prisoners and humanity

[Kragen]

The other day, some co-workers and I were discussing the treatment of
prisoners in US prisons.  They were talking about all the things that
outraged them, among which was education.  "Why should these prisoners
get their college education free when I had to pay?"

I explained that it was a lot cheaper to educate the prisoners than to
put them back in jail later, and that education drastically reduced
recidivism rates.  One of my co-workers was dubious.  He expressed the
opinion that it would just get them to commit white-collar crimes
instead of blue-collar crimes, so they'd just end up in lower-security
prisons.

(See <URL:http://www.econ.utah.edu/jameson/KENWEB/paper.htm> for
statistics on Utah's Horizon program,
<URL:http://www.operationoutwardreach.org/ars.htm> for statistics on
Pennsylvania's Operation Outward Reach,
<URL:http://www.bop.gov/orepg/edrepabs.html> for a survey of several
such programs, <URL:http://www.communitycorrections.com/> for
propaganda, and
<URL:http://www.acsp.uic.edu/OICJ/PUBS/CJI/120412_2.htm> for an
international perspective.)

I was shocked at his suggestion; I had no answer.

On further thought, I concluded that the opinion this co-worker had
expressed was just a manifestation of an opinion that seems to be very
popular these days in America.  The attitude, essentially, is that
people who are in prison are there because they are inherently flawed,
and nothing short of locking them up for the rest of their lives will
keep them from committing crime after crime.

It's not a totally unreasonable opinion in a country like ours, where
recidivism rates are between 70% and 90%.  A casual observer might
reasonably assume that, with rates like these, trying to keep people
from committing further crimes is futile.

This is, of course, incorrect --- many other countries have much lower
recidivism rates (China's, for instance, is 6%) and many factors have
been shown to have significant significant effects on recidivism,
educational programs being among them.

I suspect that this same attitude has a lot to do with the worsening
conditions in our prisons (which do not resemble country clubs very
closely, regardless of what you may have heard), the lengthening
mandatory sentences, the growing prison industry, and the increasing
enforcement of victimless crimes.

I also suspect that it has something to do with racist stereotypes.  If
you believe --- overtly or covertly --- that skin color affects
people's propensity to crime, then it gets a lot easier to believe that
criminality is inherent and incurable.

Frankly, I find these trends a little frightening.  More and more of
our population lives inside prison walls (two million people so far,
more than three times the number in prison 20 years ago); more and more
of our industry runs inside prison walls.  International human-rights
organizations, such as Amnesty International, have issued repeated
condemnations of American treatment of prisoners; even members of our
own Supreme Court have denounced recent reductions in the rights of
prisoners to appeals as "lawless".  Abuses of police power are frequent
and frightening --- in 1995, the Philadelphia Police Department
confessed to murder, robbery, and bearing false witness, along with an
elaborate coverup scheme.  More than 50 cops confessed.

(See <URL:http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar98/amr51.htm> for the
US portion of Amnesty International's 1998 annual report; see
<URL:http://www.rightsforall-usa.org/tour/index.html> for a RealAudio
presentation by Amnesty International on human rights in the US; see
<URL:http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/countries/indx251.htm> for more
detailed documentation on US human-rights abuses.  Most of these
discuss mostly abuses of prisoners, but police problems are discussed
as well.  Human Rights Watch has a variety of reports for sale at
<URL:http://www.hrw.org/hrw/pubweb/Webcat-104.htm>.  See
<URL:http://www.real.com/contentp/npr/ne0925.html> for an NPR program
on abuses of police power.  See
<URL:http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~kastor/newjersey/nj-crime-4> on the
1995 Philadelphia scandal,
<URL:http://www.walrus.com/~resist/mumia/facttwo.html> on Mumia
Abu-Jamal (who many claim was framed by corrupt Philadelphia cops in
the 1980s), <URL:http://www.ndsn.org/FEB97/PHILLY.html>,
<URL:http://www.ndsn.org/MARCH96/PHILLY.html>, and
<URL:http://www.ndsn.org/OCT95/PHILLY.html> for more on the 1995
Philadelphia scandal; see also
<URL:http://www.ndsn.org/MAYJUN97/REFORM.html> for Philadelphia
reforms, and <URL:http://detnews.com/menu/stories/24349.htm> for the
story of the man who started the investigation of the Philadelphia
corruption.  A comprehensive report on the Philadelphia corruption is
available at <URL:http://www.hrw.org/hrw/reports98/police/uspo108.htm>,
published by the international group Human Rights Watch. See
<URL:http://www.pacifica.org/democracy/mumia/mumia7.html> for Mumia
Abu-Jamal's commentary on police corruption.)

I think the attitude I described is a major cause of our human-rights
problems here in the US.  We assume that people the police pursue are
guilty, that people in prison are guilty, and that criminals cannot
reform.  So we do not protest well-documented human-rights violations
against police suspects and prisoners, because we see them as
subhuman.

This is a remarkable counterpoint to some other widespread American
attitudes.  We seem to believe that laws are not meant to be followed;
we lionize famous criminals, we practice "rolling stops" at stop signs,
we routinely break the speed limit.  Perhaps we have moved to a
government of men, not laws?

(Of course, I think this is the antithesis of democracy.)

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Irony and sarcasm deflate seriousness, and when your seriousness becomes detum-
escent, you're not held responsible for your thoughts. Irony beats thinking like
rock beats scissors. -- http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-june2-98.html