Crime Prevention

As criminal justice majors, we naturally think of criminal justice ways to solve problems. We look at law enforcement or corrections or the courts as the answer for any problem we have, but maybe a criminal justice answer is not what is needed for every problem. Robert Scott discusses the effectiveness of various preventative measures to stop criminogenic elements from ever taking hold in a home or society. He talks about the effectiveness of stopping youth offenders from becoming criminals for the long haul.

In one such instance, Scott mentions that nurse home visits for at-risk pregnant women, reduces child neglect and abuse by 48% and the children had 58% fewer arrests then those kids who were not checked up on. Mothers also had 61% fewer arrests than those not in the program. What this says is that we can reduce crime and child abuse by simply having nurses check up on those women and parents deemed at-risk, to prevent crime from ever gaining a foothold in a child's life in the first place.

Scott also goes on to mention the Head Start Program and the effectiveness of it in reducing crime. He mentions that those who took place in Head Start while in High School had lower teen pregnancy rates, lower involvement in crime and higher high school graduation rates. He also goes on to talk about Job Corps and how it helps youths avoid crime, being one-third less likely to be arrested than non participants.

We can also look at Japan and England and what they have done with their juvenile offenders to stem rises in crime. Japan, according to Lewis, et al.: “tend to react to rises in youth crime by recognizing that, although challenging, previous experience has shown that this rise can be stemmed. The emphasis is on finding appropriate policies to reduce the rise.” It should also be noted, that when the authors compared the two countries that “Japan imprisons far fewer young people than England with double the population.” As for how Japan and England differ in responding to youth crime: “Japan appears to take a more welfare-based approach, whereas in England a justice-based approach is far more prominent. The Japanese authorities also respond to increases in juvenile crime in a more measured way, whereas the English tend to respond in a more frenetic attempt to calm public disquiet, as evidenced by the multiple discourses regarding youth policy.” It is quite easy to see how England is rather similar to America in that regard, with the drafting of legislation to fix public outcries when something happens that triggers a media storm. This shows that a measured less-emotionally driven response is by far the better way to go, yet I don’t see America adopting this approach anytime soon, no matter the data.

Cohen and Piquero talk about the costs associated with youth crime, specifically the costs to society. They estimate that saving a 14 year old youth from a life of crime saves between $2.6 to $5.3 million, while saving a high risk youth at birth would save society between $2.6 and $4.4 million. For example, Cohen and Piquero were able to estimate that it cost $1,300 per drug user to rehabilitate them in 2007, and converting it into a lifetime total it would yield a cost of $17,500. Going along with this, Cohen and Piquero estimate that each heavy drug user is responsible for between $16,500 and $60,000 worth of crime every year. After taking into account many other factors, such as housing them in prison, less productivity in the workforce, etc. Cohen and Piquero estimate that we each high risk youth offender who is not saved cost’s society $4.2 million-$7.2 million over the course of their lifetime. This is astoundingly and more evidence as to why we need to focus on crime prevention. We need to realize that putting these kids away for long periods of time won’t solve much but make sure they end up their the rest of their lives. Instead, we need to put money into crime prevention and look at more welfare based approaches, similar to Japan, rather than a justice-based approach.

Ultimately, I believe crime prevention is the way that we solve our prison overcrowding problem in the future. It won’t take immediate effect, but it only makes sense that if we are able to prevent high risk youth from ending up as career criminals that we will be able to make significant dents into our prison population. There are obviously other approaches that need to be considered for reducing our prison population, but I believe this one will strengthen society as well as enriching those minority communities who have been devastated by our current prison system.

Sources:

Deemphasize Punishment, Reemphasize Crime Prevention
Robert C "bobby" Scott. Federal Sentencing Reporter. New York:Jun 2008. Vol. 20, Iss. 5, p. 299-303 (5 pp.)

Comparing Japanese and English juvenile justice: Reflections on change in the twenty-first century
Chris Lewis, Graham Brooks, Thomas Ellis, Koichi Hamai. Crime Prevention and Community Safety. Basingstoke:Apr 2009. Vol. 11, Iss. 2, p. 75-89 (15 pp.)

