Mass Incarceration: An Unacceptable Strategy for Poverty Reduction
Published April 29, 2009 @ 05:00AM PT
One reason that people are so drawn to New Orleans post 2005 is that Hurricane Katrina and our ensuing struggle for reconstruction have laid bare the disparities that arise from social problems like racism and poverty. It’s always interesting to see post-Katrina volunteers making connections between what they observe here and the problems they witness back in their own communities all across the country. One area where this has become particularly clear to me is in our national policy of mass incarceration, which has been carried to an extreme in Louisiana and New Orleans.
According to the Pew Center on the States, the United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, with approximately one in 100 people behind bars in 2008. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the nation, with 1 in 55 adults currently behind bars. This figure only includes people behind bars, not people on probation or parole. Since 1982, Louisiana’s incarceration rate has risen by 272 percent.
These numbers become even more overwhelming when figures are broken down by factors like race, class, gender, age, and the presence of mental illness. For example, nationally 1 in 15 black men ages 18 or older are behind bars, while the figure for white men ages 18 or older is 1 in 106. One in nine black men ages 20 to 34 are behind bars. Incarceration rates by race in Louisiana reflect a similar disparity. Though incarceration rates for women are lower overall, similar racial disparities persist. Finally, recent data indicates that more than half of all prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem. In New Orleans, since Katrina, the connection between poor mental health and incarceration is particularly acute. Since Hurricane Katrina, the largest mental health facility in the city has been Orleans Parish Prison, and police officers are faced with a dearth of other alternatives when dealing with residents experiencing acute mental health issues. This all occurs in the context of a city whose residents have experienced a massive amount of trauma that has not been addressed in any systemic way.
Mass incarceration policies are expensive and have not yielded a corresponding decrease in crime. Furthermore, there has not been a corresponding enthusiasm in quality re-entry programs, which means that recidivism rates remain extremely high. In one New Orleans neighborhood, it will cost $2 million to incarcerate the 55 residents that were imprisoned in 2007, yet there is virtually no other money being invested in the neighborhood.
With figures like these, it is impossible to not at least consider the notion that incarceration has become our de facto social policy for dealing with issues like poverty, illiteracy, mental illness and the continued oppression of the racial groups that we (usually falsely) associate with these problems.
In New Orleans and in my own life, I’ve watched how incarceration tears families and communities apart. Because of the horrible conditions in our prisons and jails, many formerly incarcerated persons reenter with exacerbated mental health issues. Many people reentering society after the experience of incarceration face extremely unstable or nonexistent housing and employment situations, either because they cannot afford housing or because they can’t gain access to sustainable jobs and housing due to their formerly incarcerated status. Lack of access to housing and jobs then significantly increases recidivism rates.
Professionally, I am familiar with how mass incarceration policies affect people’s access to housing. At my office, we get calls from formerly incarcerated persons who are discriminated against in the pursuit of housing. Criminal background is NOT a protected class under the Fair Housing Act. I understand fears about living around formerly incarcerated persons. But given massive incarceration rates, where do we expect people to live?
Sometimes in New Orleans, people talk about using Katrina as an opportunity to rebuild a better city, or to reconstruct a more just place. Usually, I find this point to be offensive. Occasionally, it at least provides a way forward. On a national level, perhaps the current economic crisis, with as much pain and suffering as it causes, will at least provide us with the opportunity to reconsider oppressive social policies like mass incarceration. Now we might realize that it is too expensive and that we need to adopt other methods of dealing with crime, poverty, illiteracy, and mental health.
(photo by publik15)
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Comments (8)
Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the ideas covered in the posts. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; that contain ad hominem attacks; or that are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion.
Author
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Kate Scott is Coordinator of Outreach and Development at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC). Since 1995, GNOFHAC has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure open housing in South Louisiana. Since 2005 GNOFHAC has fought to ensure that all New Orleanians are able to return home by investigating fair housing violations, filing enforcement actions, and engaging in advocacy efforts with local and national partners. Kate is also a board member of the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond.
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Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
88 People
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Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
There aretoo many people in Prison.I think Prisons should only be for violent criminals.The prison system here is a mess.
