I strongly oppose for-profit prisons, but the whole "prisons are big business!" trope the NYT likes to trot out is bullshit. For-profit prison companies are opportunists, taking advantage of the trend of growing prison populations combined with the heavy emphasis in the 1990's on trimming the number of public employees.
But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law#Enactment_by_.... Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
While I agree in general, there was serious lobbying for the Three Strikes Law by people who stood to gain financially. It may have happened even without their support, but they thought it was worth the payoff to put in millions of dollars.
You can't get American voters to agree on anything by that kind of margin, other than apparently the idea that you should get life in prison for stealing a few hundred dollars each on three separate occasions.
Honestly, what really irks me about the "prison lobbying" angle is that it's just a way to shirk responsibility. "Oh, it's those lobbyists that are to blame, not my parents, friends, or me."
That's the one the NPR article talks about (unless there was another in 1994).
Then came the "Three Strikes You're Out" law in 1994. Offenders who had committed even a minor third felony — like shoplifting — got life sentences.
Voters at the time were inundated with television ads, pamphlets and press conferences from Gov. Pete Wilson. "Three strikes is the most important victory yet in the fight to take back our streets," Wilson told crowds.
But behind these efforts to get voters to approve these laws was one major player: the correctional officers union.
In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.
And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.
Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the union, says it does what is best for its members.
"We have advocated successfully for our members," he said.
... EDIT
You also show how it worked in Washington, which is a good comparison. Was there similar lobbying there? (This is an earnest question, I do not know the answer.)
Here's a story about I-593: https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/1996/may/15/citizen-ant.... It took $200k to get on the ballot, apparently funded by the gun lobby. Meanwhile, environmental organizations spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on persuasion efforts, and can't get shit passed. Persuasion is cheap when people already agree with you.
Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
It's not bullshit, because you don't need to own a for-profit prison to profit from the prison-industrial complex. Even non-profit prisons (my, is that a weird phrase) result in the transfer of tax dollars to prison staff, construction workers, suppliers of food, surveillance equipment, and other necessary materials, and so on. Oh, and don't forget cheap prison labor. So clearly, many groups have a vested interest in maintaining and even growing a high prison population.
> But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did
This I absolutely agree with.
> Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
In your haste to criticize the NYT, did you perhaps miss that such a target audience is precisely who they should be pointing out the deleterious effects of their voting patterns to?
> Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
Agreed.
But several million to get her to think, "Corporations are using prisons to needlessly jail people"? That could work.
Rehabilitation is science fiction. Just because we want it to be possible does not make it possible.
Some convicts do spontaneously change and become rehabilitated, but no one has offered much evidence that they can engineer this change and induce it reliably. And yet the myth persists.
Medical science and psychology have failed to reliably treat much simpler mental illnesses (let alone cure), but somehow they can dig around inside someone's skull and cure something that isn't a mental illness at all, rather the predisposition to make bad, destructive, and illegal choices?
Lots of things were science fiction before they were science. Our ability to treat mental illness today is better than it was 75 years ago.
Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons, and instead put them back in society and growing the economy. There is a ton of money put into locking people up. It would pay for itself to figure out how to rehabilitated a small percentage of them.
There are already "twelve step" programs which are mandated by courts. Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
But instead the focus in the US is on punishment, victims rights, three strikes laws and being tough on crime.
> Lots of things were science fiction before they were science. Our ability to treat mental illness today is better than it was 75 years ago.
This isn't a counter-argument. Lots of things that were science fiction 50 years ago are still science fiction today.
However, I will keep an open mind. If in the future someone claims to understand rehabilitation and can prove this, I will consider their work/theory. I will not "just try it anyway" today because of wishful thinking.
> Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons
Fine by me, as long as it doesn't involve science fiction. I even have some suggestions:
Legalize drugs. Don't decriminalize them. Don't just legalize marijuana either... legalize cocaine, heroin, meth. Pardon everyone for their drug crimes (but not violent crimes associated with drug dealing).
