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