Utter Failure; It's Time to Rethink the Prison System

Editor's Note: This article is based on the author's new book, Beyond Vengeance, Beyond Duality, published by Hampton Roads.

Our criminal justice system is based on a curious set of rules and a double moral standard. The state’s burden of proving guilt is pitted against the accused’s right to thwart such proof. The state claims to be the victim because its law has been broken, but if the accused lacks the resources of O. J. Simpson or Paris Hilton to defend himself, he feels victimized by the state, and too often is.

What about repairing the harm done to the other victim, the person who was robbed or raped? The prosecutor’s job is to win the case and punish the accused, not make the victim whole. This means the victim’s role is reduced to that of a mere witness for the state in its battle to win by making the accused lose. For the accused to win, defense counsel must try to make the victim appear as untruthful as possible. Caught in the middle of the attorneys’ battle to win and make their adversary lose, the victim often feels revictimized. If a plea agreement makes a trial unnecessary, this victim becomes irrelevant.

Is this a good system for getting at the truth? About 130 death sentences have been commuted since 1973 because evidence later proved these people were innocent. Is the prosecutor’s win more important than the truth about the guilt of the defendant? In many of these 130 cases, the answer was yes. Sam Millsap, a former Texas prosecutor, now speaks openly of having sent an innocent man to death by presenting weak evidence that later proved to be false. Does this deserve to be called justice?

There is a better way, a form of justice that delivers fairness, mends broken relationships, and helps us get at the root causes of crime. There is, in fact, justice beyond vengeance.

Becoming Our Own Jailers

“Get tough on crime” has been a common mantra in the U.S. since the 1970’s and, indeed, we have. We now have over 2.3 million people locked up on any given day, approximately the same number as China and Russia combined. More than one in every one hundred adults in America is presently in jail or prison. Nationally, our prison industrial complex is a $60 billion-a-year industry.

This incarceration binge is destroying the fabric of our communities, some more than others. One in every 15 African American men lives in a prison or jail cell. If you are an African American male between the ages of 20 and 34, the ratio is one in nine. Hispanics are disproportionately affected as well. As of 2006, one in 36 Hispanic adults was behind bars.

Over the last 30 years more acts have been classified as crimes, many prison sentences have become mandatory, as well as longer, and early release for good conduct has been all but eliminated. Some defense attorneys advise their clients to plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit, reasoning that a short sentence for a lesser crime is better than risking decades behind bars that would be mandated if convicted of a more serious offense.

Few stop to think that, when the costs are added up, every year an inmate spends in jail or prison costs us about the equivalent of one teacher’s salary. This choice between hiring teachers and locking people up hits our young people hard. Our tax dollars pay to incarcerate one in every 53 of Americans in their twenties. As more tax dollars are used for incarceration instead of supporting colleges and universities, tuition is rising so fast, fewer and fewer young people can afford to attend. Some officials even demand zero tolerance to deal with behavioral problems in our grade schools and high schools, giving our children an early taste of how readily our culture uses punishment to secure compliance.