CORRUPTION IN THE SYSTEM

In the current issue of `The Atlantic Monthly' is "The Prison-Industrial
Complex," a major investigation of just how out of control and increasingly
corrupt the system is. But in order to understand the mistakes we're making
in responding to the cry for more prisons, you first have to understand why
we think we need them.

Eric Schlosser reports:

"The prison boom in the United States is a recent phenomenon. Throughout
the first three-quarters of this century the nation's incarceration rate
remained relatively stable, at about 110 prison inmates for every 100,000
people. In the mid-1970's the rate began to climb, doubling in the 1980's
and then again in the 1990's. The rate is now 445 per 100,000: among adult
men it is 1,100 per 100,000. During the past two decades roughly a thousand
new prisons and jails have been built in the United States. Nevertheless,
America's prisons are more overcrowded now than when the building spree
began, and the inmate population continues to increase by 50,000 to 80,000
a year."

Among Schlosser's other findings:

* The proportion of offenders being sent to prison each year for violent
crimes has actually fallen during the prison boom. In 1980, about half the
people entering state prison were violent offenders; in 1995, less than a
third had been convicted of violent crime.

* The enormous increase in America's inmate populations is the direct
consequence of the sentences given to nonviolent offenders -- mostly drug
offenders. Crimes that in other countries would lead to community service,
fines or drug treatment (or would not be crimes at all) are punished here
with increasingly long prison terms, the most expensive of all possible
options.

* Since 1991, the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by
about 20 percent, while the number of people in prison or jail has risen by
50 percent. This leads to a perfectly circular argument by those in the
prison-industrial complex: If crime is going up, we need to build more
prisons; if crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons -- and
building even more of them will drive the crime rate even lower. (For those
of you who missed Sociology I, the crime rate has dropped because the
crime-committing cohort -- those aged 15 to 24 -- is smaller;
unfortunately, it's about to go up again, and so will the crime rate.)

* About 70 percent of prison inmates are illiterate. About 200,000 of the 2
million incarcerated are seriously mentally ill. Sixty to 80 percent of
prisoners have a long history of substance abuse. The number of drug
treatment slots available in U.S. prisons has declined by more than one
half since 1993. Drug treatment is now available to just one in 10 inmates
who needs it.

* Among those arrested for violent crimes, the proportion of African-
Americans has changed little during the past 20 years; among those arrested
for drug crimes, the proportion who are African-American has tripled.

* The number of women sentenced to prison has increased 12 times since
1970; of the 80,000 women now in prison, about 70 percent are nonviolent
offenders. About 75 percent have children.

Schlosser's crucial findings are that the prison-industrial complex is a
set of bureaucratic, political and economic interests that encourage
increased spending on prisons, regardless of actual need. "It is not a
conspiracy, it is a confluence of special interests . . . politicians, both
liberal and conservative, who have used fear of crime to gain votes;
impoverished rural areas where prisons have become a cornerstone of
economic development; private companies that regard the roughly $35 billion
spent each year on corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as
a lucrative market; and government officials whose fiefdoms have expanded
along with the inmate population. . . . The prison-industrial complex
includes some of the nation's largest architectural and construction firms,
Wall Street investment banks and companies that sell everything from
security cameras to padded cells available in a `vast color selection.' "

Perhaps the most alarming conclusion is that the prison-industrial complex
is not just a set of interest groups and institutions. "It is also a state
of mind. The lure of big money is corrupting the nation's criminal-justice
system, replacing notions of public service with a drive for higher
profits. The eagerness of elected officials to pass `tough-on-crime'
legislation -- combined with their unwillingness to disclose the true costs
of these laws -- has encouraged all kinds of financial improprieties."

Checked-by: Richard Lake