Do this, and you can substantially reduce both the number of people in prison, and the average time spent there. Low level drug dealers won't spend time in prison learning to be psychopaths. Drug users won't commit burglaries and theft trying to pay for their drug habit (if they'll do anything for a fix, anything includes scrubbing toilets).
Of course, this won't happen. People believe the television shows they watch where someone who uses meth once turns into a demon.
> Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
I agree. But this is a problem I think requires a working theory of mind/intelligence. (Funny how it's either another variation of the AI problem, or related to it, eh?) We don't have that.
> But instead the focus in the US is on punishment
This is because we are monkeys. I don't mean metaphorically, but literally. Monkeys have instinctual senses of justice that demand punishment and vengeance and so forth.
If you remove punishment from the equation, this would be bad. The state punishes so that the monkeys will feel as if justice has occurred, and will refrain from performing their own justice.
Do you want revenge killings and vigilanteeism to rise?
A lot of countries have max sentences which are around '30-40 years'. One also has to consider the fact that a 25-year old, for example, who gets 40 years is basically spending life in prison.
in case of such sentences - where person is de-facto removed from the society forever, as even the 30-40 years means that the person will be different and the society will change unrecognizable - i see how it would make sense just to send the person to live on some other territory, continent, planet, asteroid, etc...
Long prison terms have 2 functions - deterrent and removing dangerous people from society. Both of this can be accomplished if the place where convicts are to be send is remote and harsh. Such approach would also allow to avoid feeding such a beast as the prison guards union.
I can't tell if you are being serious,but in case you really don't know, the British Empire used to send its convicts to Australia, as it was a new colony and was in need of as many people as possible. So instead of putting those people in prison, they sent them off to Australia, without the ability to ever come back.
Starting in 1788, Britain used a policy of 'Transportation' to colonies in Australia to relieve overcrowding in its prisons at home. Of course, Australia is now an independent country.
The book 'A Commonwealth of Thieves' by Thomas Keneally provides a very readable narrative of the first British people to settle there.
"While the public was not aware of the true position, the politicians were. Political leaders saw the price paid for being colonial dependencies of the British crown and it was too high. After years of negotiations the constitutional links between Australia and Britain were finally broken , not by a referendum but by legislation passed by the state, commonwealth and British parliaments. On March 3, 1986, these acts, the Australia Acts, came into force. They state that the British government is no longer responsible for the government of any state and that the Westminster parliament can no longer legislate for Australia. Most important, they transferred into Australian hands full control of all Australia's constitutional documents. So March 3, 1986, is the day Australia achieved complete independence from Britain. Happy Australian Independence Day."
The Queen of England is also still nominally head of state of Canada. Not that this has much effect in practice.
Just do what Norway does - maximum sentence is 21 years, and then it's re-reviewed. If the prisoner has rehabilitated, release them - if not,they can extend the sentence by another few years. And then again,and again,and again - as many times as needed, effectively turning it into a life sentence in the case of hardened criminals, but eventually releasing people like the ones mentioned in the article,who have genuinely changed.
Actually, if you are given 21 years in prison, you are given 21 years. Normally you would then get out on parole after 14, but the maximum you will receive unless you carry out other criminal acts while in prison that warrants a new trial and sentence, is 21 years.
In order for it to be possible to keep the person locked up further, it requires a special sentence - "forvaring" - that is separate from the longest ordinary prison sentence and is intended for use only with prisoners that are deemed to be at particular high risk of reoffending.
The court will set a minimum period that the convicted needs to stay in prison, which should normally not exceed 10 years, and a term after which the prisoner will be regularly reviewed for release, which should normally not exceed 15 years but that can be as long as 21 (at least every 5 years). The prosecution will then go to the courts and request an extension if they believe there's still cause to believe that the person is at great risk of reoffending at the end of the initial term and in advance of the expiry of any extensions.
It was specifically made clear when the changes to the law was made, that it was not generally intended as a life sentence, but in fact that it was expected that at lot of the sentences would have much shorter terms than the maximum. As of 2005 (3 years after introduction of "forvaring") 2/3's of the sentences where it had been given where given with terms less than 10 years.
I don't know, and don't have time to check, how many of these have actually been released, but I know some have been released without extensions to their initial term, even in cases where the court found that there was risk of reoffending, but where the risk was not found to be sufficient to meet the criteria for extending the term.
There's mandatory parole review for normal sentences in Norway too, and it typically happens after 2/3 of the sentencing term, but normal sentences always have a fixed maximum term that can't exceed 21 years.
This special form of sentencing - "forvaring" - is different in that it in theory is open-ended if the person in question is found to be at risk of reoffending. If a sentence of "forvaring" is not given in the original trial, then the prisoner is free at the end of his/her prison term regardless of risk of reoffending, behaviour or other factors.
The decision about whether or not to extend the term for someone given a sentence of "forvaring" is taken by the court, after a review by the prosecutors office, assuming the prosecutor choose to ask for an extension.
The only consideration is the extent of the risk of reoffending - other factors that are often taken into account in normal parole hearings (such as expressing understanding of the crimes, regret etc.) are not normally relevant, as these hearings are not about whether or not the prisoner is eligible to be rewarded with early release, but whether or not there is a proven need for society to extend the incarceration beyond the maximum term set with the original sentence in order to protect peoples safety.
Reading this article reminded me of the scenes from the film, Shawshank redemption.
You know, where Brooks got released, but was institutionalised for so long that he couldn't cope with the outside world and commits suicide? And which was then used as a suspense moment when Red also reaches for the chair and goes to the same beam?
EDIT: Not to mention, how Red narrates how hard it was for him to go on loo breaks without asking for permission :(
This is one reason the Scandinavian prison systems try to gradually move people out into society prior to full release, as kind of a phased-in release. It's common to move people who are considered less of a security risk to minimum-security prisons that are less prison-like and more like boarding schools, and then allow weekend releases towards the end of sentences, where prisoners can leave for the weekend to spend time with family, but have to report back on Monday. Sometimes this leads to bad headlines (prisoners can "escape" by just hopping a short fence at a minimum-security facility, or deciding not to come back from weekend release), but overall I think it has positive effects.
Simply write the timings in such a way as where before they would have been paroled at time t, their move to low security and reintroduction occurs at t. Therefore they don't get to escape "easily" any sooner than they would have under a previous systm?
A condition for parole seems to be that the prisoner accept that they did the crime (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocent_prisoner's_dilemma). I don't know the circumstances of the case, but assuming that the prisoner who drove over his wife during an argument maintained that he intended to reverse, would he have been paroled?
No. It is galling to me that, as your linked article states and has been demonstrated in several court cases, factual innocence is not an immediate overturning of the conviction, an expungment, and a written apology from the governing body that erred.
The problem is that most prisoners cannot show actual innocence. It's usually a matter of showing some new evidence or some flaw in the original evidence that doesn't rise to the level of convincingly proving that the original verdict was incorrect. That's why DNA evidence is so often the basis for releasing the innocently convicted: they rise to the level of convincingly showing that the original verdict was in error.
37 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 80.3 ms ] thread[0] http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab.aspx
http://www.thenation.com/prison-profiteers
I strongly oppose for-profit prisons, but the whole "prisons are big business!" trope the NYT likes to trot out is bullshit. For-profit prison companies are opportunists, taking advantage of the trend of growing prison populations combined with the heavy emphasis in the 1990's on trimming the number of public employees.
But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law#Enactment_by_.... Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
http://www.npr.org/2009/08/13/111843426/folsom-embodies-cali...
You can't get American voters to agree on anything by that kind of margin, other than apparently the idea that you should get life in prison for stealing a few hundred dollars each on three separate occasions.
Honestly, what really irks me about the "prison lobbying" angle is that it's just a way to shirk responsibility. "Oh, it's those lobbyists that are to blame, not my parents, friends, or me."
Then came the "Three Strikes You're Out" law in 1994. Offenders who had committed even a minor third felony — like shoplifting — got life sentences.
Voters at the time were inundated with television ads, pamphlets and press conferences from Gov. Pete Wilson. "Three strikes is the most important victory yet in the fight to take back our streets," Wilson told crowds.
But behind these efforts to get voters to approve these laws was one major player: the correctional officers union.
In three decades, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association has become one of the most powerful political forces in California. The union has contributed millions of dollars to support "three strikes" and other laws that lengthen sentences and increase parole sanctions. It donated $1 million to Wilson after he backed the three strikes law.
And the result for the union has been dramatic. Since the laws went into effect and the inmate population boomed, the union grew from 2,600 officers to 45,000 officers. Salaries jumped: In 1980, the average officer earned $15,000 a year; today, one in every 10 officers makes more than $100,000 a year.
Lance Corcoran, spokesman for the union, says it does what is best for its members.
"We have advocated successfully for our members," he said.
... EDIT
You also show how it worked in Washington, which is a good comparison. Was there similar lobbying there? (This is an earnest question, I do not know the answer.)
Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
> Only about 8% of prisoners are held in for-profit prisons: http://www.propublica.org/article/by-the-numbers-the-u.s.s-g...
That isn't quite correct. It's 8% as of 2009.
As of 2012, it's actually ~17%. http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4843
> But CCA didn't create the massive U.S. prison population. Voters did
This I absolutely agree with.
> Frightened suburbanite baby boomers watching the news, shrieking "Just Say No!" at school events, voting for Three Strikes' laws and aggressive drug enforcement. I.e. NYT's core readership.
In your haste to criticize the NYT, did you perhaps miss that such a target audience is precisely who they should be pointing out the deleterious effects of their voting patterns to?
> Here's the thing. A few million is enough to let my mom know that there is a "tough on crime" proposition on the ballot and she should go out and vote. Ten times that much won't convince her that being "tough on crime" is a bad thing, that her granddaughter isn't in constant danger of getting kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking, etc.
Agreed.
But several million to get her to think, "Corporations are using prisons to needlessly jail people"? That could work.
Some convicts do spontaneously change and become rehabilitated, but no one has offered much evidence that they can engineer this change and induce it reliably. And yet the myth persists.
Medical science and psychology have failed to reliably treat much simpler mental illnesses (let alone cure), but somehow they can dig around inside someone's skull and cure something that isn't a mental illness at all, rather the predisposition to make bad, destructive, and illegal choices?
Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons, and instead put them back in society and growing the economy. There is a ton of money put into locking people up. It would pay for itself to figure out how to rehabilitated a small percentage of them.
There are already "twelve step" programs which are mandated by courts. Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
But instead the focus in the US is on punishment, victims rights, three strikes laws and being tough on crime.
This isn't a counter-argument. Lots of things that were science fiction 50 years ago are still science fiction today.
However, I will keep an open mind. If in the future someone claims to understand rehabilitation and can prove this, I will consider their work/theory. I will not "just try it anyway" today because of wishful thinking.
> Why not try to find ways that we can stop paying for people to be in prisons
Fine by me, as long as it doesn't involve science fiction. I even have some suggestions:
Legalize drugs. Don't decriminalize them. Don't just legalize marijuana either... legalize cocaine, heroin, meth. Pardon everyone for their drug crimes (but not violent crimes associated with drug dealing).
Do this, and you can substantially reduce both the number of people in prison, and the average time spent there. Low level drug dealers won't spend time in prison learning to be psychopaths. Drug users won't commit burglaries and theft trying to pay for their drug habit (if they'll do anything for a fix, anything includes scrubbing toilets).
Of course, this won't happen. People believe the television shows they watch where someone who uses meth once turns into a demon.
> Something that was evidence based would surely work better.
I agree. But this is a problem I think requires a working theory of mind/intelligence. (Funny how it's either another variation of the AI problem, or related to it, eh?) We don't have that.
> But instead the focus in the US is on punishment
This is because we are monkeys. I don't mean metaphorically, but literally. Monkeys have instinctual senses of justice that demand punishment and vengeance and so forth.