New Evidence on the Monetary Value of Saving a High Risk Youth
Mark A Cohen, Alex R Piquero. Journal of Quantitative Criminology. New York:Mar 2009. Vol. 25, Iss. 1, p. 25-49 (25 pp.)

Alternative Sentencing

So I’ve been going on and on about the causes of prison overcrowding, but what are some things we can do to actually fix these overcrowding problems? Well, Alternative Sentencing is one idea that many have put forward as a method to help curb the burgeoning prison population.

The American Bar Association has found that many criminal justice professionals question the necessity of locking up people for so long if they are just going to go back to prison. This has led to thoughts about alternatives to incarceration, since it is clearly not rehabilitating offenders. The ABA has come up with several policy suggestions, the first being that if an offender has not committed a very serious offense or does not pose a risk to public safety, that the offender “should be eligible for community placement, and for community-based treatment programs, diversion, and deferred adjudication.” (2009).

We should also take a look at what various states have been doing over the past few years to reform their prisons and see what is and isn’t working. For example: Minnesota wrote a law that “Permitted early release from prison for persons convicted of a crime as the result of an addiction” (King, 2007). King draws up some recommendations based on what is working in various states: expanded use of drug treatment as a sentencing option, expanding options to reduce probation and parole revocations, reconsider policies regarding time served in prison, repeal mandatory minimum sentencing, reconsider life and long-term sentences, and to review state sentencing and corrections policies (2007).

Drug Courts have just recently begun to become popular and there is research to suggest that they are indeed effective (Eckley 2006). This has the added benefit of helping court congestion as well, with the amount of drug offenders being prosecuted; it shouldn’t come as a surprise that specially created courts such as Drug Court would benefit many cities. Eckley states that a 30 month study done at a drug court in Portland, Oregon indicated significant savings to taxpayers, although he also cautioned that these results might not be typical in every city. Eckley cites that those “drug courts with effective court-supervised treatment programs work is confirmed by research studies showing graduates of drug court programs succeed, but terminated participants fail.” Essentially, this means that for the drug court to be effective, those in drug court must complete the full course, and if they do, that it is very effective.

Hoelter has some suggestions for pushing forward with Alternative sentencing. Hoelter describes the need for a development of political will, that politicians need to be strong in resolve that “rehabilitation of offenders is acceptable and worthwhile and can be achieved through well-funded, evidence-based programs in the community” (2009). Hoelter does admit that this is easier said than done, but combats this with the fact that prisons are more than likely only increasing our crime problems by sending a 19 year old petty drug dealer to prison for 5 years and then releasing him at 24 with no job skills, a barrier to employment, and no other training. How do we expect these people to get off the path of criminality when we put it in those terms? It’s a little ludicrous, especially given the current job climate. The last thing anyone needs is more barriers to employment right now. Admittedly, they did commit a crime, but won’t five years in prison only exacerbate the problem by ensuring this young man becomes a life long criminal?

Another suggestion of Hoelters is to promote free speech among correctional leadership. According to Hoelter, at various criminal justice conferences, correctional administrators will argue that “police must divert more minor offenders, drug treatment programs must take more clients, mentally ill offenders should go to psychiatric facilities, medically fragile inmates should be released, and noncitizen inmates should serve their time in their own countries.” The problem is that they won’t tell congress this, because it’s not what they want to hear. We need to stop having our correctional administrators be glorified yes men and start allowing them to assert themselves in defining the problem of overpopulation in the prisons and how to solve it.

Hoelter brings up another startling fact, at least in regards to the Federal Courts and Prisons: “Currently, many U.S. attorneys, defense attorneys, federal probation officers, and even federal judges have a limited, and in many instances anecdotal, knowledge of alternatives to incarceration”. Hoelter argues that we need to educate our courtroom workers and advocate for alternatives to incarceration and how to apply them. To go along with that, Hoelter stresses that “more research is needed that evaluates whether alternatives to incarceration, such as community service, can be effective in meeting the goals of sentencing.” This would help judge’s confidence that they were not coming off as soft on crime if the appropriate alternative to incarceration was shown to be effective in reducing recidivism.

