Column Prison system unjust, unworkable
By ROBERT F. DRINAN
One feature of American life so
painful that we regularly forget it is the condition of the nations
prisons.
We were reminded of all the horrors of prison life by a report in
early 2000, which reveals that New York state has finally granted damages of $8
million to the survivors of the 42 persons who were killed, the 80 who were
injured and the other 1,281 inmates in Attica in 1971.
The nation wanted to believe that after the worst prison
insurrection in U.S. history that things would get better. Another recent
report confirmed, however, that things have not improved. The number of persons
in prison in the United States now exceeds 2 million, and the isolation and
degradation in which they live is staggering.
This issue has a personal dimension for me. In my seminary days, I
taught religion to juvenile delinquents and adult prisoners in Massachusetts.
In my 10 years in the Congress, I served on a subcommittee with oversight of
federal prisons. I visited scores of jails and held hearings on problems of
these institutions. During that time, the concept was born in the Congress that
reform and parole were obsolete ideas and should be dropped. The idea of the
rights of victims began to grow and dominate the world of corrections. The
notion of exacting retribution, even vengeance on prisoners, began to be the
mood of lawmakers who saw political gain by being tough on crime.
But even the savagery of Attica and the war on criminals during
the last two decades do not explain the astounding recent rise in the number of
prisoners. Inmates totaled 500,000 in 1978; the number has quadrupled to 2
million since that time. Most are nonviolent offenders, meaning inmates
imprisoned for offenses that involve neither harm nor threat of harm to a
victim. Obviously, most of the offenses were the possession or use, not the
sale, of narcotics. Seventy-seven percent of the growth in the number of
inmates from 1978 to the present time stems from such nonviolent offenses.
Data from the Department of Justice indicates that 73.7 percent of
inmates in jails, and 87.7 percent of federal prisoners, were charged with
nonviolent offenses.
The sheer numbers are staggeringly out of proportion with any
other nation. Europe, with a population of 370 million, has roughly 300,000
prisoners. The Indian nation, with a population roughly four times that of the
United States, has a prison population of some 500,000.
Even New York, despite the scars of Attica, has increased its
prison population from 12,500 in 1971 to some 72,000 in 1999.
The racial composition of the prison population almost certainly
reveals bias. Blacks are imprisoned eight times the rate of whites, and
Hispanics are also more likely than whites to end up behind bars.
Women prisoners have doubled from 3 percent in 1978 to 6.3 percent
of the prison population in 1997. While 27.6 percent of male jailed inmates are
violent offenders, only 14.9 percent of female inmates are in that
category.
Politicians like to pontificate that the day of big
government is over, but they apparently think that big government can
solve the problems of 2 million deprived and maladjusted human beings. In 1978,
the prison budget was $5 billion; in 1997, that figure had escalated to $31
billion. And the prison budgets go up and up. From 1987 to 1995, state
expenditures for prisons increased by 30 percent, while expenditures for
universities decreased by 19 percent.
If any politician asserts that the recent decline in crime is
attributable to the massive lock-up, he is speaking recklessly. The slight
decrease in crime is due to a wide variety of reasons -- one of which is the
availability of more jobs for unskilled persons in the crime-prone age
category. Statistics on states that incarcerate more persons cant prove
what the advocates of more prisons want to demonstrate. Furthermore, even if
some crimes were prevented, what has been done to the soul and lives of 2
million Americans?
Prison life does not correct, reform or educate. Prison is
obviously necessary for some few persons who are irresistibly violent. But
somehow the United States has put on blinders and, contrary to the overwhelming
advice of students of the penal system, continues to warehouse people with
little or no respect for their inherent human dignity.
Sometimes in our own lives we receive an illumination -- perhaps
it is a grace from the Holy Spirit -- about some mistakes or sins we have
committed. Similarly, nations are sometimes inspired to change their ways of
thinking. The United States has had that spiritual experience with respect to
its treatment of African-Americans. Perhaps America will see that there is
something unfair, unjust and unworkable in the way it treats its 2 million
prisoners.
Christ and the Christian churches have always had tender
compassion for those deprived of their liberty. Christ is asking us to meet him
in prison. He is residing in a special way in each of those 2 million
inmates.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Drinan is a professor at Georgetown
University Law Center.
National Catholic Reporter, February 18,
2000
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