LOCKED AWAY AND FORGOTTEN

We're Going To Have To Face Up To It--The Prison System Doesn't Work

With vigils, rallies and teach-ins across America, a ragtag coalition of
activists last Tuesday marked the moment when the nation's prison
population theoretically rose above 2 million for the first time ever.
Spirited though they were, the efforts rated little more than a yawn on the
nation's attention meter. They certainly didn't create enough of a stir to
overshadow the day's other groundbreaking event: television's first-ever
win-a-multimillionaire pageant. In fact, the inmate projections (made by
the Justice Policy Institute, a progressive criminal-justice think tank)
may have outpaced reality. More conservative statisticians believe we are
approaching, but not yet at, the 2 million milestone. Whatever the actual
current number, it is clearly going up and almost certainly will reach 2
million before the year is out. Such high incarceration rates may seem a
reasonable price to pay to keep America safe. But a number of thoughtful
people are concluding it is doing nothing of the sort. And although their
qualms have not yet ignited a mass movement, some believe that may be about
to change.

The problem is that criminal-justice issues, by their very nature, are
morally messy. They focus on the supposed dregs of society, a group with no
political clout and little claim to compassion. They also, at this point,
focus primarily on people who are black or Latino. A majority of Americans
"can easily decide it's not their problem," noted Marc Mauer of the
Sentencing Project, a group promoting criminal-justice reform. Even many
black and Latino liberals are ambivalent about the criminal class. As Los
Angeles civil-rights lawyer Connie Rice observes, convicts are "a caste of
untouchables" society is all too happy to lock away.

Yet even the police are increasingly talking of prevention and community
policing as an alternative to locking up people who, for the most part,
eventually end up on the streets again. There is also, Mauer notes, a
broader recognition of "the impact on whole communities and generations" of
sending ever-growing numbers of people to jail. Part of that recognition
comes from the work of organizations like the Sentencing Project, which
over the last several years has churned out one report after another
detailing what it considers flaws in the American approach to justice. That
approach has resulted in nearly seven times as many female inmates now
(largely for drug offenses) than in 1980—meaning tens of thousands of
children look to prison for mothering. And it has resulted in roughly half
a million ex-cons, hardened and schooled in prison, re-entering communities
yearly.

That approach has also, in the opinion of many researchers, resulted in
rampant unfairness: nonviolent drug addicts getting more prison time than
murderers, minorities getting harsher treatment than whites. Black, Latino
and Asian youths (taken together) were 2.8 times more likely to be arrested
for a violent crime, 6.2 times more likely to end up in adult court and 7
times more likely to be sent to prison than their white counterparts, says
a new JPI study.

Another result of the skyrocketing prison numbers is that more and more
people have gotten a close-up look at what modern American justice means.
Tom Murlowski, now associate director of the November Coalition (a
Colville, Wash.-based organization that advocates reform of drug laws), got
involved after a friend was sent to prison on a drug conviction. "I never
had dreamed of becoming an activist until I saw the woman I care about
destroyed," says the former technical worker. Patricia Moore, a former
city-council member of Compton, Calif., who was convicted of extortion, was
similarly shaken by personal experience. After serving most of a 33-month
term, she emerged this month with petitions asking President Clinton to
pardon 16 women (all nonviolent drug offenders) she met behind bars. The
answer to their problems, Moore concluded, "can't be just in prison."

Civil-rights leaders, previously nervous about raising too much of a ruckus
about prison policy, are becoming bolder. Some see an opening with next
year's U.N. conference on race. With the United States poised to overtake
Russia as the most prison-happy place on the planet, they plan to take
their concerns to the United Nations.

"All the signs point toward more public discussion about such issues,"
concluded Mary Frances Berry, head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
That discussion--taking in those who care about everything from civil
rights to law enforcement to drug policy--is likely to create some unusual
bedfellows. If they end up creating a mass movement, it will not be because
they care so much about prisoners, but because they care about what putting
so many Americans behind bars does to the country's soul.