“If you do the crime, you do the time,” a popular saying goes. That certainly seems to be the mindset of the American public, which is deluged with daily crime stories in the media and clamoring for increasingly tougher punishment of offenders, such as child molesters. Politicians and the courts have taken notice, and an examination of crime research reveals that, in addition to being the “Home of the brave and the land of the free,” America’s jails are overflowing.
The good news is that the FBI has reported that four major categories of crime in America declined in 2007:
» Violent crime was down 1.4 percent.
» Murder declined 2.7 percent.
» Forcible rape declined 4.3 percent.
» Robbery decreased 1.2 percent.
The bad news is that America has more people incarcerated than ever, more than any other nation. One of every 100 U.S. adults is now in our jails, an estimated 2,319,258 at the start of 2008. In 2006, about 14 percent of the prison population had been convicted of drug offenses. About 750 per 100,000 Americans are incarcerated in the United States, while China, with 4.3 times the population, has only 1.5 million people in its jails, and 628 per 100,000 Russians are incarcerated. (“More than 1 in 100 Americans in jail,” David Crary, The Associated Press, Feb. 29).
However, locking more people up and keeping them there longer costs big bucks. A report on the cost of prisons in the United States by the Pew Center’s Public Safety Performance Project noted that:
» The total cost of corrections in the 50 states was more than $49 billion in 2007.
» Prison costs in 2007 increased six times faster than increases for education.
» The average annual cost per prisoner was $23,876. Rhode Island spent the most, at $44,860, and Louisiana the least, at $13,009.
» “California spent $8.8 billion on corrections last year, while Texas, which has slightly more inmates, was a distant second with spending of $3.3 billion.”
» “Four states — Vermont, Michigan, Oregon and Connecticut — now spend more on corrections than they do on higher education.”
» “Prison growth and higher incarceration rates do not reflect an increase in the nation’s overall population. Instead … more people are behind bars mainly because of tough sentencing measures, such as ‘three strikes’ laws, that result in longer prison stays.”
Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., has become an American folk hero for his tough policies: pink underwear for prisoners, serving bologna sandwiches, housing about 2,000 low-risk inmates in barbed-wire surrounded tents with no air conditioning, and chain gangs of men and women working on county and city projects.
Sheriff Arpaio’s no-frills policies also include: no coffee (because it has no nutritional value), limiting cable TV shows to the Disney and weather channels, no smoking, no porno magazines, no weights and only G-rated movies.
Many Americans in other states would like to see their own law enforcement officials emulate Sheriff Arpaio, but it’s not easy. Legislators and the courts around the country have adopted policies that prevent similar practices.
California, for example, doesn’t permit housing prisoners in tents and requires certain amenities, in spite of the fact that many of the states jails are so crowded that prisoners have to sleep on the floor, in hallways, etc. The courts have responded to the situation by requiring that prisoners be released early to avoid such conditions. In Santa Barbara County, for example, the impact is to automatically reduce most short-term sentences (six months or less) by a third or more.
As is so often the case with complex issues, there are no easy answers, but it is clear that the U.S. public is running out of patience with treating prisoners like hotel guests while they are taxed to pay the bills.
Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA and former chairman and CEO of Santa Ynez Valley Hospital who has lived in Santa Barbara County for more than 30 years. He stays active writing opinion columns and his own blog, Opinionfest.com.