U.S.'s Strained Prison System Looks for Alternatives

This May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that overcrowding in California prisons violated the 8th Amendment, which prohibits the use of "cruel and unusual punishment", and ordered the state's penitentiary system to release an estimated 30,000 prisoners within two years. The ruling highlighted the strain that U.S. prisons are under: as state and federal budgets are being slashed (California's budget deficit is currently $9.6 billion), U.S. incarceration rates remain the highest in the world. A Pew study released in 2008 revealed that for the first time in U.S. history, the prison population exceeded one percent of the total population. With 2.3 million individuals behind bars, the United States hosts 25 percent of the world's prison population.

Policymakers are scrambling to find solutions to prison crowding.  In June, Louisiana lawmakers passed a law making it easier for prisoners over 60 to be released on parole. (The reasons cited were twofold: ailing prisoners are much more expensive than healthy ones, and past offenders over 55 have low rates of recidivism, around .3 percent, according to Louisiana state corrections statistics). A law passed in Ohio has paved the way for low-level felony offenders to be sent to community correctional programs, rehabilitation centers, and halfway houses in lieu of prison. The law will also allow the release of non-violent, non-sexual offenders once they have served 80 percent of terms of more than one year. And in Washington, DC, Attorney General Eric Holder has presented an extension of the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act (the act reducing the mandatory sentence disparity between cocaine and crack cocaine), which could retroactively reduce prison terms for the estimated 12,000 prisoners serving terms for crack cocaine possession by up to three years.

Across the United States, politicians and civil society groups are looking for ways to reduce the number of people incarcerated, ranging from reduced sentences for misdemeanors to broader parole programs.

Prison Conditions in the U.S.

The U.S. Supreme Court's May 23 ruling stated that conditions in the California prison system produced “...needless suffering and death” resulting from "grossly inadequate provision of mental and medical health care." Human rights abuses in prisons are not limited to California. A 2010 report released by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found that 4.5 percent of the state and federal prisoners surveyed reported sexual victimization in the past 12 months. That rate rises to 12.1 percent with juvenile offenders. (Other studies have found the rate of incidence to be as high as 21 percent.) "We've presented cases of inadequate medical and mental health care, poor sanitation, and physical abuse by staff and other prisoners, as well as [restrictions on] the right to practice religion," says David Fahti, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Prison Project. "Many [of these conditions] are aggravated by crowding."

Recent budget crises have added to worsening conditions for some prisoners and greater concern for resource allocation. California prisons are currently at 170 percent of their intended capacity. "When you have such over crowding," says Kara Gotsch, Director of Advocacy for The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based NGO that promotes prison reform and alternatives to incarceration, "that taxes medical and mental health. There aren't enough doctors, nurses, or psychiatrists. People are dying."

As public universities and hospitals lose public funding, some critics question the wisdom of spending $51.7 billion a year on prisons (as a 2008 Pew study estimated was spent nationwide). In an Atlantic Monthly article "Prison Without Walls", journalist Graeme Wood explores the use of tracking devices as an cost-effective alternative to prison, where "...In California, the cost per inmate has kept pace with the cost of an Ivy League education, at just shy of $50,000 a year."

Alternatives to Prison

Several alternatives to incarceration have been in place for decades. In fact, nearly 5 million people are completing sentences outside of prison. Today, policymakers are looking for ways to expand the use of parole programs, GPS tracking devices, and drug treatment and rehabilitation programs as an alternative to overcrowded and expensive jails.

"There's growing awareness that prison doesn't necessarily produce better public safety," says Gotsch. "A number of states have passed reform to expand intensive probation [programs] instead of incarceration."

Those programs include: tracking devices that monitor the offenders movements, ensuring that he (or she) stays within a defined perimeter and keeps away from prohibited areas (common off-limits areas are schools and/or individuals with restraining orders against the parolee); regular check-ins with parole officers; and "halfway" house residency. Most of these programs require the parolee to work and undergo counseling, easing his transition back into society.

"If you talk about rehabilitation in our country, that'll never be a reality if we choose to incarcerate people on such a massive scale," says Gotsch. "There will never be enough funding for that population. It's too expensive. It makes a lot more sense—if we're interested in rehabilitation—to serve punishment in the community and benefit from community programs. Those programs are very thin in the prison settings."

Re-examining the Causes for Imprisonment

In addition to changing punitive measures, some lawmakers are looking to change the laws that put nonviolent offenders behind bars in the first place. According to a 2010 report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, around 60 percent of prisoners (in jails, state and federal prisons) were non-violent offenders. A full quarter of inmates were incarcerated for drug offenses. Another segment of the U.S. prison population are undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation; in 2009 approximately 380,000 undocumented immigrants passed through the criminal justice system.

Most visible have been pushes to change marijuana laws, like in California's failed Proposition 19, which would have legalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. (Drug laws are particularly punitive toward racial minorities: According to Human Rights Watch, African Americans constitute 63 percent of all drug offenders in state prisons, even though they make up approximately 13 to 15 percent of the nation's drug users.)

Policymakers are also reconsidering mandatory sentencing laws like California's "Three Strikes", which can send three-time felons for life, even if their offenses are all nonviolent.

Will Reduced Prison Sizes Increase Crime?

Not all policymakers back a reduction in prison policies. Some say that releasing offenders will increase crime rates in the U.S. In his dissent to the Supreme Court ruling on California prisons, Justice Clarence Thomas said: "I fear that today’s decision, like prior prisoner-release orders, will lead to a grim roster of victims."

Some lawmakers credit recent drops in crime— according to a recent FBI report, homicides dropped 4.4 percent, assaults, 9.5 percent, and auto theft 7.2 percent, between 2009 and 2010—despite the economic downturn to high rates of incarceration.

But, Fahti says, "Incarceration accounts for about a quarter of the drop in crime. But, with the U.S. rates of incarceration, you get to a point with diminishing returns."