Our Prison System Must Be Reformed
There’s an interesting editorial in today’s NY Times that looks at the U.S. prison system and it’s numerous failures. Currently the United States has the largest prison population in the world. 1 in 100 Americans is behind bars bringing the total prison population to around 1.6 million people.
Nearly every prison in the U.S. is dangerously overcrowded and understaffed which creates an environment that is both deadly to staff and to inmates.
The novel idea of “rehabilitation” is something that has long since left America’s prison system. The idea now revolves around “warehousing” inmates until such time as they can be released, executed, murdered, or die of natural causes.
There is no funding for school, trades, or anything that might better prepare someone for the outside world. Most prisons have a “revolving door” meaning that 80% of those released come right back in less than a year.
I’m not naive, I know full well that there’s a lot of people who belong in prison and should be kept their for the rest of their lives. Anyone who doubts this should just watch a couple of hours of “Lock-Up” on MSNBC.
The roots of the U.S. prison system in it’s present form can be traced back to the 1980’s when the public demanded that prisons be a place for punishment and not a vacation.
This is a valid argument and one that I share. Prisons absolutely should be about punishment, however that’s not all it should be about. We are only doing further damage to our society when people who are sent to prison don’t come out any better than when they went in.
Does anyone really believe that sending a drug-addicted high school drop-out to prison for 5 years is gonna solve anything?
When he gets out he’ll be the same drug addicted high-school drop-out he was only a little older. He’ll also have convicted felon and ex-con to add to his decidedly short resume which will guarantee that not even his local McDonald’s is likely to hire him.
Contrast that with a drug addicted high-school drop-out who undergoes extensive, mandatory drug treatment over his five years of incarceration plus a GED and at least two years of college. A guy like that can leave prison feeling better about his future than he ever has and society as a whole will benefit from having another productive member added to it.
Obviously a prisoner has to want to help himself before anyone else can help him. There will be many who just don’t give a damn and whose anti-social personality is beyond anyone’s reach.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that we know exactly what to do with those kind of people. I also understand that programs like I’m describing will not be cheap and taxpayers dislike the idea of “wasting” tax payer money on criminals and thugs.
However, in the long-run I believe people will come to see it not as wasting money. Right now for ever 1 person released from prison 3 are coming in.
Imagine what are society would be like if fewer criminals were leaving our prisons than were coming into it?
We must save our “punishment only” incarceration for those who cannot be helped, but offer an aggressive rehabilitation/education program for the rest.
-Chris Jones
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