Incarceration Rate Shows We're Doing Something Wrong

As we enter the new millennium, the population of America's prisons and jails is approaching two million. It will pass that mark, according to the Justice Policy Institute in Washington, around Feb. 15.

In the entire world about eight million people are incarcerated, so a quarter of them are in this country.

The number of prisoners has been growing at an extraordinary pace, up 70 percent in the last 10 years. We have overtaken Russia for the honor of having the world's highest incarceration rate.

All this has a profound social cost. Since 1995 the states have spent more on prison than on university construction. Operating prisons in the year 2000 will cost about $40 billion.

And of course it is not just the money. Two-thirds of the prisoners are there for nonviolent offenses. Chances are good that by the time they are released -- after sentences that are among the longest anywhere -- they will be thoroughly brutalized.

The figures are so stunning that even some experts known for taking a hard line on crime think it is time for a reappraisal of criminal justice policies. One is Prof. John J. DiIulio Jr. of Princeton. He summed up his view in The Wall Street Journal in March under the headline "Two Million Prisoners Are Enough."

"The value of imprisonment is a portrait in the law of rapidly diminishing returns," Professor DiIulio said. He noted that correctional costs were squeezing money for policing. He urged officials everywhere to maintain gains in public safety "while keeping the prison population around two million and even aiming to reduce it over the next decade."

To that end he suggested, first, repealing mandatory-minimum drug sentencing laws. Since 1973 the Rockefeller drug laws in New York State have imposed fixed terms running from 15 years to life for all kinds of offenses. Federal laws also include many mandatory minimums.

The result of fixed sentences is to put hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders away for many years, at great cost to them and to us. About a quarter of those in American prisons and jails are drug violators, according to the Justice Policy Institute. Their number has gone up sevenfold in the last 20 years.

Professor DiIulio called for the release of nonviolent offenders imprisoned only for drug violations. He also urged that drug treatment be required for users, in prison and afterward.

Legislation that requires extremely long sentences for drug and some other crimes is a political phenomenon of the last 25 years or so. Few politicians, state or national, have been willing to challenge the mantra of "toughness on crime" -- willing to look at the harsh consequences of such rigidity, human and societal.

Mandatory-minimum sentences seem to me to reflect the delusion that eliminating the element of judgment will make the criminal justice system work better. Absolute rules assure certainty. But they also assure injustice.

Leaving too much discretion to judges risks uneven sentences. Leaving none produces equally harsh sentences for situations and individuals that demand different treatment. The same delusion mars the 1996 Immigration Act, with its requirement of automatic deportation for minor crimes.

The other distinctive feature of criminal justice in the United States is capital punishment. All other Western countries have given it up as an atavistic barbarity. It continues here despite a growing number of releases of death-row prisoners after last-minute proof of their innocence.

Study after study has shown that executions do not deter further murders. Yet George W. Bush has defended the death penalty on the ground that it "will save other innocent lives."

As governor of Texas, Mr. Bush has presided over 113 executions, more than any other governor in modern times. A compelling Boston Globe story by John Aloysius Farrell pointed out that in the next five weeks Governor Bush must deal with five more scheduled deaths, one of a prisoner with a mental age of 7, two others who committed their crimes as juveniles.

Mr. Bush's action in those cases, and the public reaction, will tell much about his and our humanity.

Tuesday, 15 February, 2000, 11:13 GMT

 The US has 25% of the global prison population

The jail population in the United States is expected to reach 2 million on Tuesday, prompting a wave of protests across America.

An explosion in inmate numbers in recent years means that although the US makes up 5% of the total global population, it now accounts for 25% of the world's prisoners.

Civil rights activists and penal reform campaigners are staging vigils in more than 30 cities to protest at the reaching of the unwelcome milestone.

They are demanding changes in sentencing policies to reduce the numbers of non-violent offenders, particularly drug users, who are incarcerated.

About 1.3 million of the current jail population have been imprisoned for non-violent crimes, usually drug offences.

The annual bill for their incarceration is almost $26bn - about 50% more than the government's entire spending on welfare and social security programmes.

The Justice Policy Institute estimates that the total prisons bill will increase to $41bn this year, a rise of almost £2bn on 1999.

Much of this is due to the scores of extra prisons that have had to be built to cope with the rise of "three strikes and you are out" sentencing policies which have introduced long fixed jail terms for repeat offenders.

Racist justice claims

Campaigners are particularly concerned at the high proportion of black people behind bars, which they say is often due to racist attitudes within the police and the judicial system as well as social deprivation.

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  It's a black thing  One in three African-American men aged 20-29 is in jail, on probation or on parole as opposed to one in 15 of their white counterparts
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Studies have shown that in cities such as Baltimore and Washington at least half of all young black men are either in prison, on parole or on probation.

This has also led to an alarming growth in the number of black people who have lost the right to vote because of their criminal convictions.

Reformers warn that in the states with the most restrictive voting laws, 40% of African American men could soon be permanently disenfranchised in this way.

Call for reform

Jenny Gainsborough, of the research organisation, Sentencing Project, said she hoped Tuesday's protests would highlight the need for reform to stop the upward spiral in the prison population.

"We just want people to be aware of the huge numbers of people who are being locked up and the contrast between the US and other western industrialised democracies.

"Beyond that, we want people to start calling for reform and to talk to their representatives, and to ask for changes, partly in the drug laws but in other sentencing too, and to provide alternative sanctions for non-violent criminals who don't need to be locked up in prison for long periods of time."

However, the reformers fear they may struggle to be heard in an election year when none of the presidential hopefuls will want to leave themselves open to claims that they are soft on crime.

Number of arrest, by type of drug law violations, 1982-98

         Sale/manufacture Possession
    1982       135,200    540,800
    1983       145,500    515,900
    1984       155,800    552,600
    1985       194,700    616,700
    1986       206,000    618,100
    1987       243,700    693,700
    1988       311,900    843,300
    1989       435,700    926,000
    1990       348,600    740,900
    1991       333,300    676,700
    1992       341,200    725,200
    1993       337,900    788,400
    1994       364,900    986,500
    1995       369,000  1,107,100
    1996       376,600  1,129,700
    1997       324,600  1,259,000
    1998       330,500  1,228,600

Source:  Crime in the United States, annual, Uniform Crime Reports

Also see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm