Tag: incarceration

I’m skeptical of the very term prisoner “rehabilitation.” It seems rooted in a misguided sense of paternalism, implying there is some criminal class just waiting to be cured by us, the enlightened class. Rehabilitation implying there is something to “habilitate” in the first place. And this hogwash it is the very foundation upon which our whole prison system was invented.

But the truth is, and many people don’t know this, we don’t even try to rehabilitate. The Wall Street Journal reports that just 6% of prisoners were enrolled in vocational or college programs. Of course some argue against all programs for prisoners. But what’s supposed to happen when they get out (as 95% of them do)? Is this the best we can do with our $60-billion-a-year government-run system of incarceration? Maybe it’s time to try something else.

Even if we could “rehabilitate,” could you imagine a worse setting than in confinement, surrounded by criminals? And if prisons are just punishment, aren’t there better, cheaper, and more honest ways to punish? (Like, for instance, flogging ? But more on that later.)

[Also posted at The Agitator]

The United States has more more men & women in prison than any other nation including Russia and China…. The 95% conviction rate reached by threats of long sentences, intimidation, lies and prosecutorial abuse has got to be reckoned with now, not later.

So says Duke Cunningham, an imprisoned conservative Republican, in Slate.

Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan in the Washington Post on the need for less prison.

We urge conservative legislators to lead the way in addressing an issue often considered off-limits to reform: prisons.

1) Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest for-profit prison operator, spends $25,000 for Maine Republican candidate Paul LePage. He wins the election. But state law prohibits private prisons. This kind of law is one of the few good things to come from prison guard union lobbying.

2) A few weeks before becoming governor, according to Lance Tapley in the Portland, Maine, Phoenix Lepage meets with CCA’s reps

3) The governor-elect’s spokesman says LePage “will try to get the law changed.”

4) CCA says they will build a giant prison in remote, impoverished Piscataquis County.

5) The last step is to fill the prison by lobbying elected officials for more and longer prison sentences. To not do so wouldn’t be in the best interest of your shareholders. It’s nothing personal; it’s just business.

6) Repeat. Since 1970, the US prison and jail population has gone from 338,000 to 2.3 million.

And check out CCA’s creepy website which includes what seems like a parody video from one of those dystopic-future movies like Starship Troopersor Blade Runner.

Also of note from the Phoenix:

CCA officials have talked about a prison housing 2,000 to 2,400 inmates with 200 to 300 employees. If true, that would be an extraordinarily small number of staff for such a large number of prisoners. The Maine State Prison has just over 400 workers — most of them guards — to deal with just over 900 prisoners.

Remember the rule of thumb that you need roughly six employees to man one shift. So CCA would have approximately one guard for every 60 prisoners. Maine currently spends $41,000 per prisoner.

Mosi Secret of the Times reports on nonfelony defendants arrested in the city in 2008:

In more than three-quarters of the 117,064 cases, defendants were released on their own recognizance.

In 19,137 cases from that year, bail was set at $1,000 or less. The report found that 87 percent of the defendants in those cases did not post bail and went to jail to await trial. They remained for an average of 15.7 days.

“Here we are locking people up for want of a couple of hundred dollars,” said Jamie Fellner, senior counsel with the domestic program of the advocacy group.

“Pretrial liberty should not be conditioned on the size of your bank account,” Ms. Fellner said.

The report raised the possibility that many of the poorer defendants pleaded guilty at arraignment for sentences with no jail time, simply to avoid being behind bars while awaiting trial.

A fifteen day stay on Rikers costs the city about $3,000 per person.

In the UK. According to the BBC. Something about “human rights,” sez the E.U. Bunch of socialists.

There are really two philosophies in running prisons. Some wardens and officers feel that the sentence is the punishment, not the way they treat them, and that they should treat the inmates as human beings, and that they have a future, and that they need to be prepared to return to the community. These wardens take the word ‘correction’ seriously. [By contrast] there is a whole other group that are basically bureaucrats. … Take a DMV office, string barbed wire around it, and give the clerks guns.

So says Pat Nolan of the Prison Fellowship Ministries, quoted in the Nieman Watchdog.

Fascinating. And I think a great idea. Cost is irrelevant only to those who don’t pay.

From the New York Times:

But critics — prosecutors especially — dismiss the idea as unseemly. They say that the cost of punishment is an irrelevant consideration when deciding a criminal’s fate and that there is a risk of overlooking the larger social costs of crime.

“Justice isn’t subject to a mathematical formula,” said Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County.

That’s laughable coming from a prosecutor who cuts plea bargains all day.

Here’s another simple number we should know but really don’t: What’s it cost to arrest somebody? Seems like it matters (at least to the taxpayer) if the choice is between a citation and an arrest.

Part of the problem in figuring this out is that the expense is divided between different departments, jurisdictions, and budgets (police, courts, sheriff, jail, prosecutor, and public defender). Another problem is there’s not a simple turnstile that you pay to go through. There is some economy of scale, I would presume. In other words, reducing arrests by 10 percent would not cost the cost by 10 percent.

An article in the Arizona Republic today mentions some dollar figures. I’m not sure where they’re from or how they were come up with, but here they are: “Bookings cost $192 per suspect and the city must pay about $72 per day for each inmate housed in county jails.”

Now keep in mind Maricopa County is Sheriff Joe land and spends very little on jail. Rikers Island in New York City, by contrast, costs $190 per day. Regardless, jail figures are pretty easy to come up with because, well, they have a budget.

It’s the booking cost that is more interesting and much harder to determine. Same with the cost of a court appearance. Still, for someone who spends a night or two in jail, the cost of each arrest is at least a couple hundred of dollars. Throw in a court appearance and we’re probable pushing a grand.

[Anybody know if these figures are out there somewhere and I just haven’t found them?]