TW: Here is another insane transaction by a local government to avoid make hard choices by essentially covering budget shortfalls with the equivalent of a home equity loan. This time it is a state, Arizona and they make no qualms about setting aside money for the future. They claim all options have been exhausted. This is hopefully a political lie. Because if it were true then it would mean Arizona is functionally bankrupt. They just do not want to make tough choices- raise taxes, cut spending/services etc. They just want to kick the can down the road.
The proposal will get noticed because it involves a sale/leaseback of the state capital but what they are using as collateral is relevant only symbolically, the real issue is these deals take money from future taxes and apply it to the present. They are also going to use the old trick of privatizing prisons by selling the right to manage the prisons. Classically bad policy.
From Arizona Republic:
"Legislators are considering selling the House and Senate buildings where they've conducted state business for more than 50 years.
Dozens of other state properties also may be sold as the state government faces its worst financial crisis in a generation, if not ever. The plan isn't to liquidate state assets, though.
Instead, officials hope to sell the properties and then lease them back over several years before assuming ownership again.
...allow government services to continue without interruption while giving the state a fast infusion of as much as $735 million, according to Capitol projections.
For investors, the arrangement means long-term lease payments from a stable source.
...Earlier this month, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed such sale/leaseback provisions along with most of the rest of a fiscal 2010 state budget plan sent to her by the Legislature.
But the provisions are expected to return as part of a GOP-led legislative budget proposal surfacing this week. Although Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman called sale/leaseback deals "one of the governor's least favorite options," he conceded the likelihood that they'll play a key role in any plan to close a state shortfall estimated at $3.4 billion.
The state may have little choice. Reserves already have been drained, easier fiscal gimmicks are virtually tapped out, and there's no political will for spending cuts of the size and scope needed to close the deficit.
"This is the predicament we find ourselves in," said Tom Manos, a Brewer budget adviser. "We've exhausted the better options."
...While the state is looking to sell and lease back selected properties, it also may try to contract out the operations of some prisons. The concessions provision is expected to be included within the new budget proposal, and legislative analysts believe it could generate as much as $100 million (on top of the sale/leaseback revenue) for state coffers. Private, for-profit prison operators would bid for the right to manage selected facilities, but the state would maintain ownership."
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2009/07/29/20090729assets0729.html
Showing posts with label Prisons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prisons. Show all posts
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wish We Had This Problem!
TW: Look at the numbers the Dutch have 12,000 prisoners, we have I believe about 2,000,000. They are fretting because they will need to shrink their prison system resulting in job losses. Perhaps we could work out a deal...
From NRC
"During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said. The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.
Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred Belgian prisoners could be transferred to the Tilburg prison by 2010. The Netherlands would get 30 million euros in the deal, and it will allow the closing of the prisons in Rotterdam and Veenhuizen to be postponed until 2012."
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_prisons_for_lack_of_criminals
From NRC
"During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.
Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said. The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.
Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred Belgian prisoners could be transferred to the Tilburg prison by 2010. The Netherlands would get 30 million euros in the deal, and it will allow the closing of the prisons in Rotterdam and Veenhuizen to be postponed until 2012."
http://www.nrc.nl/international/article2246821.ece/Netherlands_to_close_prisons_for_lack_of_criminals
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Less Money For Prisons: A Recession Silver Lining
TW: American prison strategy over the past 30 years could simplistically (overly so) be described as build many prisons, put them in jail and throw away the key. This created many jobs, a great industry of firms providing goods and services to those prisons and electoral candy for numerous politicians. It also costs a fortune, a fortune that we do not have. There are always silver linings, a slowdown in this prison strategy may be one of them from this current Great Contraction.
From Economist:
"Wisconsin’s prison population grew by 14% between 2000 and 2007 but, in the same period, the rate of violent crime rose by 23%. By 2019 the number of prisoners is expected to have swollen by another 25%, with a price tag of $2.5 billion. Facing a $6.6 billion deficit this year, Wisconsin can hardly afford to expand its prison system further.
...Wisconsin is not alone. Nearby Michigan, which spent a staggering 22% of its general fund on corrections last year, is debating reforms. Three judges in California have instructed that state to cut its prison population by one-third by 2012.
