The US Prison System

[ChipWrecked]

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Yeah, but what good is that gonna do me if I can't smuggle a shiv in from the laundry room?

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You got it all wrong, dude.

Your homies hide it in the laundry room, you catch the mutha with it when he wipes the sweat out of his eyes. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[PoBoy321]

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All morality aside, it costs more to kill a prisoner than imprison him for life, the death penalty is not a deterent either. I'm glad it made u so happy sending a man to die though.

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Very much so. Anybody who would stab a woman in the back, cut her son's throat, and stab a nine year-old girl, leaving her to die, should burn in hell as quickly as possible.

As to your other mistaken point re: cost: care to back it up with fact?

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Here's a link.

The reason that it's more costly is due to court costs due to the lengthy appeals process that's involved with death penalty cases.

[ChipWrecked]

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All morality aside, it costs more to kill a prisoner than imprison him for life, the death penalty is not a deterent either. I'm glad it made u so happy sending a man to die though.

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Very much so. Anybody who would stab a woman in the back, cut her son's throat, and stab a nine year-old girl, leaving her to die, should burn in hell as quickly as possible.

As to your other mistaken point re: cost: care to back it up with fact?

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Here's a link.

The reason that it's more costly is due to court costs due to the lengthy appeals process that's involved with death penalty cases.

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Those costs are only up front.

Per cell long term costs of LWOP (Life w/o Parole):

D. THE COST OF LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE VS THE DEATH PENALTY
Many opponents present, as fact, that the cost of the death penalty is so expensive (at least $2 million per case?), that we must choose life without parole ("LWOP") at a cost of $1 million for 50 years. Predictably, these pronouncements may be entirely false. JFA estimates that LWOP cases will cost $1.2 million - $3.6 million more than equivalent death penalty cases.
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Cost of Life Without Parole: Cases
Equivalent To Death Penalty Cases
1. $34,200/year (1) for 50 years (2), at
a 2% (3) annual cost increase, plus
$75,000 (4) for trial & appeals = $3.01 million
2. Same, except 3% (3) = $4.04 million
3. Same, except 4% (3) = $5.53 million

Cost of Death Penalty Cases
$60,000/year (1) for 6 years (5), at
a 2% (3) annual cost increase, plus
$1.5 million (4) for trial & appeals = $1.88 million
Same, except 3% (3) = $1.89 million
Same, except 4% (3) = $1.91 million



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This does not factor in the cost of geriatric care in prison, which is around $75k per year per prisoner.

[raisins]

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There isnt too much talk about prison reform because it mostly effects poor people, who are of course the most likely to commit a crime.

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Prison reform has been discussed and implemented to some degree semi regularly over the last 100 or so years; in that period there has been more emphasis on rehabilitation. It most recently received attention in the 60s. In the 60s many radicals thought rehabilitation was subverted by too harsh of a structure in the California prisons and worked to chage it. Rules mellowed and prison guards were given less discretion and stricter procedures for handling inmates. Racism of the guards was one of the justifications in putting in these procedures. There is a good argument to be made that weakening the autonomy of the guards allowed the prison gangs to flourish to an unprecedented level. One example of this is the network between prison reformers, George Jackson / the Black Guerilla Family and the Black Panthers. You might find the book the Road to Hell interesting. It talks a little bit about the above but it is mostly the story of George Jackson and the bloodiest inmate uprising at San Quentin.

Not all reform was that ineffective, a good example would be Texas. They were run by the trusty system where the most hardened and institutionalized convicts were given positions of authority and kept order. Some weaker inmates were held in sexual slavery. The trusty system was eventually overcome and changed due to the efforts of reformers. I wonder though if that really changed the level of violence in the prisons.

The book 20,000 Years in Sing Sing was written by Lewis E. Lawes. He was the warden during the 20s and 30s and was a major reformer in bringing some of the focus of prison time to rehabilitating the inmate. He speaks to some of the issues you bring up. I think the audience at that time was less skeptical than we are about the willingness of the criminal to change. It was fairly common to view men as being beaten down by social forces outside of their control and to think that if conditions were different the men would be too.

Both eras mentioned above were liberal in the progressive sense. I don't think too much happens in terms of prison reform when the mood of the country is conservative. I think the best that could be hoped for is the elimination of mandatory minimums and maybe a halt to the drug war. Even that though is wildly optimistic. If the U.S.A. was only fiscally conservative I could see it but we are more socially conservative than fiscally.

regards,

raisins

[young nut]

I really like your thinking on this. Never really thought about prison this way before, but it really makes sense.

[mmcd]

Generally speaking, there are 4 basic theories that underly the purpose of punishment:

Retribution

Incapacitation

Deterrence and

Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation gained favor among decision makers and commentators during the period between about 1900 and the late 1970's. Since then, it has lost its popularity.

Currently, the theory of "limited retributivism" is gaining in popularity. The upper and lower bounds of sentences are set according to the principle of retribution, and where a sentence falls between those bounds is determined by weighing the other 3 purposes.

It is also interesting to note that several states have removed rehabilitation as a purpose from their sentencing statutes.

Your argument assumes that rehabilition is (or should be) the sole purpose of punishment. This is certainly not the case, and in some states, rehabilitation has been removed from the sentencing calculus entirely.

Also, as another poster already mentioned, advocating a "softer" system of criminal punishment is politically unpallatable. In election campaigns, it's really easy to create a 20 second sound-byte that someone is "soft on crime", but it's a lot more difficult to explain why one thinks prison reform is desireable or necessary.