Overreliance on Incarceration

“This overreliance on incarceration is not just financially unsustainable…It comes with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.” Eric Holder, Attorney General. At any given moment, even in an era of falling crime rates, one percent of the American adult population is in prison. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but while the United States has only 5% of the world’s population, it shamefully carries a quarter of incarcerated inmates. I’ve blogged of late on this issue and about the fact that half of these inmates’ crimes involve drugs (half again of these drug-related crimes are for dealing or possessing). But now, tangible steps may in the works to implement needed changes.

With marijuana use now allowed for recreational use in Washington and Colorado (and other states not too far behind), moral values over drug use are changing just as our budget-breaking habit of over-jailing convicts has begun to blow out better social uses for those valuable tax dollars. Even our nation’s capital has passed legislation, joining twenty states, allowing for medical marijuana.

But now, the federal government is beginning to begin to alter both its sentencing statutes and administrative flexibility to reduce the number of inmates in prison for dealing or using drugs. With a third of DOJ’s budget goes to maintain and operate federal prisons, the strains of deficit hell are having some pretty strong pragmatic reactions. With backing from key Republicans in the House and Senate (principally from the libertarian wing), bills have been proposed to reduce sentences for these lesser, non-violent drug crimes. Mandatory sentencing would give way to guidelines with shorter recommended sentences for dealing, reducing the average 62 month sentence by 11 months.

While many argue that letting accused felons face stiffer sentences is a useful tool for prosecutors seeking “cooperation,” it does seem clear that even besides the cost issues, there are moral factors that have generated an ugly history for this kind of incarceration. “Mr. Holder … described prison reform as a matter of civil rights. African-Americans are disproportionately represented in prison: They make up 13 percent of the nation’s population, but 37 percent of the federal prison population.

“The crack epidemic is one of the main reasons the prison population has grown so much. In 2010, Congress voted unanimously to reduce the 100-to-one disparity between sentences for crack cocaine offenses and those for powdered cocaine. Blacks received harsher sentences under those guidelines because crack has been more popular in black neighborhoods, while whites have been more likely to use powdered cocaine... In January, the Justice Department issued a call encouraging low-level criminals serving lengthy sentences on crack cocaine charges to apply for clemency…

“The Sentencing Commission writes the guidelines that judges must consider. It is soliciting comments on the proposed sentencing reductions and will vote, probably in April, on whether to carry them out. Unless Congress voted to reject the proposals, the commission’s changes would go into effect in November… Until then, the Justice Department said Mr. Holder would tell federal prosecutors not to oppose any sentence that would fall under the more lenient guidelines” New York Times, March 13th. If you think about alternative paths for simple users, why would you want to send them to the best criminal educational school on earth – prison – and mark them as felons for life to make them even more reliant on social welfare?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I can think of whole list of things that our tax dollars should be covering besides jail time.