Huge cracks are forming in the wall of Americans’ indifference to our world-leading levels of incarceration — a disturbing total of 2.3 million behind bars. And for clear reasons.
First, the Great Recession. The states, which fund the bulk of our prisons, were hit by a breathtaking revenue decline of 30 percent in 2009 alone. It is becoming ever tougher for law-and-order politicos to justify ever-expanding prison rolls and costs.
About time, one could say. From 1985 to 2008, state prison populations virtually tripled, with states’ overall corrections spending up 674 percent, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice.
But in 2009, for the first time in 40 years, our prisoner total actually declined. The combined budgets of 44 states surveyed for the current fiscal year show reduced overall corrections spending, with major focus on reductions in such states as Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio and Indiana.
Many legislatures and governors have created commissions to reduce high recidivism rates (which repack prisons) and to discover more cost-effective ways to restrain crime (which now, in fact, is at its lowest levels since 1973).
Public skepticism has risen over the hundreds of thousands of prison beds filled by people convicted for minor drug sales or usage. Over 3,000 problem-solving drug courts have opened in the last 12 years. Americans’ weariness with our futile 40-year war on drugs has been reflected in the moves by 15 states to legalize medical marijuana, plus last November’s high but losing vote (47 percent) for a California initiative to legalize adult marijuana use altogether.
A landmark piece of legislation, Virginia Sen. James Webb’s bill to create a National Criminal Justice Commission that would take an 18-month, stem-to-stern look at the system and propose new directions, passed the House without opposition last year and would have cleared the Senate but for a procedural roadblock thrown up by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
And now — quite unexpectedly — elements of America’s political right are acknowledging that “the criminal justice system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it.” Those are the words, in promoting their new Right on Crime Campaign, of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Pat Nolan, former Republican leader of the California Assembly, himself a one-time prisoner (on political campaign spending violation charges) and now vice president of Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries.
With recidivism at sky-high levels, Gingrich and Nolan suggest “there are more humane, effective alternatives,” indeed chances for “a common-sense left-right agreement” on cures. They point to a pioneering Texas legislative agreement to treat mentally ill and low-level addicts at the community level, in lieu of new prison construction. Or in South Carolina, the decision to reserve costly prison beds for dangerous criminals while punishing low-level offenders through more economical community supervision.
Right on Crime Campaign supporters include former Reagan administration Attorney General Ed Meese, former drug czar Asa Hutchinson and Grover Norquist, the fiery anti-spending leader of Americans for Tax Reform — sufficient to “give cover” to conservatives in legislatures nationwide taking a new stance.
But don’t count out our infamous “prison-industrial complex.” Case in point: news that Arizona’s controversial new law to give police broad powers to check documentation and lock up illegal immigrants was actually hatched, word for word, in a December 2009 session of the conservative, largely corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council.
NPR, in an investigative series last October, reported that Arizona State Sen. Russell Pearce, who subsequently introduced the bill, was at the table when the immigrant arrest measure was debated and agreed on. And that among the corporations sitting in were officials of the billion-dollar Corrections Corporation of America — the country’s largest private prison company.
The goal of the private prisons, NPR alleged: “a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants” that could yield “hundreds of millions” in profits. Corrections Corporation of America’s own reports indicate immigrant detention is its next big market — expected to bring in “a significant portion of our revenues.”
Another obstacle to prison sanity: unions. Constant expansion of California’s grossly overcrowded prisons is due in part to tough-on-crime arguments, plus political activism, of its union of prison guards.
New York state has been smart enough to reduce prison rolls in recent years. Still, guards unions have resisted closing detention centers that are mostly empty but fully staffed. The centers for juvenile offenders have a horrendous 90 percent recidivism rate, but the unions still fight closing them. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, pledging to shut the facilities, already has a fight on his hands.
Beyond all this, rural legislators across the country have pressed for prisons as job opportunities for their residents. Will they agree to shutdowns, even in these toughest of economic times for state budgets ever? It’s hard to believe.
Bottom line: The climate for corrections reform is at its best in decades. But enough for drastic change? Stay tuned.
Neal Peirce’s e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.
