Sacramento, Calif. – Americans spend $60 billion a year to imprison 2.2 million people – exceeding any other nation – but receive a dismal return on the investment, according to a report to be released today by a commission urging greater public scrutiny of what goes on behind bars.
The report, “Confronting Confinement,” says legislators passing get-tough laws have packed the nation’s jails and prisons to overflowing with convicts, most of them poor and uneducated, but have done little to help them emerge as better citizens upon release.
The consequences of that failure include continuing financial strain on states, public-health threats from parolees with communicable diseases, and a continuing cycle of crime and victimization driven by a recidivism rate of more than 60 percent, the report says.
“If these were public schools or publicly traded corporations, we’d shut them down,” said Alex Busansky, executive director of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons.
Rather, the commission said, Americans view prisons with detachment or futility, growing interested when a riot hits the news, and then looking away, “hoping the troubles inside the walls will not affect us.”
With 20 members representing diverse perspectives, the bipartisan panel urges Americans to ignore the costs of incarceration no longer.
Launched in early 2005 amid what panelists called “accumulating doubts about the effectiveness and morality of our country’s approach to confinement,” the commission will deliver its findings to a Senate subcommittee in Washington today.
Among the highlights in the 126-page report:
Violence remains a serious problem in prisons and jails, with gang assaults, rapes, riots and, in Florida, beatings by “goon squads” of officers.
Overcrowding is one cause, with most lockups so packed that they feature a “degree of disorder and tension almost certain to erupt in violence.”
High rates of disease in prison, coupled with inadequate funding for health care, endanger inmates, staff and the public, with staph infections, tuberculosis, hepatitis C and HIV among the biggest threats.
The rising use of high-security segregation units is counterproductive, often causing violence inside prisons and leading to recidivism upon release.
Although designed to isolate the most dangerous inmates, segregation units increasingly house those who may appear unmanageable but who pose no danger to others or who are mentally ill. Prisoners are often released from solitary confinement – where they experience extreme isolation from human contact for long periods – directly to the streets, despite the proven risk of doing so.
Prison culture – the “us vs. them” mentality – endangers inmates and staff and harms the families and communities to which convicts return. Change will require recruitment and retention of high-quality officers and leaders.
