INCARCERATION SOLUTION HAS BACKFIRED

Prisons were supposed to be the means by which we separate criminals from
their communities, leaving those communities safer, stronger and more
capable of enforcing their own social codes. And the prisoner himself,
pained by the separation, was supposed to change his behavior and work to
make himself fit for readmittance.

But in some communities - notably in the poor inner cities - the treatment
has backfired. Like an overused antibiotic, it has left the prisoner
untreated and unchastened, the community unprotected and the whole society
demonstrably worse off.

That, at least, is a principal conclusion of "Invisible Punishment: The
Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment," a collection of criminal
justice essays edited by Marc Mauer of the D.C.-based Sentencing Project
and University of Hawaii Professor Meda Chesney-Lind.

I won't try to summarize the 16 essays, since they cover the whole range of
problems associated with incarceration: mandatory sentencing, welfare,
immigration, the imprisonment of women, the denial of the vote to former
inmates, prison as industry, etc.

Let me look, instead, at one of the authors, whose essay makes the general
point that incarceration taken to an extreme leaves communities worse off.

And we have taken it to an extreme. Says Todd Clear, a professor at John
Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York:

"Beginning in 1972, the prison population started a pattern of unrelenting
growth in annual increments (from a base of around 200,000), lasting for
over a generation and continuing today" - and with little regard for crime
rates, economic cycles or demographic changes. The result is a 500 percent
increase in incarceration with more than 1.3 million inmates in prisons and
jails.

The burden of this increased incarceration, it hardly need be pointed out,
falls most heavily on poor black and Hispanic communities. But the point -
at least Clear's point - isn't the unfairness of the system or that
incarceration is bad. It is that incarceration, when taken to the extreme,
takes on a life of its own, with its own unanticipated consequences.

At the most obvious level, overuse of incarceration reduces its stigma and,
therefore, its deterrent power. Young men of an earlier generation were
shamed by the label "jail bird." But in some communities, being locked up
is so common that hardly anyone takes notice of it. Indeed, we're fast
approaching the point where it's the odd young man who hasn't been locked
up - or who has any respect for the criminal justice system. But overuse of
incarceration also has the effect of taking huge numbers of black fathers
away from their families and out of their communities.

Well, aren't the communities better off without those criminals? As Clear
notes, these men aren't only criminals. They are also likely to be the
family male role models and disciplinarians - even when their own behavior
is less than exemplary - and, as such, important in early socialization of
the children, especially the boys.

According to Clear, this informal social control - first in families, then
in small networks of families - helps to build both discipline and
opportunity structures. Then:

"Children who grow up in areas where substantial amounts of human capital
are not easily acquired struggle with inadequate schools, limited leisure
time choices and insufficient formative supports. The systematic absence or
weakening of male sources of support ... makes a bad situation worse and
adds a further impediment to overcoming the disadvantages of birth."

Clear and his fellow authors are careful not to argue that inner-city crime
should be ignored, or that inner-city criminals should be treated less
harshly for acts that send others to jail. Theirs is a narrower - and in
public policy terms, more difficult - point. As Clear puts it: "High levels
of incarceration concentrated in impoverished communities have a
destabilizing effect on community life, so that the most basic
underpinnings of informal social control are damaged. This, in turns,
reproduces the very dynamics that sustain crime."

It's a fascinating argument, but it leaves one important question
unanswered: If not jail, then what?