Posted by Martin Martinez on 04/29/2009 @ 10:50AM PT
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Prison is a strategy for People Reduction
Posted by Tsahia Hobson on 04/29/2009 @ 03:23PM PT
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We compound the problem by making it very difficult for ex-offenders to find work. I run a program to help ex-offenders and other at risk individuals and their families. It is very difficult to get the support we need. We need to get like minded people to network and create actionable solutions.
Posted by james summers on 05/02/2009 @ 05:07AM PT
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The problem is compounded to two things: One, since 1980, a huge number of US jobs were moved to foreign countries in search of super-cheap labor; and two, welfare "reform"/workfare created an instant, massive, desperate labor pool to compete for a dwindling number of jobs. More workers, fewer jobs.
Posted by DH Fabian on 05/25/2009 @ 07:29AM PT
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Prisons are big business, and they can be highly profitable to the corporations to manage them. The higher the profit margin has grown (since the 1980s), the bigger our prisons grew. L<and of the free? The US now locks up a larger percentage of its population than any nation on Earth -- and this has happened during an era of falling crime rates.
Beyond directly profiting the corporations that run prisons, US prisons are increasingly becoming an abundant source of super-cheap labor for businesses that subcontract work. Simply move the job out of the factory, into the prisons, and voila! -- you have an abundance of subminimum wage labor at your disposal! Sure saves on the cost of moving American jobs to Third World countries for cheap labor!
Posted by DH Fabian on 05/25/2009 @ 07:22AM PT
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Sending a person to prison is suppose to be the way the offender pays the debt to society for breaking the laws society has set, however not only is society giving that offender a bed and 3 squares and sometimes a free education, it begins to support the offnders family through the welfare system. Why not allow the offender to work a real job a a liveable wage and the send 85% of the earned wages to offenders family, 12% to help with the cost of incarceration, and 3% into an account for when the offender is released. Maybe the would slow down the "revolving door", maybe upon release the offender would be rehabilitated and when a person is incarcerated evaluate and treat their mental health issues, I honestly belive that most are mentally ill and they are treatable fot the most part.
Posted by cynthia hargis on 10/02/2009 @ 09:35AM PT
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Prison should not be business, it should address the offenders mental health issue's and teach them how to live within boundaries. Why is it that the person who is mentally ill has to ask for help, they do not always know they are ill, why can't others step in and help them for more than 72 hours?
Posted by cynthia hargis on 10/02/2009 @ 09:39AM PT
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Actually, we don't support the offender's family through the welfare system. There has been no welfare entitlement program, no AFDC or General Assistance, since 1996. If one is poor enough, it's possible to obtain a workfare job (pt. time/temp, minimum wage or less) supplemented with food stamps and Medicaid, but that falls far short of supporting a family. Beyond that, I think our problem is that we take a "punish first" approach to virtually every/any issue, whether domestic or international. A huge chunk of the prison population consists of "low level" convicts, primarily those arrested for using marijuana -- non-violent, victimless crimes. Simply legalizing marijuana would save billions of dollars per year, while keeping people in their jobs and keeping their families intact.
On the issue of mental illness, states find it cheaper to send the mentally ill to prison than to a hospital, but the option of choice is to ignore them as long as possible. It's cheaper to let a person live and die in the streets than to get involved. The issue of intervening when someone is mentally ill, before they end up in the prison system, is tremendously complex, and there are no easy answers. We must also be very, very careful not to lock anyone up simply on the allegation of mental illness. In addition, there is such a wide range of mental illnesses of varying degrees. We've all heard the stories of the average, hard-working family man who comes home one day, pulls out a gun and goes on a rampage. Where do you draw the line when it comes to determining when a mentally ill person needs intervention? On why we often turn our backs on those who know they're ill, that's a peculiarity with the (at least US) system. If one denies that he is mentally ill, it is assumed that he is "too ill" to recognize it, while one who recognizes the problem and seeks help is said to have proved (by seeking help) that they are not mentally ill. It's a weird Catch-22. But on all social issues, states go for the cheapest option, even if that's the worst option.
Posted by DH Fabian on 10/02/2009 @ 10:24AM PT
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