![Folsom prison inmate Joseph Sweet uses his mirror to look at California Republican lawmakers visiting the inside of Folsom Prison, in Represa, Calif., Monday Feb. 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Brian Baer, Pool)](http://mnpprodpublic.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/041513_AmericanPrisons_16x9-690x388.jpg)
“Human beings are social creatures. We need psychological, intellectual, spiritual, environmental stimulation to function properly, to grow and develop. Without that stimulation we deteriorate. I do not care how strong one is mentally, solitary confinement will adversely affect you. I have literally watched grown men deteriorate before my eyes, and go mad. There were times during my eight-year stint that I lost it and began to hallucinate and lose my grip on reality. What the public needs to realize is that eventually all of those who experience that will be released back into society, far more broken than when they went in. “ — Joe Giarratano, Prisoner # 1027820, Wallens Ridge State Prison, Va.
According to the United States’ Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), there were 1,598,780 prisoners in the states and federal correctional facilities as of 2011. Of those, 492 residents of the United States — per 100,000 — are currently sentenced to a year in prison or more, with nearly 48 percent of all federal prisoners serving time on drug offenses. In 2010, there were 4,887,900 individuals on probation or parole in the United States.
The United States has the largest per capita and actual prison population of any nation in the world. Per capita, at 716 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, the United States leads St. Kitts and Nevis (649), the Seychelles (641), Rwanda (527), Cuba (510) and Russia (487). It would be expected, then, that in a nation with such a massive prison system, the conditions there would be first rate.
This is not the case.
According to the BJS, the percentage of prisoners that are 40 or older is 39 percent. Among the states, this statistic is even worse. Louisiana, for example, has 1,619 prisoners per 100,000 residents. This is due to the fact that many prisoners receive longer-than-needed sentences for their charges. This is also due to a radical shift in the way many communities think about imprisonment. Louisiana, for example, has a $182 million industry from its for-profit prisons.
“You have people who are so invested in maintaining the present system,” said Burk Foster, a former professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette with expertise on Louisiana prisons. The “punishment network,” Foster said, is “good for them financially and politically.” The trade-off for this “for-profit” attitude is a cutting of corners that result in glaring human rights violations, negligence, a lack of security and basic care and a total lack of sympathetic action that mirror the worst of the Third World and are unbecoming of the world’s sole superpower.
The realities of hard time in America
As of 2010, per 100,000 African Americans, there are 2,207 African Americans in the prison population (37.1 percent of the total prison population), compared with 966 Latinos per 100,000 in the Latino community (34.9 percent) and 380 Whites per 100,000 White Americans (59.5 percent). This is despite the fact that the U.S. Census Bureau lists African Americans as 12.6 percent of the U.S. population, Latinos at 16.4 percent and Whites at 72.4 percent.
Among males, the discrepancy is clearer: 4,347 Black males incarcerated in the United States per 100,000 African Americans, compared with 1,775 Latinos and 678 Whites per 100,000 residents of their respective communities. This has created a crisis in the African American community, where comparable numbers of African-American males that are heading off to prison and to college is creating a “lost generation” of African-American men.
In its January World Report, Human Rights Watch (HRW) decried the American prison system, stating that it acts contrary to human rights principles. According to HRW, “Research in 2012 found that the massive over-incarceration includes a growing number of elderly people whom prisons are ill-equipped to handle, and an estimated 93,000 youth under age 18 in adult jails and another 2,200 in adult prisons. Hundreds of children are subjected to solitary confinement. Racial and ethnic minorities remain disproportionately represented in the prison population.”
Massive overcrowding and a lack of resources and manpower to appropriately deal with the situation have led to the most grievous of the problems: extended solitary confinement — sometimes, extending for decades — of prisoners, denial of basic medical and psychological care, a lack of in-prison security for prisoners and a failure to respond to gross acts of staff misconduct.
A shift away from prisons being rehabilitation centers, coupled with budget reductions and tightened sentencing guidelines has created an environment in which prisons have become — metaphorically — a dumping ground for society’s “undesirables.” The “get tough on crime” movement of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s deemphasized education, occupational training and psychiatric therapy for inmates for more prisons and improved security.
“The research is very clear that the main causes of the explosion in the prison population since the 1980s are the length of sentences and tightened parole restrictions,” said Dr. Caitlyn Taylor, a professor of criminal justice at La Salle University. “As a result of mandatory minimum sentencing, habitual offender laws, and the use of life sentences, the length of the average sentence for all types of crimes has been dramatically longer.
“Changes in parole policies have also made it much more difficult for inmates to be granted release on parole. If someone is granted parole, it is also much more likely that they will be sent back to prison on a technical violation (not a new crime, but the failure to meet some condition of their supervision). These changes in sentencing practice are legislative decisions. In the 1980s, politicians began to learn about the massive amount of political capital that could be gained by demonstrating that they are ‘tough on crime.’”
“While the growth in the prison population is not attributed to a growth in crime rates, crime in poor, urban neighborhoods was highly publicized,” Taylor continued. “The media played a major role by selectively covering urban crime and telling Americans that they should be fearful. Much of this fear-mongering in the media that was used to support politicians’ displays of “get tough on crime” initiatives started even earlier with urban race riots of the 1960s.”
A recent report from the New York Times points to the the following: In New York City’s poorest borough — 73 percent of all Bronx felony cases are argued in the court’s own time target, with many taking as long as five years to argue — in direct contradiction of the Constitution’s promise of a speedy trial — with less than half of jury trials ending in guilty verdicts, with a higher-than-normal percentage of all cases going to plea bargain. This is in light of slashed budgets, fewer judges and fewer resources available to work through the massive backlog.
In light of sequestration, many see the Bronx’s example as a glimpse to things to come in the American legal system. However, there are some that are set to benefit from the chaos.
The economic motive
A motive behind this may be that prisons have become money-makers. For example, per month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread and 2.9 million eggs for general consumption. Texas and California inmates produce dorm furniture, lockers, diploma covers, binders, logbooks, locker room benches and juice boxes. Unicor (Federal Prison Industries) produces soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, combat armor and “wiring harnesses” for jets and tanks.
Washington State has contracted prisoner labor to Microsoft, Starbucks contracted California state prisoners to work their food supply chain, Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney also hired California prisoners to sew clothing and the federal government was contracted by Dell Computers to build and package computers.
Typically, these prisoners make about 25 cents per hour, where non-prison laborers would have to be paid 29 times more to meet federal minimum wage standards. “The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”
With the expansion of for-profit prisons, the “monetization” of prisoners has permitted the lowering of standards as a fiscal response and has removed the federal government and the states from being morally or economically responsible for the prisoners’ upkeep. The use of inexperienced guards, lack of in-house support and cuts to medical access as a way to increase profitability in private jails have created an environment of gross treatment and rampant abuse.
The focus on profits over the integrity of the individual trivialize the prisoner and belittles the criminal justice system. As stated in 2010 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, a major private prison company stated, “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by … leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices …” The company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), operates 65 prisons and jails and profited $1.7 billion annually.