For Release Sunday, August 15, 2010
© 2010 Washington Post Writers Group
The rest of the world is starting to notice the United States’ incarceration follies.
Case in point: “Why America locks up so many people,” the cover story of the British-based Economist magazine, showing the face of a forlorn Statue of Liberty behind bars.
The grim statistics noted: some 2.3 million people, more than the population of 15 of our states, are now incarcerated — one in 100 Americans. That’s quadruple our 1970 imprisonment rate. For hard-to-defend reasons, and at staggering fiscal cost, we incarcerate people at a rate five times Great Britain’s, nine times Germany’s, 12 times Japan’s.
Congress is on the brink of our first national reassessment in many decades. Sen. James Webb of Virginia is proposing a National Criminal Justice Commission instructed to take an 18-month, stem-to-stern look at the system, its shortcomings and alternatives. The bill recently passed the House without opposition; now the question is whether the Senate (where the measure has a 38 cosponsors) can avoid a procedural objection by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and bring it to a vote.
The Economist notes that along with truly dangerous serial rapists and murderers, as well as Bernie Madoff-like white collar criminals we want to punish severely, the United States incarcerates astounding numbers of low-level blue and white collar offenders.
Among them are street-level drug dealers (generally quickly replaced), people accused of such violations as embezzling, driving without an operator’s license or transgressing environmental laws. In addition to voluminous state laws, there are some 4,000 federally-defined offenses backed up by thousands more regulations — many virtually impossible for any layman to comprehend.
The Economist tells the story of George Norris, a 65-year old Texan who imported orchids. He was suddenly accosted in his home by armed police in flak jackets, frisked, held incommunicado for four hours as officers ransacked his home, and eventually charged with smuggling flowers into America, a violation of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
Norris, who believed himself innocent though he admitted some of his Latin American flower suppliers might have been sloppy in their paperwork, had never made more than $20,000 a year in his importing business. But he was thrown into prison with suspected murderers and drug dealers, accused of being the “kingpin” of an international smuggling ring, ultimately sentenced to 17 months — and then, despite his condition with Parkinson’s disease, put in solitary confinement for 71 days for bringing prescription sleeping pills with him to prison.
The tough question raised by the Norris case and others likes it: are some prosecutors going overboard, using their extraordinary powers beyond clear justice requirements? Under threat from prosecutors, it’s claimed, even defendants who are convinced they’re innocent may enter guilty pleas to shorten their potential sentences. Example: a prosecutor might threaten a middle-aged man that he’ll receive such a long sentence he’ll likely will die in a cell unless he gives evidence against his boss.
And then there’s the incarceration youth-aging syndrome. Americans seem anxious to get their youthful violent offenders behind bars, and it’s happening (with especially huge numbers among minorities). But in reality, there are few muggers over 30.
Why long sentences when classic penology says swift and certain punishment is what works? We already have over 200,000 prisoners over 50, often in failing health (with vast medical costs). Yet if released, they’re unlikely to offend again. When imprisonment costs vary from Mississippi’s $18,000 a year to roughly $50,000 in California, when schools and critical social services are being cut to the bone, do long sentences into middle- and late-age serve the public interest?
Webb acknowledges that when he started discussions on today’s criminal system, “we heard a lot of unease, particularly from law enforcement’s side.” But he then met with over 100 organizations, explaining the need and balance of his commission proposal — to include every relevant issue from arrest, prosecution, incarceration and prison administration to prisoner reentry. Now, he claims, the idea of his proposed commission has been “scrubbed through the entire philosophical spectrum with great support,” ranging from the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union to leading national police officers’ groups.
There’s emerging evidence, developed by such organizations as the Pew Center for the States and the Vera Institute of Justice, that we’ve reached a point of diminishing if any public safety returns from cascading levels of imprisonment. Some states — even toughly conservative South Carolina and Mississippi — have begun to reform their practices, reduce incarceration, without impairing public safety. A typical measure: make non-violent drug offenders eligible for parole or probation instead of incarceration.
Reform’s potential net effect? Saving billions of public dollars, for sure. But also fewer deeply disrupted families, fewer deeply embittered ex-cons, and fewer communities impacted by high percentages of their youth imprisoned. And fewer, as the Economist puts it, decades-long sentences “watching hairs go white, and lifetimes ebb away.”
Neal Peirce’s e-mail is npeirce@citistates.com.
For reprints of Neal Peirce’s column, please contact Washington Post Permissions, c/o PARS International Corp., WPPermissions@parsintl.com, fax 212-221-9195. For newspaper syndication sales, Washington Post Writers Group, 202-334-5375, wpwgsales@washpost.com.
3 Comments
This is good to know!
“Some states — even toughly conservative South Carolina and Mississippi — have begun to reform their practices, reduce incarceration, without impairing public safety. A typical measure: make non-violent drug offenders eligible for parole or probation instead of incarceration.”
While this raises valid concerns about the high rate of incarceration in the US, he picks a poor example of unnecessary imprisonment by citing an orchid smuggler. George Norris and his accomplice both pleaded guilty to falsifying import documents.
Rather than assuming no serious crime could be associated with “smuggling flowers”, I suggest that Mr. Peirce read The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean (not the movie) and The Lizard King by Brian Christy or investigate the TRAFFIC website http://www.traffic.org/.
Rather than “prosecutors going overboard”, law officers responsible for enforcing our laws and treaties protecting plants and wildlife must contend with the common assumption that these crimes do not merit serious jail time or heavy fines. However, the profit in illegal wild products is astronomical, illegal imports are now often associated with drug and arms smuggling, and the damage to wildlife and rare plants is huge. Mr. Peirce should understand that these are real crimes that cause real damage, whatever the circumstances of the Norris case.
The real problem here is that our justice system has been warped and wracked by special interests that gain either money or power by putting people behind bars. Those that commit crimes against other, especially violent crimes must be removed from society. However our prisons are clogged with those that were only hurting themselves. No one goes to jail alone, their family, friends and community feel a negative impact, the “unintended consequence”.
Consider the number of exonerations that have been made off of Death Row because of improper identification, tainted lab work or more importantly prosecutorial (and/or Judicial) misconduct. There are exponentially more people behind bars for lesser crimes that have been victims of those same mistakes and improper tactics. There are not enough Journalism and Law school project to begin to address the innocents behind bars.
The news and entertainment media have taken the political hysteria and created a fear and loathing that makes an accusation as good as a conviction in this country. The politicians are supported by the corporations that profit off of the prison industry, not always directly but through parent companies or subsidiaries.
It is time for America to take a close look at the workings of our court system what the police, the prosecutors, the defense and the judges actually do to get a conviction. Consider the morality of a system that piles charge after charge on people who are often times innocent and/or too poor to defend themselves and threatens them into pleading to something they didn’t do to avoid a sentence they don’t deserve so the court avoids a trial that we cannot afford to pay for. There, but for the grace of God go I.