The Incarceration Craze

The girth of the American prison system continues to expand, with no end in sight.

Last week the Justice Department reported that by the end of 2001, one in every 37 adults in the U.S. had either done prison time in their lives or were currently incarcerated in a state or federal prison. After two years of sluggish prison growth figures, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported in late July that the inmate population jumped up by 2.6 percent, for a total of 2,166,260 prisoners in 2002. Many state budgets have been bled dry by the rapid expansion of the prison industry, with an attendant negative impact on the communities hit hardest by budget cuts and the imprisonment of their residents.

This year, more than 625,000 men and women will be released from jail or prison this year with a dearth of resources to help them transition back to their communities. Herein lies the real danger. Incarceration can seriously exacerbate mental illnesses, worsen or create drug and alcohol problems, and contribute to the spread of serious infectious diseases like hepatitis C, HIV and tuberculosis.

There's also an ugly racial dimension to our incarceration craze. Prison yards from coast to coast look like a sea of black and brown skin, and the new BJS statistics bear this out. As of Dec. 31, 2002, 10.4 percent of African American men between the ages of 25 to 29 were in prison, compared with just 1.2 percent of white men in the same age group. Rounding out that mix are the poor, the illiterate, the drug addicted, the mentally ill, and immigrants.

Ex-offenders often return to their communities to find that their criminal records severely hamper efforts to reintegrate into society. In addition to social stigma and shame associated with incarceration, ex-offenders with drug convictions quickly find out about federal bans on eligibility for welfare, food stamps and public housing.

Small wonder that 67 percent of former inmates across the nation are rearrested for serious new crimes within three years after their release. In California alone, 56 percent of felons paroled in 2000 were recommitted within two years of their release.

Crime-equals-incarceration is a simple equation, and political rhetoric had Americans believing in this equation for a good portion of the '80s and '90s. But that argument is increasingly difficult to make. From 1995-2001, for instance, the federal prison population jumped up by 69 percent while the nation's overall crime rates declined by 14.5 percent. Today, the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is larger than any state prison system, operating 33 percent over capacity.

Look to the war on drugs for the underlying cause. Today, many dozens of non-violent marijuana offenders are serving life sentences in federal and state penitentiaries with no hope of parole. Tens of thousands more are doing decades behind bars for small possession and dealing charges, while child molesters, rapists and repeat violent offenders can easily end up serving only four- eight- and 15-year sentences.

With drastic changes to federal and state sentencing guidelines instituted over the past 15 years, judges have had their hands tied. Thanks to the triple-whammy of the Crime Control Act of 1984, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Amendment Act of 1988, mandatory minimum sentencing became the operative concept, stripping power from judges and handing a veritable carte blanche to local, state and federal prosecutors.

Thankfully, increasing numbers of judges and state legislators (including many conservatives) are now recognizing the drug war for the senseless and costly crusade that it is.

Mindful of shifting public opinion and record-breaking budgetary deficits, many states including Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Washington and Texas have taken steps to reduce prison populations by pursuing parole and incarceration reforms, and even by abolishing mandatory sentences for some drug offenders. The savings have been quantifiable in every state. California's own Prop. 36, for instance, saved at least $275 million in taxpayer money during its first year of enforcement.