...State correction systems have exploded in recent decades. The Pew Centre on the States, a research outfit, reports that one in 100 Americans is incarcerated. One in 31 is in prison, on parole or on probation. This is expensive. Corrections have gobbled more and more of state budgets, at a faster pace than any government service except Medicaid. In 2008 spending on corrections was 303% greater than two decades earlier.
New laws, not more crime, are the main factor. Since the 1970s, when parole boards had wide discretion to release prisoners, states such as Wisconsin have set mandatory minimum sentences and applied baseball’s “three-strikes” rule to the national pastime of incarceration, often locking up repeat offenders for life. In the 1990s federal incentives prodded the states to adopt “truth in sentencing”, meaning that a court sentence would be completed in full, ending rewards for good behaviour behind bars. Mr Grams noted a change both in the time offenders spent at Columbia and in the prison’s “climate”, a euphemism for whether inmates behave well or abominably.
...Ms Taylor points to Texas and Kansas as examples of states where reform has begun to reverse these trends. The Justice Centre counselled both states in 2007. The ensuing policy changes expanded treatment programmes in the community and strengthened supervision of those on probation and parole. In Texas the prison population grew by only 529 inmates between January 2007 and December 2008, rather than the 5,141 predicted before reform.
In Wisconsin the governor and Ms Taylor’s committee...have proposed different plans, but they have much in common. Each would allow an inmate to serve a shorter sentence if he completed certain programmes, such as job training. To keep offenders from repeating their mistakes, each would improve treatments for problems such as mental illness and drug abuse.
The proposals have many critics. Mr Doyle’s plan to end “truth in sentencing” has upset Wisconsin’s attorney-general and legislators such as Scott Suder, who calls it the “let ’em loose early” scheme. Concern over Wisconsin’s deficit may scuttle the committee’s proposal, which costs $30m. But the Justice Centre estimates that investing $30m today would avert spending $2.3 billion by 2019."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13702846
From Economist:
"Wisconsin’s prison population grew by 14% between 2000 and 2007 but, in the same period, the rate of violent crime rose by 23%. By 2019 the number of prisoners is expected to have swollen by another 25%, with a price tag of $2.5 billion. Facing a $6.6 billion deficit this year, Wisconsin can hardly afford to expand its prison system further.
...Wisconsin is not alone. Nearby Michigan, which spent a staggering 22% of its general fund on corrections last year, is debating reforms. Three judges in California have instructed that state to cut its prison population by one-third by 2012.
...State correction systems have exploded in recent decades. The Pew Centre on the States, a research outfit, reports that one in 100 Americans is incarcerated. One in 31 is in prison, on parole or on probation. This is expensive. Corrections have gobbled more and more of state budgets, at a faster pace than any government service except Medicaid. In 2008 spending on corrections was 303% greater than two decades earlier.
New laws, not more crime, are the main factor. Since the 1970s, when parole boards had wide discretion to release prisoners, states such as Wisconsin have set mandatory minimum sentences and applied baseball’s “three-strikes” rule to the national pastime of incarceration, often locking up repeat offenders for life. In the 1990s federal incentives prodded the states to adopt “truth in sentencing”, meaning that a court sentence would be completed in full, ending rewards for good behaviour behind bars. Mr Grams noted a change both in the time offenders spent at Columbia and in the prison’s “climate”, a euphemism for whether inmates behave well or abominably.
...Ms Taylor points to Texas and Kansas as examples of states where reform has begun to reverse these trends. The Justice Centre counselled both states in 2007. The ensuing policy changes expanded treatment programmes in the community and strengthened supervision of those on probation and parole. In Texas the prison population grew by only 529 inmates between January 2007 and December 2008, rather than the 5,141 predicted before reform.
In Wisconsin the governor and Ms Taylor’s committee...have proposed different plans, but they have much in common. Each would allow an inmate to serve a shorter sentence if he completed certain programmes, such as job training. To keep offenders from repeating their mistakes, each would improve treatments for problems such as mental illness and drug abuse.
