"State of prisons report not tough enough"
- From: "Jeff" <jross@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Aug 2006 20:53:38 -0700
http://gazette.net/stories/080406/poliiss180909_31941.shtml
"State of prisons report not tough enough"
Friday, Aug. 4, 2006
by Jeffrey Ian Ross
For the first time in 30 years, a national commission has examined our
country's jails and prisons and is showing a system in a woeful state
of disrepair and neglect.
A report on the problem, conducted by the Commission on Safety and
Abuse in Prisons, recently was released. This report, ''Confronting
Confinement," has gained the attention of some in Congress and of
prison reform advocates nationwide. It may start a long overdue debate
that produces real change in the way we punish those who commit crimes.
Viewed from the perspective of someone who spent nearly four years
working in a correctional institution, and the last eight years
studying correctional facilities and their effects on inmates and
correctional workers, I wish the document were stronger. For starters,
it sidesteps the ''original sin" of our current corrections
policy from which nearly every other crisis and debilitating conditions
of our prison system flows.
What is driving the failure of corrections is the overcrowding caused
by state and federally mandated guidelines for certain sentences,
particularly in drug cases, that have caused our prisons to become
storage lockers for massive numbers of people - more than 2.2 million
today, not to mention the four million on some form of community
corrections sanction. A large majority of these men, women and
juveniles have no chance at rehabilitation - again, because the legal
system, driven by politics, has shut off that possibility.
These guidelines, in turn, came into being with the increasing
popularity of politicians who preen and posture as being ''tough on
crime." Their work to criminalize deviance, and punish those who
engage in it has had an enormous ripple effect. Until we confront and
acknowledge that fact, much of what we attempt to ameliorate the damage
will only work at the edges.
Instead, ''Confronting Confinement" won't admit the complicity,
indeed the responsibility, of the law-and-order movement for our penal
system's descent into utter dysfunction. It wasn't part of their
charge, the authors say. Regardless, this compilation of massive
amounts of data and expert testimony has the net effect of a police
report on a dangerous intersection - you don't have to know why
cars crash there, you just know a lot of them do.
That's not to say that ''Confronting Confinement" lacks content
or ideas. It spends many pages describing the problems of jails and
prisons - overcrowding, violence, over-reliance on segregation,
inadequate training for guards and monitors, and so on. Much of what it
conveys makes sense, and no self-respecting prison reformer would
disagree with its assessments. But on closer examination, a number of
the proposed reforms sound less like answers and more like theorizing.
Little is said about how their recommendations might be implemented. In
an age of heightened accountability, the authors seem to have forgotten
that viable and clearly articulated solutions are what we need right
now.
For example, the report suggests that state Departments of Corrections
should ''partner with health providers from the community" in
order to better monitor and maintain prisoners' health. It does not
suggest how these kinds of relationships could be forged, given the
chronically and pathetically under-funded state of public health
departments across the United States. Indeed, knowing that the request
would be for additional public dollars to go to improving the health of
convicted ''murderers, rapists and thieves," it's likely that
this ''partnership" would never even get out of the gate of any
legislature in the country.
It's certain that lawmakers and correctional practitioners also will
find fault in the report because it doesn't do much ''on the
other hand" thinking; that is, giving due consideration to the
possible downside of its various recommendations. A section on the
potential for increased use of direct supervision - a jail system
consisting of modular, self-contained housing units designed to
eliminate barriers between staff and inmates - does not take into
account some important criticisms of this circa-1970s approach.
While its credulity and relevancy can occasionally be called into
question, as a political document ''Confronting Confinement" has
power.
''It was beyond the scope of our inquiry ... to explore how states
and the federal government might sensibly reduce prison populations,"
the authors write at one point. But their assessment still shines a
harsh light on the fact that our houses of correction are taking in
people by the hundreds, even thousands every day and relatively few are
coming out ''corrected."
The arguments in this report, in total, are deeply troubling. You
don't have to be an expert on prisons to recognize that behind those
bars and walls is a powder keg, or rather a lot of powder kegs, waiting
to blow up in the right set of circumstances.
We are slapping people with charges, convicting them, and condemning
them to sometimes long and capricious sentences, too often in 19th
century conditions. Whether these criminals deserve punishment is not
the question - that's an argument for another day. As the report
points out, it's the way that we are letting our jails and prisons
fall to pieces around us that is criminal, in and of itself.
''Confronting Confinement" may succeed in making serious people
think harder about how we're handling those who violate the law. In
order for that law to work, the criminal justice system - courts, law
enforcement and corrections - must be made whole. That includes every
jail cell in every backwater county across the 50 states. Three decades
and piecemeal reforms? It's time to do something.
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph.D. is an associate professor in the Division of
Criminology, Criminal Justice and Social Policy and a fellow of the
Center for Comparative and International Law at the University of
Baltimore. He is the co-author of ''Behind Bars: Surviving
Prison," co-editor of ''Convict Criminology" and the author of
''Special Problems in Corrections," which will be published in
September.
http://gazette.net/stories/080406/poliiss180909_31941.shtml
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