Jailbirds...

Lexington's column in this week's Economist focuses on the prison system in America, and how unwieldy it has become. Lexington points out that Senator Webb of Virginia is one of the few politicans with enough guts to take a stand on this issue. And to be honest, it takes guts, as even a tinge of being "soft of crime" has dealt many a crushing blows to American politicians.

Mr Webb also has some powerful forces ranged against him. The prison-industrial complex (which includes private prisons as well as public ones) employs thousands of people and armies of lobbyists. Twenty-six states plus the federal government have passed “three strikes and you’re out” laws which put repeat offenders in prison for life without parole. And the war on drugs has pushed the incarceration business into overdrive. The number of people serving time for drugs has increased from 41,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today, or 55% of the population of federal prisons and 21% of those in state prisons. An astonishing three-quarters of prisoners locked up on drug-related charges are black.

America incarcerates a staggering number of its' citizens (about 1 in 31 adults) and it doesn't seem to get a lot for it. It is true that our crime rates have been lowered over the past twenty five years, but there are lots of underlying questions related to the cost of this decrease. The first, and perhaps biggest, is related to what constitutes crime? There are myriad options in defining crime, but I find it difficult to believe there is any real public policy interest in incarcerating low level drug "criminals." We also love to disenfranchise many of our citizens (disproportionately minorities, btw), as many states don't allow felons to vote... not only when they are in prison, or on parole, but forever. This seems like a very good way to convince someone that society doesn't care about them, or their opinions. Our system also seems to offer very little (in the aggregate) programmatic rehabilitation, as America has a quite high rate of recidivism. This doesn't even consider the huge amounts of cash we spend on the trials, appeals, incaceration and monitoring of those caught up in the system.

I have little doubt that there are a lot of people in the prison system that deserve to be there, and that it is to society's benefit to keep them there. I'm just not as convinced that 1 in 31 adults should be in jail... or that we can afford to continue the staggering growth rate in prison populations.