Ultimately, there are a lot of options out there for alternative sentencing and we need to look at how effective each is as an alternative to incarceration. We need to drastically expand our experiments with alternative incarceration if we want to cut down the prison population in any meaningful way, and that will take a shift in mentality as well as a shift in policy.

Anonymous, . American Bar Association Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions. (2009). Federal Sentencing Reporter, 22(1), 62-76. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from Criminal Justice Periodicals. (Document ID: 1979102831).

Changing Direction?:State Sentencing Reforms 2004-2006 (Feb. 2007)
Ryan King. Federal Sentencing Reporter. New York:Apr 2007. Vol. 19, Iss. 4, p. 253 (8 pp.)

Timothy S Eckley. (2006). Drug courts: The second decade. Judicature, 90(1), 43-44. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from Criminal Justice Periodicals. (Document ID: 1129352811).

Sentencing Alternatives--Back to the Future
Herbert J Hoelter. Federal Sentencing Reporter. New York:Oct 2009. Vol. 22, Iss. 1, p. 53-58 (6 pp.)

Mandatory Minimums, Truth in Sentencing, and Three Strikes Laws

I’ve talked briefly about the above sentencing laws previously, but I’d like to take a more in depth look now and really spell out why these laws are so harmful to the prison system and ultimately doing more harm than good.

First there is mandatory minimum sentencing, which was tried before and repealed due to poor efficiency. The Boggs act was established in the 1950s, which created two-to-five year minimum sentences for first time drug offenses, including simple possession (Gill, 2008). This later increased even more by the Daniel Act to no effect other than to lock up these offenders for even longer sentences. These were later repealed in 1970 (PBS). Congress had concluded that the mandatory minimums that were imposed had done nothing to curb drug use and furthermore the laws were unduly harsh. Unfortunately, this only lasted 16 years, before mandatory drug law sentencing would return under President Reagan.

These mandatory minimum sentencing laws are out of control. One need only look at the previous 100-1 disparity in crack and cocaine sentencing. Until very recently, a person found with 5 grams of crack would get the same mandatory jail time as someone found with 500 grams of powdered cocaine. This was recently changed to an 18-1 ratio, under a bill passed by the senate and championed by Dick Durbin, a Senator from Illinois (Abrams, 2010). Attorney General Eric Holder was quoted as saying “There is no law enforcement or sentencing rational for the current disparity between crack and cocaine powder offenses, and I have strongly supported eliminating it to ensure our sentencing laws are tough, predictable and fair.” This marks the first time since 1970 that any mandatory minimum has been repealed.

Truth-In-Sentencing laws are another problem. These laws often require inmates serve the vast majority of their prison time in prison, making them ineligible for parole or able to reduce their sentence with good behavior. Trachtenberg suggests that these laws have put prison wardens in a tough predicament, stating: “By abolishing parole and good-behavior credits, states have created nightmares for prison wardens, who no longer have carrots to offer prisoners in exchange for civilized conduct. In addition, prisoners who do behave well and cease to threaten the community cannot rejoin society, meaning taxpayers fund needless incarceration.” (2009). This seems to be a running theme with these types of laws, that they take away flexibility from the system and in doing so weaken the ability of administrators or judges to use discretion. This is not a positive step, rather a step backwards.

Think of all the bone headed zero tolerance policies that schools come up with, suspending kids for bringing aspirin to school because it is technically a drug. Intention is never considered with these types of laws; it is a blanket move in an attempt to deter the crime. However, when we take discretion out of the process, all we end up with is inequality, with offenders serving nearly all of their jail time who would otherwise be paroled. We are currently sending the message that we do not trust our judges to make decisions. That they are not fit to determine how much time someone should serve if they commit a certain offense.

