Pubdate: Sat, 10 Aug 2002 Source: Economist, The (UK) Copyright: 2002 The Economist Newspaper Limited Contact: http://www.economist.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/132 Too Many Convicts AMERICA'S TOUGH CRIME POLICY IS HAVING UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES Today is a special day for 1,600 American men and women: they are being released from a state or federal prison. Tomorrow will be a special day for another 1,600 people. As will be the day after that. Some 600,000 inmates will leave prison this year - more than the population of Washington, DC. After quadrupling its imprisonment rate in just 30 years - America now has 700 people in every 100,000 under lock and key, five times the proportion in Britain, the toughest sentencer in Western Europe - the world's most aggressive jailer must now confront the iron law of imprisonment: that those who go in almost always come out. The result is a society that, statistically at least, is beginning to look a little like early Australia. Nearly one in eight American men has been convicted of a felony - and thus, in many states, has been automatically deprived of numerous rights, including the right to vote. On in 20 men has been to jail. The average is much higher among some groups (one black man in five has been to prison, one in three has been convicted of a felony). These convicts, particularly those who have been to prison, contribute little good to the places where they live. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are rearrested within three years. Prisons are a breeding-ground for terrible diseases, both medical (such as AIDS) and social (the Aryan Brotherhood), that soon spread to the outside world. The high rates of imprisonment are partly related to the number of crimes committed in America; but they also reflect a determined policy to increase the number of mandatory sentences, particularly for drug offences. Since the 1980s, laws have limited the discretion both of judges to make the punishment fit the crime and of parole boards to determine when prisoners are fit to be released. In the ten years after 1986, the average term in federal prison rose from 39 to 54 months. Did It Work? This offensive against crime is generally held to be a success. America's crime rate has fallen in recent years, and though it has now started to rise again, no politician in America thinks that arguing for more lenient treatment of criminals will bring in votes. That does not mean that it would be wrong to do so. Put simply, America probably sends people to prison too willingly, and looks after them too carelessly afterwards. Some believe that the upturn in the crime rate is directly linked to the number of unreformed ex-convicts on America's streets. There is a good case for opposing tough mandatory sentences merely on moral grounds. Locking up a young woman for ten years just because her boyfriend was a drug-dealer ill becomes a civilised country. But there are also practical doubts about America's sentencing policy. The lower crime figures may have had more to do with demography (fewer you men around) and changes in policing than with sentencing policy. Once you compare like with like, a different picture emerges. America's fiercest imprisoner, Texas, which locks up more than 1,000 people for every 100,000 citizens, has far worse crime statistics than New Your state, where the imprisonment rate has risen much more slowly. And when it comes to drugs and violent c4rime, the two plagues hard sentencing was supposed to cure, it has failed dramatically. Drug-taking is as widespread as ever, and America's murder rate is still nearly four times higher than the European Union's. The argument about sentencing is an old one. So the clamour emanating from it has tended to obscure the other side of the debate - whether America treats its prisoners and felons too roughly. That deafness may be deliberate: for many Americans, sentencing has now become purely a matter of punishment. But it surely behoves those who favour sending ever more people to prison to try to make prison work better. Each prisoner who emerges unreformed will start committing crimes again (a more frightening thought when you realise that one in four commits violent crimes). Even if such people are caught quickly, it costs money to imprison them: America spends more than $50 billion a year on its prison system. From The Land Of Second Chances To The Land Of No Hope Rehabilitation has become something of a dirty work in American debates about crime. Prisons the world over are fairly awful places, with a poor record of converting people from a life of crime. Even so, America's system seems particularly devised to ensure that prisoners remain criminals. To begin with, some rehabilitation projects - particularly drug treatment - seem to work. Yet America has slashed money for such schemes, often to pay for new prisons. One advantage of leaving some degree of discretion over sentencing to parole boards was that it obliged prisoners to prove that they were ready for outside life. This incentive has now gone. Outside prison, the aftercare system is even weaker. Many ex-cons are simply presented with a one-way bus ticket. The number of prisoners for each parole officer has risen by 50%. These deficiencies might all be described as failures of care. Worse still are those of discrimination. Trying to restart life as a felon is difficult for all sorts of reasons; in America, the government loads on many more. There is a long list of jobs from which felons are banned, many of them having nothing to do with security. In some cases they are denied housing benefit. And, of course, nearly 5m of them are denied the vote. So a convict can pay taxes, own property, send his children to school. Ought he also to be deprived, permanently in many cases, of a voice in how society is governed? This question matters, because it goes to the root of how America treats criminals. Punishment requires a fixed term. In justice, just as much as in literature, every sentence finishes, eventually, with a full stop. After that the ex-convict should enjoy the same rights as anybody else. He has served his time. America is not alone in denying its convicts the vote. But it seems odd that a country built on giving people a second chance (and a country, incidentally, with one of the most forgiving bankruptcy laws in the world) should have turned against this principle so savagely when it comes to convicts. Particularly now that it is creating so many of them. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake