Prison overcrowding and excessive prison costs are a problem in virtually every state in this nation. The question is: Is it worth it? Do we need to spend $65 billion a year on prison or are there better ways to deal with criminal offenders?
There are two things that contribute to prison and jail overcrowding: 1) admissions (i.e. technical parole violations, new court commitments, devil commitments), and 2) length of stay (i.e. mandatory minimums, or new laws the increase sentence length for a crime).
Alternatives to incarceration may be used as a means of reducing a correctional facility population by either sentencing inmates to the alternative in place of prison or jail (an admissions issue), or by releasing inmates to an alternative sanction in place of remaining in prison or jail (a length of stay issue).
By decreasing the number of inmates who are sent to prison or jail, or by decreasing the amount of time offenders spend in prison or jail, and placing these offenders in alternative sanctions that have been evaluated to produce favorable outcomes in terms of reduced recidivism and decreased costs, jurisdictions can improve public safety and decrease costs.
One extreme view is that in a modern progressive society, we should not have prisons. I disagree. The first and most obvious point about prison is that we need prisons; there are some very nasty people for whom treatment is not going to work and freedom in society will result in havoc for free citizens.
Another extreme perspective is that the tougher we get with our criminal justice sanctions, the lower crime will be. I disagree with this view, too. Career criminals don't think like law abiding citizens. For many, going to prison comes with the business of crime. For others, prison is a right of passage. For any criminal, it doesn't matter how tough the sanction is if one doesn't think one is going to get caught. Certainty of punishment is more important than severity or even the celerity of punishment.
Conventional wisdom says that if we lock up criminals they won't be committing crime and therefore society will be safer. This is very simplistic.
First, there is no consistent relationship between mass incarceration and decreased crime rates. Proponents of mass incarceration tend to look at the increase in mass incarceration and the decrease in crime throughout the 1990s. This is a classic case of cherry-picking data. If we go back to the 1970s when mass incarceration began, we find that we can't have it all ways and still have a coherent explanation: 1) Incarceration rates and crime rates bounced up and down a small amount but were fairly level from the 1930s to the 1960s; 2) Incarceration rates and crime rates increased together in the late 1970s-1980s; 3) Incarceration rates continued to go up as crime rates went down in the 1990s; and 4) Incarceration rates continued to go up as crime rates leveled in the 2000s.
So how do we deal with the hundreds of thousands of offenders who are unlikely to reoffend but are collectively costing states billions of dollars each year?
There are a number of alternative sanctions for low level or first time offenders. These are cost effective and all have been shown to be associated with lower recidivism rates than similar offenders who go through the prison system. This might be because prison is often criminogenic, meaning that it can actually make an offender more likely to engage in criminal behavior upon release. Or it could be because alternative sanctions more appropriately address the criminal underpinnings and underlying criminal behavior, essentially nipping the behavior or thought process before it becomes chronic.
A brief list of alternative sanctions includes: Electronic Monitoring; Drug Courts; Mental Health Courts; Domestic Violence Courts; Day Reporting Centers; Restorative Justice; Community Service; Fines; Probation; and Parole. There is ample research supporting each one of these sanctions. But not all are appropriate for every offender, and for some offenders, prison is the only realistic sanction.
I am not advocating that states just implement these alternative sanctions just because they exist. We have to make sure the right questions are asked and answered. The following questions should also be asked before the implementation of an intermediate punishment or alternative:
• Based on the population we have, are our inmates appropriate for an intermediate punishment or alternative?
• Do we have the right staff or training to implement this intermediate punishment?
• What are our ethical obligations, and does the potential sanction pose a conflict?
We must also address if the alternative can be afforded, if it will receive support and acceptance among other criminal justice partners and the public, and if it is sustainable?
Due to the fact that intermediate punishments have been successful in reducing criminal behavior and costs, other jurisdictions, fear of political repercussion, if any, must be overcome so that a more effective and cost efficient criminal justice may be realized.
Prison is necessary. But there are many forms of punishment -- prison isn't our only option. Just as there are many forms of medicine to address illness, there also should be many forms of intervention to address the many forms criminal behavior.
Paul Heroux worked in a state prison and a county jail. He holds a Master's in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's in Public Administration from Harvard. He can be reached at PaulHeroux.MPA@gmail.com.