If you remove punishment from the equation, this would be bad. The state punishes so that the monkeys will feel as if justice has occurred, and will refrain from performing their own justice.
Do you want revenge killings and vigilanteeism to rise?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_imprisonment#Reform_or_abo...
Long prison terms have 2 functions - deterrent and removing dangerous people from society. Both of this can be accomplished if the place where convicts are to be send is remote and harsh. Such approach would also allow to avoid feeding such a beast as the prison guards union.
And then even your prisons declare independence sooner or later. Look at Australia.
In fact, several popular referendums for forming an independent republic have failed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Australia
Think of her as being simultaneous monarch of several countries that are now independent of each other.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Act_1986
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/we-only-became-indep...
"While the public was not aware of the true position, the politicians were. Political leaders saw the price paid for being colonial dependencies of the British crown and it was too high. After years of negotiations the constitutional links between Australia and Britain were finally broken , not by a referendum but by legislation passed by the state, commonwealth and British parliaments. On March 3, 1986, these acts, the Australia Acts, came into force. They state that the British government is no longer responsible for the government of any state and that the Westminster parliament can no longer legislate for Australia. Most important, they transferred into Australian hands full control of all Australia's constitutional documents. So March 3, 1986, is the day Australia achieved complete independence from Britain. Happy Australian Independence Day."
The Queen of England is also still nominally head of state of Canada. Not that this has much effect in practice.
In order for it to be possible to keep the person locked up further, it requires a special sentence - "forvaring" - that is separate from the longest ordinary prison sentence and is intended for use only with prisoners that are deemed to be at particular high risk of reoffending.
The court will set a minimum period that the convicted needs to stay in prison, which should normally not exceed 10 years, and a term after which the prisoner will be regularly reviewed for release, which should normally not exceed 15 years but that can be as long as 21 (at least every 5 years). The prosecution will then go to the courts and request an extension if they believe there's still cause to believe that the person is at great risk of reoffending at the end of the initial term and in advance of the expiry of any extensions.
It was specifically made clear when the changes to the law was made, that it was not generally intended as a life sentence, but in fact that it was expected that at lot of the sentences would have much shorter terms than the maximum. As of 2005 (3 years after introduction of "forvaring") 2/3's of the sentences where it had been given where given with terms less than 10 years.
I don't know, and don't have time to check, how many of these have actually been released, but I know some have been released without extensions to their initial term, even in cases where the court found that there was risk of reoffending, but where the risk was not found to be sufficient to meet the criteria for extending the term.
This special form of sentencing - "forvaring" - is different in that it in theory is open-ended if the person in question is found to be at risk of reoffending. If a sentence of "forvaring" is not given in the original trial, then the prisoner is free at the end of his/her prison term regardless of risk of reoffending, behaviour or other factors.
The decision about whether or not to extend the term for someone given a sentence of "forvaring" is taken by the court, after a review by the prosecutors office, assuming the prosecutor choose to ask for an extension.
The only consideration is the extent of the risk of reoffending - other factors that are often taken into account in normal parole hearings (such as expressing understanding of the crimes, regret etc.) are not normally relevant, as these hearings are not about whether or not the prisoner is eligible to be rewarded with early release, but whether or not there is a proven need for society to extend the incarceration beyond the maximum term set with the original sentence in order to protect peoples safety.
EDIT: Not to mention, how Red narrates how hard it was for him to go on loo breaks without asking for permission :(
Someone who can show that they are actually innocent can file a federal habeas petition, and their proof of actual innocence will get past any procedural hurdle that stands in their way: http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/05/opinion-analysis-innocence....
The problem is that most prisoners cannot show actual innocence. It's usually a matter of showing some new evidence or some flaw in the original evidence that doesn't rise to the level of convincingly proving that the original verdict was incorrect. That's why DNA evidence is so often the basis for releasing the innocently convicted: they rise to the level of convincingly showing that the original verdict was in error.