Every day, someone's child, best friend, neighbor, beloved relative, or sole caretaker is being sentenced to a prison term to hold them accountable for breaking the law. Upon release from prison, they are expected to contribute to society and resume providing the necessary emotional and financial support for their children, family, loved ones, and friends.
This outcome, however, assumes that people who complete their given sentence have paid their debt to society and will no longer be punished for their mistake. Several studies have proven that assumption wrong.
The fact is that, even after an individual has paid their debt to society, society, without the authority granted by a gavel, functionally imposes a life sentence of economic hardship on those who have been incarcerated.
This phenomenon is statistically borne out by a report recently released by Pew Charitable Trusts. The report shows that individuals who have been incarcerated are significantly more likely to be unemployed, underemployed, and underpaid than they were prior to their incarceration (termed "collateral costs").
If society is responsible for imposing the life sentence of economic hardship, then employers are the ones who dutifully ensure that individuals who have been incarcerated serve out their sentence. Studies conclusively show that individuals with criminal records are far more likely to be subject to systemic employment discrimination. A study performed by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that 65% of employers surveyed refuse to hire individuals with criminal records--regardless of the offense on the individual's record. That percentage is extraordinarily significant given that a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management found that only 7% of employers do not conduct criminal background checks for any of their applicants. These practices have a direct impact on the likelihood that an individual who has been incarcerated will be able to get any job at all. In fact, another NIJ study found that as many as 60% of individuals who were incarcerated are not able to find any job, at any point, a full year after their release.
Even when persons who have been incarcerated are able to find jobs, they are significantly more likely to be underemployed and underpaid than they were before their incarceration. As a result, people who have been incarcerated earn 40% less per year than they would have earned prior to their incarceration, according to the Pew Report.
The Pew Report also revealed that people who have been incarcerated are permitted to work an average of 9 fewer weeks (more than two months fewer) than people who have not been incarcerated. Even though they are employed, they are less likely to have the stability, respect of their loved ones and peers, and peace of mind that comes with continuous employment. They are also less likely to be in a position to move up the ladder at a given job and earn more money to improve their situation.
Moreover, even when people who have been incarcerated are working enough, they get paid less for the same jobs than they would have received prior to their conviction. The Pew Report found that they earn 11% less per hour.
Given these statistics, it is clear that individuals who have been incarcerated are systematically forced to endure economic hardship. The Pew Report precisely quantifies the extent of that economic hardship by considering how the collateral costs (systematically being underpaid, unemployed and underemployed) impaired the economic mobility of an individual who had been incarcerated in 1986 versus the affect the collateral costs had on that same group 2006.
In 1986, a person in the bottom fifth of the income distribution was making less than $7,800 per year. The vast majority of the formerly incarcerated men making less than $7,800 in 1986 were still in the bottom fifth of the income distribution 20 years later (67%). The study determined that people who had been incarcerated and were in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1986 only had a 2% chance of moving into the top fifth of income distribution 20 years later. Therefore, it is clearly more difficult for people who have been incarcerated to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" than it is for individuals who have not been incarcerated.
Significantly, the Report also finds that these collateral costs adversely affect not only the financial and social prospects of the individuals who were incarcerated, but they also profoundly impact the likelihood that the individual will pay any restitution owed victims and the financial and social prospects of the individual with the criminal record's children and family. Numerous studies show that children whose parents either are or were incarcerated are more likely to suffer from physical or verbal abuse, get suspended or expelled from school, drop out of school, or become pregnant as a minor. With few educational and financial prospects, these children are more likely to become incarcerated themselves--thereby perpetuating the cycle. Consequently, these collateral costs cripple not only the individual with the criminal record, they too often end up crippling entire families for generations.
These collateral costs, perpetuated by societal stigma which is often manifested in systematic employment discrimination, unnecessarily put our friends, children, families, relatives and neighbors at risk of being victimized, resorting to criminal activity, or being mired in the lowest economic wrung for generations. Given that unacceptable risk, more must be done to address this issue.
Like most men in jail or prison or non-violent victimless crimes - it is just money for the judiciary system.
This isn't about paying one's debt. It's about the time lost to prison, which should have been spent working, seeking work or being further educated, and the loss of societal trust engendered by a prison sentence. The latter is simple economics and effects lazy people who never acquire records as well. The former is simply human nature. It is natural for people to distrust and fear those who have committed crimes. That's a survival instinct. You will NEVER get that attitude to change on a large scale no matter how unfair it might be.
