Alternatives to Prison
Issued: November 30, 2011
Our society is not alone in wanting peace and safety on our streets and a hopeful, creative future for our children. We're not alone in sharing deeply held beliefs about just punishment for evil actions. But in the United States we are alone in the way we choose to reach for those desires and implement those deep beliefs. The United States incarcerates a higher share of its population than any nation in the world--while the U.S. comprises 5 percent of the world's population, we hold almost 25 percent of the world's reported prisoners. This edition of the Washington Newsletter discusses the state of our broken prison system and the steps that can be taken to create a system that works to address crime, not simply to punish offenders.
See the PDF of this newsletter here.
Article Index
Maybe we don't have enough tools. Maybe we don't have enough imagination. Whatever the reason, we in the United States seem to be somewhat bewildered about finding and applying effective solutions to major societal problems. We have a one-size-fits-all solution: more force. We need to ask ourselves first: What results do we want? And what solutions will create an effective pathway to that end?
Bob Rhudy is a lawyer, a member of FCNL's Field Committee, and a former member of Baltimore Yearly Meeting's Criminal and Restorative Justice Committee. Bob spends time worshipping with prisoners at the Maryland Correctional Institute in Hagerstown and firmly believes that "Quakers who are involved in prison work can draw on those experiences and stories to help people get services and encourage legislators to rethink prison policy in this country."
The United States incarcerates a higher share of its population than any nation in the world--higher than Russia and the emerging Soviet states; higher than Rwanda; higher than Cuba. Our prison system also overwhelmingly punishes people of color-about two thirds of the prison population is black or Hispanic. The figures speak for themselves. We must address this problem by focusing on rehabilitation instead of harsher punishments.
The cost of our prison system is not only a moral and existential one but also a fiscal one. Keeping one person in a federal or state prison costs $29,000 a year. Nationally, U.S. taxpayers pay about $74 billion a year to incarcerate people who are charged with or convicted of crimes. The economics of the prison system are staggering and a potent rationale for fundamental change.
The problems outlined in this newsletter will not be fixed overnight. The hardest part is changing the basic assumption that force is the answer to making our society safer and more orderly. Over time, laws will change as well. The good news is that many people agree that the system is broken and are looking for ways to fix it.
African American and Hispanic males are over-represented in the prison population. They are not only stopped and arrested more often; they are also more frequently convicted of the crimes that come with long mandatory sentences. Even though whites and African Americans use and sell drugs at roughly the same rates, black men are twelve times more likely to be sent to prison for a drug offense than white men.
Despite a historical separation between the police and the Army, today military and civilian agents work side by side in an intensive operation to stop the flow of and imprison immigrants: the military supplies night vision equipment, helicopters, military translators, intelligence databases and reconnaissance aircraft. For the people living on the southern border of the United States, their communities are looking more and more like a war zone rather than a border.
Curious where we got our data from? Want to do more reading on the issue? Check out our list of notes and references to learn more.
