Do we ever think about prisons?

Do we ever think about prisons? I mean other than when we watch Law and Order. As of 2006 almost ten percent of the entire global population is in prison. An astonishing number, and one can only wonder what this number does to the global economy. How many people die in prison? How many people who go to prison for minor offences hone their skills while inside and get involved more deeply in criminal activities? Unless you know someone who has been in prison it is not a place, not a topic that we think about in any meaningful fashion.

Does our economic system influence the length of prison sentences? I recently got to know someone who was in prison for a long period of time. A long time ago he was responsible for a property crime. Not violent. No one was hurt. But it involved a large amount of money. In our economic capitalist world this is probably the worst crime from a societal perspective. Sure there is murder, rape and other violent crimes but property crimes are verboten. The interesting thing is about this story is the length of time he served. He served more time than the average murder sentence, which is in some places ten years. The average time served for rape in some jurisdictions, is six years, but time served is often half that. (http://ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/ncvrw/1996/m-rape.htm).

Of course a lot of people believe that criminals get off too easy. However consider the following, according to a report by the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1992, federal US Prisons held about 1,800 people convicted of murder for an average time served of 4 ½ years. That same year they saw 12,727 nonviolent first time drug offenders served and average time of 6 ½ years. The logic here defies me unless you factor in the fact that in legal jurisprudence there is a bias towards harsher punishments for “crimes against property”.

It is not fashionable to talk about alternatives to prison today. But the fact is that prisons globally represent a massive industrial complex. The United States is undergoing a massive correctional build up and privatization of the prisons system. Are we as a society really okay with imprisoning young men (primarily men) and women over minor infractions; smoking weed, property offences due to drugs and so on? In 1996 the National Criminal Justice Commission released a report stating that the prisons system “wastes public resources, converts nonviolent offenders into violent criminals, and disproportionately punishes some racial groups”.

But the other problem is what about afterwards? What about after serving a lengthy sentence? What is the cost of stripping a person of their livelihood and social status? What then is the cost of societal reintegration, from replacing driver’s licenses, finding work, housing, mending broken familial bonds, re-training and so on? Or are we now too deeply entrenched in the institutionalization of every facet of our public lives to consider viable alternatives?

Prison as we know it today exists in a form first conceived by British social reformer and utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham. First conceived in the 17th century it’s not too late to re-imagine other ways of punishing those who commit crimes.

Oh, any by the way, even though the prison industry how grown exponentially in the last decade, has crime decreased? Do you feel safer?