Three Strikes laws are another similar problem to the previous two, with the idea being that after someone commits three felonies, they can be jailed for life. They do not need to be violent felonies to get locked up for their entire life. Take the case that went to the Supreme Court as an example: Ewing v. California, where Gary Ewing’s life sentence was upheld after he stole a total of $1200 worth of Golf Clubs. He was sentenced to life in prison for stealing a rather minor sum of $1200 and we will be paying far more than that yearly to keep him imprisoned. Again we see the same broad approach to tackling crime that we saw with truth in sentencing or mandatory minimums. We as a society can’t afford to go on like this, we need to get back to punishment fitting the crime.

Looking at all these different laws intended to increase the amount of time offenders serve in prison, we seem to be taking the approach that locking up anyone who commits a crime for longer is better for society. We are sending the message that when you commit a crime, America is giving up on you.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/dope/etc/cron.html

Trachtenberg, B.. (2009). INCARCERATION POLICY STRIKES OUT. ABA Journal, 95(2), 66. Retrieved April 11, 2010, from Criminal Justice Periodicals. (Document ID: 1642950271).

Abrams, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/05/durbin-cocaine-bill-passe_n_525625.html

Recidivism

Recidivism is another important aspect of overcrowded prisons. According to Ryan Mack, sixty three percent of prisoners return within three years of release from prison. This has a dramatic effect on the ability of our prisons and jails to reduce inmate populations, leading to continuous growth in our prisons. If 63% of our prisoners are simply caught in a revolving door act with prisons, it is no wonder that we have such a overburdened prison system. Given the other policies and tendencies of our Criminal Justice System, our recidivism numbers only exacerbate the problem, ensuring that we keep most of those we lock up for their lives.

A Wisconsin Sentencing Commission released a comprehensive report on how best to curb recidivism and what factors to take into account when doing so. Their findings suggested that when considering a sentence, there are three factors that need to be taken into account, those being: Objectives, Facts, and Effectiveness.

What is the goal of the sentence? If it’s a drug offender, it might be to stop his addiction problem and turn him into a productive member of society. If it’s a violent sex offender, it might be to keep the community safe, considering the needs of society over the needs of the individual. Is the goal of the sentence that is being imposed to punish? Or is it to rehabilitate? Or is it to incapacitate and deter? Consider that our objective for one offender may not be the same as another. If we are dealing with a murderer, we might simply impose a sentence as a punishment for taking another human’s life, rather then to rehabilitate them. Murderers are rather unlikely to reoffend statistically (CDCR), but that doesn’t mean we should simply let them go, they need to face a serious punishment for such a serious crime.

What are the facts of the case and the offender? Semmann suggests crafting sentences customized to each offender and his or her traits. He suggests “One possible strategy to develop an effective sentence is to predict who is likely to re-offend based on some quantity of recidivistic factors”. Semmann also cautions to take into account both aggregate facts and individual facts. In other words, judges need to take into account the unique information of the case in front of them, but also consider what the statistics say of other similar offenders and their propensity to re-offend. In some ways, the courts already do this, with their different specialized courts.

It is suggested in the same report by Semmann that we do not have enough information to determine what exactly is most effective for each offender in regards to sentencing options. Semmann quotes a Judge Michael Marcus who states “sentences are selected more on perceptions of sentences intuitively fitting a crime rather than on evidence that a given sentence has been proven to be successful at preventing future crimes.” Marcus goes on to state “we send thieves to theft talk, drunk drivers to alcohol treatment, bullies to anger counseling, addicts to drug treatment, and sex offenders to sex offender treatment… as a matter of symmetry rather than of science.” Marcus is saying that while these different treatments sound like a good idea in theory, that we do not have enough scientific backing to make the case that they are actually effective in curbing the wrongful behavior.

Finally Semmann and the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission have some suggestions on how to reduce recidivism: Continue to study traits specific to repeat offender groups; consider aggregate factors when sentencing; research new and different sentences; create uniform offender I.D. system for all state justice partners; expand information collected on sentencing guidelines worksheets; create system to identify and track sentence effectiveness; and to consider all three sentencing elements (Objectives, Facts, and Effectiveness) as one to reduce recidivism.

