A Jail Tale

Americans love their cars and their comfort food. Can’t live without the Web or their mobile phones. But what Americans really seem to love is prisons! We’ve got prison shows on TV that would easily sustain several entire networks. And if domestic pain in Hard Time or Lock-Up, Extended Stay ain’t your thang, if Prison Break doesn’t do it for you because your tastes are international, try Locked-Up Abroad. Hey, the U.S. has only 5% of the people on earth but we have 25% of the planet’s prisoners. Yeah, baby! Eat your heart out China! Russia! We’ve got you soooo beat on that one! We’re number one! We’re number one?

But just like being the country with a defense budget that accounts for 44% of global military spending and with “enjoy waging wars to nowhere” listed on our national resume under “hobbies,” putting so many folks in jail is righteously expensive… $40-50,000 these days (a few do it for less) per prisoner per year, and that even doesn’t count the part of the criminal justice system that investigated, prosecuted and tried those criminals. But at least most of those prisoners are getting an education; they can learn to be vastly more professional criminals from their fellow inmates, knowing that in this economy (actually even in better times), the likelihood of getting a decent job after jail is pretty low, so they better learn this criminal thang a whole lot better.

Yup, that three strikes and life for too many crimes that probably aren’t worthy of much of a punishment was a really good idea from a constituency that really likes simple answers and slogan-enhanced (“tough on crime”) solutions: “The 1980s and 1990s saw a wave of stiff new sentencing laws, from mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession to California’s three-strikes law imposing an automatic life sentence for a third felony conviction. … Taxpayers are spending about $50 billion a year on state corrections systems — nearly twice as much, in inflation-adjusted terms, as expenditures in 1987, according to the Pew Center on the States.” New York Times, August 12^th.

Well, the economic misery index is pushing the pendulum quietly in the other direction. Why so quietly? Well, the governors and legislators who were so “tough on crime” are finding out that their policies are a whole lot “tougher on our budgets” than most states can afford. Saying “we were wrong” is not exactly PC if you want to get reelected. Even rich states, like oil and gas enhanced Texas, have got the message: “While liberals have long complained that harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent offenses like drug possession are unjust, the push to overhaul penal policies has been increasingly embraced by elected officials in some of the most conservative states in the country. And for a different reason: to save money.

“Some early results have been dramatic. In 2007, Texas was facing a projected shortfall of about 17,000 inmate beds by 2012. But instead of building and operating new prison space, the State Legislature decided to steer nonviolent offenders into drug treatment and to expand re-entry programs designed to help recently released inmates avoid returning to custody… As a result, the Texas prison system is now operating so far under its capacity that this month it is closing a 1,100-bed facility in Sugar Land — the first time in the state’s history that a prison has closed. Texas taxpayers have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, and the changes have coincided with the violent crime rate’s dipping to its lowest level in 30 years.” You mean putting everyone in jail doesn’t necessarily lower violent crime rates? Shock!

But it’s hardly just Texas: “More than a dozen states in recent years have taken steps to reduce the costs to taxpayers of keeping so many criminals locked up. As crime rates have steadily declined to 40-year lows, draining the political potency from crime fears, the fiscal crunch has started to prompt a broad rethinking about alternatives to incarceration… Even before the financial crisis settled in, a handful of states, including New York, had begun experimenting with softening mandatory sentences for drug crimes, driven by a mix of concerns about effectiveness, fairness and cost… But in the past two years, many more states have enacted — or are considering adopting in their 2012 legislative sessions — similar policies, including reducing prison time for low-level drug offenders or diverting them into treatment; granting early release to well-behaved or elderly inmates; expanding job training and re-entry programs; and instituting penalties other than a return to prison for technical violations of parole or probation, like missing a meeting.” NY Times.

So what’s the moral in all this? That we need to be fiscally responsible and re-prioritize? That appears to be the way it’s being sold. I’d like to suggest another lesson: “Don’t be so over-reactively, slogan-driven stupid” in the first place!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am fiercely curious why common sense and politics appear to be such mortal enemies.