The proposals have many critics. Mr Doyle’s plan to end “truth in sentencing” has upset Wisconsin’s attorney-general and legislators such as Scott Suder, who calls it the “let ’em loose early” scheme. Concern over Wisconsin’s deficit may scuttle the committee’s proposal, which costs $30m. But the Justice Centre estimates that investing $30m today would avert spending $2.3 billion by 2019."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13702846
Friday, May 22, 2009
De-Bunking the Myths
TW: We house terrorists including al-Qaeda adherents within the U.S. at federal prisons. We have pre-9/11 terrorists, post-9/11 terrorists, not to mention untold numbers of very, very evil and whacked serial rapists, racists, mass murderers etc. Yet ignorance reins and folks still quiver at the concept of bringing several more dozen into the U.S. Hopefully as time passes calmer heads will prevail. And kudos to the folks of Hardin, Montana I would be right there with them. Not sure the wife would agree but if the Feds wanted to provide me with several million in funds I would construct my own little cell block and house them.
From WaPo:
"...lawmakers from both parties, as well as the director of the FBI, have sounded alarms about moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to federal prisons, where they could launch riots, hatch radical plots or somehow be released among the populace.
"No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. to live among us," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.). Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said Tuesday, before saying he was open to changing his position, "Part of what we don't want is them be put in prisons in the United States."
But the apocalyptic rhetoric rarely addresses this: Thirty-three international terrorists, many with ties to al-Qaeda, reside in a single federal prison in Florence, Colo., with little public notice.
Detained in the supermax facility in Colorado are Ramzi Yousef, who headed the group that carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; Ahmed Ressam, of the Dec. 31, 1999, Los Angeles airport millennium attack plots; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, conspirator in several plots, including one to assassinate President George W. Bush; and Wadih el-Hage, convicted of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.
..."We have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners, since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month, all over the United States, including some really quite dangerous people," Philip D. Zelikow, who was counselor to Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
....Still, one economically pressed community in Montana is bucking the trend of "not in my back yard." Some residents in Hardin are volunteering to open their unused, 464-bed Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility to the detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The City Council recently passed a resolution in support.
But Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) put his foot down. "We're not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country -- no way, not on my watch," he told Time magazine this month."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052102009.html
From WaPo:
"...lawmakers from both parties, as well as the director of the FBI, have sounded alarms about moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to federal prisons, where they could launch riots, hatch radical plots or somehow be released among the populace.
"No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. to live among us," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.). Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said Tuesday, before saying he was open to changing his position, "Part of what we don't want is them be put in prisons in the United States."
But the apocalyptic rhetoric rarely addresses this: Thirty-three international terrorists, many with ties to al-Qaeda, reside in a single federal prison in Florence, Colo., with little public notice.
Detained in the supermax facility in Colorado are Ramzi Yousef, who headed the group that carried out the first bombing of the World Trade Center in February 1993; Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiring in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; Ahmed Ressam, of the Dec. 31, 1999, Los Angeles airport millennium attack plots; Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, conspirator in several plots, including one to assassinate President George W. Bush; and Wadih el-Hage, convicted of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya.
..."We have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners, since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month, all over the United States, including some really quite dangerous people," Philip D. Zelikow, who was counselor to Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and executive director of the 9/11 Commission, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
....Still, one economically pressed community in Montana is bucking the trend of "not in my back yard." Some residents in Hardin are volunteering to open their unused, 464-bed Two Rivers Regional Detention Facility to the detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The City Council recently passed a resolution in support.
But Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) put his foot down. "We're not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country -- no way, not on my watch," he told Time magazine this month."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052102009.html
Monday, April 20, 2009
Silver Lining Amidst the Contraction
TW: Not really the way I would prefer our prison systems to reform but better than no reform. After three decades of profligacy related to the expansion of our prison networks, the fiscal crisis is forcing states to re-examine a cost center that is growing faster than all other government programs save health care. At roughly $35K per person per year, governments are figuring out that throwing as many folks as possible into prison may not be a viable long-term solution.
As a multi deca-billion $ annual expenditure, prisons have become big business with local governments fighting to keep what is now the functional equivalent of patronage employment. I suspect prison spending is yet another one of those sacred cows conservatives would like to continue to fund at least as aggressively as the recent past if not even more. Regardless even some of the bastions of lock um up and throw away the key are moving toward reforms. We need penal reform sooner rather than later, our current system is yet another example of a politically expedient process which is neither efficient nor effective.
From NYT:
" For nearly three decades, most states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Kansas, are closing prisons. Others, like New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
...Being tough on crime and sentencing has long been the clear path toward job retention for state lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike. But the economic crisis is forcing them to take a more pragmatic approach as prisoners are increasingly seen less as indistinct wrongdoers and more as expenses that must be reined in.
“When state budgets are flush,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, “prisons are something that governors and legislators all support, and they don’t want to touch sentencing reform. But when dollars are as tight as they are now, you have to make really tough choices. And so now things are in play.”
...In the past 20 years, correction department budgets have quadrupled and are outpacing every major spending area outside health care, according to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States. With 7.3 million Americans in prison, on parole or under probation, states spent $47 billion in 2008, the study said.
...The annual cost to keep someone in prison varies by state, and the type of institution, but the typical cost cited by states is about $35,000.
...Mr. Schwarzenegger, as well as other leaders and lawmakers who are far more conservative, has come around to a view held by advocates of sentencing and prison reform that longer sentences do little to reduce recidivism among certain nonviolent criminals.
“In California we are out of room and we’re out of money,” said the state’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate. “It may be time to take some of these steps that we should have taken long ago.”
...Here in Carson City [NV] the state estimates it would save $18 million a year by closing the prison. But the idea has rattled employees, some of whom have followed their parents’ career paths, and the community, which considers the prison a provider of jobs and an important piece of Nevada history.
...“As the economy has worsened, prisons are the modern-day factory in our rural areas,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Corrections Department. “We built these prisons in the 1980s, and people were adamantly opposed to having them in their communities. Now we go and try to take them out, and they don’t want them gone.”
http://tinyurl.com/c6e8ne
As a multi deca-billion $ annual expenditure, prisons have become big business with local governments fighting to keep what is now the functional equivalent of patronage employment. I suspect prison spending is yet another one of those sacred cows conservatives would like to continue to fund at least as aggressively as the recent past if not even more. Regardless even some of the bastions of lock um up and throw away the key are moving toward reforms. We need penal reform sooner rather than later, our current system is yet another example of a politically expedient process which is neither efficient nor effective.
From NYT:
" For nearly three decades, most states have dealt with lawbreakers in two ways: lock more of them up for longer periods, and build more prisons to hold them. Now many governments, out of money and buried under mounting prison costs, are reversing those policies and practices.
Some states, like Colorado and Kansas, are closing prisons. Others, like New Jersey, have replaced jail time with community programs or other sanctions for people who violate parole. Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill this month that enhances the credits some inmates can earn toward release.
...Being tough on crime and sentencing has long been the clear path toward job retention for state lawmakers — Republicans and Democrats alike. But the economic crisis is forcing them to take a more pragmatic approach as prisoners are increasingly seen less as indistinct wrongdoers and more as expenses that must be reined in.
“When state budgets are flush,” said Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, “prisons are something that governors and legislators all support, and they don’t want to touch sentencing reform. But when dollars are as tight as they are now, you have to make really tough choices. And so now things are in play.”
...In the past 20 years, correction department budgets have quadrupled and are outpacing every major spending area outside health care, according to a recent report by the Pew Center on the States. With 7.3 million Americans in prison, on parole or under probation, states spent $47 billion in 2008, the study said.
...The annual cost to keep someone in prison varies by state, and the type of institution, but the typical cost cited by states is about $35,000.
...Mr. Schwarzenegger, as well as other leaders and lawmakers who are far more conservative, has come around to a view held by advocates of sentencing and prison reform that longer sentences do little to reduce recidivism among certain nonviolent criminals.
“In California we are out of room and we’re out of money,” said the state’s corrections secretary, Matthew Cate. “It may be time to take some of these steps that we should have taken long ago.”
...Here in Carson City [NV] the state estimates it would save $18 million a year by closing the prison. But the idea has rattled employees, some of whom have followed their parents’ career paths, and the community, which considers the prison a provider of jobs and an important piece of Nevada history.
...“As the economy has worsened, prisons are the modern-day factory in our rural areas,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Corrections Department. “We built these prisons in the 1980s, and people were adamantly opposed to having them in their communities. Now we go and try to take them out, and they don’t want them gone.”
http://tinyurl.com/c6e8ne
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Our Bulging And Ineffective Prison System
TW: America imprisons a lot of folks. Many Americans support the lock um up and throw away the key approach to crime. No politician runs on a lets empty our prisons platform, many run on lets put more in prison. As a later post will show, this is both highly expensive and not particularly effective. One in thirty adults in prison or parole, something is not working. As the piece mentions, prisoners beget future prisoners as their children are far more likely to follow their legacy. The economics of prisons are now huge with localities competing for house them as they create relatively high paying, low skill jobs. I support stimulus but this is not one of them.
Jim Webb (Dem Senator VA) has bravely come out with suggestions on reform. Here is to hoping he is joined by many others.
From Economist:
"...America has less than 5% of the world’s people but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average. About one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one-in-three chance of being imprisoned at some point in their lives.
...More than 20% of inmates report that they have been sexually assaulted by guards or fellow inmates. Federal prisons are operating at more than 130% of capacity. A sixth of prisoners suffer from mental illness of one sort or another. There are four times as many mentally ill people in prison as in mental hospitals.
As well as being brutal, prisons are ineffective. They may keep offenders off the streets, but they fail to discourage them from offending. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are re-arrested within three years of being released. The punishment extends to prisoners’ families, too. America’s 1.7m “prison orphans” are six times more likely than their peers to end up in prison themselves.
...It is possible to pick holes in these figures. Some of the world’s most repressive regimes do not own up to their addiction to imprisonment (does anyone really believe that Cuba imprisons only five in every 1,000 of its citizens?). No sane person would rather be locked up in Russia or China than in America. A country as large and diverse as America boasts plenty of model prisons and exemplary training programmes. But all that said, the conclusion remains stark: America’s incarceration habit is a disgrace, wasting resources at home and damaging the country abroad.
Few mainstream politicians have had the courage to denounce any of this. People who embrace prison reform usually end up in the political graveyard. There is no organised lobby for prison reform. The press ignores the subject.
...Which makes Jim Webb all the more remarkable. Mr Webb is far from being a lion of the Senate, roaring from the comfort of a safe seat. He is a first-term senator for Virginia who barely squeaked into Congress. The state he represents also has a long history of being tough on crime: Virginia abolished parole in 1994 and is second only to Texas in the number of people it executes.
But Mr Webb is now America’s leading advocate of prison reform. He has co-sponsored a bill to create a blue-ribbon commission to report on America’s prisons. And he has spoken out in every possible venue, from the Senate to local political meetings. Mr Webb is not content with incremental reform. He is willing to tackle what he calls “the elephant in the bedroom”—America’s willingness to imprison people for drug offences.
Does Mr Webb have any chance of diminishing America’s addiction to incarceration? History is hardly on his side. For most of the 20th century America imprisoned roughly the same proportion of its population as many other countries—a hundred people for every 100,000 citizens. But while other countries stayed where they were, the American incarceration rate then took off—to 313 per 100,000 in 1985 and 648 in 1997.
Mr Webb also has some powerful forces ranged against him. The prison-industrial complex (which includes private prisons as well as public ones) employs thousands of people and armies of lobbyists. Twenty-six states plus the federal government have passed “three strikes and you’re out” laws which put repeat offenders in prison for life without parole. And the war on drugs has pushed the incarceration business into overdrive. The number of people serving time for drugs has increased from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today, or 55% of the population of federal prisons and 21% of those in state prisons. An astonishing three-quarters of prisoners locked up on drug-related charges are black.
...Some signs suggest that the tide is turning in Mr Webb’s direction. Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Barack Obama’s Justice Department has hinted that it wants to do something about the disparity in sentencing between blacks and whites for drug crimes. Support for both the death penalty and the war on drugs is softening: a dozen states have legalised the use of marijuana for medical purposes. If Mr Webb can transform these glimmers of discontent with America’s prison-industrial complex into a fully fledged reform movement, then he will go down in history as a great senator."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13415267
Jim Webb (Dem Senator VA) has bravely come out with suggestions on reform. Here is to hoping he is joined by many others.
