What Kind of Neighbor Do We Want?
Picture this, a small woman in a big town driving ride share as a part-time gig. It was a glorious morning, having my coffee, doing yoga poses and off to work. The birds are singing, the sky is yellow and the weather is a perfect 70 degrees. I picked up my first ride, the nice gentleman greets me politely and I do the same. We began small talk and landed on the passenger admitting to being just released from prison. Ah nice, wait wha?! I remained calm, and politely asked, “if you don’t mind my asking, what was the crime?” He replied, “Murder”. Oh great, freaking wonderful way to start the work morning. I’m not judging, but there’s a murderer in my car behind me, oh shit! Keeping the mood light, we continued conversation in detail about what he was facing after being released. The world for him had changed drastically after being incarcerated for nearly 20 years. He was faced with being a single, unemployed, man starting over. Luckily, he had family and a place to live.
Side note:
The victims are not the purpose of this writing but are not forgotten. There are no victimless crimes, “restorative justice is concerned with addressing and repairing the harm to victims, relationships, and the community that is caused by crime”. In violent offenses, victims are notified regarding the release of the offenders. https://www.justice.gov/usao/resources/crime-victims-rights-ombudsman/victims-rights-act
At some date, the prisoners will be released and reentered into a community. What’s explored here is the purpose of prison, its inequities and reentry data, and a possible solution for the newly released. The gentleman mentioned earlier, let’s call him Robert for humanization purpose. Robert’s reentry seemed bleak, due to difficulties finding a path toward redemption. His expectation of “normalcy” was circumvented by his past with background checks for employment and finding a home. He remained upbeat during our conversation, but there was nothing but doubt in his tone.
The purpose of prison
The purpose of Roberts sentencing was to “quench society’s thirst for vengeance”. Not everyone is a Christian, but in a mostly “Christian” society, the call for blood is loud and political leaders must answer.
The old motto if “you do the crime, you must serve the time”! The objective of prison is taking away the offenders name and time; solely to treat the person as poorly as possible with the hopes that they will not re-offend. “Another layer is the concept that prisoners do not “deserve” anything more than that experienced by those in the lowest social class in the free society.” And “If the prison does not underbid the slum in human misery, the slum will empty and the prison will fill”. The last sentence speaks of the actual purpose of prison. The slum (free society) will empty and the prison will fill, ideally with “slum”. There’s no way to vindicate a “Robert” if you are already considered slum. At best Ex-offenders are characterized as poor, illiterate, socially inadequate to societal norms.
To create an American utopia, criminals would have to be eradicated, peace amongst our society has devoted attention to “lock em up”. A mentality that will lock up all but the moderately and extremely wealthy; making reentry impossible. The conflicts are moral views, social welfare and what divides society as a whole; for example, “status, class and wealth’. Each person / or group type will arrive at their separate views about the treatment of prisoners. Unless or until the prison issue presents its self as a personal or professional matter.
An article suggests there’s new evidence proving prisons are ineffective; moreover the recidivism data proves that the current prison method / system isn’t working. “What’s more, “the movement toward broad, punitive crime control and prison policies wasn’t based on any scientific rationale, it was largely the product of policy decisions made for largely political reasons”.
Another article argues, that welfare prisons are not an answer to recidivism. Asking the following: “Is the food tasty? Are the prison officers decent and professional? Do you feel safe here”? But this method would preserve “the prison system as a human warehouse” with socially distant and distrustful prisoners”. Not a promising neighbor this will make, and that’s what we’re building folks. The prisoner is expected to fully recover and blend into society. There are government offered resources for individuals upon release from prison. Yet this may not be helpful while trying to obtain employment and living arrangements.
Meanwhile, in Norway they built a prison in 2010 that explores the reintegration of prisoners. Providing a life that looks as normal as life in a community. In comparison of the US guards and Norway, the US provides weeks of training defensively with the standard offender/deterrence model. Compared to Norway’s two year education program of protection, self defense, psychology, and human rights training.
The two are night and day justice, one served up as inhumane treatment and the other too passive not serving enough justice for the victim(s).
U.S. Warehousing Humans — The Timeline
The US has the largest prison population in the world. We just have to be the best at everything, including outdoing communist countries with prison populace. “American sentencing policies, practices, and patterns have changed dramatically during the past 40 years. The incarceration rate had been falling since 1961”. So, when was it decided to increase the population of prisons? The answer, the late 1980’s. In the nineteen eighties, the prison population had been on a steady incline because of the “war on drugs” campaign. Herein is the timeline of how the prison population has increased in the US.
1972:
Not going too far back in history, in “1972 there were less than 350,000 people in adult prisons nationwide”. Today we are over achieving with more than two million people in prisons.
1989:
The change came in the 1980’s, introduction to the “adult prison industrial complex”. The government gave private sector businesses contracts to establish a new prison mechanism. Two of the first known businesses were CCA and WCC, they were awarded contracts in 1989 to begin the “penal legitimacy”. This legitimacy allows the contractor to “design, construct, finance and manage; with a recovery of cost in 20 years.” The recovery is an “attract taxation” benefit making this the DCFM contracts.
By the end of 1989 private contracts were established for 44 adult prisons, located in 14 states at a capacity of 15,000 bodies by 1996.
Interesting side note, 45 states passed laws to try juveniles as adults in 1992.
1990:
The nineties saw an increase to 118 adult prisons across 25 states with a capacity of 78,000; by November 1999 the rate had grown to 162 prisons across 31 states with a capacity of 125,000 human souls. Not everyone was in favor of privatizing prisons, because it could possibly lead to influencing politicians through lobbying. But they must have been outvoted, because privatization continued without a hitch in the planning.
Recidivism Data
I like to call this the revolving door data. Unearthing recidivism data world-wide produced information about Denmark in comparison to the United Sates. Denmark may grant prisoners leave, for example “of the 60,000 prisoners leaving yearly, only 3 percent return to prison.” While in the United States, “67.8% of the 404,638 state prisoners released in 2005 in 30 states were arrested within 3 years of release, and 76.6% were arrested within 5 years of release.”
Possible Solution
According to the timeline and the extensive plans implemented; it appears that the US doesn’t plan to really “release” prisoners. But, I may just be misinterpreting the data presented.
To revise the prison system for proper reentry, we may want to consider a little from column A (US), and a lot more from column B (Norway, Denmark).
A criminal sentence + reentry program = Social forgiveness. It may be asking too much, but it’s an idea. We all want a successful community; after the prisoner is released “what kind of neighbor do we want?”
Back to Robert, his re-entry will need a lot of family and community support. Some of us are not forgiving and are unwilling. But for the many that believe in redemption, we should consider education, housing and employment through the current prison plan (if these actions haven’t been initiated already).
There were so many times during the research that I wanted to discuss another topic regarding the American prison system; it’s a vast collection of elements to tackle. Notably however, there was a supplemental discovery worth mentioning. Another big panic tactic to protect the future, preventing the start of a criminal trend by attacking the family line.
Sounds like something out of a horror movie. They want you, and your children and your children’s children. But that can’t be right?! Well…
The old saying goes, the “apples don’t fall far from the tree’ but it’s a hard pill to swallow giving the countless crimes against humanity from the start of time. That narrative could be applied to anyone’s ancestral tree. So, don’t cast stones if your house is made of glass, right.
Well the best example is a Florida county tracking children that “will be” criminals. The YouTube video is called “This Sheriff’s Office Allegedly Tracks Kids They Think Will Be Criminals” VICE News 806,618 views Jun 3, 2021. Some apples are often rotten to the core, and seemingly are judge and jury of America’s current population. Children were marked as criminals before they could actively consider the idea, making a criminal for “justice” sake.
Sources:
Keramet Reiter, Lori Sexton, Jennifer Summer, INSIGHT 03 February 2016 The world weekly https://www.theworldweekly.com/reader/view/15847/the-danish-jails-that-reduce-crime-by-treating-prisoners-like-people
Pollock, J. M., Hogan, N. L., Lambert, E. G., Ross, J. I., & Sundt, J. L. (2012). A Utopian prison: Contradiction in terms?. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 28(1), 60–76.
Durose, M. R., Cooper, A. D., & Snyder, H. N. (2014). Recidivism of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005: Patterns from 2005 to 2010 (Vol. 28). Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Harding, R. (2001). Private prisons. Crime and Justice, 28, 265–346.
Wald, J., & Losen, D. J. (2003). Defining and redirecting a school‐to‐prison pipeline. New directions for youth development, 2003(99), 9–15.
Moore, R. (2017). An analysis of Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. Macat Library.
Nally, J. M., Lockwood, S., Ho, T., & Knutson, K. (2014). Post-release recidivism and employment among different types of released offenders: A 5-year follow-up study in the United States. International Journal of Criminal Justice Sciences, 9(1), 16.
How Norway’s Prisons Are Different From America’s | NowThis 2, 630,804 views Aug 6, 2020 https://youtu.be/zNpehw-Yjvs
https://www.justice.gov/usao/resources/annual-statistical-reports
Ugelvik, T. (2016). Prisons as welfare institutions?: Punishment and the Nordic model. In Handbook on prisons (pp. 388–402). Routledge.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2014/10/incarceration# American Psychological Association “Incarceration Nation” October 2014, Vol 45, №9
