Prisons.  Establishing a New Self Identity.

Early American colonists practiced punitive methods on offenders that were universally common at the time.  Widespread practices included such things as branding and confining people in stocks on public display.  These harsh methods came into conflict with the democratic ideals established by the American Revolution.  Many perceived (as many perceive today) a dilemma of imprisoning individuals in a free society.

The attempt to reconcile that dilemma began with the American Quakers establishing a new type of prison in 1790—the Philadelphia Walnut Street Jail.  The jail was based on a lofty goal of reforming convicts through solitary confinement and total abstinence from alcohol.  The only reading material allowed was a bible.  Because the inmates performed penance through their solitude and isolation, the Walnut Street Jail was called a “Penitentiary House.”  Needless to say the idea of forcing people to reform through solitary confinement failed.  Many inmates reportedly went mad.

The Penitentiary was the outcome of a reform movement with a misplaced sense of priorities.  Even though the idea was a flop, the mission for prisons was forever engraved within the lexicon of corrections.  The primary mission of prisons was to “correct”, reform, or rehabilitate inmates. 

American prisons have been held to that measure ever since.  Any attempt by politicians or administrators to establish policies that appear more punitive or controlling is immediately attacked by reformers as tampering with or abandoning the “true” mission.  Prisons are held accountable if inmates are released and commit more crimes.  They’re called human warehouses regardless of the educational and vocational learning they provide.  

Because many consider prisons incompatible with a free society (except for the most violent) it seems that nothing they do can fully redeem their usefulness.  They’re called violent schools of crime but when they clamp down on violence they become more oppressive in the eyes of critics. 

On October 22, 1983, inmate Thomas Silverstein, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang was released from his cell in the Control Unit of the U.S. Penitentiary Marion, to take a shower.  He was shackled but as he passed in front of another cell an inmate slipped him a “shank” and an improvised handcuff key.  After freeing his hands Silverstein attacked officer Merle Clutts and killed him by stabbing him 40 times.

Later that same day, another Aryan Brotherhood member, Clayton Fountain used the same method to kill another Marion Correctional Officer, Robert Hoffman.  The back-to-back murders sent shock waves throughout the Bureau of Prisons.  I was working at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary at the time and the news created a depressing pall of gloom that lasted several days.

The Marion Federal Penitentiary was the most secure prison in the country and had replaced Alcatraz after it closed in 1963.  The Marion control unit was like a maximum-security unit within a maximum-security prison.  It housed the most violent offenders in the system-the worst of the worse.

Thomas Silverstein and Clayton Fountain were exactly the types of inmates the unit was designed for.  In 1981 they were charged with killing a black inmate at Marion by strangling him to death. Silverstein and Fountain then killed a friend of the murdered inmate who had sought to avenge his death.  They reportedly stabbed the inmate 67 times and then dragged his bloody corpse up and down the prison tier so that other prisoners could see their handiwork. 

Through these murders, Silverstein and Fountain were sending a message on behalf of the Aryan Brotherhood that no matter where you locked them up they’d get to you.  It should be noted that there was no federal death penalty at the time of these murders and Silverstein and Fountain were already serving life sentences for murder.  The Bureau of Prisons clearly got the message.

The Bureau consequently “locked down” Marion, meaning that all inmates would be locked in their cells 23 hours a day.  Marion, thus essentially, became the nation’s first “super max” prison.  The response from angry inmate advocates was swift and expected.     The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was hit by a wave of lawsuits claiming cruel and unusual punishment. 

The BOP eventually prevailed in court and set out to build a new institution specifically designed as a super max facility.  The states meanwhile were watching and waiting to see what would happen once the dust settled.

In 1994, the BOP announced the opening of its new Administrative Maximum (ADMAX) Facility in Florence, Colorado. Silverstein and Fountain, meanwhile, were transferred to other federal prisons.   Fountain died of a heart attack in 2004 and Silverstein is now housed at the ADMAX.  Critics have been decrying the use solitary confinement since super max prisons began proliferating after the BOP successfully fended off all initial lawsuits.  

One way of looking at super max facilities is that they are prisons for the prison population “community”.  Many inmates will tell staff that they’re happy the Bureau of Prisons provides a place to keep dangerous predators away from them. 

