The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

BY DESIREE COOPER
DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

November 16, 2004

Today, some of the nation's greatest minds have gathered at the Detroit Opera House to discuss "Restoration, Reformation and Rehabilitation in the U.S. Criminal Justice System." More than 2 million Americans are now behind bars -- the highest number in our history and the highest rate of incarceration in the world. It seems that as a society, we've decided that it's worth $50 billion a year -- nearly $30 billion more what's being proposed to combat AIDS in Africa and send a man to Mars combined -- to keep society safe from the nation's most dangerous elements.

We hold onto that belief despite the fact that crime has been plummeting for the past decade and 70 percent of the people behind bars are nonviolent offenders. And we continue to invest in harsh, mandatory sentences although they are completely ineffective in the war on drugs.

The convocation of experts, gathered by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the Wayne County Community College District and local news media, will discuss how to put an end to the mass incarceration of Americans, a policy that has disproportionately affected poor and minority communities.

Key to this discussion, said Curtis Ivery, chancellor of WCCCD, is to start considering the broader effect that mass incarceration has on prisoners, but also on "their families and their children in particular, who are left behind."

Indeed, with such a wide swath of our citizenry behind bars, the effects of prison have spread beyond the offender. Society itself is now at risk.

The collateral damage
In April, Dorothy Roberts, a professor at Northwestern University's law school and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, published a shocking article in the Stanford Law Review detailing the broad social impact of mass incarceration. By focusing on one segment of society -- the African-American community -- she offers a cautionary tale for a society that believes it can imprison its way out of crime.

Of the 2 million Americans behind bars in 2002, about 587,000 of them were African-American men. Since poor and black communities tend to bear the brunt of the staggering incarceration rates, Roberts likens the devastation to communities to those that have been shattered by war, epidemics and natural disasters. We'd never ignore the needs of communities burned out by wildfires, but we ignore the needs of communities leveled by mass imprisonment because we believe that they deserve it.

Roberts addresses how inequities in law enforcement -- crack carries stiffer penalties than cocaine, the drug of choice for many middle and upper-class users -- poor access to legal representation, education and employment create a pipeline from poor, black communities to prison.

But whether or not you find those arguments compelling, the fact remains that mass imprisonment has its own set of consequences that must be borne by the rest of us, like it or not.

First, said Roberts, the incarceration of people from concentrated areas, like the inner city, destroys the community's ability to withstand economic and social hardships. Think of the grandmother with two sons in prison who, on a fixed income, has to help raise the grandchildren. Think of the child who has only seen her mother through prison glass. Or of a child sent away to a juvenile camp where his parents cannot travel to see him.

Such drastic separations, said Roberts, have "serious psychological consequences for children, including depression, anxiety, feelings of rejection, shame, anger, and guilt and problems in school." Poor school performance equals a future prison population: The Justice Policy Institute said that its examination of recent U.S. Justice Department statistics shows that 13 percent of white school dropouts had prison records by the time they were in their early 30s, and an astonishing 52 percent of black male dropouts in the same age bracket had records.

Mass imprisonment also distorts what that community views as normal.

"When a sizable portion of a community has been in prison, prison loses its stigma," said Roberts. But most troubling, she said, is that prison becomes a key institution, like schools and churches, in shaping the values of that community.

Studies show that the mass imprisonment of men also skews gender relations, said Roberts. The scarcity of male partners encourages men to enter relationships with multiple women, and gives women less leverage within relationships. Women become more vulnerable to male exploitation.

Finally, Roberts points to the destruction of social citizenship. Even first-time, nonviolent offenders can suffer wide-ranging, sometimes permanent consequences of incarceration: ineligibility for food stamps, public housing, or educational assistance; and denial of a driver's license, professional licenses, military service and even the right to vote.

At least 1.4 million of the 4.6 million disenfranchised felons in the United States are black , according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal-justice reform organization.

When you aggregate this collateral damage -- the destruction of family kinships, the perversion of gender relations, the tainting of community values and the removal of young people from constructive participation in the economic and civil life of the community -- it's clear that mass imprisonment does more than segregate wrongdoers: it creates a hopeless subculture.

And if you think that your community is immune from the effects of mass imprisonment -- aside from higher taxes -- think again. It's no secret that rap culture has long reflected prison culture with its baggy pants -- worn because prisoners are not allowed to wear belts --and glorified thug life. But now, rap culture is popular American culture. In fact, the hip-hop term "bling-bling" is now in the Oxford English Dictionary.

A policy that's criminal
Why do we tolerate mass imprisonment? Because we'd rather pay to contain people we don't like than invest in more permanent solutions like equal education, better employment opportunities, access to health care and transportation. If the conference today does nothing else, I hope it convinces public policymakers that when you address crime by filling prisons, you get exactly what you pay for.

Contact DESIREE COOPER at 313-222-6625 or cooper@freepress.com.

Copyright © 2004 Detroit Free Press Inc.