The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Recent reports show that 45 of the 50 democratically elected state governments in the U.S., including Florida, imprison their citizens at a faster pace than any of the foreign governments headed by dictators.

Rulers in Libya, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia, China and Pakistan made Parade magazine's 2005 world's worst dictators list. And the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, located in Oakland, Calif., has issued a report titled, "U.S. Rates of Incarceration: A Global Perspective," showing the incarceration rates for these five dictatorships - the number of persons in prison for every 100,000 population - ranging from a low of 57 in Pakistan to a high of 207 in Libya.

By comparison, prison policies made in Tallahassee locked up 499 state citizens for every 100,000 population in 2005. In other words, Florida imprisons its people at a rate more than two times faster than Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya and eight times faster than Pakistan under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. If inmates held in local jails in Florida were added, the spread would be even wider.

Only five states - Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Minnesota and North Dakota - have prison incarceration rates less harsh than Libya's. All other states enforce prison policies that put dictators around the world to shame, including more than 600 inmates per 100,000 population in Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

The NCCD study went on to compare prison rates in U.S. states to foreign countries with a similar population. While New York state and Australia have about the same size populations, New York prisons hold 92,000 inmates to Australia's 25,000. California's 246,000 prisoners compare to Poland's 86,000, even though each has similar populations.

Why are prisons in America filling at a faster rate than anywhere else in the world? Some say our crime rate is the cause.But the Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., reported: ³Criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck examined the near-tripling of the prison population (in the U.S.) during the period 1980-1996 and concluded that changes in crime explained only 12% of the prison rise, while changes in sentencing policy accounted for 88% of the increase.²

Legislatively dictated sentences for even minor offenses tie the hands of judges and juries. These mandatory minimum punishments continue to keep hundreds of thousands behind bars for just using or selling tiny amounts of ³illicit² substances.

In addition, about one-half of all inmates in the U.S. are serving time for nonviolent offenses. If prisons were only used to separate dangerous people from the rest of society, the 89,766 state prisoners in Florida in 2005 could be drastically cut overnight.

This uniquely American belief in prisons as the all-purpose punishment for offenses great and small has resulted in one in every 136 U.S. residents living behind bars.

Rather than reforming inmates, U.S. prisons have become a merry-go-round. More than one-half of all inmates leaving prison find their way back - often due to minor violations of parole or probation rules.

The NCCD study ends on this note: ³The rate of imprisonment in the United States is considerably higher than any other industrialized nation. To ignore it is to condone the flagrant waste of money and lives and the crime-producing effects of needless imprisonment and to perpetuate the myth that more imprisonment means better protection of the public.²

With only 5 percent of the world's people, the United States is home to 23 percent of the world's prisoners. If the rest of the world followed America's prison policies, the worldwide incarcerated population would grow from 9 to 47 million.

Isn't it time that we stop worrying about the behavior of faraway dictators and start downsizing prisons here at home? ______________________

Ronald Fraser writes about public policy issues for the DKT Liberty Project, a Washington-based civil liberties organization. Contact him at fraserr@erols.com.
http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/OPINION05/705
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