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October 24, 2005
Incarceration Won't Solve Region's High-Crime Rate
Incarceration won't solve region's high-crime rate
Letter to the Editor, Springfield (MA) Rebpublican. October 24, 2005
I hope that Sheriff Michael J. Ashe, District Attorney William M. Bennett and Acting Police Commissioner William Fitchet read, not only the front-page page story, "Inmate populations hits a record," (The Republican, Oct. 18), but also the column on Page 11 by William Raspberry ("The price of low expectations").
Raspberry refers to work by Professor Todd Clear of the City University of New York, who has documented that mass incarceration - standard in Springfield even before this recent increase - serves to destabilize communities, not make them safer. In exhaustive research, Clear and others have demonstrated that locking up large numbers of people and then releasing them into the same communities where they have little chance of finding drug treatment, legal employment or job training further marginalizes people and their communities.
Incarceration becomes the one-size-fits all response and, with it, comes demands for larger budgets, more and bigger jails and more police. It turns out mass incarceration does not create less crime. It is a self-perpetuating cycle and one that the sheriff and police will not voluntarily break.
Instead, it is up to each of us to demand that we want fewer people in jail and would rather have some of the $55-plus million spent each year to cage people at the Hampden County jail to go to quality education, drug treatment and economic development - the long-lasting and real crime deterrents.
LOIS AHRENS The Real Cost of Prisons Project Northampton
Posted by lois at October 24, 2005 12:33 PM