(Host)
Commentator Bill Schubart writes about many aspects of life in Vermont –
from potholes to politics. Lately, he’s been listening to conservative
arguments about our outsized government and its related costs, but
wonders about one area of expense that seems beyond any reasonable
chance of cost containment.
(Schubart) The most expensive
service our government provides to its citizens, other than heroic
healthcare in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, is to lock them up.
According
to the Bureau of Prisons, the annual average cost per prisoner in 2008
was $26,000 at the federal level and $24,000 at the local level. Small
states like Rhode Island and Vermont estimate their costs much higher at
$35-$45,000 a year. This is two to three times our per-pupil costs for
public education.
At 743 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, the US
incarceration rate is roughly six times greater than that of England,
Australia or China. It’s even significantly greater than that of Russia.
The "Land of the Free" now incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world.
The
term "penitentiary," meaning a place to do "penance" derives from the
early Shaker belief that confining one in solitary would afford them
time to consider and repent for their transgressions. Today’s massive
penitentiaries sprang from that belief and help explain why we are so
out of sync with the rest of the world.
There are three reasons
given for putting people in jail: public safety, deterrence and
retribution. Statistically, only the first is effective. Most crimes
occur in a fit of testosterone, rage, desperation or panic. About-to-be
criminals don’t pause and reflect on outcomes.
In Christianity at
least, Old Testament retribution gave way to Christ’s admonition to
forgive. But that persistent Old Testament demand of an eye for an eye
is hard to quell and usually trumps the rationale that sending an
offender to what amounts to a crime academy doesn’t serve the victim,
the criminal or society.
Most experts agree that economic crime
and incarceration increase as more people fall into poverty. But the
conservative right seems curiously untroubled by the erosion of our once
robust middle class and reluctant to acknowledge the increasing number
of Americans losing economic ground. They point instead to the tiny
minority clawing their way into the rarified world of wealth derived
from interest and dividends.
Furthermore, they complain about
the cost and size of government, specifically the social safety net and
its mandates, but we hear little from them about the skyrocketing cost
of incarceration, perhaps because it’s been privatized into a highly
profitable business. It’s hard to deny the correlation between economic
stability, equal opportunity and the distribution of wealth – and crime
and the cost of corrections . Property crimes occur along a spectrum
from need to greed. A parent will steal food to feed a starving child; a
kid may kill simply for a pair of designer sneakers. With this in mind,
we need to differentiate and invest more in programs like reparative
justice, court diversion and early release. We cannot sustain the high
cost of corrections, especially when it corrects so little.