5/1/2000
Recent articles in the Clarion-Ledger have pointed out the alarming increase in prison population and the long-term consequences of such policies. Here is the JP's view on this, together with a table of winners and losers. You might be surprised by who wins and who loses. Read the article
12/31/999
Almost two million adults will greet the new millennium in American prisons. According to the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., there are six times as many Americans behind bars as are imprisoned in the 12 countries that make up the entire European Union, even though those countries have 100 million more citizens than the United States. If all these people, mostly American citizens, actually belong behind bars, then we can truthfully conclude that the American experiment with democracy has failed, that it has produced instead of a law-abiding populace a large criminal class that threatens the remaining population and must be kept in check by long-term incarceration.This is a damnable lie. We have been sold that lie by media, the giant corporations which own them, and the politicians who are in their service; a lie intended to arouse within us an irrational fear for our personal safety sufficient to still our better judgment and to accept measures which are clearly not in our best interest.
With few exceptions, such as violent criminals, locking up people will not make us safer. There is little relationship between large-scale incarceration and the crime level. But there is a very direct relationship between the harshness of the criminal code and the liberty of the citizens.
Are we being conditioned to accept a despotic regime?
Be reminded of Montesquieu's prescient statement:
It would be an easy matter to prove that in all, or almost all, the governments of Europe, penalties have increased or diminished in proportion as those governments favoured or discouraged liberty.
The Punishing Decade: Prison and Jail Estimates at the Millennium. A Report by the Justice Policy Institute. Download the Adobe Acrobat Version
Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration, 1992-93 is a well-researched study by the Lindesmith Center's Sentencing Project of the relationship between the actual prevalence of crime and incarceration rates. The main findings are as follows:
- Russia has now surpassed the United States to become the world leader in its rate of incarceration, with 558 citizens per 100,000 population in its prison system. The rise of organized crime, political instability, and the transition to an uncertain economic future have all played a factor in crime rates and the use of imprisonment.
- With 1.3 million Americans behind bars, the U.S. rate of incarceration is 519 per 100,000, second in the world among the 52 nations covered in this survey. The U.S. rate has increased by 22 percent since 1989, and is generally 5-8 times the rate of most industrialized nations.
- A racial breakdown of the U.S. inmate population shows that African-Americans are incarcerated at a rate that is more than six times that of whites -- 1,947 per 100,000, compared to 306 per 100,000.
- Black males in the U.S. are incarcerated at more than four times the rate of black males in South Africa -- 3,822 per 100,000 versus 851 per 100,000.
- The cost of incarceration nationally in the U.S. is estimated at $26.8 billion annually. Estimated costs of incarceration for African-American males are $11.6 billion annually.
- The number of African-American males in prisons and jails in the U.S. 583,000 is greater than the number of African-American males enrolled in higher education 537,000.
- Drug, property and public order offenders accounted for 84 percent of the 155 percent increase in new court commitments to state prison from 1980 to 1992, while violent offenders accounted for only 16 percent of the increase.
Read an article in SFGate about the growth of prisons and the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, a union of prison guards that has lobbied to keep the California prison population high.Tom Lowe
9/26/99
Let's think seriously about prison labor. For the last few years it has persisted as a cloud on the horizon no bigger than a man's hand. It is now gathering over our heads and becoming dark and ominous. Crime is decreasing, but the federal prison population is swelling by leaps and bounds. It's sitting at 130,000 at the moment and expected to climb to 200,000 by 2006. Our leaders in Congress have put 21,000 federal prisoners to work in prison industries, currently making goods for the Federal government. The same thing is happening in the State of Mississippi. State contracts are going to prison industries to help defray the incredible costs of housing, feeding and taking care of thousands upon thousands of inmates sentenced for long terms without parole.You might say "well and good -- let them contribute to their own upkeep and they won't be such a burden on the taxpayer." That's what the Republican leadership is saying, along with many Democrats. The push is on, under a bill sponsored by Rep. Bill McCollum, a Florida Republican, to allow federal prison industries to compete in the private sector.
What's wrong here?
Plenty. Even if we ignore the real cause of the problem, that we have incarcerated far too many of our fellow citizens behind bars for activities that aren't even crimes in most of the world, the problem remains that prisoners who are paid $1.00 to $3.00 per day can produce goods far more cheaply than private companies, and, consequently, the competition from those cheap goods, produced by what is essentially slave labor, is guaranteed to put law-abiding workers out of jobs. The jobs in the private sector most affected will be precisely the ones that pay a decent wage.
The problem is not merely academic; jobs and business in Jackson, Mississippi, are already being lost to the state prison printing shop. Others will follow.
The criminal justice system is out of control. It is sentencing and locking up citizens, especially young African-Americans, at a frightening rate, far greater than any other industrialized country in the world. They are being sent to graduate school in failure and crime; they will emerge with PhDs in cynicism, hatred and violence, equipped with those infernal skills and techniques for which hardened criminals are famous. "For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind" according to Hosea. That's us -- sowing the wind.
This is not new. We could learn something from the common experience of humankind if we only would. It would be difficult to put the case better than Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, more than two centuries ago:
9. Of the Severity of Punishments in different Governments. The severity of punishments is fitter for despotic governments, whose principle is terror, than for a monarchy or a republic, whose spring is honour and virtue.
In moderate governments, the love of one's country, shame, and the fear of blame are restraining motives, capable of preventing a multitude of crimes. Here the greatest punishment of a bad action is conviction. The civil laws have therefore a softer way of correcting, and do not require so much force and severity.
In those states a good legislator is less bent upon punishing than preventing crimes; he is more attentive to inspire good morals than to inflict penalties.
It is a constant remark of the Chinese authors that the more the penal laws were increased in their empire, the nearer they drew towards a revolution. This is because punishments were augmented in proportion as the public morals were corrupted.
It would be an easy matter to prove that in all, or almost all, the governments of Europe, penalties have increased or diminished in proportion as those governments favoured or discouraged liberty.
--Spirit of Laws, Book VI (1752)
Each of us ought to ask ourselves the question:
"As our penalties, as well as the number of criminal laws, have increased significantly in the last 15 years, is this a sign that the men and women who run our government wish to discourage our liberty?"
Perhaps we should ask ourselves an even more searching question:
"Do we approve?"