Well, as you can imagine, the last couple of days have been all too busy. Nor did I think that it would take a couple of days to come back to this subject. However, I am finally back to it.
USA attitudes towards incarceration were not always as they are nowadays. Several events began to drive incarceration policies towards what we find today. One was a rising crime rate following the events of the sixties and early seventies. America changed during those years, and the result of a major cultural change (or paradigm shift, as was popularly said back then) is always social instability. That social instability engendered a rising crime rate that brought repeated calls for a solution.
That social instability also damaged the previous incarceration policies, which were based on rehabilitation rather than retribution. The damage was not necessarily due to a mistaken philosophy of rehabilitation. Rather, for rehabilitation to work, the society into which a parolee is released has to have a certain stability which encourages the parolee to settle down and become a productive member of society. Without that stability, the rehabilitative policies were not working. Mind you, some of the rehabilitative policies were every bit as Pollyanna-like as the financial policies of the Fed under Mr. Greenspan. In other words, a mixture of an unstable society plus some unrealistic expectations about rehabilitation created a near perfect storm.
By 1980, people in this country were beginning to change their opinions and were beginning to demand retribution instead of rehabilitation. This was also the time of the return of political conservatism and the rise of the Religious Right. Crime and punishment became one of the perfect issues with which to take on Democrats and liberals. As an issue, this was one of the most successful issues. A measure of its success is found in the infamous 1988 Willie Horton advertisement used by President George H.W. Bush against his challenger, Sen. Michael Dukakis.
As a result of this emphasis, and as crime continued to appear to be an intractable problem, laws were changed, little by little, from rehabilitation towards retribution. It was during the following period, of the 1990’s, that “three strikes and you are out” laws became popular. The original versions of some of these three strikes laws were draconian. It was possible, in some of those laws, to commit three misdemeanors whose total prison time would be less than three years and yet end up sentenced to life in prison. Though there has been some modification of those laws, yet California, can still sentence you to life without three separate serious felonius incidents. By 2004, close to half of the States have some type of three strike law.
As these laws were enacted, crime rates began to drop. Proponents of retribution were quick to point to that type of drop as proof that their policies were working. In fact, in the 10 year period between 1994 to 2004, crime dropped significantly across the United States. However, what has now become clear is that crime has dropped, whether or not the state had a three strike law. In fact, half of the states do not necessarily have clear retributive policies and crime dropped in those states as well. Interestingly enough, one wag has pointed out that crime has dropped precisely as the baby-boomer generation, that most rebellious and least society oriented generation in our history, has aged. That wag commented that arthritis and Geritol among the baby-boomers may have been the best prescription for lowering the crime rate.
But, the result of those policies has been the incarceration of a sizable percentage of our population, particularly among minorities. And, those policies have led us to have the world’s largest prison population. The recognition of the problem is found across both parties:
“There’s a shift away from the mindset of lock them up and throw away the key. That cannot sustain itself.” OH State Rep. John J. White (R-Kettering) Dayton Daily News February 11, 2007
“There isn’t a person in public office that’s not sensitive to the accusation of being soft on crime. But you don’t have to be soft on crime to be smart in dealing with criminals.” OH Gov. Ted Strickland (D) The Columbus Dispatch January 26, 2008
The solution will not be easy to achieve. As Gov. Strickland points out, years of using the accusation of being soft on crime as a political tool have made it nearly impossible to revise our laws without its being used as a political tool leading to your defeat. And, so, we struggle with a problem that we have created, a problem to which most people are insensitive because of the way we, ourselves, have taught ourselves to regard all “criminals.”
I say insensitive because, despite published statistics by the US Bureau of Prisons, despite the articles, despite statements by governors and representatives, not only are most people unwilling to believe that those statistics are true, but when they hear the statistics, most people’s response is that those incarcerated not only belong there, but ought to stay there. Worse, most people have removed all humanity from those incarcerated, often speaking approvingly of prisoners living with inadequate space or food, or even of homosexual rape in prison. One need only look at how often a police officer on TV or in a movie makes a statement to a suspect about their going to jail and becoming someone’s “woman” to realize just how acceptable it is to dehumanize a “criminal” to the point that such rape is an acceptable, and even positive, comment in these recordings.
That is, one of the results of politicizing the crime issue has been the dehumanization of the criminal. But, I mentioned that there is also a religious component.
===MORE TO COME===
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