Prison Alternative
Prison AlternativeBy: Scott Ervin
E-mail: [email protected]
"The Prison Alternative" America has to wake up and realize that the current structure of our penal system is failing terribly. Take a group of people, strip them of possessions and privacy, expose them to constant threats of violence, overcrowd their cell-block, deprive them of meaningful work, and the result is an embittered underclass more intent on getting even with society than contributing to it. There is a better way to deal with crime and punishment in America. Americans pay too much money for prisons to fail so badly. Like many big government solutions, prisons are expensive. In the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1997, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates the total cost for our judicial system for 1993. That year, the United States had 1,364,881 adult jail and prison inmates. Based on this information, the cost per inmate for corrections, judicial, legal, and police costs totaled $ 71,467 per inmate. That is about the same as the cost of sending a student to a four-year college. Due to overcrowding, more than ten billion dollars in construction is needed to create sufficient space for just the current prison population. "Building more prisons to address crime is like building more graveyards to address a fatal disease." (Robert Gangi, Executive Director, Correctional Association of New York) Ervin 2 Prisons take the nonviolent offender and make him live in the same conditions that a hardened killer would have. The very nature of prison, no matter how humane society attempts to make it, produces an environment that is inevitably harmful to its residents. Even by delaying release by longer sentences, residents will eventually return to damage the community. Society is paying the bill for this injustice to go on. Not including Federal Funds, states spent $28.9 billion on corrections in 1997 alone. To compare, the states only spent $14.0 billion on welfare to the poor (National Association of State Budget Officers 1997). Why should we force taxpayers to pay to keep nonviolent criminals sitting in prison cells where they become bitter and more likely to repeat their offenses when released? The government must devise new ways to punish the guilty, and still manage to keep American citizens satisfied that our justice system is effective. Instead, why not put non violent criminals to work in restitution programs outside prison where they could pay back the victims of their crimes? In 1995, only 13% of all state prisoners were violent offenders (US Department of Justice Report, "Prisoners in 1996"). The government should initiate work programs; where the criminal receives a task and must relinquish his or her earnings to the victim of their crime until the mental and physical damages of their victims are satisfied. A court will determine how much money the criminal will have to pay for his restitution costs, and what job the criminal will have to do to pay back that restitution. The most obvious benefit of this approach is that it takes care...
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