Sadly, America’s first national prison commission in 30 years failed to tackle, head on, our lock ’em culture and to find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars in Oregon and elsewhere. The commission’s recent report is little more than a how to manual to help wardens cope with the overcrowded prisons that breed violence, disease and recidivism.
What we really need is a road map yo drastically shrink Oregon’s prison population and, at the same time, save state taxpayers a lot of money. In Confronting Confinement, the
Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons admits, “It was beyond the scope of our inquiry to explore how states and the federal government might sensibly reduce prisoner populations. Yet all that we studied is touched by, indeed in the
grip of, America’s unprecedented reliance on incarceration. We
incarcerate people at a higher rate than any country in the world.”
The study rightly pins responsibility for our overcrowded prisons on tough on crime laws passed by state and federal legislators. But it does not look for ways to decrease America’s
booming prison industry that adds more than 1,000 new inmates per week, costs more than $60 billion a year and employs about 750,000 workers to watch over 2.2. million
inmates – almost double the 1990 prison population.
The commission never asked this question: Why pay room and board to put someone like Martha Stewart, behind bars when modern electronic tracking devices can easily keep tabs
on these non-violent criminals at a fraction of the cost?
Oregon taxpayers shelled out about $360 million in 2003 to hire 8,693 state and local corrective employees to watch over 18,600 inmates. That’s about $19,350 per year, per inmate.
Nationally, about one-half of all state prisoners have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder and assault. The other half – in the case of Oregon about 9,300 inmates – are non-violent, many of them convicted of possession or sale of
small quantities of drugs. For such offenders – and for low level burglars and embezzlers – prison can do more harm than good. Many will leave prison more violent and possessing
better criminal skills then when they arrived. And even those
that want to go straight will have a hard time finding a legitimate job.
Why not treat those offenders differently? The Council of State
Governments reports that halfway houses and non-residential, community-based supervision programs, including day reporting centers, community service and other work assignments, are viable alternatives to incarceration. These alternatives also allow offenders to build work and social skills needed to avoid future run-ins with the law.
In 2003, according to my research, Oregonians also spend $87
million, or about $1,250 per year to supervise each of the 64,500 nonincarcerated convicts. This means that for every non-violent inmate shifted from inside prison to nonprison
punishment, taxpayers could save upwards of $18,000 per year. If all 9,300 non-violent inmates were released to alternative punishments, the state could potentially save
$167 million annually.
Five years ago California started sending drug offenders to treatment programs instead of prison and,
based on a recent UCLA study, the state has saved about $173 million a year and no longer needs to build a planned new prison. Total savings: $1.4 billion. Maryland is cutting their
prison population and saving money with a similar program.
As a society, we are quick to needlessly fill prisons with non-violent inmates, and too slow to find alternative ways to punish and rehabilitate them.
Ronald Fraser, Ph.D, writes on public policy issues for the DKT
Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization