Legal Law

How bad is the crisis in America’s prisons?

Pretty bad. From 1987 to 2007, the US prison population nearly tripled. The US prison population in 2004 was eight times greater than it was in 1954. In 2008, it was 40 times greater than in 1904. On a per capita basis, there were 15 times as many sentenced inmates in 2008 as in 1904. In early 2008, 2,319 .258 Americans were in prison or jail, more than any other country in the world, and a higher percentage of our population is in prison or jail than any other country in the world. As of early 2009, the total inmate population in the United States was 2,424,279. That’s just the number behind bars, four times as many people as are in the US military, more than Utah in the last census. With 5% of the world’s population, the United States has 25% of the world’s prisoners. In 2010, more Americans are serving life sentences than ever before. Prisoners now have their own inspirational lifestyle publication, “Prison Living Magazine”.

In 2007, the entire US correctional population, which includes jail and penitentiary inmates plus those on probation and parole, numbered 7,328,200. By the end of 2008, the number of parolees and parolees increased again. Add in ex-convicts who have completed sentences, parole, or parole, and everyone who is in slavery to their addictions, and the number of Americans alive who are now or have ever been enslaved exceeds 10,000,000. Every year, some 13.5 million people spend time in jail or prison, and 95% are released. Reducing the number behind bars does not directly decrease the correctional population. More than two-thirds of the correctional population is out of prison, on probation, on probation, or awaiting trial. When the prison population peaks and then declines, it probably just means there are more criminals out there.

The hyper-incarceration statistics for African-American men are much worse. We incarcerate one in nine African Americans between the ages of 20 and 34. In 2007, the US Department of Justice estimated that African-American men have a 32% chance of going to jail or jail (become a slave) in their lifetime. Black youth who drop out of high school are nearly 50 times more likely to end up behind bars than the average American, with 60% of that demographic cohort eventually going to prison.

Prison costs create big holes in state budgets, but they don’t improve recidivism. The total cost exceeded $49,000,000,000.00 in 2007, and fairly recent figures show a national operating cost per prisoner of $23,876.00 per year. One study pegged the total costs at more than $60 billion. Costs continue to rise, taking ever larger portions of the state’s general funds and crowding out other priorities. Forward-thinking criminologists, recognizing the lack of good answers in penology, actively seek new evidence-based techniques from other disciplines. The state of California pays $49,000 per prisoner per year according to its governor in mid-2009, who also said the national average is now $32,000 per prisoner per year. With more inmates serving life without speaking and longer sentences, the costs of incarceration are continually rising due to increased health care expenses for older convicts.

It’s not just prisons that are overcrowded and expensive. Officers supervising probation and probation often have more cases to handle than was previously believed optimal. As of early 2008, more than 5.1 million adult men and women were on probation or parole. Supervising every single one of those parolees and probationers costs thousands of dollars a year. Direct spending on the police and judicial system has also increased by several hundred percent over the past 30 years, now costing a total of about $150 billion per year.

Americans in both parties thought we were done with welfare as we knew it when work was required from welfare recipients, but we forgot about the larger group of unemployed welfare recipients. The millions of social parasites we fully support in prisons and jails went almost unnoticed during welfare reform. Very few prisoners pay more than a small fraction of their maintenance; most pay zero. Unlike welfare recipients who may receive some money for food, clothing, and housing, we provide prisoners with all their balanced and regular meals, decent clothing, housing, utilities, court-ordered medical and dental care, medications , education, limited postage privileges, recreation, toiletries, bedding, various forms of treatment or therapy, and for those in isolation, their own private cells with room service. Many enjoy television, radio, or music devices. President Clinton announced in 1998 that inmates would be barred from receiving Social Security checks, but thousands of inmates received stimulus checks from the US government in 2009, many by mistake. According to the Inspector General of Tax Administration in 2010, 1,295 inmates fraudulently received first-time homebuyer tax credits, averaging more than $7,000 per inmate. Of this group, 715 were serving life in prison. Mass incarceration increased the size of the American welfare state through the direct costs and the collateral welfare costs caused by the imprisonment of family members. The costs of crime and punishment are far greater than the costs of imprisonment. There are enormous personal costs for the victims and the families of the perpetrators. Victims lose a lot in terms of dollars. Victims of crime lose billions of dollars every year. Each year, gun violence in the US costs society approximately $80 billion. Black victims greatly outnumber white victims in percentage. Nearly half of shooting victims are black. Blacks victimize their own race. In 2005, about 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks.

Mass incarceration hurts the country in multiple ways. Simultaneously, it creates more real unemployment, because prisoners are severely underemployed, labor shortages outside prison, regularly covered by foreign workers, and new welfare recipients inside prison, because each prisoner, in essence, receives welfare complete. It also produces additional welfare recipients outside of prison. The families of the prisoners lack financial support. Prisoners have higher legal and correctional costs overall and experience more suicide, self-mutilation, gang influence, and racism. Mass incarceration amplifies widespread unhappiness and social disruption. Arguably the 2010 census will count a couple million prisoners in the wrong place. Runaway government spending made us mistakenly think we could afford mass incarceration. Turns out we can’t. It is a significant drag on our entire economy. Over two million people are in prison, and it takes millions of citizens out of prison, working hard, just to keep them.

The good news in history is that nations eventually do what makes economic sense with their prisoners. So a change is coming, because our current systems are wasteful in many ways. The fairly recent Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Silver can help you get the attention you need.

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