The Caging of America

A close family member of mine was just arrested for possession of marijuana. They allegedly had a sizable amount, more than your normal 1/8th of an ounce, but nothing obscene. Due to a felony 10 years ago when they were a teen, they are looking at 5-10 years. Granted, Oregon is known to go easy on pot offenses, however even 6 months in jail is ridiculous. The real cost however, is not having their prior felony expunged - it will be another 10 years before that is a possibility, well into middle age for this person :( Try finding yourself a job with a felony record. If you can, it is probably paying a wage that will doubtless encourage the same illegal behavior that landed you a felony in the first place. When your only hope the rest of your life won't be utter shit is getting off on a technicality, something is messed up.

Other comments asked how incarceration rates could be reduced in the United States. One way would be for many of the forty-some other states to follow the example of the few states, including Minnesota, which have set up determinate sentencing based on severity of the offense of conviction and the criminal history of the convicted defendant.<p><a href="http://www.northfieldnews.com/content/understanding-minnesotas-determinate-sentencing-guidelines" rel="nofollow">http://www.northfieldnews.com/content/understanding-minnesot...</a><p><a href="http://www.doc.state.mn.us/crimevictim/terms.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.doc.state.mn.us/crimevictim/terms.htm</a><p>I toured a prison in Minnesota in the mid-1980s, as an interpreter for an official visitor from another country. The visitor was amazed to learn that Minnesota then (and now) spends LESS per taxpayer on putting convicted criminals into prison, while spending substantially MORE per prisoner. Only the most serious criminals with long histories of offenses are imprisoned. Most convicted criminals receive sentences that involve community corrections but not imprisonment. Minnesota's maximum-security prison, the one I toured, had a population of inmates 97 percent of whom had killed at least one other human being before being put in that prison. The foreign visitor was a human rights lawyer, and he was actually amazed at how humanely the prisoners were housed and treated in that prison. (He had visited many prisons in his own country, and none were as well funded as the prison in Minnesota.) A prison can be properly staffed and funded, and not too crowded, if a whole state's criminal justice system is geared toward imprisoning only persons who must be kept out of general society, responding to most forms of criminal behavior with sentences that don't include prison time.

I admit I've only skimmed the article and the comments on HN, but I don't think that either have mentioned the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association). It's basically a union of prison guards who are heavily pro-incarceration. The quick version is that stricter laws produce more prisoners which leads to more money for prison guards and their organization. The story is better told here:<p><a href="http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/05/the-role-of-the-prison-guards-union-in-californias-troubled-prison-system/" rel="nofollow">http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2011/06/05/the-role-of-th...</a><p>The phrase "prison-industrial complex" leads to some interesting reading, as well.

6 million people is roughly the working age population of some of the smaller countries in Western Europe. Thinking about the massive waste of resources and the cost in terms of human lives extinguished (6 million people in prison translates to ~85,000 peoples lives wiped out every year, and that's only the inmates not the guards and whoever else is involved in the system) is instantly depressing.<p>Gruesome.<p>Here is a good graphic to illustrate how bad it really is:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PRISON_GRAPHIC.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PR...</a>

Before I went to law school, I had a somewhat conservative view of the justice system (they deserve to be in there!) But the more you learn about the prison system in the U.S. the harder it is to see it as anything other than a crime in and of itself.<p>D.A.'s being elected officials, try to railroad people accused of crimes to get them in jail. Legislatures looking to be "tough on crime" have jacked up the penalties for offenses to ridiculous levels, so much so that most people would be foolish to take their chances at trial instead of pleading guilty in exchange for a lesser sentence. Forensic "science" is anything but, with error rates in finger printing being in the 7-8% neighborhood and rising from there. Handwriting, hair samples, and bite mark analysis have error rates in the 40-60% range.<p>As the article mentions, the system elevates procedure above everything else. If you have a busy, poorly-paid public defender who doesn't present any evidence in your case and actually argues in favor of the death penalty in the sentencing hearing (a real example) the Supreme Court has no sympathy for you if that attorney also forfeits an avenue for post-conviction relief by failing to make a particular argument at the right time.

The article makes the good point that reform won't happen with one piece of sweeping legislation, but rather with patchwork improvements to the system.<p>What would you do to reduce incarceration rates?<p>I would start with a reform of drug laws inspired by Portugal [1]. We're not sure if the same solution can scale to the size of the US, but we can introduce reform incrementally, starting with the decriminalization of Marijuana. (Which I think most would find agreeable.)<p>Education reform is important too. Obama is pushing reform to get states to increase the age of required education to 18 [2]. This sounds like a good idea on paper...we'll have to see how it pans out. His push for increase utilization of community colleges also makes sense, since they provide a decent education for the increasing number of Americans who can't afford college.<p>1: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal</a> 2: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/obama-states-should-require-kids-stay-in-school-until-18-or-graduation/2012/01/24/gIQAPg63OQ_blog.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/obama-...</a>

The fundamental problem is that there is a whole industry, and corresponding political lobby, built on incarcerating people.

<i>Crime ends as a result of “cyclical forces operating on situational and contingent things rather than from finding deeply motivated essential linkages.” [...] Curbing crime does not depend on reversing social pathologies or alleviating social grievances; it depends on erecting small, annoying barriers to entry.</i><p>Funny how this comes up again and again in so many different contexts. Minor bottom-up tweaks are more effective than top-down policies. In one of Joel's classic articles he talks about how small UI tweaks to forum software completely change the course of a community. Tiny changes in economic incentives have massive effects. It's a great lesson to be applied in so many fields.

One problem with putting so many people in prison, and keeping them there for so long, is that you end up with a large number of prisoners with dementia like illnesses.<p>The routines of prison help to mask some symptoms of those illnesses. And because some of these prisoners are in for serious, violent, crimes it's hard to release them to nursing homes.<p>Here's one prison's response:<p>(<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dementia-among-aging-criminals.html?_r=1&#38;hp=&#38;pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/health/dealing-with-dement...</a>)<p>I submitted it to HN here: (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3649276" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3649276</a>)

<i>By “supply side criminology,” he means the conservative theory of crime that claimed that social circumstances produced a certain net amount of crime waiting to be expressed; if you stopped it here, it broke out there. The only way to stop crime was to lock up all the potential criminals.</i><p>Very odd to describe this as a "conservative" idea. Most conservatives I know object to this sort of sociological determinism, instead embracing the idea of individual responsibility. If anything, they believe in the power of (slowly) malleable culture and institutions to shape outcomes, rather than accepting bad outcomes as inevitable.

Why don't prisons get their asses sued off for allowing inmates to be raped?

<i>The accelerating rate of incarceration over the past few decades is just as startling as the number of people jailed: in 1980, there were about two hundred and twenty people incarcerated for every hundred thousand Americans; by 2010, the number had more than tripled, to seven hundred and thirty-one. No other country even approaches that. In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. </i><p>If the New York Times is to be believed, the crime rate has nearly halved since 1980 [1]. Obviously it needn't follow that the increase in the prison population caused this, but the author's unwillingness to even explore the idea seems awfully incurious.<p>[1] See the "In the U.S." tab on this graphic <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PRISON_GRAPHIC.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/04/22/us/20080423_PR...</a>

This reminds me of an article Time Magazine did on Norway's Halden Prison.<p>Essentially, when the Norwegian justice system treated their inmates more humanely, their recidivism (crime after prison) rate became 40% less than the US and the UK.<p>Similarly, in Norway, there are only 69 inmates per 100,000 people, compared to 753/100,000 in the United States.<p><a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1986002,00....</a>

<i>The normalization of prison rape—like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows—will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized.</i><p>"Surely"? Let's start with "hopefully" and rigorously work our way up to "probably."

Reminds me of an Econmist article from a while back [1]. The theme being shared with the two being: systems we set up to punish _criminals_ rarely do just that.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.economist.com/node/14165460?story_id=14165460" rel="nofollow">http://www.economist.com/node/14165460?story_id=14165460</a>

Reading this reminds me of this quote: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller<p>and another darker vision: "For if you [the rulers] suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves [outlaws] and then punish them." Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), Utopia, Book 1<p>Here's an idea for a frighteningly ambitions startup: Kill the prison-industrial complex! How? Fight crime! It costs a lot of taxpayer money and social wealth to keep things the way they are. Ostensibly the goal is to keep people safe from criminals and reduce crime opportunities.<p>A friend of mine was mugged on the street for his iPhone last night. He was stabbed in the leg when he fought back (mistake but he's ok thankfully). I wonder if a few high-res web-cams on the street would have kept the attackers at bay?<p>How about a Peer-to-Peer police/surveillance state? Found these startup ideas tonight:<p>idea: turn my webcam into a security cam [1] <a href="http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-turn-my-webcam-into-a-security-cam" rel="nofollow">http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-turn-my-webcam-into-a-s...</a><p>idea: millions of sensors / millions of surveys [2] <a href="http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-millions-of-sensors-millions-of-surveys" rel="nofollow">http://ideashower.posterous.com/idea-millions-of-sensors-mil...</a>

I can't help but think that, given this quote:<p><i>More than half of all black men without a high-school diploma go to prison at some time in their lives.</i><p>The first step is simple &#38; straightforward. Fix education (or what is preventing them from getting an education) first, <i>then</i> tackle other problems with prisons.

Many people reading this will fail to realize that "correctional supervision" includes about 4M who are on probation or parole. Horrible article.

Something's really wrong with this article - lack of an economic angle. Prisons in the US are an enormous <i>private</i> business, with free labor. (i.e. <a href="http://www.unicor.gov/about/faqs/top_ten/index.cfm" rel="nofollow">http://www.unicor.gov/about/faqs/top_ten/index.cfm</a>)<p>Another problem is the silly/cruel "three strikes" laws, which might put someone in jail for life for stealing a loaf of bread out of hunger.

Awesome TED talk touching on similar topics. I would recommend if you haven't watched/heard it yet. <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_abo...</a>

How would a hacker deal with solitary?

Corrections Corporation of America = <a href="http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=47162" rel="nofollow">http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/index.html?id=47162</a>

As I age, I realise that time speeds by faster. A year in prison now would a much smaller punishment than when I was in my teens, when a year seemed like forever.<p>Perhaps we need an age-related transform to prison sentences.

As a voting American let me say this is a disgrace. human rights are inalienable -- and we are close to the line in the USA. We can do better.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." - Dostoyevsky.

My own preferred solution: ankle bracelets with GPS for felons convicted of non-violent crimes.

This article should be accompanied by another New Yorker piece from a couple of years ago:<p><i>Hellhole: Is long-term solitary confinement torture?</i><p><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande" rel="nofollow">http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...</a>

First we should only be comparing the statistics of large countries when counting prisoners per 100k. Small and third world countries have an entirely different culture and/or little law enforcement. (Yes I know that we would still be at the top of the list).<p>Race (and all the complexities it encompasses) is at the center of this whole issue. I am black so don't start calling me a racist OK.<p>Remove blacks from all prison and population statistics when comparing the USA to other countries' people in prison per 100,000 and we will fall to the middle of the pack of countries.<p>I am not suggesting in any way that we deport all of us. All I am saying is that we need to find a way to teach the black population how to make better choices in life and give them the opportunity to be rewarded for those choices. Throwing more public assistance at them is certainly not the answer, it has only made the problem worse.<p>We can still do better even then middle of the pack though and this article brought up some through provoking things.