Most of those in the penal system are convicted felons for drug usage or "petty " theft or non violent crimes ...Upon release , they should not be held to a lower standard .
When the police arrested the guy who broke down my door and attacked my family in the middle of the night, he had a track record a mile long. And the problem is that these scoundrels, usually with the aid of attorneys like Belcore, here, keep getting out. And then some other scoundrel says, "but they paid their debt to society."
The real problem is with the community of sympathizers. And the real plague isn't the criminal, who's always been a nuisance to society since the beginning of time; but instead is with the person who can be so open-minded to think that the criminal is somehow a victim too.
And when this happens, and society alters its approach to crime, more and more people are plagued by criminals who ought not be on the streets at all.
The word "felon" brings up the worst of mental images. But the fact is, that in most states a judge has the discretion to make almost anything a felony. In my case, I did 2½ years for $40.00 worth of grass. Most people incarcerated today are in for petty crimes. No matter how well I live my life from here on, I'll never own a house, or be able to save for retirement, or be able to pay off a judge to get my civil rights restored.
So, what happens when there are more of us, than there are of you?
I'm sorry you did time for a victimless crime and that it ruined the future you could have had.
There is also a profit motive to consider. Here in Arizona, incarceration is big business, and to keep stockholders happy, the beds need to be full. Once a profit motive is associated with the loss of liberty, no one is safe. Eventually there will come the loss, in subtle, small chunks, of due process. We'll arrive at the place where pointing a finger, and public vilification will suffice (think of how much money we'll save).
We'll forget what is right, and do what is expedient. The script is as old as humanity, and has changed very little.
Really, sometimes I wonder whether sentience itself is an evolutionary dead-end. If so, we're on the right track.
My sympathies are with the victims and not with the criminals.
What we have to do is look at the outcome. What is a good outcome for our justice system- yes, to catch bad guys and lock em up. But beyond that we'd sure like to get them to change directions and become self sufficient and tax paying citizens. Getting a job is KEY to this.
It makes sense to help them get jobs, even make work jobs, in order to break that cycle of unemployment and recidivism. Job programs for offenders are far more effective and less expensive than more prison time.
Its a good outcome we are after- not just the idea of right and wrong. A good outcome is that the offender does his time- goal one met. But goal two is to keep that person from returning to prison. That doesn't stop us from accomplishing goal 1. Its just makes practical sense to help them stay out of prison, out of a cycle of crime.
For decades I have heard this expression and ones similar to it. I've always considered it to be bullshit.
The fact that the taxpayers have been compelled to spend THEIR tax dolllars to incarcerate some sociopathic bastard does NOT return the situation to status quo ante. If anything, it makes it worse. And even if it didn't, you can't seriously believe, can you, that someone who has, for instance, committed rape, is somehow wonderfully transformed by the experience of incarceration? Do you seriously believe such a person is the moral equivalent of someone who has never raped, or murdered, or manslaughtered, or stolen, or done whatever crime they did to get convicted and sent to prison?
Incarcerating such socipaths may stop them from re-offending (although te stats on sex crimes certainly don't indicate that), but mostly it just inflicts yet ANOTHER burden on society - the cost of their incarceration - and there is certainly little enough to suggest that anything about the experience is even therapeutic much less somehow ennobling.
We should spare no effort in seeing that only the guilty are convicted, but once convicted these sociopaths should be warehoused as cheaply as possible.
Thank you for mentioning the real fact that truly innocent people are convicted all the time, even if indirectly--it's just the spectacular mistakes that get all the headline news. And I'm glad to see you admit that happens, even indirectly. What I don't see in your posting is what do we, as a society, do to help make those wrongly imprisoned people whole again, especially if they've been incarcerated for a few years???
Murder: OK, if it's a crime of passion, but on the other hand, do I want to walk the halls with someone who found it possible to reduce another human being to a slab of meat?
Theft: Anything in my office is vulnerable.
Rape: Second most-likely-to-repeat crime after theft. 15% of rape victims commit suicide within 24 months because they can't live with the nightmares and the flashbacks. Nope, can't see it.
And so on. The problem is the punishment as much as the crime: prison doesn't rehabilitate. It's as likely to be training ground as anything else, but the people who want prisons to punish are building better criminals.
For another take on this issue, try the book "Running the Books" about an inmate who ran a prison library and soon figured out who was going to do OK outside, and who wasn't. Simply by how they treated the library.