CONSIDER ALTERNATIVES TO PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX POLICY

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the
United States. If Louisiana were a country, it would have the highest
incarceration rate of any country in the world. The fact that there
were 45,400 Louisianians in prison and jail in 2001 (more than double
the number locked up in the early 1980s) represents just a glimpse
into the deep impact of our increased dependence on prisons, prisons
and more prisons.

While prisons have multiplied across the United States, the results
have been especially dramatic in the South, where approximately
800,000 people are incarcerated.

At a time when we are facing major cuts to education and health-care
programs, Louisiana spends over $600 million on juvenile and adult
corrections. Between 1980 and 2000, employment in policing and
corrections in this state grew at more than four times the rate of
employment in higher education, and nine times the rate of employment
in the public welfare sector. Recent reforms to Louisiana's mandatory
minimum sentencing laws are only the start of the type of changes
needed to truly reduce prison spending.

And despite the astronomical costs, how much we spend on prisons
underestimates the impact of what prisons truly cost communities. In
2000, African-Americans were imprisoned at almost six times the rate
of whites, and Latinos were imprisoned at four times the rate of
whites. There were more African-American men imprisoned in Louisiana
than enrolled in higher education, according to the Justice Policy
Institute.

The impact on families is also seen when women are imprisoned. Even
though the 2,300 women imprisoned in Louisiana in 2001 represent just
6 percent of the prison population, during the 1990s, women were added
to state prisons at nearly double the rate of men.

Most children of women prisoners are displaced during their mother's
imprisonment and at least 10 percent end up in foster care. The
repercussions don't end upon release. Women imprisoned for drug
offenses may be barred for life from receiving welfare benefits, which
can lead to higher incidents of family breakdown and higher child
welfare caseloads.

And more prisons and more people in prison do not necessarily lead to
lower crime rates. For example, while the prison population in
Louisiana grew at about double the rate of incarceration in Florida in
the 1990s, Florida experienced a bigger drop in its crime rate.

Thousands of people from all across the South came to New Orleans
recently to participate in Critical Resistance South, a three-day
conference and strategy session aimed at reversing our nation's
reliance on prisons as an answer to social, economic and political
problems. The South, and Louisiana above all, was a particularly
appropriate venue for this historic gathering.

The teachers, students, faith communities, academics, policy makers,
former prisoners and family members of prisoners, and community
organizers from across the South that were part of Critical Resistance
shared their stories, and talked about what a nation without 2 million
prisoners might look like. We need to work in communities around this
state, region and country, to get beyond the "prison-industrial
complex" -- the use of prisons as a solution to social, political, and
economic problems.

In order to move beyond the prison industrial complex, we must invest
in front-end solutions that prevent crime, rather than back end
approaches that rely on locking up more and more people for longer and
longer. Put another way, we can't move beyond the prison industrial
complex if we don't have sustainable communities for people to come
home to. In every Southern community where people are fighting
prisons, they are also fighting to unlock what is spent on jails to
build up our education, health care and local economies.

We must seek out alternatives to prisons -- models of restorative
justice that rely on community mediation, drug treatment rather than
prison, and adequate mental health care. At the same time, we should
develop strategies for creating the qualities that truly make a
community safe: things like access to quality education, job training
and a safe place to live for all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Melissa Burch is coordinator for the Critical Resistance South Conference.
Jason
Ziederberg is with the Justice Policy Institute.