Our Failure of a Prison System
Posted on Thu Jun 08, 2006 at 05:14:56 AM EST
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The Vera Institute has completed a bipartisan report on our prison system for Congress. 13.5 million people are jailed each year. On any particular day, more than 2.2 million people are locked behind bars. The cost for all this is a staggering $60 billion per year. Not only are our prisons failing them, so is the American public. And while violent crime has dropped, we are not any safer.
"We should be astonished by the size of the prisoner population, troubled by the disproportionate incarceration of African-Americans and Latinos, and saddened by the waste of human potential," the panel said in a report to be presented to Congress on Thursday.
Among its findings:
The report gives credit to the best corrections professionals, but finds too much violence and too little medical and mental health care, as well as a "desperate need for the kinds of productive activities that discourage violence and make rehabilitation possible."
The violence experienced by inmates in prison stays with them after release:
The commission's principal conviction is that prison life is relevant far beyond the fences and walls of the nearly 5,000 adult places of incarceration in the United States. Violence, overcrowding and poor services -- from medical care to literacy programs -- ripple outward when an inmate heads home, as 95 percent do.
"What happens inside jails and prisons does not stay inside jails and prisons," the commission concluded. When things do not work out, the group found, the effects are felt in higher crime, higher taxes and heightened dismay. Sixty percent of the nation's inmates commit another crime. Even modest improvements in medical care and attention could significantly reduce recidivism, the panel said.
One thing that mitigates against re-offending is the strength of the prisoner's connection to his family:
To that end, one commission member said that institutions should lower the cost of telephone calls, expand visiting rooms to accommodate families, and offer counseling to inmates' relatives.
Other recommendations:
The commission is asking Congress to develop uniform data-reporting requirements and to extend Medicaid and Medicare, without co-payments, to eligible inmates. Crowding should be reduced, and programs that foster productivity and purpose should be expanded, it said.
The report is titled "Containing Confinement."
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