The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens. We imprison more of our own people than any other country on earth. And now, a new Pew report announces that we are keeping even nonviolent inmates behind bars for increasingly longer terms.
Funding for schools, libraries, parks and social programs has been slashed while soaring costs of prisons are wreaking havoc on federal, state and local budgets. When I graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1983, California spent more on higher education than prisons, a lot more. That equation is now reversed. Money that could have gone into reducing tuition costs and cuts to education has instead gone to prisons and inmates.
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during this same period. And nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.
As I protest education cuts, I’m so often told, “We just don’t have the money.” It’s a lie. We do have the money. We just choose to spend it on prisons.
The number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980. More than two million of our people are now locked up, with another nearly five million under an increasingly restrictive system of correctional control in lieu of or after incarceration. Criminalizing human behavior like never before, our judges are required by law to mete out increasingly punitive, long sentences, even for children. Even after inmates are released, they remain under the heavy-handed and pricey control of the criminal justice system for years or for life, often legally barred from voting, receiving public housing, food stamps or student loans.
Forced to “check the box” on job applications that they are convicted criminals, even those who have had simple convictions like marijuana possession are often legally discriminated against by employers.
An unemployed young man recently wrote to me about being shut out of his dream job, nursing, because of a decade-old marijuana offense. In fact, no one at all will hire him. As he languishes on a friend’s couch, he is hopeless, depressed and suicidal.
In the United States, one man out of eighteen is incarcerated or on probation or parole, and more are locked up every day. We are the last developed country on the planet to lock up juveniles, overwhelmingly boys, for life-without-parole sentences for crimes committed when they were minors. (Though the Supreme Court banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for minors in June, judges may still impose the sentence as a discretionary matter.)
Here’s one stark way to understand our new normal of mass incarceration: If we wanted to return to 1970s level of incarceration, we’d have to release four out of five people behind bars today.
Nonviolent offenders are 60% of our prison population. Releasing half of them would free up nearly $17 billion per year for schools or other worthy programs, with no appreciable effect on the crime rate. In fact, many studies conclude that mass incarceration is crimogenic, i.e., locking up people for minor offenses increases crime because they become hardened behind bars. Since few prisons offer therapy or vocational programs and children left behind in fatherless homes are more likely to grow up to become offenders themselves, the problem just gets worse.
We cannot keep going down the road of locking up more people for longer amounts of time. According to Pew, prisoners released in 2009 served an average of nine additional months in custody, or 36% longer, than offenders released in 1990. Annually we now spend $68 billion and growing on local, state and federal corrections.
Why is this not a front and center issue in the presidential campaign? The American public strongly supports reducing time served for nonviolent offenders. But candidates appear afraid to touch this touchy third rail issue, for fear they appear less than “tough on crime.”
Why does the right not consider our multibillion-dollar prison system to be the type of bloated government program ripe for cost-cutting?
Why is the left so rarely concerned about the warehoused young lives and the destruction of inner city families from our culture of mass incarceration?
Why do both sides accept the framing of this question, so often parroted: In these tough economic times, should we cut more social services or raise taxes? It’s a false dichotomy. The third alternative is to stop warehousing our own people.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not necessarily those of Avvo.com.
12 comments
Marina Giddings
My fiancee has spent just over 6 1/2 months sitting in a county jail, with an unattainable bail, waiting for trial. The courts have set the trial off until Dec. 28th. Our family is sinking further into poverty, living with an uncertainty of what the future will hold for us, our children have lost faith in those charged with upholding the laws. We struggle to pay the $6.78 fee charged in order to recieve a 15 min call.
He will have sat in jail for 8 1/2 months before being tried. He has been not been found guilty, and yet he is punished, as are those who love him. He faces 22-29 months in a Washington State Prison for DUI, his first btw, and supposedly eluding police. He has no memory of any of it, but he has been having stroke-like symptoms while being repeatedly refused medical treatment.
What would our forefathers think if they saw what we have become, what we have ALLOWED to happen to our people?
nicholas perez
It is an industry. So many people make a living off of this draconian system that creating crimes, exagerating crimes and instigating crimed is how they justify their paycheck and position. Back in the 1990`s pete wilson passed Californias 3 strikes laws that boosted prison populations. Yet a major contributor to his campaign was the prison guards union.
Countless law enforcement get paid and feel like their existences have purpose from this police industrial complex that exists. They use classic fear mongering to pass laws that strip us of our constitutional rights. As long as they accuse us of a crime they can then justify violating our rights. We no longer have rights. Criminal investigations have become a magic pass for them. Now we need a government to protect us from the government.
