Investing in Prisons Over Education is not Being Smart on Crime

By Lindsay McCluskey and Robert Rooks

What does it mean to be "tough on crime"? Does "toughness" depend on how many people we imprison? Or should the indicator be whether our society combats crime at its root? Current policies point directly at the former option, but we need to be smarter on crime.

The United States leads the world in incarceration with 2.3 million people behind bars; while we are home to five percent of the world's population, we house 25 percent of its prisoners. That means that one in 31 adults in the United States is currently in prison, jail, or on probation or parole (1). Is this because we have a larger population than most countries and logically imprison more people? Nope. China's population is four times greater than ours, yet China imprisons one million less people, even with its draconian criminal laws. Are Americans inherently more violent than citizens in other countries? The fact that over half our inmates were convicted of non-violent drug offenses suggests that it has more to do with our criminal laws than our nature. Has the incarceration rate risen proportionally with our country's population growth? Well, between 1970 and 2000 the general population rose by less than 40 percent, yet our incarceration rate skyrocketed by 500 percent (2). So how did the world's greatest defender of freedom snatch freedom away from more of its citizens than the harshest of totalitarian states?

American lawmakers have criminalized a vast array of non-violent, victimless behavior involving narcotics. Drug arrests have more than tripled in the last 25 years, reaching a record high of 1.8 million in 2005 (3). These aren't the violent drug kingpins in Miami Vice or Bad Boys. In 2005, nearly 43 percent of all drug arrests were for marijuana offenses, the mere possession of which accounted for 79 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990's (1). Today, over half of the 2.3 million people behind bars were convicted of non-violent drug offenses. More than half of federal offenders sentenced in 2002 were in the lowest criminal history category, and nearly 9 out of ten had no weapon involvement (2). Put simply, our elected officials have become obsessed with imprisoning low-level drug users. It has gotten so bad that the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled in Brown v. Plata that the California prison system was so overcrowded that it violated the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

So what does this matter for higher education? Our unprecedentedly high inmate population is very expensive to maintain. The United States spends $70 billion a year on incarceration, $50 billion of which comes from state governments. This matters because $9 out of every $10 in state prison funding comes out of state general funds, the same accounts that fund higher education. So it should be of no surprise that in the last two decades, state spending on prisons grew at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

The Great Recession has done little to curb this trend. In 2009, despite the worst national economy in 30 years, 33 states spent a larger proportion of their general funds on prisons than in 2008. In fact, in fiscal year 2008, prisons' share of state general funds grew more than other category of state spending. At the same time, 2009 saw tuition hikes at public four-year colleges average over 6 percent, some reaching into the double-digits. Having to pay more for their college education than ever before, student borrowers now owe an average of $25,000 in loan debt. Today, Americans owe more in student loan debt than credit card debt, and the number is closing in fast on $1 trillion. Meanwhile, state legislators claim we have a "spending problem" while they cut higher education budgets and infuse prisons with ever more money.

We do not have a spending problem. Elected officials choose to terrify the electorate into supporting laws that lead to mass incarceration. There are compassionate and effective ways to wage the war on crime; politicians simply chose to ignore them. While we've outlined many of the problems, below are a few possible solutions to remedy our justice system -- making it "smart on crime" rather than "tough on crime".

• More than fifty percent of all prison and jail inmates have mental health or drug problems. Over half of female inmates have been physically or sexually abused. Half of all inmates in state and federal prisons were abused or dependent on drugs before they were imprisoned. One would expect policymakers to invest in rehabilitation efforts that address the root causes of why criminals initially turned to crime or drugs. Also, drug rehabilitation is seven times more effective for dealing with nonviolent drug offenders than prison. Yet today, only one in seven prison inmates are receiving treatment, down from one in three inmates in 1991 (1).

• Despite their proven ability to reduce recidivism, inmate educational and vocational training is severely restrictive and arbitrarily administered. A recent study by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) found that, of 43 states surveyed, 13 states accounted for 86 percent of all inmates enrolled in post-secondary education programs. In total, just six percent of all U.S. prison inmates were enrolled in a program during the 2009-10 academic year. Of that, less than a quarter obtained an associates or bachelor's degree.

