Incarcerations punish the individual and the community

Getting tougher on crime sounds like a good idea, as long as you don't think about it. From an emotional standpoint, it makes sense, doesn't it? People who break the law should be punished—you do the crime, you do the time.  Inmates lack education, rehabilitation, adequate healthcare and voting rights, but didn't they relinquish those privileges when they broke the law? While families struggle to make an honest living to send their own kids to college, why should our tax dollars be spent on criminals?

Here's the thing: our tax dollars are already spent on criminals—in unnecessarily huge quantities. A Justice Policy Institute report estimates that we invest $68 billion in the criminal justice system every year. According to a study by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, funding for education has dwindled as these costs increase. In the last 20 years, the study says, state spending on prisons has grown at six times the rate of spending on higher education.

Yet, despite the fact that we imprison more people than any other country, crime rates don't seem to correlate with the boom in prison populations that has steadily risen for the past 30 years. In fact, there's evidence that as we pour our resources into prisons, our unparalleled incarceration levels may actually worsen crime, at both individual and community levels.

First of all, poverty and incarceration are undeniably linked. Criminals, in general, are distinctly disadvantaged—they're more likely to drop out of high school, to have a history of mental illness, alcoholism or drug addiction and to be unemployed. Criminal convictions usually exacerbate these problems, since former prisoners can be prevented from receiving housing assistance, welfare and often employment. Given these handicaps, it's hardly surprising that former criminals would struggle to integrate themselves back into society without returning to jail; the State of California, where recidivism rates are as high as 70 percent, is a particularly sobering example. If our aim in punishing criminals is to create more productive members of society, we have surely failed.  

Second, as ex-prisoners rotate in and out of jail in high numbers, the effects on their communities can be devastating, making them more vulnerable to crime. These constant cycles produce impermanent populations, not only because people are committed to prison, but because family members may move, either to be closer to the loved one or because of the financial blow that may occur when a loved one is incarcerated.  

Where residents frequently circulate in and out of neighborhoods, inhabitants become more isolated from one another, and this lack of cohesion and trust tends to hinder the community's ability to enforce the social norms that discourage criminal activity. When a parent goes to prison, families are damaged, often depriving youth of parental guidance. In short, excessive incarceration causes instability that can make some neighborhoods a breeding ground for violence. If our aim in punishing criminals is to ensure public safety, these efforts have failed as well.

"A lot of people are sent to prison who perhaps ought not to be in prison, in terms of some cost-benefit analysis," says Grover Norquist, conservative tax activist and president of an advocacy group—Americans for Tax Reform. "I don't get weepy about the whole idea. But we are keeping some people in prison who might be better off in drug rehabilitation or under other kinds of house arrest or other kinds of control, other than very expensive prisons."

I admire Norquist's rational take on the issue. To tackle the rising costs of our criminal justice system, we must divorce ourselves from our emotional need for sympathy or vengeance to consider what policies will actually benefit and heal our communities. If education and rehabilitation will prevent former inmates from reoffending—despite the massive cuts made to these programs in the last two decades, countless studies have declared these the most cost-effective ways to reduce recidivism—we should stop worrying about whether or not convicts we've never met "deserve" an education and instead focus on what works to fix our bloated prisons.

The bottom line, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous says, is that "we have too many people in prison. And what's clear is that the policies that have put them there are failing us. Now, we know that there are policies that can make us safer that cost less, that are more effective. And the time has come for us to actually choose those policies, stop wasting money, stop wasting lives and stop needlessly breaking up families."

Molly Jones is a senior in English. The opinions expressed in her columns do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Barometer staff. Jones can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.