The laws must be amended. Likewise prosecutors have to stop over zealously convicting people to appear tough on crime and bad guys. The Innocence Project is impressive with all the innocent people they have exonerated from over zealous police and district attorneys that have "investigated" and prosecuted people they were wrong about only to get stuck in a spiderweb of a system. Cowboy justice needs to stop.
trinity-n-1
Lisa you should run for PRRSIDENT. I sincerely agree with you on the incarcerated problems. The incarceration increases even higher closer to election time. I wish you would start your own talk show.
annamarie
excellent, excellent article on massincarceration, but not so good on Miss. abortion and shame on that federal judge
Randy
What percentage of these "non-violent" criminals are repeat offenders? If one does not actually stop their criminal activities or lifestyle after the first conviction what options are available and expected to work other than prison? Indeed these are the folks who brag about their crimes and or prison time as some badge of honor. They take pride from their "predatory" lifestyle much like the carnival con man seeks his "mark." Perhaps the typical American experience with the criminal justice system is not unpleasant enough to be a successful deterent.
titan3
you hit it on the head when you said put themin work camps it would reduce the cost that the counties and states have to pay out for labor oh excuse me when i said states i should said tax payers
titan3
take a few lessons on crime from our other counties overseas such as norway, germany, and other not so liberal and bleeding hearts counties usa punishment not deter the crime
Aquila Commander
"If we wanted to return to 1970s level of incarceration, we’d have to release four out of five people behind bars today."
Perhaps it would make more sense if you factored in how much our population (both legal and otherwise) has grown in that same amount of time.
I hate people who spout statistics that only support the hobby-horse they're flogging. Try telling BOTH sides of a story, eh?
mad citizen
Putting people that are not risk to society in jail is ridiculous. My niece is a college graduate that got a third DUI- does she have a drinking problem? should they take away her license? Yes. Putting her in jail is stupid and in this case was very politically motivated.
Michelle Kienlen
it is trajic that Non-Violent criminals are incarerated.the only one's who should be incarated are the violent one's or pedophiles and rapist's.and to destroy people's hope's and dreams for a minor past offense is in my opinion Criminal. if a person has not broken any laws for 10years or better why not allow them to pursue their dream career's?without having to worry because of a past mistake that they will be "legally" discriminated against.
Martin Fister
How can it be that no one has yet commented??
If the numbers in this article don't scare the heck out of you, you must not be an American! Literally! Of course, then you would have a good excuse for not being concerned.
Thank you Lisa, for an excellent piece on our incarceration problem. Perhaps one day it will be rectified by legislation but I, for one, doubt it greatly.
Truman Peyote
Of course Lisa is correct on virtually all points on this compass. Why?
Here in the USA we are incarcerating people based greatley upon very old "Christian and Jewish" religious opinions and policies. We make someone else's private sexual behavior a crime.
We make a commodity like Hemp Plants which are marijuana, into a "Dangerous" drug. Why? Because the competition wants it that way. That is: The booze and pharmacutial and psycology "territories" know that if cures many things they cannot. It replaces dangerous drugs, Booze and Tobacco, with a drug much safer than Tobacco and Alcohol, and cures Anxiety and Stress and Fear AND some alcoholism replacing tobacco. People use sex and tobacco and Pot to reduce anxiety and fear of their governments and more.
This criminalization of "different" sex and marijuana CREATES the Drug Cartels and the Organized Crime Sex trade, and puts Non-Criminals in the jail systems. All of that creates Jobs for people that would otherwise be in the prisons.
Two out of eight prison and jail workes are actually criminals or drugs and booze and knives and such, could not get in to the prisoners.
Non violent crimes should be treated as such anyway, and handled with financial penalties or work programs.
Lisa is correct in that we are creating a bigger and tougher group of trained prison students that learn real criminal ways in prison and then go back into the world as educated Criminals, with lost ethics and morals because we taught them that ethics and morals are not practiced by the governments, or the churches or the people.
If they who can vote can put you away out of their hair, they will do it. Do not vote on Marijuana or Sexual Freedom, incarcerate it and eliminate THEIR vote at the same time.
Our prison system is out of proportion to our population and studying that will not change it.
Only the government NOT ALLOWING the churches and courts to rule by THEIR religious and paranoid morals and ethics, will get the country back to freedom.
The heros of the past would all be in Jail today, such as those guys at the Alamo carrying guns and getting drunk in public and rebelling against tyranny government, AND huge but wasted taxes. Santa Anna wanted to tax literally everything to become Napoleon of the West.
We must decriminalize those 80% in the can, who did not perform physical and violent crimes. Put the bad bankers and the rotten lawyers in Work Camps and fix up the infrastructure. But, Not in dangerous criminal institutions. Although I believe that they, (those who are Different) are dangerous to this religious society of morons, they are not dangerous to the individual citizen out there.
But as Mark Twain said, along with others, "We have the best polititions money can buy". And they are bought by Churches and other political organizations and criminal organizations, that Demand we act in THEIR moral manner. That SIN must be a criminal activity and their church or Rightous Organization will define sin.
But please know well, that the Organized Crime folks also want it that way to give them power to control the criminal side of things made criminal by politcal power.
The self righteous shall inherit the earth and the problem of keeping the Majority in prison. But they will pay for it. We will all pay billions and billions on it. Send the non violent criminals to SCHOOL Please.
Truman Peyote the Elderly