With 490 inmates in federal super max out of a population of 219,000, this comes out to an “incarceration rate” of about 224 per 100,000.  This is considerably lower than the U.S. incarceration rate of 738 per 100,000 (and lower than the top ten countries’ incarceration rates) that critics constantly quote to criticize our nation’s criminal justice policies. 

Partly because of ADMAX, where the most violent and dangerous inmates can be isolated from the rest of the population, and for other reasons, homicides within BOP facilities have taken a nosedive.  Many states have also built their own super max facilities instituted other innovations.  Consequently, our prisons are more peaceful than 35 years ago. 

This has happened despite a surge of the prison population, and “severe overcrowding” contrary to what the experts have long predicted and warned us about.  Better staff training and inmate classification systems have dramatically decreased prison homicides.  Between 1980 and 2003 the state prison homicide rate dropped from 54.0 per 100,000 inmates to an astounding 5.7 per 100,000.  This should strike inmate advocates as good news but they persist in condemning prisons as if nothing’s changed since the 1971 Attica riot.

New and ever-changing conditions in society require new and innovative operating practices.  Critics nonetheless continue to malign prisons for failing to perform the mission imposed on them by religious zealots more than two hundred years ago.  Because of this corrections in general and prisons in particular have suffered from a kind of identity crisis.  This crisis was, and still remains in some jurisdictions, demonstrated in a vague or even contradicting sense of mission. 

Consensus at last.  Good, bad, or same old same old? 

There’s a surprising consensus spreading across the political spectrum regarding criminal justice reform.  From Rand Paul to Bernie Sanders, the Koch brothers to the Quakers, everyone has joined the chorus in a syncopated refrain demanding a solution to a “broken system.” 

This is both a reason to cheer and to ponder.   Like all previous reform efforts this latest attempt is focused on the wrong problem and calls for inappropriate solutions.  The public wants to improve the system but justice reform has never been a critical issue for voters.  That’s because of a divide between what politicians are promoting and the demands of the public. 

People in general are more concerned with crime control and reduction than with criminal justice system reform.    That’s not to say they don’t want a more humane, and just system, they just don’t believe that the focus of reform efforts is in tune with their own interests.   Politically driven justice reform focuses on reducing incarceration.  The public demands public safety.

Experts from academia, social services, as well as the public and private sectors, provide legislators with answers to what’s described as “mass incarceration”.  Bad policy however isn’t the result of not knowing the answers.  It’s the result of not asking the right questions.  Not asking crucial questions targets the wrong problems.  Subsequent solutions only succeed in requiring more remedies in the future and it further alienates the public. 

Reform activists also don’t seem to be aware of two important facts that render their methods unwarranted.  They demand that the system do what it already does and has done for decades.  They also seem to be unaware that for more than twenty years the justice system has been changing itself from within.  This ongoing “quiet revolution” goes beyond the scope of reformation to transformation.

Traditional reform efforts are initiated and directed from outside the system.  Selling the idea of less incarceration to a seemingly indifferent public requires a negative portrayal of prisons and incarceration in general.  The narrative describes a justice system that incarcerates too many in terms of numbers and necessity.  Prisons are too costly and drain not only our economy but deprive money to our schools and other more vital initiatives.  To our shame we have the highest incarceration rate in the world because we lack or don’t make use of other options. 

Reality paints a different picture.  Despite our high incarceration numbers and contrary to statements that we don’t make use of alternatives, the vast majority of our corrections population (more than eighty percent in some states) is under community supervision rather than locked up.  States spend about $50 billion yearly on corrections and about $600 billion on education.

Statistics only give a snapshot of a person’s current offense.  They don’t describe criminal histories, crime circumstances, or plea-bargaining.  By asking crucial questions we can avert disasters as when corrections departments are ordered through legislation or the courts to release all “non-violent offenders” who “shouldn’t be locked up”. 

So what exactly is wrong with our criminal justice system and what needs to be done?  The premise of the system has always been offender-focused and is supposed to do things to or for them after they commit a crime.  This means that punishment and rehabilitation are two sides of the same coin and operating policies and procedures depend in large part on the political coin toss.  The justice system is also not so much a system as it is a group of individual components each with its own mission, values and priorities.  It works to process cases rather than to solve problems.

The reason we need an effective crime policy is because of the system’s steadfast focus on offenders.  We strive to make the system either meaner and harsher or kinder and gentler on law violators and crime victims are all but ignored.   We fool ourselves into thinking we’re addressing crime when we’re actually trying to determine the best means of responding to individual criminal behavior.  The labels “tough on crime” and “smart on crime” actually have nothing to do with crime at all.  They merely dictate reactive responses after someone violates the law.

