Our economy may be stagnant, our civil rights may be shrinking, our elected representatives may be sub-par, but we Americans finally have something to crow about. Our prison population, already the largest in the world, reached a new high of more than 2.1 million last year! Translation: one out of every 138 residents of the U.S. is locked up! Way to go! We're number one! We rock, Dude!
The numbers, made public by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, puts us far ahead of countries like China and Russia, whose combined population is about five times that of the U.S.! The number of inmates from sea to shining sea rose about 48,452 people, or 2.3%, in a twelve month period ending in June 2004. In other words, the prison population added about 932 folks a week to its ranks.
The irony is that a lot of these folks are non-violent offenders who may be serving sentences of 25 years to life because of those funny Three Strikes (Y'er Out) Laws passed in the early nineties, when American politicians were declaring various wars: on crime, on drugs, on being poor and backed into a corner.
Are the Three Strikes Laws fair? Well, when Washington State voters were considering theirs, more than 20 then-current and former prosecutors urged the public to vote against it. Here's the scenario they came up with:
"An 18-year old high school senior pushes a classmate down to steal his Michael Jordan $150 sneakers — Strike One; he gets out of jail and shoplifts a jacket from the Bon Marche, pushing aside the clerk as he runs out of the store — Strike Two; he gets out of jail, straightens out, and nine years later gets in a fight in a bar and intentionally hits someone, breaking his nose — criminal behavior, to be sure, but hardly the crime of the century, yet it is Strike Three. He is sent to prison for the rest of his life.”
Neat, huh? Oh, yeah. Washington citizens voted for it by a 3-to-1 margin.
In California, one fellow who had two assault convictions dating back 30 years and in another state got the Three Strikes treatment for what would be considered a misdemeanor were it not a Third Strike. Petty theft. (He successfully got the sentence overturned.)
There are other downsides to these laws. Many of those convicted are non-violent black and Latino drug users. Urban areas are the easiest targets to zero in on for collars because drug use and sales are right out there in the open in a very confined area.
And then there is the "back against the wall" syndrome. A criminal facing the prospect of a life sentence will be far more likely to lash out and resist arrest, try to kill cops, witnesses or attempt a prison escape. Dave Paul, a corrections officer from Milwaukee, Oregon, wrote in a newspaper article: "Imagine a law enforcement officer trying to arrest a twice-convicted felon who has nothing to lose by using any means necessary to escape."
Our present rate of incarceration has reached a record of 726 inmates per 100,000 residents, up from 716 a year earlier. Britain's rate is 142 per 100,000, China's is 118, France 91, Japan 58 and Nigeria 31. Come on, Nigeria, get with the pogrom, I mean, program.
American prisons that house mostly drug offenders had the largest increase in the prison population, 6.3% And here's an interesting statistic, a total of 12.6% of ALL black males in their late twenties are now officially behind bars, compared to 3.6% of Hispanics and about 1.7% of whites.
Man, white guys gotta get their act together. I mean, where's your sense of competition? Steal a Hummer and go for the gold!
Bush, who ran as the "tough love" candidate in 2000, had his minions point to a lower national crime rate to prove that keeping these felons locked away was working. But Jason Ziedenburg, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute, pointed to the need to address the underlying issues of unemployment, poverty and education in order to reduce the number of inmates while also keeping crime down.
"Unless we promote alternatives to prison, the nation will continue to lead the world in imprisonment," he said, in a statement. (And, interestingly enough, most states without Three Strikes laws have lower crime rates than those with them.)
It should come as no surprise that, when Bush was governor of Texas, he tripled the number of inmates in juvenile prisons, lowered the age at which a juvenile could be tried as an adult and increased the maximum sentence for youthful offenders. (This from a guy who claimed: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible." …and had a good lawyer.)
He ended parole for repeat offenders. Increased funds for state prisons and contracted with private sector firms to build and/or manage state prisons. (In the 1990s, Texas' state prison system was known for corruption and brutality, too.) And, oh yeah, he saw to it that over 100 prisoners were executed. No-one tangled with THAT Compassionate Conservative, you betcha.
Oh, well. Aside from the fact that incarcerating people for twenty-five years to life for drug abuse is morally hazy, it also costs a hell of a lot. The cost of an average prisoner per years to tax-payers is somewhere between $20-30,000, depending on the state. If Little Jimmy is found guilty of a bong-induced third strike at the age of 25 and he winds up doing fifty years? Let's just say, the resulting math doesn't bode well for his state's budget.
And if Little Jimmy is considered too uppity or mentally challenged by a warden? Well, he can be shipped off to a Supermax prison! What's a Supermax prison, you might ask? These little ditties were concocted in the late eighties and are still being built. Advertised as being designated for the "worst of the worst" prisoners, they are 500 cell units built largely in rural or job-depleted areas of the country, where anything goes.
