JF on Twitter
Issues in Criminal Justice (JF)
|
|
Can Our Shameful Prisons Be Reformed? |
With 2.3 million people in prison, the United States far exceeds any other country in the number of people incarcerated.
According to the Pew Center on the States, one in 100 Americans is behind bars. In his article in the New York Review of Books, David Cole reviews three books that take on this huge problem and offer solutions based on the fundamental cause of the system’s flaws.
The growth in the prison population is not attributable to increased offending rates, Cole says, but to increased punitiveness. Being "tough on crime" became a political mandate as state and federal legislatures imposed mandatory minimum sentences; abolished or radically restricted parole; and adopted "three strikes" laws that exact life imprisonment for a third offense, even when the offense is as minor as stealing a slice of pizza.
In addition, rehabilitation has slipped from prison lexicons, and recidivism rates have skyrocketed. An estimated two-thirds of inmates will be re-arrested within two years of their release. Another Pew Center study found that one in 31 in America are either incarcerated or under supervision.
“Our addiction to punishment should be troubling not only because it is costly and often counterproductive, but because its race and class disparities are morally unacceptable,” Cole says. “The most promising arguments for reform, therefore, must appeal simultaneously to considerations of pragmatism and principle. The very fact that the U.S. record is so much worse than that of the rest of the world should tell us that we are doing something wrong, and the sheer waste of public dollars and human lives should impel us toward reform.
“But as the authors of these three books make clear, we will not understand the problem fully until we candidly confront the fact that our criminal justice system would not be tolerable to the majority if its impact were felt more broadly by the general population and not concentrated on the most deprived among us.”
Visit Justice Fellowship “Key Issues” for more information on overcriminalization, prisoner reentry and sentencing reform.
The books reviewed are:
- Race, Incarceration, and American Values by Glenn C. Loury, with Pamela S. Karlan, Tommie Shelby, and Loïc Wacquant
- Let's Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of Justice by Paul Butler
- Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities: Reentry, Race, and Politics by Anthony C. Thompson
|
|
