Crime and Corrections - what is the problem?

June 9, 2009 Rota, Spain

Corrections - the running of prison systems - talking about this is one of those "hopeless" topics that leaves the average citizen with eyes glazed over within the first 5 minuntes. We all sort of know that the prison system is not a pleasant place to live; that it is brutal and violent; that it is dominated by prison gangs; that it is a dangerous environment for guards as well as prisoners; that it rarely succeeds in rehabilitating the prisoners; and that it is very expensive to operate.

Those shared understandings are pretty close to the mark. Maybe just a few numbers will help to put things further into focus.
1) I have read that one out of every 165 Americans are in some kind of confinement.
2) In 2002, the reported annueal cost of the prison system was 60 BILLION dollars. I'm not sure that included the costs of probation departments or the criminal court system. It certainly doesn't include the costs of crime to its victims. Today, I believe the annual costs exceed 80 BILLION!
3) In 2002, 67% of released prisoners were rearrested, not exactly a triumph for this very expensive system...and I fear this number may be on the low side.

Historically, there have been periodic attempts to improve prison conditions and to make them more effective. During the 1960's and 1970's, there was money available for new methods in corrections and some very dedicated professionals attempted to use what has thus far been the strongest medicine for dysfunctional behavior - psychology.

A variety of techniques were introduced into prisons - group therapy and individual counselling were made available. Staff sensitivity training was added in many facilities. Alas, in the 1980's and 1990's, budgets became tighter and there were ever more prisoners as "get tough on crime" legislation gave the courts less freedom to bypass incarceration. Building new prisons ate up operating funds and the psychological programs were phased out in place of a new philosophy of "warehousing".

But what really doomed the psychological programs was that statistically they failed to convince that they had any impact. I worked in corrections during this era and there was a lot of "feel-good" activity - we really felt that we were making a difference. We felt that we had connected with our clients. But they continued to fail and get rearrested.

What went wrong? I think the psychological approach works when an individual is in distress and seeks relief. Unfortunately Outlaws have made a successful adaptation to their environment and are not really in distress. They participated eagerly in the psychological programs - perhaps believing it might be a way to qualify for earlier release. Certainly, some of them came away with new insights into their own behavior. But what I now see, few of them came away with the confidence and ability to avoid the Outlaw lifestyle for the rest of their lives. The power of that lifestyle and the difficulty of re-entering a non-Outlaw world where they are seen as dangerous and untrustworthy usually proves definitive. In the next essay, I will address that difficult transition in more depth.

But, after psychology had it's run and failed to convince, the prisons fell back to "warehousing" prisoners - trying to keep them safe and secure while keeping them off the streets. The amount of "safe and secure" that could be provided was linked to the budget and as overcrowding and understaffing became the norm, things were not all that "safe and secure". Wardens saw that what the public demanded of them was that they 1) stay in the budget; and 2) stay out of the newspapers.

Rehabilitation became seen as hopeless, so internal policies shifted towards minimal contact between staff and inmates, to keep staff from getting "conned" or injured. The inmate now found himself in an environment where he had 100% Outlaw contacts.

And the hope for rehabilition and permanent change of Outlaw behavior seems just as remote as it has ever been. It's true that Outlaws eventually outgrow prisons. The fact of aging seems to be the most effective factor causing prisoners to stop committing crimes. They get to where they just don't want to go back "inside" and find some accomodation where they can live without being arrested. But there seems to be no shortage of the young, aggressive inmates.

So the question we raised in the beginning - what is the problem? Well, we're spending a fortune on corrections and it isn't doing much correcting. Prisoners who are locked up don't commit crimes while in prison - that is the only saving grace for the system. If we could lock them all up indefinitely, well then I guess that would pretty well handle the crime problem. But given the size of our underclass and the number of Outlaws, that is beyond our budget many times over - to say nothing of the humanitarian issues.

And so, are prisons destined to forever be a hopeless topic? Is there no hope? Well, maybe. The next essays will contain some ideas for increasing the effectiveness of the existing system.