Ethical Treatment of Prisoners Is a Complex

Ethical treatment of prisoners is a complex question, involving the nature of the prison system in the U.S. And the nature of those incarcerated in it, as well as ethical obligations that individuals owe to society as well as those that society owes to those who are imprisoned. Deontological ethics might hold, for example, that those who have violated the law and the basic moral norms of society deserve to be punished but at the same time even those convicted and imprisoned have certain basic human rights. For example, they have the right to food, clothing, shelter and medical care, and cannot be tortured, abused or brutalized. Another problem from a deontological perspective would be to criticize a society where blacks and Hispanics are a minority of the population but also the majority of the prison population, including those on death row. Indeed, they are more likely to be profiled, arrested, convicted and receive harsher sentences than whites. Emotivist ethics are not particularly helpful in resolving all these questions, either, since a person adhering to these might feel very strongly that murder, theft and drug dealing are wrong and should be punished severely. On the other hand, they might also feel and emotional sympathy for those who are incarcerated or revulsion toward prisons and the death penalty. An emotivist might also strongly condemn the injustices of society, particularly its racism, poverty and mistreatment of minorities. In short, neither of these ethical theories can offer any concrete or absolute answers about what the ethical treatment of prisoners really means.

Since 1980, the U.S. prison population has increased over 400% due to the War on Drugs and mandatory sentencing laws, and over 70% of inmates are young black and Hispanic males. No other Western nation has this level of imprisonment, and in many areas the majority of black men are in jail or on probation and parole. In 2002, the total number of prisoners in state, federal and county jails surpassed two million for the first time in history, with five million more on probation or parole. In 2009, the total number of state and federal prisoners was 1.4 million, of which 479,000 were white, 563,000 black and 303,000 Hispanic (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2009).

In the last thirty years, the U.S. has become the only Western country that still has capital punishment and one of the few countries in the world that puts juveniles to death. Given the conservative domination of political and economic life in recent decades, there has been little sympathy or attention for dealing with the social and economic causes of crime, or rehabilitating criminals. Blacks are also far overrepresented among death row inmates, but racism in criminal justice is hardly unusual in U.S. history. They have always been more likely to be arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated than whites, to be lynched, and to receive harsher sentences for the same crimes. Death row inmates have almost never been presented sympathetically in popular culture or the mass media, and the public mood has almost always favored retribution and punishment over rehabilitation or even analyzing the socioeconomic causes of violent crime.

There were fifty-two executions in the United States in 2009 and forty-six in 2010, with over 3,000 people waiting on death row for their sentences to be carried out. In most cases these never will be because of lengthy appeals and delays in the courts so for most of those convicted the death penalty is actually a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. Death row inmates are overwhelmingly male, from a lower class background, and on average over 40% have been black in 1977-2009, even though blacks were only 12-13% of the population (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2011). Thirty-six states and the federal government allowed capital punishment, which is mostly done by lethal injection rather than by hanging, gas or electrocution.

Since inequality is more extreme in the U.S., than any other Western nation and has been increasing over the last thirty years, the correlation with the rising prison population and weakening social safety net much is quite clear and obvious. These conditions have worsened during the present recession, particularly for blacks and Hispanics (Volbrecht, 2002, p. 17). Alone among Western nations, for example, only the U.S. lacks a system of national health care and support for children and families, while its mental health care system for the lower classes is very limited. In short, the U.S. has truly developed a prison-industrial complex over the last thirty years, and only the recent recession has slowed its growth to some degree, mainly because of budget shortfalls and the state, local and federal levels.