U.S. Prison Reform: Costs, Policies, and Alternatives

Introduction: A Nation of Prisoners

The United States criminal justice system houses the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of total numbers and in proportion to the overall population (per capita). The United States has a larger prison population than China and India despite having far fewer total residents. It also incarcerates a greater percentage of its citizens than any other country in the world, including Russia, North Korea, and Iran. The United States contains about five percent of the world's population, yet it accounts for approximately twenty-five percent of the world's prison population.

There are many stereotypes that uphold the image of the inmate, prisoner, or felon as a violent criminal who must be locked away to keep the public safe. However, in many cases the actual prison population represents a wide range of offenses, and many of these are non-violent. In fact, only a small percentage of the U.S. prison population was convicted of a violent crime. 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 several perspectives and considers some of the costs this phenomenon has imposed on individuals, communities, and society as a whole.

The War on Drugs

The War on Drugs, relaunched on a new scale over the past several generations, has been largely successful at imprisoning drug users — but simply incarcerating individuals for drug-related conduct has not addressed the underlying problem. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 55% of federal prisoners and 21% of state-level prisoners are incarcerated on the basis of drug-related offenses, representing an incarcerated population larger than the entire population of Wyoming. The federal government spends over twenty-two billion dollars annually on a strategy that 76% of the public views as a failure (Head, N.d.). The War on Drugs became so unpopular in public opinion polls that President Obama stopped referring to the criminalization of people on drug charges as the "war on drugs."

The reason the War on Drugs has become so unpopular is that despite record numbers of arrests and the highest incarceration rate in the world, public spending has risen year after year to fund this approach while producing little measurable impact on the drug trade or overall drug use. Furthermore, the ineffective War on Drugs has produced a number of damaging social consequences. When a person is incarcerated for drugs, it often leaves a broken family or community in its wake. Moreover, once a person is incarcerated, that fact appears on their permanent record and can prevent them from finding decent employment.

Therefore, the War on Drugs not only devastates families but can also condemn individuals to a life of poverty. Instead of providing the treatment needed to overcome addiction, the system criminalizes drug users in ways that diminish their social capacities for the rest of their lives. Rather than treating drug dependency as a disease requiring care, the system sends users to prison. As a result, recidivism rates remain high and many drug users never receive treatment — only punishment.

Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation, and public assistance. Only Medicaid spending grew faster than state corrections spending, which quadrupled over the past two decades, according to a report by the Pew Center on the States (Moore, 2009). The United States is spending unprecedented amounts of money to expand the prison system while failing to address the root issues driving the drug epidemic.

Other models around the world have proven more effective than incarceration in addressing drug use. Many of these approaches treat alcohol and drug dependency as public health issues rather than criminal matters. One notable example of a more effective approach is Portugal's drug policy. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Data collected since then shows that drug usage has not increased and may have even decreased slightly (Greenwald, 2009). Decriminalization also brought treatment programs into mainstream public discourse, making them more socially accepted and less stigmatized. There are ample examples of more effective policies that could positively inform reform of the U.S. War on Drugs approach.

Prison Privatization

Because of the growing prison population and the expense of housing it, some states have looked to privatize their prison systems. Since the 1980s, the U.S. prison population has grown at a rate with no historical precedent (The Justice Policy Institute, 2000). Prison management was traditionally conducted by public officials accountable to the public, but beginning in the 1980s a trend emerged of replacing publicly managed prisons with private-sector counterparts. Private companies have been able to reduce some costs of housing prisoners; however, the direct cost of custody is only one dimension of the broader social equation.

The largest private prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), became publicly traded on a major stock exchange in 1998 (Schneider, 1999). From a corporation's perspective, the rate of criminalization and the resulting inmate population directly determines profitability. This creates a financial incentive to keep prisoners behind bars, since rising occupancy rates are the mechanism through which the market delivers financial growth.

One study found that in Louisiana, prisoners held at state-run facilities cost an average of $55 per day, while those at private local prisons cost just over $24 per day (Chang, 2012). However, this comparison captures only part of the picture. The additional expenditures in state-run prisons often go toward the care and rehabilitation of inmates. Many state-run facilities provide vocational opportunities such as welding, plumbing, and auto mechanics, better preparing inmates to reenter society as productive members. By contrast, such opportunities are more limited in privately operated prisons, where the emphasis on cost savings reduces investment in rehabilitation programs.

Conclusion

The United States criminal justice system houses the largest prison population in the world, both in terms of total numbers and in proportion to the overall population per capita. The United States has about five percent of the world's population, yet it holds about twenty-five percent of the world's prison population. Only a small percentage of that incarcerated population was convicted of a violent crime; the majority are held for drug-related offenses or other non-violent acts. A large portion of these prisoners could be better served through rehabilitation in alternative settings, and there are significant costs — to the individual, the community, and society — from failing to pursue more effective options.

The system clearly prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation, and this is a costly choice for the public. Criminal correction spending is outpacing budget growth in education, transportation, and public assistance. Some states have attempted to reduce the costs of housing prisoners through privatization rather than addressing the root causes of a failing criminal justice system. As a result, many prisoners are subjected to unethical living conditions with little opportunity for rehabilitation. The War on Drugs has proven to be massively ineffective and represents the most obvious starting point for meaningful prison reform. There are ample examples of more effective policies from which the United States could learn in reforming both its drug laws and its broader criminal justice approach.

Works Cited

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McLaughlin, M. (2012, September 14). Overcrowding in federal prisons harms inmates, guards: GAO report. Retrieved from The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/14/prison-overcrowding-report_n_1883919.html

Moore, S. (2009, March 2). Prison spending outpaces all but Medicaid. Retrieved from The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/us/03prison.html

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