Too Many Convicts

AMERICA'S TOUGH CRIME POLICY IS HAVING UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Today is a special day for 1,600 American men and women: they are
being released from a state or federal prison. Tomorrow will be a
special day for another 1,600 people. As will be the day after that.
Some 600,000 inmates will leave prison this year - more than the
population of Washington, DC. After quadrupling its imprisonment rate
in just 30 years - America now has 700 people in every 100,000 under
lock and key, five times the proportion in Britain, the toughest
sentencer in Western Europe - the world's most aggressive jailer must
now confront the iron law of imprisonment: that those who go in almost
always come out.

The result is a society that, statistically at least, is beginning to
look a little like early Australia. Nearly one in eight American men
has been convicted of a felony - and thus, in many states, has been
automatically deprived of numerous rights, including the right to
vote. On in 20 men has been to jail. The average is much higher
among some groups (one black man in five has been to prison, one in
three has been convicted of a felony). These convicts, particularly
those who have been to prison, contribute little good to the places
where they live. Two-thirds of ex-prisoners are rearrested within
three years. Prisons are a breeding-ground for terrible diseases,
both medical (such as AIDS) and social (the Aryan Brotherhood), that
soon spread to the outside world.

The high rates of imprisonment are partly related to the number of
crimes committed in America; but they also reflect a determined policy
to increase the number of mandatory sentences, particularly for drug
offences. Since the 1980s, laws have limited the discretion both of
judges to make the punishment fit the crime and of parole boards to
determine when prisoners are fit to be released. In the ten years
after 1986, the average term in federal prison rose from 39 to 54 months.

Did It Work?

This offensive against crime is generally held to be a
success. America's crime rate has fallen in recent years, and though
it has now started to rise again, no politician in America thinks that
arguing for more lenient treatment of criminals will bring in votes.
That does not mean that it would be wrong to do so. Put simply,
America probably sends people to prison too willingly, and looks after
them too carelessly afterwards. Some believe that the upturn in the
crime rate is directly linked to the number of unreformed ex-convicts
on America's streets.

There is a good case for opposing tough mandatory sentences merely on
moral grounds. Locking up a young woman for ten years just because
her boyfriend was a drug-dealer ill becomes a civilised country. But
there are also practical doubts about America's sentencing policy.
The lower crime figures may have had more to do with demography (fewer
you men around) and changes in policing than with sentencing policy.
Once you compare like with like, a different picture emerges.
America's fiercest imprisoner, Texas, which locks up more than 1,000
people for every 100,000 citizens, has far worse crime statistics than
New Your state, where the imprisonment rate has risen much more
slowly. And when it comes to drugs and violent c4rime, the two
plagues hard sentencing was supposed to cure, it has failed
dramatically. Drug-taking is as widespread as ever, and America's
murder rate is still nearly four times higher than the European Union's.

The argument about sentencing is an old one. So the clamour emanating
from it has tended to obscure the other side of the debate - whether
America treats its prisoners and felons too roughly. That deafness
may be deliberate: for many Americans, sentencing has now become
purely a matter of punishment. But it surely behoves those who favour
sending ever more people to prison to try to make prison work better.
Each prisoner who emerges unreformed will start committing crimes
again (a more frightening thought when you realise that one in four
commits violent crimes). Even if such people are caught quickly, it
costs money to imprison them: America spends more than $50 billion a
year on its prison system.

From The Land Of Second Chances To The Land Of No Hope

Rehabilitation has become something of a dirty work in American debates
about crime. Prisons the world over are fairly awful places, with a poor
record of converting people from a life of crime. Even so, America's
system seems particularly devised to ensure that prisoners remain criminals.

To begin with, some rehabilitation projects - particularly drug
treatment - seem to work. Yet America has slashed money for such
schemes, often to pay for new prisons. One advantage of leaving some
degree of discretion over sentencing to parole boards was that it
obliged prisoners to prove that they were ready for outside life.
This incentive has now gone. Outside prison, the aftercare system is
even weaker. Many ex-cons are simply presented with a one-way bus
ticket. The number of prisoners for each parole officer has risen by
50%.

These deficiencies might all be described as failures of care. Worse
still are those of discrimination. Trying to restart life as a felon
is difficult for all sorts of reasons; in America, the government
loads on many more. There is a long list of jobs from which felons
are banned, many of them having nothing to do with security. In some
cases they are denied housing benefit. And, of course, nearly 5m of
them are denied the vote. So a convict can pay taxes, own property,
send his children to school. Ought he also to be deprived,
permanently in many cases, of a voice in how society is governed?

This question matters, because it goes to the root of how America
treats criminals. Punishment requires a fixed term. In justice, just
as much as in literature, every sentence finishes, eventually, with a
full stop. After that the ex-convict should enjoy the same rights as
anybody else. He has served his time. America is not alone in
denying its convicts the vote. But it seems odd that a country built
on giving people a second chance (and a country, incidentally, with
one of the most forgiving bankruptcy laws in the world) should have
turned against this principle so savagely when it comes to convicts.
Particularly now that it is creating so many of them.