: Mind, British prisons are well behind the US 9700 per hundred thousands head of population in some states)- is it 1 million people in US jails now?Actually, according to Bob Woodruff of ABC News, the US incarceration total was recently (15 March, 1999) 1.8 millions. That's about one out of every 150 US citizens behind bars. (I used ABC deliberately, to avoid the "lefty bias" BS that I usually get from citing specific details. You should hear some of Angela Davis' recent stuff on this topic!)
US inmates are also not a representative sample of the population. Blacks and "Hispanics" make up the vast majority of the prison population here, and a considerable portion of Native American/First Nations people are also incarcerated (I think it was Peltier who described the US prison system as "the fastest-growing Indian reservation in the country"). This is not, as some have argued, evidence of higher crime rates in minority communities, but rather evidence of differential observation and enforcement. Cops "know" that non-whites commit more crimes, so they patrol Black and "Hispanic" neighborhoods much more frequently and scrutinize young men there much more carefully than is true in "white" communities. Naturally, they see more crimes where they are looking for them than where they are not.
The US crime rate is actually dropping, and Justice Department says that the prison boom is to be credited with this. That may be partially true, but is mostly a factor of statistical manipulation, since crimes committed in prison aren't counted in the same statistics as those outside.
A considerable proportion of prisoners are in for non-violent, "drug-related" offenses, most frequently posession. The incarceration of a bunch of dope-smoking hippies does nothing to increase the safety or well-being of the populus. One main effect, as you imply, is to expose petty criminals to more dangerous offenders, and transmission of information between prisoners may be related to the apparent increase in violence of repeat offenders in their later crimes, relative to their first conviction.
Another major effect of the boom in US imprisonment is, of course, profit. Tax money is being consistently diverted, most clearly from education, but also from other programs, into prison construction. At the same time, "for profit," privately operated prisons have been sprining up all over the country. This process increases the diversion of public funds into private pockets, and thus increases the disparity between rich and poor.
Poverty, itself, does not lead to crime. (If it did, sub-Saharan Africa would have a higher crime rate than the US.) However, the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is a major factor, particularly in the media-saturated US. Children are told that hey have to have products X,Y, and Z in order to fit in, and any family that can not afford these products is seen as inferior. Young people internalize both the manufactured desires and the sense of inferior status, and crime, and the profits therefrom, are seen as ways out.
In addition, in communities where some crime is tolerated, (e.g. "he's only selling dope to make money to support his family,") youth are more prone to see criminality, in general, as an acceptable approach to capitalist society.
: And of course, what that article doesn't mention is, what will happen when the incarcerated actually get out, you may slow crime for a while by locking everyone up, but they come out eventually- but ah, yes, you have the three strikes system just to be extra inhumane...
Indeed! Recidivism is most definitely part of the "problem," since most former inmates are released back into the exact same environment they occupied before their conviction. Since funding for prison education programs has been dramatically cut by the "tough on crime" politicians, people are being released with no new skills or knowledge to use in coping with the environment that supported their criminal behavior in the first place. Prison education programs seem to have a significant impact on recidivism. Educated ex-cons don't commit second offenses at anywhere near the rate of uneducated ones. However, "get tough" politicians view such programs as "coddling" of criminals, and have convinced a considerable portion of the public that this is the case. Thus programs that actually help reduce crime are actively dismantled, leading to higher crime rates, which lead to more prison construction ($$$) and to re-election of "tough on crime" politicians.
Maybe I'm just being cynical.
There's a lot more to this topic, but I have other work I should be doing. Peace.
-Floyd
None.
