WANTED: THE PRISON ISSUE

Something was missing from presidential campaign 2000 - the crime issue.
That may be because both George W. Bush and Al Gore were already on record
as strong anticrime crusaders.

Or because overall crime rates went down through the 1990s.

But crime ought to be a matter of acute national concern if for no other
reason than this: The United States has 2 million people behind bars, at a
cost of some $40 billion yearly.

That number of inmates represents a far higher imprisonment rate than any
other advanced industrial country.

Is this because America is simply a more violent country?

No. It's fundamentally because politicians in America, in their race to
capture the anticrime vote, have passed sentencing laws that automatically
incarcerate, for five years or more, a great many people whose crimes could
have been dealt with in other ways - including probation, shorter jail
stays, and mandatory drug rehabilitation programs. It's estimated nearly
half the 2 million inmates in the US are serving time for small-time drug
possession and other nonviolent crimes. But if crime rates are down, isn't
all the jail time and jail-building worth it? Consider a recent report by
the Sentencing Project, a group that favors alternatives to prison.

It traced incarceration rates, state by state, through the 1990s. Texas,
the state with the largest increase in incarceration (144 percent) had a
crime-rate drop of 35 percent.

But other comparably large and diverse states, such as California and New
York, had much smaller increases in incarceration with similar or even
larger decreases in crime.

These statistics cast doubt on the efficiency and efficacy of prisons as
the primary solution to a multifaceted crime problem. What may be occurring
all too efficiently is the induction of large numbers of Americans,
particularly black males, into a culture shaped by prison. Disturbingly,
some researchers note a trend of convicted criminals choosing a prison term
over probation when they have a choice - at least partly because time spent
behind bars is considered a badge of honor in some urban neighborhoods.

Another facet of this acculturation phenomenon: Nine states bar anyone
convicted of a felony from voting.

Scholars estimate 7 percent of African-Americans are thus disenfranchised.
In Alabama, nearly a third of black men can't vote because of a prior
conviction. That's a perpetual block to full citizenship - hence an
invitation to continued social pathology - and states ought to remove it.

Incarceration is a necessary part of our systems of justice.

But its overuse can undermine justice and perpetuate lives of crime.
America is at a point where its leaders should be facing this issue, not
acting as if it didn't exist.