The nation’s decades long war on drugs and ‘tough on crime’ posture has failed to reduce crime rates and control the rising prison population. Additionally, our current crime fighting strategy puts us at a disadvantage in other critical sectors, namely education. Knowing what we now know, it is clear that it’s beyond time to take a different approach on crime…a smarter one.
According to a recently released NAACP report entitled “Misplaced Priorities: Over Incarcerate and Under Educate,” state spending on prisons in the last twenty years grew six times faster than education spending. In fact, 33 states increased prison spending in 2009 while simultaneously reducing education funding.
Much of this increase in prison spending can be blamed on mandatory sentencing laws that require mandatory jail time for even low-level, non-violent offenses rob the sentencing judge of the ability to hand down a punishment that is more suitable to the crime. Instead, offenders who might be better served in a drug rehab program are sent to prison, causing prison populations to go up and requiring prison budgets to increase in order to keep up with the ‘demand’.
As states around the country are forced to make tough cuts to balance their budgets, very few are pulling funds from those allocated for prisons. Instead, they are pulling money from education, healthcare and social services, programs that serve those in need. This is definitely not the right approach.
Reducing the prison population and, in turn, reducing prison budgets, stabilizes state budgets so that other key programs won’t have to take such hard hits. Restoring the judge’s ability to use creative sentencing for non-violent offenders is one way to reduce prison populations around the country. Employing alternative sentencing methods, such as home confinement and drug treatment, is another.
Our priorities as a nation are currently skewed…we are placing far more emphasis on incarcerating people than we are on educating and healing them. By taking a smarter approach to crime, one that looks for lower cost ways to punish and rehabilitate offenders, we can free up billions of dollars that can be put to much better use.
GreatNESS and your blog JUDGE MATHIS, and congratulations on your Awesome Children, I Certainly look forward to the impact they will have on this world. Yep that’s right.. and may GOD Continue to bless you and your Family.
I WILL be renewing my membership with the NAACP This week coming. It’s time. Out of my three sons, one of them has been to prison (has his own trucking Co. Now). Out of my eight nephews two have been to prison. The strategy of these “Silent Weapons in this Quiet War” is weighing me down. And the MASS of us don’t even know that this IS WWIII… if WE don’t make A Stand, I am going to JUST BURST!!!
those laws were put in place to create a disadvantage for minorities and an advantage for the majority. The laws have targeted the disadvantage youth of America who were not in a position to make or even acquire the appropriate skills to live above the influence. A good portion of those males are from broken homes in the low income area hustling to have the necessities and the material possessions that they are taught are important. By creating these mandatory laws the judicial system was allowed to place felony charges on minorities which would make them ineligible for government student aide, housing and employment which puts them back on the streets and back in jail. This system was set up to remove the minorities out of society. Yes there are others who made conscious decisions to make fast money but to have someone spend 10yrs in jail for selling drugs and another person spend 1yr in for killing a family while drunk driving or 3yrs for raping someone is such a miscarriage of justice. Spend more money on challenging education and drug use prevention, create youth development programs and there will be less young people in jail. Meet the needs of the community and you will have a successful one.
Tough On Crime Policies
By: A. Scott Washington, J.D.
A factor that cannot be ignored when discussing criminal justice policy is over reliance on incarceration in this country. To ignore the causal connection between contemporary criminal justice policy and the rise in youthful urban violence is turning a blind-eye to factors that are rotting the foundation of contemporary urban society.
There are nearly 2.4 million persons incarcerated in state or federal prisons in this country. Half of those persons are African Americans. Obviously, there are identifiable behavior patterns are associated with African Americans being disproportionately incarcerated. On the other hand, the intersection of public policy and poverty has collided with the forces of history, race, economic theory and human vulnerability to create a social pathology like none seen before in this country. As a result, “prison culture” is now firmly embedded in inner city America.
Following 35 years of tough on crime policy, the affect of generational incarceration and recidivism has created an environment ripe for this new subculture within the inner city. This subculture is fueled by the extremely violent and brutal customs and values that were born within the concrete walls of this country’s correctional institutions.
Prison culture, which is now abundantly present in the inner city, is directly connected to the extreme and pervasive violence we are experiencing in the African American community. These conditions grow exponentially, parallel to the prison population in this country. This phenomenon is cyclical and, as the statistics suggest, actually increases violent criminal activity in both the inner city and suburban communities. Therefore, community safety is significantly compromised by the tough on crime mentality associated with contemporary criminal justice policy; particularly, this country’s drug control efforts that have become the fundamental premise of our national crime policy.
Our children have become the collateral damage of contemporary American criminal justice policy. For many inner city residents and African American children in particular, criminal justice policy and poverty have contributed to a blurring of cultural, as well as social values. During the welfare reform era we spoke about children raising children. What prison culture has resulted in today is children raising themselves. A significant proportion of our inner city youth today are the children of prisoners that inhabit this nation’s prisons. When these children reach adolescence they are typically raising themselves in the bowels of contemporary urban America.
What criminal justice policy and poverty have perpetuated in this country is the social disenfranchisement of African American children. The forces of public policy, poverty, and human vulnerability have conspired to create this new and peculiar universe within the inner city. The apparent evolving nature of this new inner city subculture and its intersection with poverty and social pathology has created an environment ripe for youthful urban violence to flourish.
The questions that must be raised here are: 1) what are we going to do with the massive numbers of unskilled, undereducated, and often, recalcitrant felons that will be returning to our communities over the next several decades (98% of the 2.4 million prisoners in this country will be released)? 2) When will policy be implemented to deal with the flaws and inadequacies in current drug control policy? 3) When are our lawmakers going to present concrete solutions for problems that cannot be conquered by locking up millions of Americans?
A. Scott Washington, J.D. is an ex-offender that holds a Bachelors Degree in Urban Studies with an emphasis on contemporary urban problems and a Juris Doctor Degree from the University Of Dayton School Of Law. He is the Chair of the Criminal and Social Justice program at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois.