The Cancer of American Incarceration

There is no starker example of the contradictory nature of the USA’s exceptionalism than our prison system.  We have 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners.  Our normalized (adjusted for population size) incarceration rate is many times the rate of any other developed nation and is in the same category as such ‘exceptional’ nations as Russia and Iran.  Indeed, we can boast of an even higher level than those countries!

Here is a map of the world prison population depicted in colors:

This prison mania accelerated monstrously from 1980 to 2000 and is now very slowly declining.  Here are three graphs depicting the growth of our correctional world.  The first one shows the total numbers of people in various states of correction, the second shows prison population, and the third shows the growth of the % of the population incarcerated over time.

There is currently a bi-partisan effort underway to address the extreme nature of our prison industry, but the ramifications of this 30 year orgy of incarceration will be with us for a long time.

Not only do we incarcerate more people than any other nation, we also do the poorest job of rehabilitating them.  Our system’s mantra is punishment, not rehabilitation, and we have rates of recidivism that reflect that misguided policy.  Over 77% of prisoners released in 2005 were arrested again by 2010.  Over 43% are arrested within the first year.  Compare this to European countries, where the focus is on rehabilitation and the recidivism rate is well below 50%. 

People who have a criminal record have a very difficult time re-entering society.  Job opportunities are scarce (who wants a ‘criminal’ as a new employee?), their primary group of friends and acquaintances is very likely to consist of ex-cons who may tempt them to return to criminal activities, their families may have distanced themselves during their incarceration, they cannot vote or hold many types of jobs, and they are much more susceptible to depression, suicide, drug or alcohol abuse and many other ills.

To a great extent society gives up on people who go to prison.  And the consequential costs to society are staggering.  The largest visible cost is the incarceration itself and the justice system that surrounds it.  More police, more courts, more judicial officials, more jails, more prisons, more probation officers – the list goes on and on.  And then there are the unseen costs – the loss of these people as contributing members of society, the impact of their imprisonment on their families, and particularly their children, the material and psychological impact of their criminality on our social fabric.

Underlying all of these sad facts is our nation’s unresolved problem of race.  Black men comprise 37% of the prison population in the U.S. though they are only 16% of the overall population.  Blacks are given significantly longer prison sentences than whites for the same crimes.  There can be no denying that these facts are a dismal legacy of slavery and the unfinished reconstruction of our society after freedom was granted. 

There are two sides to the racial crime coin.  One is that blacks are undoubtedly profiled and targeted for investigation much more aggressively than whites, especially in drug-related crimes.  The other side is that blacks do commit more violent crimes than whites, with the great majority being black on black crime.  However, black crime is a huge fear factor for white people, and much of our over-zealous incarceration over the last 30 years is due to a kind of hysteria that afflicted white people and influenced lawmakers to act aggressively.

What is clear is that ever-increasing incarceration as punishment is not the long term answer to crime.  Excellent examples of rehabilitation techniques do exist in the world, especially in Nordic countries – Norway, Sweden, Denmark.  Our current prison system is a frighteningly dangerous, dysfunctional hell that is more likely to create career criminals than do any rehabilitation at all.  If we are not willing to reform our system and dedicate the necessary resources to oppose this trend of vengeance over forgiveness, then we will be doomed to a vicious cycle of increasing crime and alienation in our society.