America Behind Bars

As you read this, one out of every 140 U.S. citizens is behind bars. More people live in prison than in each of the following states: West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Nebraska, Maine, Idaho, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, South Dakota, Delaware, North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming--16 of 50.

It hasn't always been this way. The US prison population has increased nearly 400% since 1980. A study by the Brookings Institution suggests that if our prison population continues to increase at the present rate, half of America will be in prison by the year 2053. Clearly, something must be done. The prisons are full, they are incredibly expensive, and prisons perpetuate, rather than eradicate, crime.

The cost of this warehousing operation is high: an average of $30,000 per person, per year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Additionally, rising prison expenditures have almost exactly paralleled decreases in expenditures on education. In 1980, federal spending on education totaled $27 billion while federal spending on prisons totaled $8 billion. By 1995, Federal spending on education had fallen to $16 billion, while prison spending had increased to $20 billion. Prison construction now exceeds college construction nationwide.

All this might be justified if there were some tangible result to the "Great Prison Explosion" of the last 20 years. This, to put it bluntly, has not been the case. Crime rates are virtually the same, and are generally thought to be surprisingly invariant with incarceration rates. Crime has decreased somewhat recently, but this is hardly unexpected due to the economic prosperity of the past decade. Historically, the economy is the strongest predictor of crime rates. Besides, by almost all measures we still have the highest crime rate in the world, so clearly what we are doing isn't working on a more general level.

What we are doing is, quite frankly, stupid. In the U.S., in the year 2000, when we decide that an individual has committed a crime we lock him inside a room, a compound of buildings for some length of time. Though men used to comprise the vast majority of the prison population, women are now the fastest growing group of prisoners.) He will have minimal contact with members of his family and his community. His living environment will be chaotic, overcrowded, noisy, brutal. Typically, he will not be educated--though more than half of all prisoners are functionally illiterate, only seven percent of those who need it receive literacy education. He will not receive drug treatment--though more than 950,000 federal and state prisoners need drug treatment, fewer than 150,000 received any care before being released. He will not be allowed to vote or organize politically. He will be abused, physically, sexually, verbally, emotionally. And then, if he is like 90% of prisoners, he will be released. Untrained, uneducated, untreated, and now with a criminal record, he walks free but will likely be back.

Solutions are out there. A large part of the Great Prison Explosion has been due to harsh drug laws, filling the prisons (especially federal prisons) with non-violent drug offenders. Arizona has responded by becoming the first state in the country to divert all of its non-violent drug offenders into probation and treatment instead of prison, saving an estimated $2.5 million in its first year of operation and with even greater predicted savings in the future. More importantly, drug treatment has been shown to cut crime, reducing the recidivism rate of substance abusers by as much as 40%. Similarly, education and vocational training have also been shown to have a strong impact on reducing recidivism. Saving money, cutting crime: it makes sense to me.

Unfortunately, political rhetoric and fear still surround the debate, and many politicians are unwilling to press for increased rehabilitative programming in prisons, despite their proven effectiveness in cutting crime and saving taxpayer money. My personal experience has attested to this as well.

The Harvard Prisoner Education Program has tutored at the Suffolk County House of Correction for more than a decade, and we currently tutor at two other facilities as well. Early this year, we were told that we would only be able to bring in half as many people as we had in the past, due to "safety" concerns of the new deputy superintendent. Left with many more tutors than places for them to tutor, we looked to expand to other facilities. MCI-Framingham, an all-women's prison, turned us down outright. MCI-Concord, a facility that had no teachers when we went to speak with them, strung us along for over four months, only to eventually reject us outright as well. No reasons were given. I am at a loss to explain why free volunteers would be turned away outright. Many of us had taught in prisons for several years. We were willing to be incredibly flexible. Sadly, it seems there is just a general trend moving away from programming of any sort: only seven out of 23 Massachusetts state facilities offer any academic programs at all, and we are, all things considered, one of the "better" prison systems in the country.

For all of these reasons, our program decided to broaden its focus, from just tutoring to tutoring and planning a conference. From April 17th to 26th the first "Prisons in America" conference will be held on campus, dealing exclusively with prison-related issues. We have scheduled speakers representing a range of perspectives and backgrounds to appeal to a wide audience. Whether you are opposed to wasting money; rampant, systematic abuse; racial bias or just bad, bloated government, prison reform is an issue we all need to face and act upon. We must elevate the level of discussion on these issues, so that we can be tough on crime, not people.

Alex A. Guerrero '01, is a philosophy concentrator in Mather House and co-director of the Harvard University Prisoner Education Program.