Correctional Dilemma

During the last few months I have been given the opportunity to work in a local women’s prison as well as take a class learning about the justice system in the United States. My understanding of this system has been challenged during my time there. Until recently, I found myself apathetic to the topic of the prison system. People commit crimes, they must pay for their crimes, and prison is where they go to serve out these sentences. And while I do have strong opinions about the death penalty, I had forgotten the presence of a whole other population serving time as well.

This experience has shown me first-hand the dilemma the United States correctional system faces. Incarceration rates are skyrocketing, the economic cost of housing inmates strains state governments, and the recidivism rate continually rises. At the same time, funding for rehabilitation programs is almost non-existent, and what is in place has not come easily. Many times, in my own experiences and in the material I have read, it is as if we have forgotten that we all have a humanity, even those that have broken our laws. How do we fix this problem? How do we remind a nation—which is determined to have a system of punitive justice—that our punitive response hurts society as a whole?

To help put these statements in perspective, here are a few facts and statistics about the correctional system. According to Senator Jim Webb’s Fact Sheet, “the United States currently incarcerates 750 inmates per 100,000 persons; the world average is 166 per 100,000.” This means more than one in one hundred citizens are imprisoned in American jails or prisons. Both male and female incarcerations rates have increased dramatically over the past three decades. Each year, 3.2 million women are arrested, and while many of these women are later released without being charged, 156,000 of those women will be held prior to trial or as prisoners after sentencing. And, according to Beth E. Richie, author of “The Social Impact of Mass Incarceration on Women,” these numbers represent a tripling of the female inmate population since 1985. For men, the numbers are ever more staggering: the incarceration rate rose 573% from 1980 to 1997 and has continued to rise today. According to The Pew Center on the States, 1 in 13 adults is under correctional control in Georgia.

While incarceration rates have gone through the roof without a proportionate increase in crime. According to Senator Webb, the rise in incarceration rates results from changes in the penal code. Decreasing crime rate has less to do with increased incarceration as a deterrent to crime than with changing policy dealing with sentencing “in terms of time served and the range of offenses meriting incarceration.”

Local, state, and federal governments face an economic crisis of prison cost. Senator Webb says “in 2006, states spent an estimated $2 billion on prison construction, three times the amount they were spending fifteen years earlier.” This amount, combined with the total cost of law enforcement and the daily expenditure associated with corrections, totals over $200 billion annually. To break that down, Christine Rathbone, in her book A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bards, says housing one inmate for a year costs $38,000 on average. According to The Pew Center on the States, Georgia spent $1.1 billion on corrections in 2007.

And while these costs could be somewhat understandable if they had a positive impact on society, the rising recidivism rate suggests otherwise . According to Senator Webb, “the number of ex-offenders reentering their communities has increased fourfold in the past two decades. On average, however, two out of every three released prisoners will be rearrested and one in two will return to prison within three years of release.” This is due much in part to the way our correctional system currently functions.

During the 1970s, the correctional system went through a transformation. According to Bruce Western, in his book Punishment and Inequality in America, “the official philosophy of rehabilitation was replaced with a punitive approach.” Western describes this approach as characterized by policy analyst James Q. Wilson—characterized by policy analyst James Q. Wilson—as the view “that criminals were not made in the poor and broken homes that dotted traditional criminology; they were born into the world wicked and covetous. Rehabilitation was a sentimental delusion for this tough-minded analysis. Incarceration could reduce crime only by locking away the hard cases and by deterring the opportunists. To deter, punishment had to be certain and not left to the vagaries of the sentencing judge and the parole hearing.”

Because of this change during the 1970s and opinions akin to those of Wilson, we now face a dilemma. How should we approach rising rates of incarceration and recidivism along with the increased economic costs of the correctional system? We are unable simply to “lock offenders up” as a solution, we must again look closely at communities, they way households and neighborhoods foster crime, and these as ways of understanding how to prevent the formation of criminal behavior leading up to and after prison. Though not a new concept for the United States, perhaps a return to greater sentencing flexibility and supportive services would reduce recidivism in a manner less costly than housing inmates. Western says the main objective of such a system was to correct (not merely to punish). It gave judges freedom to determine whether an offender should be incarcerated, or be sentenced to community service under the direction of a parole officer. Further, Western argues that while most convictions did not lead to incarceration, those that did faced an institution focused on rehabilitating the offender to help them become a productive member of society. Western quotes David Garland as describing this system as a “combination of indeterminate sentencing, corrections, and community supervision as ‘penal welfarism.’” For the vast majority of convicted offenders, the criminal justice system was an extension of the welfare state—a government-sponsored effort to provide opportunity and lift society’s failures back into the mainstream.” This sort of approach would help decrease economic cost by reducing the rate of incarceration while promoting a type of rehabilitation proactively working to reduce the recidivism rate by educating and preparing offenders for society once more. Funding previously spent on prison facilities could be used to increase educational and job programs along with counseling and other types of rehabilitative curricula.

Something we seem to have forgotten when dealing with criminal offenders is that they too are human beings. They too are created in the image of God. They too deserve to be treated as such. While it is not okay to violate laws of our society, we cannot just lock individuals up and hope they learn from their mistakes. We must actively pursue an avenue that helps returns them to society with the resources for fulsome, appropriate participation in public life. Christine Rathbone quotes Jeanne Woodford, “I don’t want to forget that this is about people, about humanity.” As the United States faces this dilemma of rising rates of incarceration, recidivism, and economic cost in a system dominated by a punitive idea of justice, we must remember that this is about people, about humanity.