Incarceration nation: 1 in 31 U.S. adults now in criminal justice system

3-3-2009 National:

The U.S. criminal justice system is tapping out state budgets while failing to make the public safe, but most people don’t care until it affects them directly. If the numbers keep growing, it won’t be long before practically everyone is. A study released today by the Pew Center on the States shows that 7.3 million people — 1 in 31 U.S. adults — are now locked up or on parole or probation. In Michigan, it’s one in 27 people. In one neighborhood on Detroit’s east side, one in seven adult men is in the system.

Our policies on crime and punishment aren't working and we can no longer afford them. Over the past two decades, state general fund spending on corrections has more than tripled to $68 billion a year. That means a lot less money for education, health care and other essential government services. Michigan spends $2 billion a year on corrections — more than it spends on higher education.

Despite this investment, recidivism and crimes rates have not gone down. My own feeling is that mass incarceration has increased crime by disrupting families, neighborhoods and social networks. In Michigan today, one in six adults has a felony on his or her record. One in 14 African American children has an incarcerated parent, making it seven times more likely that they, too, will go to prison.

What people forget is that nearly everyone sent to prison will get out. Roughly 600,000 people a year leave prison or jail and return to their communities, many of them unable to find work. Mass incarceration has made prison a norm in certain neighborhoods. My brother-in-law, who’s 34 and grew up on Detroit’s east side, told me once that every male peer he knew coming up went to prison or jail. For many young men, going to prison has become almost an expectation, a rite of passage.

The Pew report also notes that it costs, on average, 22 times more to lock offenders up than to supervise them in community programs like probation and parole than it does to lock them up. Diverting more lower-risk, non-violent offenders to community programs makes dollars and sense. It would lower corrections costs and enable states to spend more on education and other government services.

We need to find a better way. It’s troubling and puzzling that many of the same people who attack government inefficiency give our costly and ineffective criminal justice system a pass by pushing for more of the same. ..News Source.. by JEFF GERRITT