Books Prisons Make Us Safer (1 Viewer)

[National Socialist]

Then there are the people under correctional supervision, which means they’re under some form of surveillance and restriction either instead of or in addition to a jail or prison sentence... If you count them, the total number of people under some form of correctional control rises to 6.7 million.

Biden authored the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which provided funding for one hundred thousand new police officers, earmarked $9.7 billion for prisons, created sixty new death penalty offenses, and imposed lengthier prison sentences, including the “Three Strikes, You’re Out” provision for a number of federal crimes.

Their answers debunk the theory that the threat of incarceration deters people from committing crime: one-third did not think of a penalty at all. Another third thought the penalty would be substantially less. The final third thought they might face a far greater penalty if caught but, at the time they committed the acts, were indifferent to the potential consequences.3 In other words, the threat of prison was no deterrent to their decision.

in some states, people have been locked in solitary for months, years, and sometimes decades, creating and exacerbating post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health conditions.

In addition, a prison record can impede people from finding a job, securing housing, or being accepted to college.

In New York, the combined jail and prison incarceration rate was cut by 55 percent between 1994 and 2014; during those twenty years, the rate of serious crime in New York City fell 58 percent.

Since 1991, violent crime in the United States has fallen more than 51 percent. Between 1990 and 1998, the nation’s homicide rates dropped by half.

Society is safer than you think.

Numerous studies have shown that the best form of rehabilitation in prison is education. Approximately 60 percent of people entering prisons lack high school diplomas or GEDs.

In 1994, the US had 350 college-in-prison programs, largely funded by Pell Grants, or noncompetitive need-based federal funding.

In reality, privately run prisons incarcerate between 8 and 8.5 percent of the US prison population.1

In 1998, for instance, private prison corporations contributed $285,996 to both Democratic and Republican campaigns. In contrast, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA), the union for California’s thirty-one thousand state prison guards, contributed nearly $2.2 million.11

Reflecting on her call center job, Martha writes, “I like it. It beats layin’ in a cell.”

But even before the Civil War, Black people were imprisoned at higher rates in the slavery-free Northern states.

she observed, “They play a lot of cards, watch a bunch of television, listen to a lot of radio, smoke, drink coffee, get high, talk on the phone, and play sex games.” 1 None of these activities push a person to take responsibility for their actions or the harms that they’ve caused.

mental health experts are increasingly in agreement that locking a person in isolation for twenty-three to twenty-four hours per day for days, weeks, months, and sometimes years is dangerous for their mental well-being.

Sometimes staff delays in calling for medical attention can be deadly. In 2014, one year after Rikers began requiring officers to escort people to medical care, forty-six-year-old Carlos Mercado fell into a diabetic coma and died fifteen hours after entering the jail. He had requested medical treatment from both jail and medical staff but to no avail.6 Jail surveillance video showed Mercado walking unsteadily holding a plastic bag full of his own vomit. When he collapsed onto the floor, he was left there for three minutes while corrections officers stepped over him.

Then there’s the financial hurdle to medical care. Forty-two states (as well as the federal prison system) require a co-pay from incarcerated patients. These co-pays range from three to five dollars, though some can be as high as $7.50 per visit.

In addition, some states, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, pay incarcerated people nothing for their work but still charge them co-pays for medical care.13

Jail attributable deaths represent 10 to 20 percent of all deaths in New York City’s jails each year.

In liberal California, Susan Burton was pushed through a revolving door of addiction, arrest, and imprisonment for fifteen years. “Jail had done nothing to stop my addiction,” she wrote.3

focusing primarily on men ignores the fact that, since 1980, women’s incarceration has grown at twice the rate of men’s.

advocates have dubbed it the “abuse-to-prison pipeline.”

A 1977 study in Chicago’s Cook County Jail found that 40 percent of women charged with murdering their partners reported that their partners had been abusive. Each woman had called police at least five times; many had already separated from that partner in an attempt to escape. Thirty years later, a study by the New York prison system found that, of women convicted of killing someone close to them, 67 percent had been abused by that person.

That’s what happened to Kelly Ann Savage, whose husband killed her three-year-old son, Justin, from a previous relationship. Savage had a plan to escape her abusive husband; she had bus tickets for herself and her children to leave their small town for her sister’s home in Los Angeles. But fifteen hours before the bus was scheduled to leave, her husband fatally beat the toddler. Both parents were arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
In court, the prosecutor used her history of abuse to argue that Savage enjoyed being beaten, that she allowed her husband to beat Justin in order to please him, and that, because she had not fled, she was equally at fault for her son’s death.

