The American Prison system is becoming a huge, bloated mass, ready go pop like a big gray towering pimple and spread criminals all over the world!!!
Okay, maybe not quite like that.
But it seems clear that the American system of justice is unsustainable. Our criminals often re-commit, we have many of them, and they are very costly. At some point the amount of money poured into it will become to much. This isn't a real threat right now, just like our defense spending, despite being massive, is also not a threat to the American budget. We just make to much damn money. But supporting programs with excess spending just because we can is a recipe for failure. It is not an adaptable system. If the country hits hard times and we can no longer support an expensive prison system, what exactly do? A country can't just release prisoners. They're prisoners. It may not have been a good idea to put some of them in prison, but once they're there, it isn't a good idea to suddenly release a great number of them.
As I see it, the American prison system has two major problems. First, the creation of criminals has gone out of control. This is not to say more people are doing things which are wrong - it is to say the state is saying more people are doing things wrong. The creation of a criminal is as much the responsibility of the state as the individual, because without the state in existiance to put people into prison and to enforce the law, the criminal does not exist (nor does the prisoner). Yes, people still do things considered to be wrong, but killing someone and being a murder are not the same thing. One is the action, the other is the title/label gained by the action.
Not that I'm arguing people shouldn't be put in prison for murder. But what about putting people in prison for drugs? Burgerly? Petty theft? Drinking and Driving?
The criminal is an element in society which is deviant. In many cases, this deviance is obviously unwanted. Murders and rapists are deviants from social norms who are dangerous and who most people would want to put behind bars. But deviance has many forms besides murder and rape, and America seems to have confused the criminal as a deviant for the criminal as THE deviant. Why in the world would we put people in jail for pot? People who smoke pot are not violent and at worse do nothing good for society. The black market for the drug stems from it's illegal nature, much like the ban on alcohol in the 1920s caused an alcohol black market. But people who smoke pot are considered deviant - and thus, America seems to think they should be criminals.
I'm not sure where this consider for deviance comes from, though I think generally that American is simply a more conservative country than many other western nations, and as such it both holds more actions as deviant and is more likely to punish them by criminalization.
The other problem with America's prison system is the American since of individuality and personal responsibility. Just because American society considers actions deviant does not mean prison is the only possibility. Certainly, the fact that the deviant portions of society can be rounded up into jails has a great symbolic effect in that it allows American to point to a sort of geographical feature which contains that which society does not want. Yet that does not have to be the case - a similar stigma could be applied to rehabilitation programs. People in drug rehabilitation are hardly considered to be the best society has to offer. But the prison system obviously prevails.
The reason, I think, is that Americans do not wish to take responsibility for the fall of others. It a very economical argument, actually - we're all responsible for our own welfare, and by looking out for ourselves, we actually increase the welfare of society as a whole. That is the basis of American individualism, an invisible hand which is not just economic but also social, promoting the best society has to offer through their own hard work and thus insuring that members of society have a reason to work hard. A sense of personal responsibility is essential to this idea. An individual, it is thought, is responsible only for themselves. Society had no responsibility to them - and also, that individual has only limited responsibilities to society. If you become homeless, no one should have to catch you - but you should not have to catch those who go homeless.
This sort of view on responsibility does not have any room for promoting rehabilitation. If rehabilitation was promoted, it means the society has a responsibility to keep people from being deviant, and to help them reform to the social norm. In America, that just doesn't fly. We don't want to reform people who fall - either they reform themselves, or they don't. Either way, Americans do not see it as their responsibility.
If America ever is to get rid of it's prisons, one of these two factors would have to change.
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2 comments:
All right uhh...
So, I would first argue that our prison system is not unsustainable despite what liberals want us to believe. We are locking up more and more criminals but we are also finding cheaper and cheaper ways to do so. We are privatizing prisons. The prisoners are making things that companies sell for profit. We are figuring out the economics of this.
You seem to be arguing in your pot argument that as long as noone gets hurt by the criminals action then we should not lock them up. This is kinda absurd. Should we not lock up attempted murders? No one got hurt. At worst, he just did nothing to benefit society. No harm no foul?
Our government makes the laws. We elect the government. If the majority of people agreed with you we would not have these laws. Look at California. They passed a statewide law saying medical marijuana is legal. They ran into problems when they realized that a federal law is just that, a federal law and the california law only stopped people prosecuring them under the state law and no the federal law.
My point about this is basically that most people support these laws that you seem to disagree with. If we did not agree with these laws we would vote for people to change them. We don't. When we get to vote for local judges we vote for people who are hard on crimes, all crimes. We vote for people who support these systems because we support them.
I think the argument that our sense of individuality is a problem in this setting is a little absurd. We support people who want to get themselves help. Most states and counties have free clinics for drug addicts. Most churches also provide help in this. My church of less than 100 people sponsors a house that houses 12 people that are overcoming addictions.
It is only the criminal that goes "yep, you caught me but dont punish me for what I did wrong send me to get help." that we are suspicious of. Those who go to prison and then want help, we try to get it to them. Those who try to get help before they end up in prison get our help. It is only those who have broken a law and are looking for a get out of jail card that we look on with suspicion.
I dont quite get your invisible hand comment but I at least find it interesting as an econ major. I would appreciate more explanation of it.
Anywho, Im off to celebrate cinco de mayo. Ill talk to you later uhh..
If we're figuring it out, then why is the cost of our prisons so high? It's not like we just started putting people in prison - the prison is a long-held tradition of western liberal ideals. If we're figuring it out, why do we spend so much more on it than other countries? The evidence for this is everywhere. We hold more prisoners than every other country in the world. This articletells us how prison costs are growing far quicker than education. This article tells us about Colorado, which is facing at least $130 million dollars per year in new spending on prisons.
These economics do not add up. Considering we hold two to four times as many prisoners as most other western nations, we'd have to reduce costs by half to make our situation only 'bad' instead of 'ridiculous'. Privatization will not fix this. It may help - MAY - but there is no way private prisons will be able to reduce costs by 50 to 75%.
Your attempted murder argument is pointless. The two are not similar in a number of ways. First of all, attempted murders very likely do hurt people. Further, they are actively trying to hurt people. A pot smoker hurts no one and is not trying to hurt anyone. He is just smoking pot. The negative cost of letting loose an attempted murder is the very high probability of the person committing murder in the future, and also the state of fear the attempted murder's target(s) will live in. The negative cost of letting loose a pot smoker is that all the conservatives will get really really angry and complain about how in 30 years will be a third will country because of the damn kids, or something equally stupid.
You apparently haven't been living in the same world I do. In your world, governments are never corrupt and are always equally based purely on the value of their positions to their people. Please say hello to the Unicorns for me, it must be a very happy place. However, in the real world, gerrymandering, slander tactics, and money-raising are all factors. I'm not saying these takes are immoral, but I am saying that to say a law must be passed because the people want it isn't true. This is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy.
In addition, the rule of the majority is both a very poor argument and not relevant to my argument. I do not disagree that a majority of people want harsh sentences nor do I disagree a majority of people want pot smokers locked up. However, I disagree with these points of view, and I think they should change them. To attack my argument because a majority of people don't believe in it is irrelevant. Thats the entire point of making an argument. To change people's minds.
I entirely disagree that Americans wish to help people. We wish to help people to a point. But we're not at ALL interested in say, helping the poor person who has cancer and could have had it cured except that they didn't have health insurance and couldn't afford to go get a check-up on what the lump was. According to your argument concerning the majority, if we wished to help these people we'd have voted laws into place so they could get help! But we haven't, so we must not care. The argument goes the same for prisons. We do not have any mandatory system for educating prisoners. Nor do we care why someone stole a car, and what might need to happen so it doesn't reoccur. If we did care, then we would make education a requirement for prisoners. We would help them restart their lives after a long incarceration. We would not put them in jail for minor offenses, such as having some drugs. We wouldn't put someone on a sex offender's list for taking a piss on a tree.
The invisible hand comment has to do with a sense of self-interest that is no only economic but social - essentially I'm saying that Americans seem to believe the invisible had is more than an economic concept, it is also social. We pursue our self-interest both in our economic interests and also in our support of social programs.
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