1 in 100 U.S. Adults Behind Bars, New Study Says - New York Times
Incarceration Rates. USA. Charts. Timelines. 1920 to recent years ...
Are we incarcerating people who are not criminals? It seems so. A couple examples will suffice.
One type of jailed non-criminal is the so-called "deadbeat dad". Fathers who are allegedly behind on child support payments. This problem is further aggravated by the unwillingness of these courts to actually follow state laws and grant downward modifications due to economic hardship. As a result, thousands of fathers are jailed because they lack the economic means to pay support rates set arbitrarily high by family courts across the country.
One also has to consider the collusion between court officials and the prison industry. Witness the recent scandal involving former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr....sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for taking $1 million in bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers in a case that became known as "kids-for-cash. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel.
The court systems and the prison industry have become a self-justifying cartel.
An interlock device & a good results-oriented chemical dependency, behavioral, or a faith-based program should be used--instead of prison.
Also, the government overcriminalizes human activities. We have tons of laws that are ridiculous, & seem to serve as points of entrapment for incarceration. California seems to have an underlying incarceration agenda that can only be motivated by greed or something even more dark & heinous. Send ALL low-level offenders home to their families. Earnestly pray for their freedom, reconiliation, and restoration. Yes, there are bad people for whom prison is the only answer. But, there are also some bad people making bad laws of our land, and enforcing them, and imprisoning the rest of us, and then playing control the incarcerated masses. My heart hurts for the low-level offenders. They do not need to be imprisoned. They need to be reconciled to their families and their communities.
Lack of an effectively functioning family and community is itself what incubated most offenders. What is "reconciling" and how can you "reconcile" offenders to these "families" and "communities" that do not, as actual well-functioning entities, exist? Seems to me you have to first work on rehabilitating or creating a family and community to be well-functioning, before you can even talk about "reconciling" an offender to them. Wouldn't sending an offender back into the dysfunction that likely created him or didn't guide him properly be not only severely unfair to him but also detrimental to society at large?
Governing entities' motivation: "Keep citizens afraid of "bad people,"raise taxes to "keep you safe." Gullible & uniformed voters endorse California-bankrupting & life-stealing laws (like 3 strikes law).
One father's "3rd strike" offense (that put him away for 25 years to life): stealing $160 of children's videos.
Costs for taxpayers: $50,000 every year.
Voters: kept unaware that prisons financially feed greed, malice, &/or desire to control for investors, attorneys, corrections union, the CDCR (which is neither about "Corrections" nor "Rehabilitations"), & law enforcement, who consider themselves to be above laws.
Prisoners & Surviving Hell on Earth: It is a modern-day caste system, & highly racial. Low-level "offenders" are housed with real criminal reprobates. Survival is the only goal. Inmates are deliberately starved & abused. Gang affiliation is apparently almost only way to survive. It's hard time, & inmates are like packed rats. Only other is to physically & behaviorally qualify for fire camp. For those inmates in a SHU ("secure housing unit," isolated from all humans for 23 hours each day), there's more heinous abuses & going insane. Debriefing is only way out SHU, but may be killed for ratting on others.
A better alternative: Treat maladaptive behaviors of low-levelers & returning them to their wives and children. If they are allowed to build more prisons, they will fill more prisons. Care about your fellow citizens behind bars. Go sign the petition at www.curbprisonspending.org (Californians United for
I'm especially interested in your thoughts as this relates to the issue of your last article, reducing gun violence. Many, including virtually all gun owners like myself, call for:
1) Prosecution of ALL substantiated cases where a violent crime suspect used a gun.
2) No plea-dealing which reduces any gun-related violent crime charges.
3) Application of the maximum allowed penalty to gun-related violent crime offenses.
4) Parole rules which require stricter scrutiny and higher hurdles for the granting of parole to those convicted of violent crimes in which they used a gun.
Keeping these on the table, of course, would not contribute to reducing prison overcrowding. However, they must be kept on the table and put into effect, if we are serious about reducing gun violence.
Your thoughts? Should effective gun violence reduction policies be kept on the table and not touched, even though they do not effect reduced prison overcrowding?
What I find even more profoundly troubling is how society continues to "punish" ex prisoners once they leave the system. I am one of those who believe that once a prisoner has served his or her time, s/he should not be further ostracized by society. The debt has been paid. If people don't like it, they should argue about the sentence!
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