It seems to me….
“You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you’re compelled to say something. To speak out against it.” ~ Macklemore[1].
Approximately 70 million Americans have criminal records. More than one in five people have been arrested, jailed, or otherwise encountered the criminal justice system. Mass incarceration has functioned to construct political majorities, or, more accurately, power blocs, primarily for conservative political benefit through voter disenfranchisement and other forms of civic and social exclusion. Though those identified as “white” represent only 39 percent of the people in prison and jail, it is not generally appreciated that the most severe consequences of criminalization fall on “black”, “brown”, indigenous, and/or trans-working-class people.
People of color face double jeopardy. The U.S. justice system routinely grinds masses of mostly minority men through its gristmills but fails to protect them from bodily injury or death in their communities. People retreat into their silos and arm themselves with their best rhetorical weapons – racial bias on one side and statistics in which minorities, particularly African-American, are overrepresented as criminals on the other. Although the news media and popular culture constantly cast suspicion on young Muslim and African-American men and the supposedly disproportionate and ever-present threats these communities pose, African-American men are more than six times more likely to be sent to prison than Caucasian men even though Caucasian men and women accounted for 60 percent of those arrested for violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault…).
Some primarily minority areas have essentially become urban war zones to an extent considered intolerable in non-minority neighborhoods. The more dangerous the environment in which a person lives, the more likely males are to kill holding all other individual attributes constant [2]. The level of danger in an environment is itself endogenously fueled by the extent of perceived danger or fear. Systemic lower incomes and higher rates of unemployment among African-Americans make the penalties for attempted murder or manslaughter seem lower for them relative to their outside options.
Prisons are an essential tool for keeping society safe[3]. Without the threat of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish would prey on the weak as they do in countries where the state is too frail to run an adequate justice system.
But as with many good things, more is not always better. The first people any rational society locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as murderers and rapists. The more people a country imprisons, the less dangerous each additional prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. The U.S. long ago passed the point of negative return.
The U.S. incarceration rate rose fivefold between 1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now locks up seven times as many people as France, 11 times as many as the Netherlands, and 15 times as many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, unintentionally violating incomprehensible regulations) and imposes extremely harsh penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life.
In 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, about 126,000 prisoners were held in privately operated facilities under the jurisdiction of 29 states and the federal Bureau of Prisons[4]. That’s an 83 percent increase since 1999 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). By comparison, the total U.S. prison population increased 12 percent during that span.
Regardless of this increase, however, both the private and overall U.S. prison populations have declined at modest rates in the most recent 4-5 years. The private prison population has shrunk by 8 percent since its peak in 2012 while the overall prison population has fallen by 5 percent since its peak in 2009. (The state private prison population peaked in 2012 with 96,774 prisoners; the federal private prison population reached its peak a year later in 2013 with 41,159 prisoners.)
Prisons are expensive: cells must be built, guards hired, prisoners fed…. Inmates, while confined, are unlikely to work, support their family, or pay taxes. Money spent on prisons cannot be spent on other things more likely to reduce crime, such as hiring extra police or improving pre-schools in at-risk neighborhoods. And locking up minor offenders can make them more dangerous since they learn felonious habits from hard-cases they meet inside.
A ten-year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year sentence but is not nearly ten times as effective a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the future. If they did, they would take up some other line of work. One study found that each extra year in prison raises the risk of recidivism by six percent. Also, since mass incarceration breaks up families and renders many ex-convicts unemployable, it has increased the U.S. poverty rate by an estimated 20 percent. Between 2010 and 2015 the U.S.’s incarceration rate fell by 8 percent. Far from leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by a 15 percent drop.
There is ample evidence of what works: Reserve prison for only the worst offenders. Divert those less threatening to drug treatment, community service, and other penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, family, and normality. Justice systems also could do far more to rehabilitate prisoners. Cognitive behavioral therapy counselling for prisoners on how to avoid the places, people, and situations that prompt them to commit crimes can reduce recidivism by 10-30 percent and is especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It also is relatively inexpensive, a rounding error in the $80 billion a year the U.S. spends on incarceration and probation. Yet, by one estimate, only 5 percent of U.S. prisoners have access to it.
The U.S. is unusually individualistic partially explaining its primarily punitive-focused approach to crime and aggression when contrasted with Scandinavian nations more inclined to emphasize treatment rather than punishment even for serious crime offenders. Mental health treatment reduces recidivism indicating that externalizing behaviors including crime and aggression should be considered a psychopathology requiring treatment rather than failures of impulse control to be punished.
That’s what I think, what about you?
[1] Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, known by his stage name Macklemore and formerly Professor Mack Lemore, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter.
[2] O’Flaherty, Brendan, and Rajiv Sethi. Homicide In Black And White, http://www.columbia.edu/~rs328/Homicide.pdf, 15 January 2010.
[3] America’s Prisons Are Failing. Here’s How To Make Them Work, The Economist, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21722642-lot-known-about-how-reform-prisoners-far-too-little-done-americas-prisons-are?cid1=cust/ednew/n/bl/n/20170525n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/33652/n, 27 May 2017.
[4] Geiger, Abigail. U.S. Private Prison population Has Declined In Recent Years, Pew Research Center, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-prison-population-has-declined-in-recent-years/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=5b5503619d-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_04_13&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-5b5503619d-400092341. 11 April 2017.
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