Are Too Many Americans in Prison?

by Eric Jaffa

August 15, 2004

An article in today's New York Times,"Decarcerate?" by Jim Holt, discusses the history of prisons and related issues.

The number of Americans in prison has gone from 200,000 three decades ago to 2,000,000 today.

The crime rate has gone down over the past decade, but Holt questions if there a cause-and-effect. "Why did states that neglected to adopt tougher sentencing rules enjoy the same improvement as those that did?"

Holt notes that "the American Bar Association has just issued a report calling for an end to mandatory minimum sentences and a renewed emphasis on rehabilitation (which recent studies have shown to be effective, despite the scoffing of many conservatives). "

The US has 5 percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of its prisoners, writes Holt.

Some people want to abolish prisons altogether, and call themselves "abolitionists," Holt writes, but unfortunately Holt doesn't refer to any of these individual advocates by name.

Yet there is a movement afoot today, albeit a tiny one, that aspires to get rid of prisons altogether. The members of this movement call themselves ''abolitionists,'' borrowing the term applied to steadfast opponents of slavery before the Civil War. Since the 80's, an international group of abolitionists -- lawyers, judges, criminologists -- has been holding conferences every few years. According to ''Instead of Prisons,'' published by the Prison Research Education Action Project in 1976, the first article of the abolitionist catechism is that imprisonment is morally objectionable and indefensible and must therefore be abolished. Are these people moral visionaries, like their 19th-century namesakes? Or are they simply nuts?...

Some abolitionists will concede that the prison system is a necessary evil for now. Their immediate goal is to decarcerate as many categories of prisoner as possible (nonviolent drug offenders, for instance), and to make prisons less debilitating and degrading for those who remain. But can we imagine the practice of coercive confinement withering away entirely? Will it ever follow barbarous punishments like maiming, flogging and hanging into extinction?

If the very idea seems hopelessly utopian, consider a real-world case: Finland. Three decades ago, the Finns had a severe penal system modeled on that of the neighboring Soviet Union, and one of the highest imprisonment rates in Europe. Then they decided to rethink penal policy along more humane lines. Finnish prisons became almost ridiculously lenient by our standards. Inmates -- referred to as ''clients'' or ''pupils,'' depending on their age -- live in dormitory-style rooms, address guards by the first name and get generous home leaves. ''We believe that the loss of freedom is the major punishment, so we try to make it as nice inside as possible,'' one prison supervisor commented. Today, Finland imprisons the smallest fraction of its population of any European country (52 prisoners per 100,000 people, compared with 702 in the United States). Yet its crime rate, far from exploding, has remained at a low level.

I want for people who commit violence and severely harm others to be punished with prison.

I wouldn't want for violent criminals in the US to serve their time in a nice setting.

But I don't want for us to lock up so many non-violent offenders.

"The land of the free of the home of the brave" shouldn't lead the world in people behind bars ("U.S. prison population largest in world," The Baltimore Sun via The Charleston Post and Courier, June 1, 2003.)

We should get rid of mandatory minimum sentences., If a judge finds that leniency is called for, he or she should be able to set a sentence of no prison time or a short prison time.

Relatedly, we should drop "three strikes and you're out" (mandatory, decades long sentences for anyone convicted of a third crime). A judge can already impose a harsher sentence for a repeat offender; we shouldn't tie the judges hands in how to do so.

"Three strikes and you're out" has an appeal its in simplicity and the proper desire for justice, but we have judges to use their judgement, and arrive at a fair sentence which takes everything into account.