Are there really that many suicides in Massachusetts prisons? If so, why? If not, who is killing these people?[graphic: SHaRC,State HArm Reduction Coalition]

Research conducted by our National Center on Institutions and Alternatives reveals that more than half of young black males living in Washington, DC and Baltimore are caught up in the criminal justice system on an average day— either in prison, jail, on probation or parole, out on bond, or being sought on a warrant.

Three of every four (76 percent) African-American 18-year-olds living in urban areas can now anticipate being arrested and jailed before age 36. In the process, each young man will acquire a “criminal record.” By the late 1990s, federal statisticians were predicting that nearly one of every three adult black men in the nation could anticipate being sentenced to a federal or state prison at some time during his life.

The uncomfortable truth is that the national attitude on crime is more firmly grounded in race than in putative crime rates. The surge in crime rates occurred between 1965 and 1973. The general trend since that time, with “blips” in 1989 and 1991, has been for crime to either remain stable or to decline.

While most people assume jail overcrowding results from rising crime rates, increased violence, or general population growth, that is seldom the case. Here, in order of importance, are the major contributors to jail overcrowding:

(1.) The number of police officers (2.) The number of judges (3.) The number of courtrooms (4.) The size of the district attorneys’ staffs (5. Policies of the state attorneys’ offices concerning which crimes deserve the most attention (6. The size of the staff of the entire court system (7.) The number of beds available in the local jail (8.) The willingness of victims to report crimes (9.) Police department policies concerning arrest (10.) The arrest rate within the police department (11.) The actual amount of crime committed

It is common for a “trickle-up effect” to set in. Although there may be little or no change in the ways serious crimes are handled, those who engage in minor infractions of the law end up receiving harsh penalties as well, thereby “casting the net” of social control ever wider. Such matters should give the nation pause as we move aggressively to build more prisons and camps, but there is little to suggest any respite.

We are in a curious position in which a surfeit of prisons filled with a million minority young men is seen not as an embarrassment, but as indispensable to the smooth running of our democracy and integral to its economy. 

For more than 20 years, our politicians have played the dangerous game of one-upping each other over who can demand the harshest punishments. In this pursuit, the definition of what is criminal, the relaxing of limits on the police to enforce laws, and the mandatory use of prison over non-institutional means of control or correction have been distilled to carefully crafted marketing slogans like “three strikes and you’re out.”

Offenders emerge from prison afraid to trust, fearful of the unknown, and with a vision of the world shaped by the meaning that behaviors had in the prison context.

For a recently released prisoner, experiences like being jostled on the subway, having someone reach across him in the bathroom to take a paper towel, or making eye contact can be taken as a precursor to a physical attack. In relationships with loved ones, this warped kind of socialization means that problems will not easily be talked through. In a sense, the system we have designed to deal with offenders is among the most iatrogenic in history, nurturing those very qualities it claims to deter.

It’s not that we don’t know that our present medieval tapestry of crime and punishment will at some point unravel. It isn’t that there aren’t alternative ways presently available for dealing with those who threaten us or break our laws. However, at times they seem largely futile, if not actually counter-productive. In the present poisoned atmosphere, even the most well- intentioned alternatives run the danger of being pummeled to serve the very same warped conception of humanity they would challenge.

Somewhere in my youth I learned that the only unforgivable sin is the sin of despair. For that reason if no other, I choose to continue what has become a somewhat melancholy battle. It is a great comfort to know that so many others continue to exercise their hope for a better way with equanimity and crazy joy.

Jerome G. Miller is president and co-founder, National Center on Institutions and Alternatives. He is best known for closing the state reform schools in Massachusetts and replacing them with community-based programs while serving as commissioner of the state Department of Youth Services. He has since headed criminal justice programs in four other states. His books include Over the Wall (republished, Ohio State University Press, 1998), and Search & Destroy: African Americans in the Criminal Justice System (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

http://yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=371