A STIGMA THAT NEVER FADES

America May Want to Rethink a System That Creates So Many Hardened Criminals

At the end of August, Mike, a 31-year-old Latino from Chicago's south side,
will walk away from prison a free man. Again. This is his second long
prison term for dealing in drugs and stealing cars; he has been in and out
of jail a dozen times. He will be released into the same community where he
has found trouble so many times before; he will attempt to reunite with his
five children born to several different mothers. "Nothing really scares me
about leaving," says Mike. "It's just the thought of coming back."

America's incarceration rate was roughly constant from 1925 to 1973, with
an average of 110 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents. By 2000,
however, the rate of incarceration in state and federal prisons had more
than quadrupled, to 478. America has overtaken Russia as the world's most
aggressive jailer. When local jails are included in the American tally, the
United States locks up nearly 700 people per 100,000, compared with 102 for
Canada, 132 for England and Wales, 85 for France and a paltry 48 in Japan.
Roughly 2m Americans are currently behind bars, with some 4.5m on parole or
on probation (the probationers are on suspended sentences). Another 3m
Americans are ex-convicts who have served their sentences and are no longer
under the control of the justice system.

Christopher Uggen and Melissa Thompson, sociologists at the University of
Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, a sociologist at Northwestern University near
Chicago, have done rough calculations suggesting that some 13m
Americans--7% of the adult population and nearly 12% of the men--have been
found guilty of a serious crime. Not all of these have been behind bars
but, legally speaking, the felony conviction is the crucial distinction.
American job applicants are asked whether they have been convicted of a
felony, not whether they have served time. And the figures for some parts
of the population are much higher than the overall averages. Roughly one in
five black men has been incarcerated at some point in his life; one in
three has been convicted of a felony.

How Did It Happen?

The imprisonment rate is tied to the crime rate. America has a high number
of violent criminals, particularly those who use guns; America's homicide
rate is five to seven times higher than the rate in most industrialised
countries, according to Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project in Washington,
DC.

But America is also "tough on crime". For similar offences, an American
convict is more likely to go to prison and to draw a longer sentence than
his European peer. America has taken a particularly punitive approach to
its drugs problem. The incarceration rate for drug offences was 15 inmates
per 100,000 adults in 1980; by 1996, it was 148 inmates per 100,000 adults.

This keenness to lock people up is matched by a complete lack of interest
in them when they get out. Which they do--and faster than you might think.
The average prison sentence is still only 28 months. Two-fifths of state
prisoners will be released in the next 12 months.

Conwanis, a 26-year-old black man with two children, will leave prison in
October after serving a three-year sentence for drug and guns offences. He
failed to graduate from high school, and he also failed a high-school
equivalency exam in prison that would have earned him a diploma. But he is
clean of drugs (with tests to prove it) and he has been working 12-hour
shifts in a transitional job at a Country Kitchen restaurant. "I can't
continue to come in and out of jail," he says. It would be better for
everyone if he made something more of his life this time.