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"So long as society is founded on injustice, the function of the laws will be to defend and sustain injustice. And the more unjust they are the more respectable they will seem." -- Anatole France, August 1913 |
By Jamie York
As a humanist -- one who believes in maximum individual freedom within the framework of social and planetary responsibility -- it is my hope that one day there will be no need for prisons because people will have adapted to new ways of thinking and living together on this planet. I do not believe that humans are born violent, but I do believe we are products of our environment. The care and nurturing we receive as infants, the attention we receive from adults, the treatment we receive from our peers in school, the images we see on television, and so on, all contribute to our sense of self-worth. The better we feel about ourselves, the less likely we will be to engage in unhealthful behavior or criminal activities.
Since 1980, thanks primarily to the so-called "war on drugs," the prison population in the United States has quadrupled. Today, there are more than 2 million people in jails or prisons and another 3.6 million on parole. In the states of California and Texas alone, there are more people behind bars than in all of western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined. Alvin J. Bronstein, former Executive Director of the National Prison Project, cites a recent British study estimating that there are 8 million people incarcerated worldwide. "You do the math. With less than 5 percent of the world's population, the United States incarcerates nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population."
Approximately 87 percent of the U.S. prison population are incarcerated for non-violent offenses such as drug possession, theft, forgery, vandalism, burgarly, disorderly conduct and alcohol-related offenses such as DUI. Of the 13 percent incarcerated for violent offenses, only 3 percent of these cases involved injury or death to others. Overall, the crime rate has been dropping and violent crime is at a 25-year low.
The prison system in the United States is a blend of private business and government interests. While politicians say publicly that the "war on drugs" or the "fight against crime" is the rationale behind incarceration, the drive for profit and social control are the real purposes of incarceration. In the 1970s, Chief Justice Warren Burger called for turning prisons into "factories with fences" and this concept has now been widely implemented. Inmates -- mostly people of color and the poor -- represent a cheap labor pool comparable to sweatshops in Mexico, Indonesia, or Southeast Asia. Today, inmates in the U.S. are being paid as little as 23 cents per hour to manufacture goods for corporations like McDonalds, TWA and Starbucks.
In the United States alone, approximately $100 billion is spent on the criminal justice system each year. Incarceration costs an average of $25,000 per person annually and each prison cell costs $75,000 to $100,000 to build. I believe this is wasteful spending because prison does nothing to address the fundamental causes of crime or to rehabilitate people. A person who has served a five-year sentence for drug possession might be a greater threat to the community after having experienced life in prison.
In 1996, only 6 percent of state prison budgets were allocated to support rehabilitative prison programs -- i.e., vocational, educational and treatment programs -- while 94 percent of prison budgets were spent on staffing, new prison construction, and on maintaining and housing prisoners. When one considers that 65 percent of all prisoners re-entering the community will be re-arrested within three years, then it is clear that the prison system would rather warehouse prisoners than make an honest effort to rehabilitate them.
More social workers and teachers are needed to help inmates develop a positive self-image and to teach basic life skills such as managing money, finding employment and considering housing options. Those who want to pursue a GED, obtain a college degree, or to learn building maintenance trades such as plumbing and electrical work should have the opportunity to do so. Prison infirmaries could offer a basic nursing assistant training program, complete with classroom instruction and on-the-job experience, so that inmates will at least have a skill that can be used when he or she is released. Those who have an aptitude for music, crafts, or the arts should be encouraged to pursue those interests as well. Inmates who have mental illness, drug and alcohol addictions, or other chronic health problems such as diatetes or hepatitis, should be properly counseled, treated and monitored. The emphasis should be on helping the inmate learn to cope with the illness when he or she is released from prison and to obtain appropriate follow-up care. The transitional role of prisons in a society that cares about rehabilitation should be "classrooms with fences," not "factories with fences."
As states expand prison rehabilitative programs, states should also focus on keeping people out of prison in the first place. With 80 percent of prisoners functionally illiterate, the best crime prevention program of all is education, yet states would rather spend money building new prisons than improving schools. In my view, spending money on new schools, early-childhood development, conflict-resolution, after-school recreation programs, job training and placement, and for therapeutic intervention to treat people with mental illnesses and drug addictions would drastically reduce crime in just a few years if these programs were adequately funded.
Communities, too, can help reduce the jail population by seeking alternative sanctions, rather than jail sentences, for individuals who commit non-violent crimes. For example, a person convicted of vandalism might be sentenced to scrub city sidewalks and shovel snow for three months to pay the community back; a person convicted of burglary might be sentenced to a rehabilitative housing costruction crew, perhaps building energy-efficient straw bale homes for poor families.
For those who have committed violent crimes and need to be incarcerated, every effort should be made to treat, counsel, and rehabilitate them. No matter what they have done, they should be treated as human beings, with access to health care, visitation, exercise, school, work, creative endeavors, and uncensored reading materials. No inmate should be disenfranchised from society, so laws restricting or eliminating voting rights should be repealed. Part of the rehabilitative process should be teaching inmates responsible citizenship -- and the only way to do this is through active participation.
Warehousing inmates, or using them as a cheap labor pool for private corporations, is wasteful spending and bad public policy. As a first small step toward the elimination of control unit prisons, I support a national moratorium on all new prison construction so states can establish community task forces to evaluate drug sentencing laws, explore the cost and effectiveness of alternatives to incarceration, and evaluate treatment strategies. I also support converting all existing private prisons into state prisons.
[The following is a letter from an inmate serving a life sentence at Montana State Prison. He did not want his name to be used out of fear of reprisals and harassment for his criticism of the Montana Department of Corrections. This letter is especially timely as state agencies all over the country position themselves against inevitable budget cuts. One State of Montana proposal to help ease the so-called budget crisis is to release some inmates up to 90 days early, so it is interesting to note the scare tactic language used by some state representatives, even though violent and sexual offenders are excluded from this early release.]
The fiscal year is coming up, so Montana State Prison is gearing up for some grandstanding. It always seems to fill up around here near the end of the fiscal year. Nobody out there seems to notice the pattern the Department of Corrections uses for extorting money from the state and federal governments. I can see it -- I learned all about it in a group I had to take -- and the DOC is going through their criminal cycle now.
First let me point out to you that as the fiscal year comes to an end, lo and behold, we're at capacity here at Montana State Prison. All the regional prisons and community corrections programs are saturated as well. But wait, that's not supposed to be happening! Remember when the DOC told you that if you gave them all those millions they could build more cells, and then you folks wouldn't have to worry about all of us dangerous criminals? In the last 10 or 12 years didn't you folks pay for a new women's prison? Haven't you paid for another 1,000 or so beds that are contracted to Shelby, Great Falls, Missoula and Glendive? By the way, Glendive has supposedly been operating in the red for the past 18 months, so you people are going to be asked to pony up another 3 or 4 million; otherwise, the DOC will have to parole150 or so "hardened, dangerous criminals."
People like the guy in my ITU (Intensive Treatement Unit) group, who was caught practicing a hobby without a permit and, subsequently, received a write-up. This individual is a first-time offender and was scheduled to go to a pre-release center -- where he would have paid his own way -- upon completion of ITU. This write-up has kept him here at least four months longer than expected. At a per diem cost of $63.00, this will cost you, the taxpayer, at least an additional $7,686.00 for a single, minor infraction of the rules. These frivolous write-ups occur every day and are just one more example of why Montana spends more to incarcerate its citizens than to educate them.
Here on the Low Security side of the prison, in A,B and C units, wwe're capable of housing 168 inmates in each unit. Well, I guess that's not quite enough. The powers that be are going to put 20 people in the day rooms of each unit. Those inmates unfortunate enough to be put in those day rooms will not have easy access to toilets, sinks or showers. So somebody -- perhaps somebody in the DOC administration -- will tip off the ACLU about the overcrowding. The ACLU will then scream and holler about the people in the day rooms. And let's not forget about the overcrowding on Fish Row [that is, the reception unit for new inmates]; those boys are three deep in a 5 x 8 cell!
You might ask, "Why does this keep happening? We've paid for all those extra beds, but according to all the charts and graphs, the crime rate hasn't doubled in the last 10 years." The problem begins with the Parole Board. If a hundred inmates go before the Board here at the prison, only four will get parole upon completion of pre-release, two upon completion of ISP, and one will get straight parole. Remember when pre-release was a program designed to help inmates without other means to re-integrate into society and build a productive life? Now it is a required program in order to get paroled here. There are guys who have waited six months or longer to get a bed in a pre-release center.
In all reality, about half the people who go in front of the Parole Board would be good candidates for parole. However, if the Board started giving parole to all those who are good candidates, the backlog at MSP would dissipate, so the DOC could no longer ask you, the taxpayer, for more money. They would no longer be able to threaten you good people by scare tactics, by telling you that they'd have to let a bunch of sex offenders and violent offenders out if you refused to give them more money. This sounds like extortion to me. Isn't extortion a criminal act?
So there you have it. The Montana Department of Corrections criminal cycle. Pretty simple; pretty obvious; yet effective enough to work year after year.
Sincerely,
I.N. Mate