• Online courses would expand educational access to a large number of inmates, yet public officials don't like the idea of giving inmates access to the internet, and no state has yet demonstrated the courage to implement a pilot program. Yet IHEP research analyst Brian Sponsler believes "the technology exists to provide online educational opportunities in an environment that doesn't sacrifice safety." Denying programs that would better the lives of countless flies in the face of every value our criminal justice system purports to uphold.

Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his famous Democracy in America that, "in no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States." How far we've come since 1831. Today, we are the world leader in locking people up -- not because we have the world's largest supply of violent criminals, but because we have allowed our elected officials to criminalize the most trivial of actions. The ramifications of these eerily Orwellian laws have been dire for higher education, which has suffered immensely from depleted state coffers. Unless we drastically reform our spending priorities, and move toward "smart on crime" policies, our City on the Hill will continue to resemble Rikers Island instead of the Library of Alexandria.

Lindsay McCluskey is President of the United States Student Association. Robert Rooks is Director of the NAACP Criminal Justice Program.

1) Stevenson, Bryan, "Drug Policy, Criminal Justice and Mass Imprisonment." Global Commission on Drug Policies. January 2011
2) King, Ryan; Marc Mauer; Malcolm Young. "Incarceration and Crime: A Complex Relationship." The Sentencing Project. 2005.
3) Allen, Rob; Chris Hallam; Dave Bewley-Taylor. "The Incarceration of Drug Offenders: An Overview." International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, University of London. March 2009.

 

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Comments

[realitytrumpsbull]

12:22 AM on 06/01/2011

There's nothing trivial about murder, assault, grand theft, or multi-billion-dollar white collar crime, or chronic check forgery, gang activity, and and and. And, maybe about the time the kinder, gentler crowd backs away from the prison system, and recognizes that there's no amount of education that's going to compensate for something called 'bad personal character', and we stop wasting $63k/yr on counseling and coddling inmates, and instead use the monies to construct newer, larger, better, safer prisons, there'll be an overall improvement especially in states like California. Understanding who criminals are, how they act, and whether they'll be likely to commit the same or similar crime again, that's what police and law enforcement and corrections are all about, and there's some people that are going to end up in the Big House at some point in their lives, because they don't respect the law, or their fellow citizens, at all.

[becky bradshaw]

01:57 PM on 05/30/2011

Our priorities are distorted if we choose to spend tax dollars imprisoning marijuana smokers instead of educating our children, and caring for our old. (http://articles.sfgate.com/2007-05-29/opinion/17244077_1_school-dropouts-school-diploma-spending-on-higher-education)

A second victim group are the citizens of Mexico, where our drug policies are resulting in a terrorized environment. (http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1651420,00.html)

[Ben Dixon]

07:31 PM on 05/29/2011

Criminals will all be criminals, we have an endless supply of that. So lets put them to good use, turn prisons in to labor camps that produce items that schools need, such as food, pencils, paper, etc. That way a dollar spent on prisons will also be spent on schools.

[Chris Herz]

03:34 PM on 05/28/2011

Deindustrialized as we are we simply do not need so many educated people. It does not take a BA to run the cash register at McDonalds or to tote a rifle for the Marines.
Our lack of social solidarity means that we need lots of jails to deal with poverty and hopelessness. Any other policy might mean taxing the rich in order to uplift marginalized communities, and we cannot have that.

[Mark MacDonald]

10:17 AM on 06/01/2011

You would be surprised what it takes to be a Marine.

[DefaultMovie]

04:21 PM on 05/27/2011

Great article! Keep up the good work, Lindsay!
-DEFAULT: The Student Loan Documentary

[amgnme]

03:40 PM on 05/27/2011

As with so many of our social problems, we attempt a fix after the fact, instead of going to the source. Our problems are like a clean flowing river that, at various points, is polluted by illegal dumping of contaminants. Our solution is to pour money and effort into cleaning up the water, so it can be useful to others downstream, but the effort becomes a lifelong project because the dumping is still going on. If you go back to the site of the illegal dumping and prevent it, you only have to clean up for a while and eventually the water will flow clean again. Educate the parents who will educate the kids that will be able to make better choices and stay out of jail.