Welcome to America, where 2.3 million people are locked up, and each year 600,000 of those individuals will be coming home, often to communities near you. For the most part, they will leave prison uneducated, unskilled, unprepared, and angry at having spent years locked away in a warehouse. This is the legacy of the law-and-order movement and the prison boom of the 1990s: America is in the midst of an incarceration and post incarceration crisis.
This series of diary entries will:
(1) focus on the roots of this crisis
(2) argue that the current environment makes reform of American correctional policy more possible than it has been in years
(3) explain the need for federal involvement re state correctional policies
(4) explain how strategies related to building human capital and employability of incarcerated individuals can help remedy the current situation
(5) explain why federal efforts on employment of ex-offenders have failed and
(6) propose a series of national reforms
In the early 1990’s, Chicano author Jimmy Santiago Baca penned the epic autobiographical poem El Gato, in which he accused the affluent and politically powerful in this country of "answer[ing] the burning and gunning of America by building more prisons." The past two decades have vindicated Santiago Baca, himself an ex-convict, as being less given to poetic hyperbole and more inclined toward prescient observations about American attitudes toward crime and punishment. The American prison boom that swept up Santiago Baca and millions like him has its origins some forty years ago, in then presidential candidate Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, which was based, in part, on promises of restoring law and order to reign in the public enemies of the day: communists and "Negroes who start[ed] riots."
In an unfortunate conflation of electoral politics and actual public policy, trite catchphrases about getting tough on crime provided the impetus for an array of subsequent changes to existing sentencing schemes, all designed to lock up more people for longer periods of time.
Scholars contend that a variety of such changes contributed to the prison boom, including the enactment of mandatory minimum statutes, three strikes laws, and truth in sentencing laws. Some experts argue that these policies have created a prison industrial complex, in which private companies that profit from running, staffing, and supplying prisons or utilizing prison labor have a tremendous financial incentive to lobby for building new prisons and keep existing ones full. In many rural areas, elected officials have lobbied hard to attract new prisons as a means of economic stimulus, and have rendered whole communities dependent upon prison economies for survival. Still other scholars point to the power wielded by actors in the local court systems like judges, prosecutors, and probation or parole officers who have a tremendous amount of discretion in the criminal process but little concern for policy issues like state budgets and prison overcrowding. Through a combination of these factors, the prison population in the United States has swelled to nearly 2.3 million. In the words of President-elect Barack Obama, America is confronted with a post-incarceration crisis.
More than 95% of the individuals who are currently incarcerated will eventually be released from custody, at a rate of 600,000 per year. Many will leave prison unskilled, uneducated, and angry at having been locked away in warehouses for years.
I. THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT: OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION
In late December of 2008, Senator James Webb of Virginia announced his intention to introduce new legislation that would create a national commission to study the state of American prisons and recommend major reforms. His announcement sparked the traditional law and order posturing that many have come to expect from politicians in certain camps. Virginia State Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, himself a candidate for attorney general, pounced on Webb’s comments immediately, branding the proposal as "out of line". A spokesman for the Office of National Drug Policy Initiatives was quick to add that while America may have too many people in prison, it was simply because America had too many criminals. In response to the familiar tough on crime rhetoric, Senator Webb offered this, ""I think you can be a law-and-order leader and still understand that the criminal justice system as we understand it today is broken. . .". Although certain political actors and interest groups will be loathe to distance themselves from the pro-incarceration policies that they have long deemed politically or financially beneficial, there are signs that a growing number of stakeholders are beginning to reject such policies as untenable.
Cash Strapped States
It is no coincidence that the number of prisons and prisoners increased dramatically in the economic boom times of the 1990’s. Robust economic growth generated the tax revenue that was necessary to both build more prisons and satisfy other civic needs. As the country entered the 21st century, and economic growth slowed, many states faced budget shortfalls that were compounded by dramatic increases in prison spending that had occurred over the previous decade. In many states, even the most ardent supporters of law-and-order, pro-incarceration policies have been forced to reevaluate their positions in light of current financial realities. As one Republican Texas state lawmaker succinctly noted in 2004, "We don’t have the money to lock everybody up."
In the current financial crisis, that sentiment has been echoed by state lawmakers across the country who are now seeking to dramatically decrease the number of inmates on their prison rolls in order to shrink their prison budgets. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, faced with rampant prison overcrowding, has recently proposed a budget that would dramatically reduce the number of criminals behind bars and under government supervision. The plan calls for the early release of some 15,000 non-violent offenders, nearly 1/10th of the state’s inmate population. Recognizing that more than 2/3 of all individuals entering the California prison system in 2007 were parole violators , the proposal also calls for eliminating parole for all non-serious, non-violent, and non-sex offenders. Additionally, the proposal would increase the amount of sentence credit given to model inmates. California is not alone in its consideration of releasing non-violent inmates early to free-up much needed capital. Scrambling to balance their budgets for 2009, governors and state lawmakers in Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio have already echoed this sentiment.
Calls to rethink our correctional policies have come not only from politicians who have moderated their positions out of financial necessity, but also from a growing coalition of actors on the local, state, and national level who are seeking to roll back, and even dismantle, the prison state for social, political, and moral reasons. Organizations like Families Against Mandatory Minimums, The Sentencing Project, ACLU, Campaign for New Drug Policies, NAACP, Congressional Black Caucus, and various faith-based social justice groups have all played roles in lobbying for changes to sentencing policies.
Although rhetoric about the need to be tough on crime still figures prominently into the debate on criminal justice policy, public attitudes on the issue have shifted significantly since the early and mid 1990’s. Support for mandatory minimum laws has eroded, while support for alternative sentencing of non-violent offenders has increased dramatically. In the mid-1990’s, the public was divided between fighting crime through (1) tougher laws, more police, and more prisons or (2) attacking the social and economic problems that lead to crime through better education and job training. By 2002, a solid majority favored the latter approach.
In 2006, when polled about a bill pending in Congress that would provide additional funding for prisoner reentry programs, an overwhelming majority of Americans – 78% - expressed their support for such a measure. The Second Chance Act – the measure in question - received broad bipartisan support in both the House and Senate, and was signed into law by President Bush in 2008. The year 2009 opened with Senator Webb’s bold call for nation-wide prison reform, and the pending inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has long supported efforts to address America’s "incarceration and post-incarceration crisis", particularly through reforms that help ex-offenders find stable employment. The environment for reforming the criminal justice system and reducing recidivism through programs that focus on building human capital, facilitating reentry, and helping ex-offenders transition to stable employment has not been so favorable in years.