Seth Sandronsky: Rethinking US Penal Policy
The proportion of US citizens behind bars far exceeds that of every other nation on Earth. Further, there is a class and race dimension to US incarceration: blacks and Latinos are imprisoned at a much higher rate than are whites.
The total incarceration rate per 100,000 individuals, including federal and state imprisonment and local jail detention, is: 820 for whites, 5,126 for blacks, and 1,907 for Hispanics. Latinos represent the fastest-growing segment of the minority prison population, having risen from 5 percent of federal and state inmates in 1978 to 21 percent in 2007, write Hanna Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna.
How did this incarceration frenzy come to loom so large in the US? Politics is part of the answer. State and federal lawmakers have drafted and passed increasingly tough sentencing laws, beginning during the 1980's "War on Drugs." The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act pushed judges to apply the longest prison terms allowable by law.
Some state lawmakers followed suit with the "tough on crime" approach. The 1990's spawned the "three strikes" law in California, expanding the prison population with mandatory life sentences for third-felony convictions. Next came the "10-20-life" law, which mandates that judges impose a life sentence penalty for shooting a victim during the commission of a felony crime.
As a result of such "tough on crime" laws, California's prison population has increased by 750 percent since the middle of the 1970's, according to a panel of three federal judges. (The population of California has increased 80 percent since 1970.) Recently, those judges ordered a reduction in the state's prison population by 27 percent, or 40,000 people, to decrease overcrowding.
Harsh policy alone does not account for the explosion of America's prison population. For the rest of the story, we turn to economics. Let us begin with a brief look at one example: spending policy.
In California in recent years, a higher percent of tax dollars went to prisons than to colleges and universities. New prison construction became a growth industry. However, once California's current budget crisis hit, the yawning gap between tax revenues and spending began to call these budget priorities into question. Suddenly, staffing 33 state prisons became untenable. Something had to give, and it did. Before the three federal judges ordered a reduction of the state prison population, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers reached a new budget deal including deep spending cuts in government services, from health care to parks to schools - and even to prisons...
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The total incarceration rate per 100,000 individuals, including federal and state imprisonment and local jail detention, is: 820 for whites, 5,126 for blacks, and 1,907 for Hispanics. Latinos represent the fastest-growing segment of the minority prison population, having risen from 5 percent of federal and state inmates in 1978 to 21 percent in 2007, write Hanna Holleman, Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna.
How did this incarceration frenzy come to loom so large in the US? Politics is part of the answer. State and federal lawmakers have drafted and passed increasingly tough sentencing laws, beginning during the 1980's "War on Drugs." The 1984 Sentencing Reform Act pushed judges to apply the longest prison terms allowable by law.
Some state lawmakers followed suit with the "tough on crime" approach. The 1990's spawned the "three strikes" law in California, expanding the prison population with mandatory life sentences for third-felony convictions. Next came the "10-20-life" law, which mandates that judges impose a life sentence penalty for shooting a victim during the commission of a felony crime.
As a result of such "tough on crime" laws, California's prison population has increased by 750 percent since the middle of the 1970's, according to a panel of three federal judges. (The population of California has increased 80 percent since 1970.) Recently, those judges ordered a reduction in the state's prison population by 27 percent, or 40,000 people, to decrease overcrowding.
Harsh policy alone does not account for the explosion of America's prison population. For the rest of the story, we turn to economics. Let us begin with a brief look at one example: spending policy.
In California in recent years, a higher percent of tax dollars went to prisons than to colleges and universities. New prison construction became a growth industry. However, once California's current budget crisis hit, the yawning gap between tax revenues and spending began to call these budget priorities into question. Suddenly, staffing 33 state prisons became untenable. Something had to give, and it did. Before the three federal judges ordered a reduction of the state prison population, Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers reached a new budget deal including deep spending cuts in government services, from health care to parks to schools - and even to prisons...