Prison Reform in America: Costs and Alternatives

The United States criminal justice system houses the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of total prison population and proportion of prisoners to the total population per capita. The United States has a larger prison population than China and India despite having nowhere near their total population. It also holds a greater percentage of its population in incarceration than any other country, including Russia, North Korea, and Iran. With only about five percent of the world's population, the United States holds approximately twenty-five percent of the world's prison population.

Many stereotypes portray inmates, prisoners, and felons as violent criminals who must be locked away to keep the population safe. However, the actual prison population comprises a wide range of offenders, and many of these crimes are non-violent. In fact, the United States houses only a small percent of its prison population who were convicted of violent crimes. Many people are imprisoned for seemingly minor offenses such as failure to pay child support, motor vehicle violations, missing court dates, drug offenses, and even failure to pay debts (Maag, 2012). This analysis examines the need for prison reform from different perspectives and notes some of the costs to society that this phenomenon has caused at different levels.

The War on Drugs, launched at a new scale in recent generations, has been largely successful at imprisoning drug users. However, simply incarcerating individuals for drug-related offenses has proven ineffective at reducing drug use. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 55 percent of federal prisoners and 21 percent of state-level prisoners are incarcerated on the basis of drug-related offenses—a number exceeding the population of Wyoming. Meanwhile, the federal government spends over twenty-two billion dollars annually on what 76 percent of the population views as a failure (Head, N.d.). The War on Drugs has become so unpopular in public opinion that President Obama stopped referring to the criminalization of people for drug charges as the "war on drugs."

The reason for this declining public support is clear: despite a record number of arrests and the highest incarceration rate in the world, public spending that rises year after year has not significantly impacted the drug trade or drug usage rates. Furthermore, the ineffective War on Drugs has ushered in numerous social consequences. When a person is incarcerated for drug offenses, it often leaves a broken family or fractured community in its wake. Once incarcerated, a criminal record prevents individuals from finding decent employment, creating lasting barriers to reintegration.

The War on Drugs not only devastates families but can also condemn individuals to a life of poverty. Instead of providing treatment for drug addiction—which should be understood as a disease—people are criminalized, and this impacts their social capacities for their entire lives. Without access to proper treatment, there is a high rate of recidivism, and many drug users never receive treatment as an alternative to punishment. Criminal correction spending is now outpacing budget growth in education, transportation, and public assistance. According to state and federal data compiled by the Pew Center on the States, only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which has quadrupled over the past two decades (Moore, 2009). The United States is spending unprecedented amounts of money to expand the prison system while overlooking the real issues contributing to the drug epidemic.

Other countries have demonstrated more effective approaches to drug use than incarceration. Many of these models treat alcohol and drug use as diseases rather than criminal matters. One notable example is Portugal, which decriminalized all drugs in 2001, including cocaine and heroin. Data collected since that time show that drug usage has not increased and may have even decreased slightly (Greenwald, 2009). Another benefit of decriminalization is that it normalizes treatment programs within public discourse, reducing stigma and increasing social acceptance. These examples demonstrate that prison system reform could be positively influenced by reforming War on Drug policies.

Because of the growing prison population and expenses related to housing it, some states have sought to privatize their systems. Since the 1980s, the U.S. prison population has grown at a rate with no historical precedent (The Justice Policy Institute, 2000). Historically, prison management was conducted by public officials accountable to the public. However, beginning in the 1980s, a trend emerged replacing publicly managed prisons with private sector counterparts. While private companies have reduced some housing costs, the expenses of incarceration represent only part of the societal costs.

The largest private prison company is the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), which became publicly traded in 1998 on a major stock exchange (Schneider, 1999). From a corporation's perspective, the rate of criminalization and resulting inmate population determines profitability. Thus, a corporation has a financial incentive in keeping prisoners behind bars. Rising occupancy rates are the way the market achieves financial growth—creating a fundamental misalignment between corporate profit and public safety.