Each prisoner is treated to:
* 23 hours of solitary confinement inside a cell 4 days a week, 24 hours confinement 3 days a week. The cell has no windows. A cell light is on 24-hours a day.
* 4 hours of "recreation" per week, alone, inside a room slightly bigger than a cell, with no equipment - or a small outdoor area subject to weather restrictions. If the "recreation" room is inside, the fresh air requirement of the law is met via a narrow screened-in window at the very top of the room.
* No views of the outside world. Supermax prisons have no windows a prisoner can see out of — ever.
* No human contact with anyone. Each cell has a steel-front door with one window, through which all communication with staff, including medical and counseling consultations takes place…unless there's a medical emergency.
* No touching. Most Supermax prisons have "no contact" visitation with loved ones through plexiglass via telephone. In Wisconsin, prisoners and loved ones aren't even allowed to see one another in person, even through plexiglass. They communicate via video.
* No fraternizing. Supermax prisons have no communal dining area, work rooms, study areas, gyms or chapels. There are no attempts at rehabilitation.
In short, a Supermax prison is an isolation chamber.
Kurt Russell couldn't escape from one of these suckers.
Okay, now, you'd expect this kind of drastic interment to be used on killers, mad bombers, terrorists and maniacs; the Hannibal Lechter/Charles Manson crowd. Unfortunately, that's not the case. ANYbody can wind up in a Supermax prison. There are no rules on who does or doesn't make the cut. It's often done capriciously.
Supermax inmates include the mentally ill, people who file lawsuits against the prison system, people who are members of African-American political groups and prisoners suspected of belonging to gangs. (Hence, there's a high percentage of black and Latino prisoners.)
"Normal" prisons, faced with overcrowding, simply ship out inmates into Supermaxes without any due process. The Ohio State Penitentiary tried to save money by shipping all of its death row prisoners to a Supermax. (Prompting one death row inmate's mother to say: "They're going to kill my son, but in the time he's here, don't treat him like an animal.")
Other inmates include minors, including a 17 year old boy (with a history of emotional disturbance and at least one prior suicide attempt) sentenced to four years for car theft and fleeing from a police officer and a 16 year old kid from the wrong side of the tracks sentenced to three years for slapping a counselor at a juvenile mental health treatment facility.
Since 2001, the ACLU has successfully challenged "Supermax" confinement in several states including Connecticut, Virginia, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Ohio. Other suits have been filed by Amnesty International, the NAACP and various other civil rights organizations. (This year a state court ruled that Supermax prisoners were allowed due process before being hermetically sealed. This may spread nationally.)
Many of the lawsuits concern the mentally ill tossed into a cell that is, basically, a sensory deprivation chamber. In Indiana's Secured Housing Unit, for instance, the sensory deprivation spawned four suicides and numerous self-mutilations. The isolation led prisoners to hallucinate, rip chunks of flesh from their bodies and rub feces on themselves. (Back in 1997, Human Rights Watch declared Indiana's Supermax simply "cruel.")
The Supermax prisons, which cost twice as much to operate as a normal prison, literally drive prisoners up a wall. If you weren't mentally unhinged going in, you certainly will be going out. If you were a maniac going in, you'll be more of one going out. Jerome G. Miller, president of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, says such prisons “don’t have any shot of making these guys less dangerous. . . . They come out very, very dangerous, much more dangerous than they were when they went in. There’s no evidence this reduces recidivism. They sit and simmer.”
Plus, there have been charges of prisoners being beaten, hog-tied, stripped to their shorts and thrown into a fifty degree cell, chained to concrete beds and having black hoods placed over their heads.
If all this stateside "fun" sounds familiar, please note: When then-Attorney General Ashcroft sent a team of American prison experts to restore Iraq's criminal justice system two years back, he declared: "Now all Iraqis can taste liberty in their native land, and we will help make that freedom permanent by assisting them to establish an equitable criminal justice system based on the rule of law and the standards of basic human rights.”
One of the prison experts that Ashcroft chose for modernizing Iraqi prisons was a fella named Lane McCotter, who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and trained the guards.
McCotter had resigned as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 under pressure after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.
Oopsie.
Clearly, democracy is on the march, or crawl, as it were.
Last year, after the Abu Ghraib scandal made its way into the headlines, President Bush announced a five-point plan for Iraqi reconstruction. Abu Ghraib was to be torn down.
And replaced by an American-style Supermax prison.
Meet the new Boss.
Same as the old Boss.
So, as America gears up to keep the number one spot in the global incarceration Grand Prix again this year? Let's cheer and all say in unison:
