when the people there cannot find jobs that allow them to live, an alternative economy emerges. This happens all over the world and throughout history. We should not be surprised. People will try to survive. Fix the economy, create jobs that provide a living wage, and the drug trade will diminish rapidly.

Since the late 1990s, many more poor whites have entered prison because of the emergence of meth. Again, the use and sale of this drug comes out people’s desperate circumstances. Blue collar jobs have been disappearing, and people can’t find work.

If you watch House, be sure to check out the extras. In one, called “Jury Nullification,” Simon points out that juries are not required to go by the judge’s instruction or the letter of the law. They can rule as they see fit. Simon says that if he’s on a jury, he will never convict anyone charged with a nonviolent crime.

I’ll stop. This is an informative and heartbreaking film. I highly recommend it.