Robben Island Prison by g-hat@flickrNew High in U.S. Prison Poplulation

Apparently we hit a new record… go us?

More than 1% of the U.S. population is presently in jail. Obviously if you are minority or poor than more than 1% or your community is currently in jail. I don’t understand how we accept that state of affairs as if it is acceptable.

For my conservative readers: We are spending $55 billion dollars a year to lock up 2.3 million people. Since we are operating in a deficit that means we continue to spend millions of dollars each year on interest on borrowing that money. With all that money consumed in the prison system it hinders our ability to build roads, fund the armed forces, have another round of tax cuts or whatever else conservatives think governments should be spending their money.

For me it’s simply inhuman to lock up that many people. Clearly the current system isn’t working and what we are doing now simply isn’t practical. We can’t just keep putting people in jail and hope that makes things better. What happens is people people who went to jail for minor things, come out hardened criminals with socialized contacts into the criminal world.

They get out and look for a job and we don’t hire them because they have the habits, demeanor, tattoos, etc of someone who’s been in jail. That’s before the we even consider the stigma of the criminal record once a background check is done or the interviewer asks about the five year blank space in the resume. Looking for a place to live and way to make ends meet they are more likely than ever to take a shady job that allows them to support themselves. With that sort of cycle it’s only a matter of time before they return to jail.

We have more of our population in jail both as a percentage and an absolute number. The argument could be made that the numbers reported for the distant second place holder, China, aren’t very accurate. Even if you accept that without any evidence to suggest it’s true you still have to contend with the fact that we imprison a greater percentage of our country than any other industrialized nation who’s data you trust.

Prisons are not the answer. They don’t make us safer, they are merely deficit spending of public safety. Eventually people get out of jail, it’s neither moral, nor can we afford to keep them there forever. When they are released they are even more distant from legal society. Their ability to change their lives are diminished and the problem that prison was supposed to solve surges again in 5, 10 or 20 years.

While there may be a temporary benefit to public safety by locking a lot of people up, it is dwarfed by the effect of reducing poverty or unemployment has on the crime rate. We need to concentrate on the longterm meaningful, humane solutions. Work on poverty and person’s ability to meaningfully employed and provide for their own welfare and there will be a much more longterm benefit to public safety.

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