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Editorial | America's Swelling Prisons
Cell-block nation
There are two Americas: the ideal and the reality.
The ideal is a land of good will, where crimes are few and criminals rare, where felons are always incarcerated and their problems left to a stern warden to handle.
Here's the reality: We live in a criminalized society. That doesn't mean every American is a criminal. But every year the number of us in jail or prison increases. It now exceeds 2.2 million, and no one is predicting a reversal of that trend.
Our prison population is number one in the world. We've got more inmates than Russia, more than the known number in China - what a distinction for the Land of the Free.
The U.S. Justice Department says 650,000 inmates are released from state and federal lockups every year, but two-thirds end up back behind bars within three years. What are the recidivists doing during their three years away from their homes away from home? Many do try hard to avoid going back to prison. But without the societal support they need - drug treatment, education, counseling, mentorships - they end up riding the same train.
Americans who prefer to ignore reality don't want to spend money on support programs for "ex-cons." They call it coddling. They ignore that it's more expensive to keep building $150 million prisons and spend millions more in maintenance costs to house them.
Federal, state and local spending on prison construction and operations across America now exceeds $62 billion a year and is expected to reach $89 billion annually by 2011 if the inmate population keeps growing at the current rate.
Gov. Rendell has two plans to address expected growth in the population of 80,000 inmates in Pennsylvania prisons and jails. One is to build two new prisons on existing prison sites, including one at Graterford in Montgomery County. The other plan, which makes more sense but is harder to sell politically, is to make early release available to more inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, which would then allow the state to accept more prisoners from crowded county jails such as Philadelphia's.
Just the words early release scare people who conjure images of some Willie Horton raping and pillaging his way through their communities. But it doesn't have to be that way. It won't if prisons are used to rehabilitate rather than warehouse inmates. It won't if you have effective support programs to help released inmates make a successful return to society. Most important in that transition is helping them to get a job.
Toward that end, Philadelphia Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. has introduced a bill that would provide a $10,000 credit against the city's business privilege taxes for every job a company gives to a former inmate. It's a good idea. If more employers would take a chance on hiring former inmates, it would not just help reduce recidivism but also help lower the number of murders in Philadelphia, which police records show mostly involve former inmates shooting each other. Their violence is a symptom of lost hope. Changing their attitudes will make the streets safer for us all.
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Cell-block nation
There are two Americas: the ideal and the reality.
The ideal is a land of good will, where crimes are few and criminals rare, where felons are always incarcerated and their problems left to a stern warden to handle.
Here's the reality: We live in a criminalized society. That doesn't mean every American is a criminal. But every year the number of us in jail or prison increases. It now exceeds 2.2 million, and no one is predicting a reversal of that trend.
Our prison population is number one in the world. We've got more inmates than Russia, more than the known number in China - what a distinction for the Land of the Free.
The U.S. Justice Department says 650,000 inmates are released from state and federal lockups every year, but two-thirds end up back behind bars within three years. What are the recidivists doing during their three years away from their homes away from home? Many do try hard to avoid going back to prison. But without the societal support they need - drug treatment, education, counseling, mentorships - they end up riding the same train.
Americans who prefer to ignore reality don't want to spend money on support programs for "ex-cons." They call it coddling. They ignore that it's more expensive to keep building $150 million prisons and spend millions more in maintenance costs to house them.
Federal, state and local spending on prison construction and operations across America now exceeds $62 billion a year and is expected to reach $89 billion annually by 2011 if the inmate population keeps growing at the current rate.
Gov. Rendell has two plans to address expected growth in the population of 80,000 inmates in Pennsylvania prisons and jails. One is to build two new prisons on existing prison sites, including one at Graterford in Montgomery County. The other plan, which makes more sense but is harder to sell politically, is to make early release available to more inmates convicted of nonviolent crimes, which would then allow the state to accept more prisoners from crowded county jails such as Philadelphia's.
Just the words early release scare people who conjure images of some Willie Horton raping and pillaging his way through their communities. But it doesn't have to be that way. It won't if prisons are used to rehabilitate rather than warehouse inmates. It won't if you have effective support programs to help released inmates make a successful return to society. Most important in that transition is helping them to get a job.
Toward that end, Philadelphia Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. has introduced a bill that would provide a $10,000 credit against the city's business privilege taxes for every job a company gives to a former inmate. It's a good idea. If more employers would take a chance on hiring former inmates, it would not just help reduce recidivism but also help lower the number of murders in Philadelphia, which police records show mostly involve former inmates shooting each other. Their violence is a symptom of lost hope. Changing their attitudes will make the streets safer for us all.
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