The punishment culture

In an article headlined "U.K. headed for prison meltdown," describing the rapid increase in prison populations in the U.K., the London Guardian notes:

"The last three years has seen a 26% increase in the number of children and young people criminalised and seven times as much is spent on youth custody as on prevention schemes."

The head of the U.K.'s prison service warns that:

"I wouldn't be surprised at all if by 2010 there were 100,000 people in prison. I think there is every chance that, at the end of the decade, we will look back nostalgically at a figure of 80,000. The US experience shows there is no end to this."

To see how far they still have to go towards adopting the U.S. model, the Brits might take a look at numbers like these (showing juvenile custody rates per 100,000 population):

• U.S. custody rate - all juveniles ....307
  
• White juveniles.......................190
• All minorities........................502
• Blacks................................754
  
• Hispanic..............................348
  
• Native Americans......................496
  
• Asians................................113

Here are a few western European rates per 100,000:

• U.K....................................23
• France..................................6
• Spain...................................2
  
• Finland.................................0.2
  

This huge disparity isn't limited to juvenile inmates. Here's a sampling of incarceration rates for adults per 100,000 population:

• U.S. .................................737
• England/Wales.........................139
• Canada................................116
• Germany................................91
  
• France.................................85

The U.S. currently has 2,193,798 inmates in its prisons and jails. China, with four times the population, comes in second with 1,548,498 prisoners.

These numbers begin to reveal the true dimensions of what Barbara Ehrenreich once described as the U.S. "punishment culture." And they raise a number of questions:

• Are too many convicted criminals put in jail for offenses that merit lesser sanctions such as probation and drug and alcohol rehab programs? Is drug addiction fundamentally a public-health challenge rather than a concern of the criminal-justice system?
  
  
• Does it make sense to lock people up for long periods when nothing is being done to prepare them for eventual release? (In Oregon, for example, 80% of all inmates are imprisoned for misdemeanors and will released within one year.) Should prisons focus more on education, job training, drug and alcohol rehab and counseling programs? Should more services be available to ex-cons after their release?

• How should we interpret the data showing that black, Hispanic and Native American juveniles are much more likely to be incarcerated than whites? Are minority juveniles more likely to be charged with serious offenses? Are they more likely to be sentenced to longer terms in detention?
  

• How does the huge increase in the number of adult ex-convicts, especially among minorities, affect their families, communities and job prospects? Should their civil rights, including the right to vote, be restored after they complete parole to give them a larger stake in their communities?
  
  
• Has a politician ever met a harsher punishment that he or she didn't like—and vote for? (But, here in Oregon, the legislature recently declined to lower the blood-alcohol threshold for drunk driving from 0.08% to 0.05%.) Should the discretion once given to judges in sentencing be restored?
  
  
• To what extent did the increase in prison populations affect declining (but now rising in some categories) crime rates since 1990?

• Should prison be the placement of last (or first) resort for the 300,000 inmates who are mentally ill in the U.S.—or the other 700,000 mentally-ill inmates on probation or parole?
  

For a detailed response to these and related questions, take a look at the current New York Review of Books article, "The American Prison Nightmare."

SOURCES

Juvenile custody rates in the U.S.: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice. Custody rates by state are also shown in detail, along with a vast wealth of related data about the juvenile justice system. One example: the custody rate for blacks in California is six times higher than the rate for whites.

Custody rates in Europe: London Guardian, March 31, 2007

Comparative rates for adults: International Centre for Prison Studies, London. Only Russia comes close to the U.S. in terms of adult incarceration rates, estimated at 613 per 100,000 in 2007.

New York Review of Books article, "The American Prison Nightmare," April 12, 2007. The article notes that:

By the late 1990s, 60 percent of federal inmates were in for drug offenses. The result is an ever-growing prison system, populated to a significant degree by people who need not be there. It was no liberal advocate but Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who offered a damning view of criminal justice in the United States: "Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long."

The definitive statistical source on juvenile crime is Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report from the U.S. Department of Justice.

PHOTO: A holding cell for juveniles in the maximum-security Wood County (Ohio) detention center.