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Prison Nation
The New York Times | Editorial
Monday 10 March 2008
After three decades of explosive growth, the nation's prison population
has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind
bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36
adult Hispanic men.
Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses
all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last
year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11
billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote
as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.
These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States,
point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge
facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance
on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states
are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals
and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders,
who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring
and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.
Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach
to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building
and running jailhouses has become a major industry.
Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration
rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce
the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing
laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970's. Many Americans
have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population
locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990's.
In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky.
Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release
policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment
and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising
incarceration rates during the 1990's actually experienced a steeper decline
in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing
Project, a nonprofit group.
A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new
options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but
still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime
rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent
drug offenders in prison.
The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started
to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing
in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment
and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for
minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United
States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of
harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.
These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and
moral costs of bulging prisons.
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