The encouraging news is that despite claims of needing to fix a broken system, something appears to be working.  For more than twenty years we’ve experienced a remarkable drop in crime.  The timeline corresponds with the conception and growth of a new justice system.  What makes the new criminal justice revolutionary is that it’s a “ground up” rather than the “bottom down” approach to change.  The changes weren’t because of more laws passed through legislation but because the justice system and citizens joined forces in partnerships to develop new strategies and operating practices. 

It began with community policing when increasing crime, disorder and rapid deterioration in our cities forced citizens and business owners to work with police to develop problem-solving practices at the neighborhood level.  They began by changing the question and ultimately the mission and goal of their efforts.  Rather than asking how many more or fewer people to put in prison, they simply asked how they could create and maintain safer communities.

These practices have spread throughout the other system components.  Community courts, community prosecution, and community probation/parole work with citizens, schools, faith groups and social services.  They combat juvenile delinquency, domestic violence, drug addiction, gang and gun violence and other issues. 

Even prisons and jails have transformed themselves.  The direct supervision model, which was in its infancy in the 1980’s, has now spread throughout the country.  Direct supervision is a microcosm of community policing in prisons and jails.  Officers are in constant and direct contact with inmates and get to know them so they can respond to trouble before it escalates into violence. 

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) between 1980 and 2002 the state prison homicide rate dropped from 54.0 per 100,000 inmates to an astounding 5.7 per 100,000.  Better architectural design of facilities has also made Attica type uprisings virtually a thing of the past.

It seems reformers should rejoice at such good news but instead they portray prisons and jails as if nothing’s changed in the past forty years.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the latest calls for racial justice come when police departments in the inner cities have begun to work with and for their communities.  Black police chiefs working for Black mayors and working in partnership with the Black residents in these communities head many of these police departments.

The people who need protection from those who terrorize them because they can’t afford to live anywhere else but in the poorest crime-infested neighborhoods are now marginalized by a sense of misplaced compassion for their victimizers.   It’s easy to advocate for thugs when you don’t live among them.

Giving citizens and victims a sense of ownership of their justice system is the way to erase the existing harmful divisions and mistrust.  Citizens must be trusted to craft policy together with the justice system including the courts.  This is already being demonstrated in neighborhoods from Brooklyn NY to Portland OR.  Partnerships of citizens, faith groups, social services, businesses, and others working with the justice system have transformed crime-infested areas into safer, more livable locations. 

This transformation must not be hindered because of harmful and divisive rhetoric.  We can only hope that politicians finally hear and heed the calls of the populace as they work to transform the system. 

Crime down, costs up since prison realignment, study finds

http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-down-costs-up-since-prison-realignment-6536236.php

One can imagine the not too distant future when cries for more reform resume because of continued prison crowding.  It’s easy to imagine the charges that will be brought upon the state.  $81 million was not enough, or was directed at the “wrong” programs. More money must be spent to fix a “system that’s too expensive.”  Meanwhile California sinks deeper into financial ruin. 

The prescribed solutions to what ails the criminal justice system often do little or nothing to solve the problem.  That’s because offender advocates are considered criminal justice experts.  Experts provide policymakers with answers rather than help them ask the right question.  The answers are based on myths about the system, which have become established within the criminal justice reform movement.    

The criminal justice reform narrative is essentially anti-incarceration, and strives for less imprisonment without a systemic view or approach to the problem.  Reform advocates are essentially offender advocates that consider prisons and imprisonment cruel and harsh measures unfit for a democratic society except for the most violent offenders.  

The unintended consequences of this authoritative strategy ensure that reforms are constantly called for because the real problems are never solved.  This begs the question if in fact these consequences are actually unintended.  

From THE QUIET REVOLUTION Shattering The Myths About The American Criminal Justice System By Ed Barajas

Interesting Comparison between health insurance and car insurance.

http://www.realclearpolicy.com/blog/2015/09/11/why_theres_no_car_care_crisis_1414.html

U.S. Overall Prison Population Declines Slightly

U.S. Overall Prison Population Declines Slightly

Weaning America Off Violent Crime Stats

Weaning America Off Violent Crime Stats

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