In the nation's state prisons in 1991, less than half were sentenced for a violent crime, a fourth were sentenced for a property crime, and about a fifth were sentenced for a drug crime. 19% of the inmates had current and past nonviolent offenses and had a record of only minor offenses or no prior sentence to incarceration or no incarceration for at least 10 years prior to the current offense. (Bu.of Justice Statistics, NCJ 136949)
According to Bureau of Justice Statistics, "National Corrections Reporting Program 1992," less than one third of state prison admissions in 1992 were for violent offenses. In fact, most maximum security prison systems report that less than 20 percent of their inmates actually need high level security.
In 1996, 12,865 persons, 61% of the total, were sent to NY State prison for non-violent offenses. 9,841 people, 46.5%, were committed for drug offenses. Only 29% were committed for violent felonies.
Most drug offenders are non violent. A report released by Human Rights Watch reveals that only a small percentage of those convicted of drug crimes have violent felony histories.
It is well known that males in the 15 to 24 age group commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and that rates fall off fairly dramatically in the succeeding age cohorts. There is a new cohort of 15 year-olds entering the high crime rate years annually. Thus, while some offenders are "aging out" of crime, younger offenders are constantly "replacing" them. (Marc Mauer, "The Truth About Truth In Sentencing," American Correctional Association)
Disorganized neighborhoods can be devastating to families - with high rates of transiency, there are few support networks or effective social controls. Residents experience discrimination, chronic unemployment and social isolation from the labor market. Gang activity and drug distribution networks provide violent role models and opportunities to participate in the illicit economy. Young people are at high risk of being victimized and of participating in violence. Many have not developed competencies, social skills or self discipline. Lacking a significant stake in mainstream society or the future, many abandon conventional goals, drop out of school, and adopt dysfunctional lifestyles. ("The Violent Juvenile Offender: Policy Perspetives," Campaign for an Effective Crime Policy)
Almost one in three (32.2%) of young black men in the age group 20-29 is under criminal justice supervision on any given day - in prison or jail, on probation or parole. (Marc Mauer and Tracy Huling, "Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice system: Five Years Later," The Sentencing Project). Thus, the most productive years of young African-American males are being squandered.
African-Americans constitute 13 percent of all monthly drug users, yet represent 35 percent of arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of convictions, and 74 percent of prison sentences (ibid)
. A study of state prison inmates in 1991 revealed: Most inmates did not live with both parents while growing up. Over 25% had parents who abused drugs or alcohol. 31% had a brother with a jail or prison record. More than 4 in 10 female inmates reported they had been physically or sexually abused before they entered prison. (Bu. of Justice Statistics, NCJ-136949, 1993).
Drug policies constitute the single most significant factor contributing to the rise in criminal justice populations in recent years, with the number of incarcerated drug offenders having risen by 510% from 1983 to 1993. The number of Black (non-Hispanic) women incarcerated in state prisons for drug offenses increased more than eight-fold - 828% - from 1986 to 1991. (Ibid)
31% of the 1991 inmates in state prisons committed their offense under the influence of drugs; and 17% committed their offense to get money for drugs. 32% of inmates committed their offense under the influence of alcohol. About half the inmates under the influence at the time of the offense had been drinking 6 hours or more. (Bu. of Justice Statistics, NCJ 136949)
Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that new court committments to state prisons increased by 155 percent from 1980 to 1992. Violent offenders accounted for only 16 percent of this increase, with the remaining 84 percent being due to increased incarceration of drug and poperty offenders and persons convicted of public order offenses.
Tightening the screws on parolees is a definite, set policy of most states . Between 1980 and 1989, the number of parole violators sent back to prison more than quadrupled (Edna Mc Connel Clark Foundation, Americans Behind Bars, p 11).
In many communities, the mentally ill have been abandoned. Jails and prisons then become the holding centers, without treatment, for many. One study estimates that one in fourteen people in jail suffers from a serious mental illness (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill, Washington, DC, 1992).
When a woman is arrested, she often does not have the assurance that her children will be cared for. Because a woman is usually a child's primary care-giver, a mother in prison suffers both the pain of separation and the concern for her children's care. Children are unfairly punished for the crime of the mother. They may be removed from home, school and community. They are often shuttled from one care-giver to another. They are deprived of seeing parents and siblings and they are often left on their own to comprehend what is happening to their family. Without community support, children of women prisoners are prone to experience anger, alienation, hostility toward authority, failure in school, feelings of abandonment and overall dysfunction. (Justice Works Community, Mothers in Prison Campaign 97)
"I don't thnk policymakers have any idea what the impact of what they are doing today will be 20 years from now. Increased homelessness, school failures, kids in foster care, truancies, and dropouts. all of these are an effect of losing your mother at an early age. We're really fostering greater disaster if we don't focus on more family preservation." (Gail Smith, Emerge, March 1997)
Our country, the United States of America, land of the free and the brave, now has more than 5 million people under the supervision of our criminal justice system. 1.5 million are held in prisons or jails, the rest are on probation or parole. At the rate we're adding prisoners, we will soon exceed 6 million in this "substitute educational system", equal to the number we have in all of our higher education systems.
We lead the world. By 1993, we already had 519 men and women behind bars per 100,000 residents. South Africa, while still under apartheid, had only 368. England and Wales had 93, France 84, Germany 80 and Japan 36 per 100,000 citizens.
While the total number of crimes has remained relatively stable since the mid-1970s, with a minor increase between 1987 and 1990, the U.S. prison population has tripled since 1980.