How are we to find the answer to such a serious problem if we do not have the necessary data to inform us? Like other facets of the Criminal Justice System, Corrections has been prone to this phenomenon of simply guessing that a program would work and implementing it before studying the results it would achieve.

Ultimately, the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission is suggesting that we need to collect far more data to determine how to effectively deal with recidivism. I believe that the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission has stumbled onto a rather large problem and have hit the nail on the head. We need to conduct more studies on what works and what doesn’t with reentry programs, with halfway houses, with all those programs aimed at reducing recidivism until we find something that is truly successful at reducing recidivism rates.

Sources: Mack, R. (2009). The Optimum October Fight Against Recidivism. Accessed March 21st, 2010. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ryan-mack/the-optimum-october-fight_b_323483.html

Semmann, S. (2006). Three Critical Sentencing Elements Reduce Recidivism: A Comparison Between Robbers and Other Offenders. Accessed March 21st, 2010. http://wsc.wi.gov/docview.asp?docid=6679

Office of Research, CDCR (2007). Untitled. Accessed March 21st, 2010. http://www.cdcr.ca.gov/Reports_Research/Offender_Information_Services_Branch/Annual/RECID2/RECID2d2004.pdf

Drug users and their contribution to prison overcrowding.

Over the course of the next few blogs, I plan to delve in depth on issues that are leading to overcrowding in our prisons and looking at ways to fix them. Specifically, I’ll be looking at drug users and how they contribute to prison overcrowding in this blog post. I’ll examine what history has shown us about drug users and treatment, how much of an impact they have on the prison population, if these drug laws have had a drastic effect on females in prison, and if we should imprison them.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we’ve been down the beaten path with draconian drug laws. In the 1950s we started instituting mandatory minimum sentences for drug crime and surprisingly these laws were still in effect when the 1960s happened. The 1960s are synonymous with drug culture, yet at this time, there existed stiff penalties for possessing drugs. Under one of the biggest expansions of drug culture to date, we had these stiff penalties, suggesting that they were not accomplishing the intent of decreasing drug use.

A commission set up by President Kennedy recommended rehabilitation over imprisonment, stating that rehabilitation of the individual should be the intended result (Gill, 2008). This commission also found that stiff penalties and sentences were not very effective at all stating “persistence of narcotics abuse, despite severe penalties for the possession of narcotics abuse, is persuasive evidence that the abuser will risk a long sentence to get his drug” (Gill, 2008). We knew this back in the 1960s, so why are we repeating our mistakes well into 21^st century?

Drug users now occupy large amounts of both federal and state prisons. 55% of those serving time in Federal Prisons are there on drug offenses, with 11% being there for violent offenses (Sentencing Project). The majority of these drug offenders in federal prison were primarily low-level drug offenders (Gross, 2008). Gross found that “by 1998, 40% of all federal sentencing was for drug crimes, and federal prisons saw more than a 400% increase in the number of inmates sentenced on drug convictions.” (2008). State prisons, according to Sabol, West & Cooper, housed 1,331,100 prisoners in 2006, with 265,800 of those being drug offenders. Another interesting statistic according to Gross “between 1986 and 1991, drug offenders accounted for 44% of the increase in the state prison population” (2008). As we can see, drug offenses and our sentencing practices based on them have clearly had a drastic impact on our prison population.

Risley (2007) makes a good point when she questions our methodology of imprisoning drug users. She states “It's not like you can't get drugs in prison. You can get drugs anywhere, in any prison in this country. As long as there is one remaining orifice on the human body, it is impossible to stop the flow of drugs. The ingenuity of a desperate addict is quite amazing.” We need to realize that hard time is not a way to cure an addiction. Why put these addicts through a revolving door that quite simply does not seem to be working?

Consider that these previous figures do not take into account females doing time for drug offenses. The war on drugs has had an even more radical impact on women in prison than men, where the amount of women in prison increased by 420% from 1986 to 1996. Which incidentally resulted in 70% of the female prison population being low level drug and nonviolent offenders (Gross, 2008). Currently, we have 114,000 females in prison, which does not include those in jail (Sabol, West & Cooper). How many mothers have we taken off the streets to these draconian drug laws from the war on drugs? Has it made any difference? If our goal is to simply get these nonviolent drug users off the streets, I suppose you could say it has. If our goal was to keep them off the streets, however, then we should be sending them to rehabilitation, not incarcerating them.

Ultimately, America needs to decide what it wants to do as a nation in regards to these drug offenders. Do we want to help cure their addictions and get them back to being productive members of society? Or do we want to lock them up and throw away the key for their transgressions? Prison is no cure for an addict; we either commit to rehabilitation or accept the fact that these drug users will be in and out of prison for the rest of their lives.

Sources:

Gross, Bruce. (2008). Mandatory Minimums. Forensic Examiner, 17(3), 64-69

Gill, Molly M (2008). Correcting Course: Lessons from the 1970 Repeal of Mandatory Minimums. Federal Sentencing Reporter, 21(1), 55-67

Risley, Cristini http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michealene-cristini-risley/changing-our-prison-syste_b_75893.html

Sabol, West and Cooper, http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/p08.pdf

What are the Causes Behind Prison Overcrowding?

So, we see that Prison Overcrowding is a problem and that we should care about it, but why exactly is it happening? What is it in America that is causing prisons to swell to such massive sizes? Well, back in the 1970s, crime was a big concern, partly because Richard Nixon made it a political issue, a national political issue, for the first time ever (pg. 127 2008 Mays and Ruddell). This caused Congress to act and “get tough on crime”, which started our rather steady incline of increasing incarceration numbers year after year, regardless of crime rate. Around 1970 our imprisonment rate was comparable to most European nations, but now our imprisonment rate per capita is seven times higher than that of other first world industrialized nations.

Mays and Ruddell note that there are a large number of drug offenders behind bars, perhaps pointing to them as one of the causes for such high numbers. However doing the math, they show that even if we subtracted all the drug offenders from the system, we’d still have 1, 624, 864 prisoners, or an incarceration rate of 548 per capita, which is still five times greater than most other nations, with Russia as a notable exception. So, the War on Drugs did have an impact, pushing us from around 548 to 770.

Byron Williams suggests a multitude of sources are to blame for Prison Overcrowding, focusing his efforts on California’s prisons. Williams states “Our failure to confront issues of drug addiction, mental health, and immigration makes the prison system simultaneously the last resort and the first choice.” Williams also mentions California’s aging prison population noting that “California’s prisoners are aging and taxpayers are paying for their medical care”, imploring us to ask ourselves why we are keeping the elderly locked up. All of these are good points and bring us closer to realizing how our prisons became overcrowded in the first place.

As for the Elderly and why we have them locked up, we need only look at various tough on crime legislation such as Three Strikes and You’re Out, mandatory minimum sentences, and truth in sentencing policies. Three Strikes and You’re Out is an amendment to the California constitution which can get an offender life without parole if they commit one violent felony, along with two other felonies. The fallacy in the law is the latter part of it, which can lead us to cases like Ewing v. California, where a man was convicted of his third felony and sentenced to life in prison after stealing three golf clubs worth an estimated $1200 or so. Is that really accomplishing the intended result of getting violent offenders off the streets? Yes, he did commit a violent felony, but Three Strikes makes no mention of how long ago that felony had to occur. Consider that someone could get sentenced to life for committing a violent felony in their youth, than another felony somewhere along the way, and later in their 40’s get sentenced to life without parole for something that would barely get them a year in jail. Were three strike legislation limited to three violent offenses, I would see it as more agreeable, perhaps still excessive, but understandable nonetheless. Unfortunately this is not the case.

However, we also need to consider that these laws were mostly enacted after we had already seen a large growth in the prison population, so while these specific laws I’ve talked about are certainly helping the cause of prison growth, they are not the only reason we got to where we are today. The 1970s and 1980s both saw a rapid growth of prisons, but were mostly before the time of mandatory minimums, truth in sentencing, and three strikes laws. This does not mean that there was not legislation enacted to stiffen sentences for offenders or bills that were passed that appeared on the surface as tough on crime. We went from indeterminate sentencing before the 1970s, to mostly determinant sentencing. This means that judges were stripped of most decision making when it came to sentencing. They were no longer capable of making and altering decisions based on mitigating factors such as first offense or strong connections to the community.

Ultimately, it has been the turn toward the Crime Control model, which believes in incapacitation and retribution more so than it does rehabilitation that has led to a lot of the underlying causes of prison overcrowding. We do not make enough attempts to better our prisoners, to prepare them for life outside prison after a long stay, to rehabilitate them. If we are to solve this problem, we have to get the recidivism rate lower. Prison can not simply go on as a revolving door for so many Americans, they deserve better.

Sources: Mays, G. & Ruddell, R. (2008) Making Sense of Criminal Justice: Policies and Practices. New York: Oxford University Press.

Williams, B. (2007, July) California Prison Crisis Product of Long Term Neglect. Retrieved February 23rd, 2010, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/byron-williams/california-prison-crisis-_b_58267.html

Why should you care?

Why should the American people care that prisons are overcrowded? Isn't the answer just to build more prisons? Well, I'm going to attempt to explain to you why prison overcrowding is an epidemic and why America Should take a hard look at sentencing and examining why we have overcrowded prisons. This problem will get worse unless we deal with the underlying causes. Why are our prisons overcrowded? Do they all deserve to serve the time they’ve been sentenced too?

America has the largest prison population in the world. In 2005 we had approximately 2.2 million individuals incarcerated. This is a growing trend. We have seen 33 consecutive years of continuous growth in our prison population (Sentencing Project). The United States’ incarceration rate per 100,000 is also the highest, with 737 per 100,000. Keep in mind that the United States has seen a decline in crime since the 1990s, yet our prison population continues to rise. In fact, we've seen a rise of over 50% in our prison population since 1991 despite this falling crime rate. So the answer as to why more are incarcerated now than ever before is not because more people are simply committing more crimes. It is far more likely that there is not one answer, but a complex series of answers that would explain why we are in our current predicament.



California's prison population in particular is in bad shape. The state has been ordered to reduce its prison population by 40,000 by August 2011. California has released 6,500 prisoners. This was estimated at saving the state $100 million in a single year. Think about that for a second; $100 million in a single year for 6500 prisoners. California currently has 150,000 prisoners (NYTimes). That's an average of about $15,000 per prisoner per year. Our prison population is costing us $2, 250, 000, 000. That’s 2.25 Billion dollars per year. That is a massive amount of money that could be better spent on something like education or infrastructure or to keep California from becoming the first failed state.

Prison overcrowding also puts pressure and added and cost on communities. Many people of color are stuck in what seems to be a cycle of prison, with 1/8 African American's age 25-29 being in prison (Sentencing Project). That is shockingly high and we need to address that this could be affecting the next generation of kids by depriving them of male role models. There are thousands out there going without a father due to the high incarceration rate.. I am not advocating we simply release criminals to go be dads, but it doesn't mean we can't take a look at this issue and see if there's something we could do to help fix it.

For the record, I am by no means advocating we release all prisoners or make ourselves unsafe in the release of convicts. We do, however, need to take a serious look and decide if locking up all these people for the length of time they are locked up for is actually necessary. There are improvements to be made without compromising our safety. For example, do we really need to keep some of our aging convicts in Prison? Are 60 or 70 year olds really presenting a danger to the community if they are released?

There you have it, not only is it costing us money to house so many prisoners and make sure they receive adequate care (and no, simply denying them health care is not a way to solve this problem), but it is also having a large effect on different communities throughout America who grow up without male role models. This is a problem that is 20 years or more in the making and we are long past needing to find ways to fix it.


Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/us/05calif.html
http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_newfigures.pdf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/byron-williams/california-prison-crisis-_b_58267.html