She did 23 years for something she didn't do.

That’s what happened to Tondalo Hall, a young Black mother and domestic violence survivor in Oklahoma. In 2006, her boyfriend, Robert Braxton Jr., broke the ribs and femur of her three-month-old daughter. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to ten years in prison; eight of those years were suspended. He spent only two years behind bars.
Despite testifying against her boyfriend and presenting evidence of his past abuse, Hall was sentenced to two consecutive fifteen-year prison sentences.12 In 2019, an outpouring of public outrage, support, and pressure resulted in the governor commuting, or shortening, her sentence, allowing her to be released early. By then, Hall had spent fifteen years behind bars.13

Tolanda Hall spent fifteen years in prison for what her boyfriend did.

the Criminal Alien Program is a misnomer. Approximately half a million people were deported under CAP between 2010 and 2013; over 27 percent had no criminal conviction. The second- and third-biggest categories were of people whose “most serious” criminal conviction involved a “traffic offense” (20 percent) and “dangerous drugs” (18 percent).

That level was increased to 34,000 in 2015. Meanwhile, under the slogan of “families, not felons,” the Obama administration justified its continued criminalization, detention, and deportation of nearly three million immigrants during his tenure, earning him the moniker “deporter-in-chief.”

In 1993, Washington State passed the nation’s first three-strikes law, in which any person convicted of a third felony was automatically sentenced to life in prison.

In 1999, Florida passed and enacted its 10-20-Life law, which allowed prosecutors to add a sentencing enhancement to any conviction that involved firearms.

If every person incarcerated for drug offenses were released tomorrow, that still leaves over 1.2 million people in prison.

Focusing solely on [those arrested for drugs] excludes nearly two-thirds of the women’s prison population.

Arrest and incarceration occur only after harm or violence has occurred; incarceration does not prevent these acts from happening.

Incarceration acts after not before.

African Americans are disproportionately represented on the registry. They comprise 22 percent of those convicted of sex offenses but only 13 percent of the total US population.)6

Brock Turner, the nineteen-year-old Stanford University swimmer who received a six-month jail sentence (and registration on the sex offender registry) after raping twenty-two-year-old Chanel Miller while she was unconscious.

over the course of six years, one thousand police officers throughout the country lost their badges because of sexual misconduct, including assault, rape, propositioning people for sex while on duty, or possessing child pornography... But, just as sexual assault is underreported, sexual assault or abuse at the hands of police is also underreported, particularly because victims know that the word of an officer carries much more credibility among their peers, who are charged with investigating and prosecuting.

 

[National Socialist]

[Paula] Cooper’s story also illustrates another point that is often overlooked in conversations about crime and punishment—not every family member or loved one wants retribution.

This was about how the victim's family didn't want the death penalty for the perpetrator.

Electronic monitoring is one of these reforms...The person may not be behind bars, but their movements are still strictly regulated—each week, they have to submit a list of destinations, including times, for the approval by the authorities (usually the probation officer or the monitoring company, depending on the jurisdiction). Going to work is usually permitted, but stopping at the library to grab some reading material or bring a child to story time probably won’t be.

Today many of Norway’s prisons are considered at the forefront of “normalization” and humaneness. One-third of its incarcerated people are in open prisons where they live in cottages with three to five others. In these prisons, they work, study, shop for groceries, cook their own meals, and receive visitors in a more homelike environment.

They are allowed to vote in national elections and are paid a daily average of 63.50 NOK (or eight US dollars).3

A 2010 survey found that 80 percent of Norwegians felt that punishment was too lenient.

[Anders Breivik from Norway] was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison, a sentence that many in the United States found shockingly lenient.

Washington State, where Briscoe lives, is one of fourteen states that does not offer parole.

In the United States, some jurisdictions are starting to turn to restorative justice as an alternative to the traditional criminal court process with its threat of imprisonment. Common Justice, founded in 2008, is one such program for sixteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds facing violent felony charges in New York City’s court system.
...
When Common Justice approaches survivors of violence, 90 percent choose to engage in restorative justice rather than the traditional criminal court proceedings.