There is no clear relationship between incarceration rates and crime rates. Incarceration rates rose by 65% and violent crime declined by 16% in the period 1980 to 1986, but from 1986 to 1991, despite the fact that imprisonment rose 51 %, violent crime also increased by 15%."Also, sometimes when prisoners are not embittered, made more villent or worse by their pison expeience, they still haplessly return to their life of crime once released. This is because their prison record may make them unemployable. They may be impoverished, missing out on years of opportunity to build a career, family, friends. They may wind up committing a crime in what they misguidedly view as their only hope" (Peter Elikann, "The Tough on Crime Myth," Plenum Press, New York, 1996).
"You will, within a few years, have a significant segment of society who are prison-influenced and prison- behaved," says New Haven Police Chief Nick Pastore, who denounces prison expansion because you'll only be eventually releasing a "ticking time bomb" of people who are uneducateed, unemployable, disenfranchised, and Angry (Bruce Shapiro, "How the War on Crime Imprisons America," The Nation, April 22, 1996, p. 19).
Statistics are tricky.
First of all, Justice Dept. figures reveal that of the estimates 34 million serious crimes committed in the U.S. in 1986, 31 million never even resulted in an arrest ( Bu. of Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Justice, BJS Data Report, 1987 (1988), p. 8).
The Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) are tabulated by the FBI on the basis of arrest reports from local police departments. As police departments computerized their record keeping, modernized their file systems, and increased their use of arrest, police crime statistics increased - yet the increase probably was more closely related to aggressive policing and improved record keeping than changes in crime.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is considered more accurate by many criminologists. Since its beginning in 1973, the NCVS shows basic stability and even small declines in crime rates.
For example: In 1973, citizens surveyed via NCVS reported 861,000 aggravated assaults to the police, but the police recorded only 421,000 via UCR. In 1988 citizens reported 940,000 aggravated assaults (NCVS) and the police recorded 910,000(UCR). Thus, the survey showed a modest increase in aggravated assault, hardly larger than the increase in population, but police statistics showed massive increases.(National Center for Incarceration Alternatives)
The UCR is a chief reason people believe crime has gone up in recent years.
Just building new prisons every year costs a bundle. A maximum security bed costs an average of $80,000 to build. Debt service to finance construction comes close to tripling that original investment. In New York State, the cost for just one maximum security bed, including finance charges, rises to about $300,000. In New York State, 33,458 new prison beds have been constructed since 1983. When interest rates are factored in, the construction cost to taxpayers is almost $6 Billion, according to the Correctional Association of New York.
N.Y. Senator Abate's report ("Dollars and Cells," Jan. 1996) finds that if Gov. Pataki's 1996 'sentencing reforms' were enacted, NY State would have to create 13,000 new prison beds by the year 2005, at a cost of over $3.5 Billion.
Holding these men and women doesn't come cheap either. The combined local, state, and federal budgets to secure the country's inmate population (jails and prisons) exceeded $31 Billion in 1992, and it's been climbing every year since. Longer sentences (like the 3 strikes bills) lead to more elderly inmates with medical problems! The annual cost of housing an inmate over 60 is $69,000, over three times the norm.
The hidden costs of broken families also pile up. These often are put on welfare, and children are put in foster care. The parent-less kids are more likely to go berserk, adding to the crime wave. Then there's the reduced tax revenues with 1.5 million who can't be wage-earners. It goes on and on.
Where does all this money come from? Of course it comes from higher taxes or from sacrifices in schools, roads, libraries, environment, job training, health, and other social services.
Each year, about 400,000 "re-educated" individuals are discharged from federal and state prisons and returned to the community to be our neighbors once again. Often, after a dehumanizing lesson in utter dependence, they leave less able to cope than when they entered the prisons.
We know that today's prisoners are tomorrows neighbors. New York State alone now releases some 30,000 prisoners back to society each year. To make the point, would we rather encounter someone in a dark alley after they've spent three years in Attica Prison, or after three years in drug rehabilitation?
Of those who recidivate back to state prison within 3 years of release, what percentage do so because of a new crime? Of those released in New York State in 1991, for example, 42.1 % returned to DOCS custody. However, only 23.7% returned on a new felony charge. 18.4% returned because of some (possibly minor) violation of parole.
Age at time of release affects the return rate. For example, of those released in New York State in 1992, only 5.7% of those over 65 and 9.3% of those 50-64 returned on a new commitment. That compares with 28.5% of the 16-18 year olds.("1992 Releases: 3 yr Post Release Follow Up", NYS DOCS)
Of those that do recidivate back into prison because of a new crime, what crimes have they committed? Well, of those released in 1991 and returned within 3 years, 48.5% of the returnees were back because of a drug offense. Another 38.8% were back because of a "property" offense (robbery, burglary, grand larceny, forgery, stolen property). That's 87% of the total. Then there's 5.4% for use of dangerous weapon, and some small miscellaneous categories. (NYS DOCS "1991 Releases: 3 Year Post Release Follow Up")
As a further related indicator, since 1980 the number of prison guards in CA has risen from 4800 to 23,359. Their average income is almost $10,000 more a year than the average public school teacher in CA. The prison guard union gave $1,000,000 to candidates for seats in the Legislature in 1992, and provided $101,000 for the Three Strikes You're Out Committee to help pass that sentencing law. (The Lionheart Foundation Newsletter, Winter/Spring 1996)
Let your voice be heard. See the Action Page
To return to the home page, click: