The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

By Lucas Power
Posted: 10/10/2006 Pine Magazine
http://pine-magazine.com/content.php?id=229

A “tough on crime” approach has guided criminal justice policy in the United States since the 1970s. This approach has involved hiring more police, building more prisons, and handing out longer and more certain prison terms for a variety of offenses, many of them non-violent or drug related. Although scholars dispute the impact of such measures, they generally agree that these steps stem in part from widespread public concern over crime and a desire for the criminal justice system to treat suspects and criminals more punitively.

Prior research, however, has found that racial prejudice partly underlies punitive sentiments among the public. In addition, this mentality is not the result of skyrocketing crime rates, but a combination of unwarranted public hysteria over crime generated by the mass media and influence over the political process by groups that profit from mass imprisonment. This tough on crime image obscures some harsh realities about our system of incarceration.

The United States has the highest prison population rate in the world, some 714 per 100,000 of the national population, followed by Belarus, Bermuda and Russia (all 532 per 100k). Almost 58 percent of the world’s countries have rates below 150 per 100,000 people. By the end of 2004, one in every 138 U.S. residents was incarcerated in State or Federal prison or in a local jail. Although the violent crime rate in the US still dwarfs those of many western European countries, the rate of violent crime in the United States has decreased since 1991. In 1980 about half the people entering state prison were violent offenders; in 1995 less than a third had been convicted of a violent crime.

The enormous increase in America's inmate population can be explained in large part by the sentences of non-violent and drug offenders. Prisoners sentenced for drug offenses constituted the largest group of Federal inmates (55 percent) in 2003, half of those prisoners were low-level offenders, such as mules or street-dealers. Only 11 percent qualified as high-level dealers. Currently, the U.S. nonviolent prisoner population is larger than the combined populations of Wyoming and Alaska.

So, if the rate of violent crime in the United States has fallen by about 20 percent, why has the number of people in prison or jail risen by 50 percent? Steven R. Donziger, an attorney who headed the National Criminal Justice Commission in 1996, explains: "If crime is going up, then we need to build more prisons. If crime is going down, it's because we built more prisons and building even more prisons will therefore drive crime down even lower."

A quick look at the numbers shows that perhaps there is more to the prison boom than civic interest. One of the fastest growing businesses in the private sector is private corrections companies.

Private investment in the prison industry is attractive to many becuase it is deemed a “recession proof” industry. Investment firm Smith Barney is a part owner of a prison in Florida. American Express and General Electric have invested in private prison construction in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Correctional Corporation of America, one of the largest private prison owners, already operates internationally, with more than 48 facilities in 11 states, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Under contract by government to run jails and prisons, and paid a fixed sum per prisoner, the profit motive mandates that these firms operate as cheaply and efficiently as possible. This means lower wages for staff, no unions, and fewer services for prisoners. Private contracts also mean less public scrutiny. By cutting corners with substandard diets, extreme overcrowding, and abuses by poorly trained personnel, prison owners have made billions. The industry conducts trade shows and elaborate conventions, maintains mail-order catalogs and involves thousands of corporations. These include construction and architectural firms, Wall Street financiers, real estate brokers and developers, manufacturers, telephone service providers, health care companies and countless others, with a high level of profiteering and price-gouging involved.

Communication companies like AT&T, Sprint, and MCI provide inmates with exorbitant phone calling rates, often six times the normal long distance charge. The nearly two million inmates in the United States are ideal customers: phone calls are one of their few links to the outside world most of their calls must be made collect and they are in no position to switch long distance carriers. A pay phone at a prison can generate as much as $15,000 a year about five times the revenue of a typical pay phone on the street. It is estimated that inmate calls generate a billion dollars or more in revenues each year. The business has become so lucrative that MCI installed its inmate phone service, Maximum Security, throughout the California prison system at no charge. As part of the deal it also offered the California Department of Corrections a 32 percent share of all the revenues from inmates' phone calls. MCI Maximum Security adds a $3 surcharge to every call. When free enterprise intersects with a literally captive market, abuses are bound to occur. MCI Maximum Security and North American Intelecom have both been caught overcharging for calls made by inmates. In one state MCI was adding an additional minute to every call.

As the prison industry has grown, it has assumed many of the attributes long associated with the defense industry. The line between the public interest and private interests has blurred. In much the same way that retired admirals and generals have long found employment with defense contractors, correctional officials are now leaving the public sector for jobs with firms that supply the prison industry. These career opportunities did not exist a generation ago, and this revolving door holds all the same dangers from the military-industrial complex. Just as national security planners faked a "missile gap" in order to justify extravagant expenditures for defense, criminal justice policy makers are currently faking a "crime gap" in order to justify similar expenditures on prisons. Just as the military- industrial complex is a means of exercising international control so is the prison-industrial complex a means of exercising domestic control. This system is less about keeping the streets safe or rehabilitating criminals and more about serving a dual role in social management. Prisons are used to warehouse members of the unwanted social groups. Simultaneously, the job creation from the expansion of the prison system serves as a means of partially compensating and pacifying elements of the population negatively affected by outsourcing, automation, and farm failure.

The proliferation of such an industry would seem to be a textbook illustration of political repression, particularly if repression is to be defined as an effort by haves to prevent have-nots from advancing themselves into becoming the status quo. The over- whelming majority of persons herded through the penal system tend to be from the socially disadvantaged sectors. Under federal law, it takes only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. But it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine (100 times as much) to trigger this same sentence. The political repression becomes even more brazen when it is recognized that these same persons are losing their legal rights to participate in the political process. Also, the permanent status of prisoners as "convicted felons" renders their labor less marketable and therefore lessens their collective income.

Lucas Power is just a simple man trying to make his way in the universe. He stays in Atlanta, where he paces back and forth in his apartment, looking savage and obsessing over people who are trying to take over the world.