From Economist:
"...America has less than 5% of the world’s people but almost 25% of its prisoners. It imprisons 756 people per 100,000 residents, a rate nearly five times the world average. About one in every 31 adults is either in prison or on parole. Black men have a one-in-three chance of being imprisoned at some point in their lives.
...More than 20% of inmates report that they have been sexually assaulted by guards or fellow inmates. Federal prisons are operating at more than 130% of capacity. A sixth of prisoners suffer from mental illness of one sort or another. There are four times as many mentally ill people in prison as in mental hospitals.
As well as being brutal, prisons are ineffective. They may keep offenders off the streets, but they fail to discourage them from offending. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are re-arrested within three years of being released. The punishment extends to prisoners’ families, too. America’s 1.7m “prison orphans” are six times more likely than their peers to end up in prison themselves.
...It is possible to pick holes in these figures. Some of the world’s most repressive regimes do not own up to their addiction to imprisonment (does anyone really believe that Cuba imprisons only five in every 1,000 of its citizens?). No sane person would rather be locked up in Russia or China than in America. A country as large and diverse as America boasts plenty of model prisons and exemplary training programmes. But all that said, the conclusion remains stark: America’s incarceration habit is a disgrace, wasting resources at home and damaging the country abroad.
Few mainstream politicians have had the courage to denounce any of this. People who embrace prison reform usually end up in the political graveyard. There is no organised lobby for prison reform. The press ignores the subject.
...Which makes Jim Webb all the more remarkable. Mr Webb is far from being a lion of the Senate, roaring from the comfort of a safe seat. He is a first-term senator for Virginia who barely squeaked into Congress. The state he represents also has a long history of being tough on crime: Virginia abolished parole in 1994 and is second only to Texas in the number of people it executes.
But Mr Webb is now America’s leading advocate of prison reform. He has co-sponsored a bill to create a blue-ribbon commission to report on America’s prisons. And he has spoken out in every possible venue, from the Senate to local political meetings. Mr Webb is not content with incremental reform. He is willing to tackle what he calls “the elephant in the bedroom”—America’s willingness to imprison people for drug offences.
Does Mr Webb have any chance of diminishing America’s addiction to incarceration? History is hardly on his side. For most of the 20th century America imprisoned roughly the same proportion of its population as many other countries—a hundred people for every 100,000 citizens. But while other countries stayed where they were, the American incarceration rate then took off—to 313 per 100,000 in 1985 and 648 in 1997.
Mr Webb also has some powerful forces ranged against him. The prison-industrial complex (which includes private prisons as well as public ones) employs thousands of people and armies of lobbyists. Twenty-six states plus the federal government have passed “three strikes and you’re out” laws which put repeat offenders in prison for life without parole. And the war on drugs has pushed the incarceration business into overdrive. The number of people serving time for drugs has increased from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today, or 55% of the population of federal prisons and 21% of those in state prisons. An astonishing three-quarters of prisoners locked up on drug-related charges are black.
...Some signs suggest that the tide is turning in Mr Webb’s direction. Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Barack Obama’s Justice Department has hinted that it wants to do something about the disparity in sentencing between blacks and whites for drug crimes. Support for both the death penalty and the war on drugs is softening: a dozen states have legalised the use of marijuana for medical purposes. If Mr Webb can transform these glimmers of discontent with America’s prison-industrial complex into a fully fledged reform movement, then he will go down in history as a great senator."
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13415267
Monday, December 15, 2008
Why Do We Imprison So Many People?
TW: Many conservatives see a chart like above and see progress, I see failure.From Reason:
"According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics report released yesterday, 2.3 million Americans were behind bars in 2007, 1.5 percent more than in 2006 and a new record. The number includes about 780,000 people in local jails, 1.4 million in state prisons, and 200,000 in federal prison. Roughly one in five state prisoners and more than half of federal prisoners were serving time for drug offenses. Assuming the percentage of drug offenders in jails is similar to the percentage in state prisons, the total is more than half a million. "That is ten times the total in 1980," notes the Drug Policy Alliance, "and more than all of western Europe (with a much larger population) incarcerates for all offenses."
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